congrats guys! i totally forgot about the 'biomorph' ad, here i was thinking the inspiration was the g-star raw denim add by glassworks.
s On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:05 PM, Andy Moorer <andymoo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi gang. I wanted to give a shout out to the folks who worked on Nike > Evolution, it just posted. Those who weren't involved, this is a pretty > nice story... > > A young studio, Royale, got interested in this ICE buzz and invited a > number of us from the list to visit the studio and work on a commercial. > Their designers had been watching cool stuff on ICE for a while, admiring > Tim Borgmanns work and the tools Eric was writing, and had tried > Exocortex's tools for maya. They decided this was pretty neat and when they > got a chance to reach out, they took it. > > The brief was to take what Digital Domain had accomplished (about a year > ago?) with "Biomorph" and introduce a new product with an effect similar to > the Biomorph knitting sequence... But with a small team, for a very short > produvtion duration and a fraction of the budget. > > Oh and three commercials, not 1. > > These are the times we live in. > > Given this challenge, Royale turned to the ICE community they had been > eyeing... names were passed around and folks talked to and consulted. In > the end I wound up CG sup, leaning heavily on Ciaran Moloney as lighting > lead and Leonard Kotch as a tool builder. Steven Caron took a short break > from Whiskytree to lend a hand with some pipeline tools and general > expertise, Billy Morrison dove in with me on VFX, and aside from that we > had the help and assistance of Royale's maya artists and designers. And not > a few of you on the list helped by offering the studio names and advice > when contacted. > > So the job was greenlit and we started the clock - about three weeks, from > installing Softimage to delivery. > > http://youtu.be/932FiLPe4kc > > We rented a farm and populated it with 25 Arnold nodes, the folks at > SolidAngle were awesome, plugged everything in and made the spot. Our > principal tool was ICE, specifically a very cool and robust system Leonard > Kotch put many hard hours in to create which we called "LKFabric" and > inspired by the example Psyop's Jonah Froedman has set earlier, Anto's > "knit the strands," and earlier work Polynoid did with their "carbon" spot. > > Leonard went all the way with LKFabric... it let us manage some of the > complexity of trying to get the major components of the shoe to weave > themselves procedurally, from fibers, to threads, to cloth. Because the > next spot, which we're wrapping up right now, required us to get in on > individual fibers in extreme macro shots, Leonard built the system in an > abstracted out manner, unsimulated, and supporting motion blur etc. I would > send him pages and pages of feedback and requests, and he chewed away at it > like a trouper. Pretty outstanding Leonard, I owe you many beers. > > Royale has been kind enough to agree to share the system out to the > community, through Leonard, some time after the final project wraps. > > Ciaran, Billy and Steven worked similarly hard and with the same good > cheer we see so often here on the list. This is why I like Softimage so > much, it attracts artists of this calibre and can do mindset. I should > add that emTools, emTopo and polygonizer were used as well, though largely > in the design phase and for an effect that was later cut (no fault of the > tools lol the idea just didn't gel with the client.) Thanks Eric! > > It's very rare for a small studio with literally no staff using Softimage > to get excited over ICE and have the courage to jump in with it no hold > barred, for multiple spots, like Royale did. I can't express more > admiration for their willingness to try something new and embrace ICE the > way they did for these jobs. > > The results may not be earth shattering but the client and the studio are > happy and the other ice-heavy spot is looking cool too. In a time where we > are all concerned with where Softimage may be headed it was really > gratifying having a maya studio step out of their comfort zone and place > all their chips on Softimage with one of their major clients like that. > > So I wanted to take a minute to share the story and thank the people on > this list who contributed, both those of us who worked on the project > directly and the guys who extended advice and friendship to the studio > willing to take a chance on softimage like Todd Akita, Rob Chapman, the > gang over at Whiskytree and many others. Thanks guys. >
