Features | |
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Crash and Burn |
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Spot Focus : Good Stuff |
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Percy jackson and the Olympians |
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Making Of Long Journey |
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The Making Of Salty |
News Headlines | |
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Baby Data |
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Brickyard VFX for Toyota Nascar |
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IT'S ART Archive |
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This Shall Pass Too |
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CG Gallery Awards - Febuary 2010 |
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The Making Of unleashed |
Other Features | |
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Death to all Iron Warriors |
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Making Of Dominoes |
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Shilo for Census |
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Making Of Cable |
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Toy Story Concept Art |
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Zoic Studios' Loni Peristere depicts the making of “Dominoes”, a spot for ESPN Nascar via agency W&K where, In the midst of a forty car pile up, Jason Leffler finds his way through the pack.
When you watch the film, you might ask yourself why CGI? From an outside view, the concept, and the finish seems shoot-able. And it is. However, the creative control over camera, and lighting, would have put an overwhelming and budget prohibitive handcuff on our production. With the advent of new technology using image based lighting and facial capture ala Benjamin Button, we felt we could achieve a seamless photo real spot with complete creative control in CG.
The Process
Styleframes : We began with an illustrator to discover
the graphic palette for the spot. These style frames became
the foundation for lighting, layout, and tone.
Storyboard and Pre-Viz: The story boards and pre-viz provided the base level storytelling. We spent several weeks working through the pacing and accuracy of the action. Typically this phase is used as a shooting guide, for this project, it became the foundation of the animation.
Model and Texture: While we were working on the edit. The team began the process of building the world. We built the track using photographic studies of Lowes @ Charlotte, North Carolina. We built the cars using Nationwide specs and photographic reference provided by ESPN. Each driver’s vehicle has subtle variation, which was meticulously modeled and painted.
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Facial Capture: With locked Pre-Viz and went to Miami to capture facial performance. Each driver was brought in and run through a series of performance beats. They were recorded by 3 synched locked off cameras. These three sets of synched images provided a universal capture of the performance, which we could then project and light in 3D space. The resulting image applied to the characters, appears photographic, because it is. Once captured, we selected takes based on performance and provided the images to 3D for application.
Secondary animation/Motion Capture: After
we locked pre-viz, the animators began meticulously animating
the cars. On a shot by shot basis we evaluated and applied the reactive
suspension, breaking, and tire pressure. The drivers motion was captured
on a mocap stage using an actor, then applied to the 3D character models
built for each driver.
Lighting and FX: Lightwave (Cars and Track)
/Maya (Characters and FX). The luxury of working in 3D allowed
us a permanent magic hour. Our CG supervisor captured this
lighting and the Skydome we used for the spot using the Canon 7D. The
image was capture on the beach in Santa Monica at Sunrise. It was a giant
image comprised of over 120 photo’s
to create a complete panorama with a full dynamic range of
stops with which to light.
Damage: Was overseen and animated by Brian White. He used Maya Physics simulations to creat the various levels of damage through out the spot. The completed sky dome image was then used to light each shot.
The smoke and sparks being emitted by the cars are a combination of live action and CG. We spent an evening shooting shot specific smoke passes and sparks, then added fluid dynamics built in Maya. These were meticulously art directed to achieve scale and cinema, ending in the vortex flourish at the end.
Compositing: Nuke / Flame - Once all the elements were rendered, we composited the elements together and graded the final layers of black, white, blue. In flame we added cinematic camera shake, vignette, and grain.
Link : Zoic Studios