Thanks Andy, very inspiring story, it sheds some light these dark days. :)
On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 11:40 PM, Andy Moorer <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. 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