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On Aug 1, 2013, at 11:05 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.
