That's the next one. :) A tough hurdle given a small and now exhausted team, and 4 more weeks. We won't be trumping "raw" lol, but it's looking cool enough.
On Aug 1, 2013, at 9:36 PM, Steven Caron <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 <[email protected]> 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. >
