Great story! Nice work guys!
—
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On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 11:47 PM, Pingo van der Brinkloev
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Such a good read. Thanks for sharing, and inspiration :) Looking forward to
> the release of LKfabric!
> Pingo
> On 05/08/2013, at 17.48, Kris Rivel <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Nice work guys...spot looks fantastic...gorgeous.
>>
>> Kris
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 7:31 PM, Sylvain Lebeau <[email protected]> wrote:
>> ohhhh yeah!!!!!
>> very nice looking piece!!! loved it! And very nice breakdown Andy, very
>> informative.
>>
>> hat's off
>>
>> sly
>>
>> Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
>> V-P/Visual effects supervisor
>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>
>>
>> On 02/08/2013 12:05 AM, Andy Moorer 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.
>>
>>
