by tompainter | Jul 18, 2018 |
Buhler Sorting Machine Explainer Sorting it out We were approached by Buhler to take an existing edit of a fruit and vegetable sorting machine and adapt it. The new animation needed multiple changes. The sorting machine itself was to be amended to remove certain components and add others. The overall colours and hues of the old animation needed to change from colder blues to warmer more autumnal colours. We also needed to create new assets of the food to be sorted; various types of nuts, corn and bones. Problems…. The major issue with this animation was the rendering. We had huge amounts of complex mechanical rendering to produce in a very short space of time. We turned to cloud based rendering for the solution. Online rendering services allowed us to render out huge amounts of animation in an impressively short amount of time. …solutions This process has solved so many problems Bigman was facing in terms of rendering. It allows us as a business to take on huge amounts of complex animation. We now know that we would be able to deliver even if the deadline was quite tight. Let’s go nuts! The end result was an animation that blended seamlessly from old to new. Buhler were very happy and asked us to edit and adjust another animation for them. Not only did we end up with a great looking, very technical animation, we also tried, tested and succeeded in a new rendering process that will be a huge advantage to Bigman as a company moving forward. Similar Projects Buhler Sorting Machine Explainer NSS Faith Schools Puppy The World...
by tompainter | May 26, 2017 |
Spaniel Puppy – Virtual Pet Cute CG pet required After we won the contract to recreate the Duracell Bunny in CGI we quickly realised that we needed to take our fur rendering technology to the next level. The problem was that we would need to turn around the animation in a matter of weeks, but we wouldn’t get the bunny design assets for a month after the project started. Want to see some puppies? In order to minimise our risk for our client, we decided the best solution was to create a cute spaniel puppy whilst we waited for the bunny, this way we could test our fur pipeline from start to finish and have it all ready to fire on all cylinders once the Duracell assets were ready. Bigman – bespoke puppy grooming salon! Matching the type of curly hair that a real spaniel has was very challenging, as all the different bits of the pup have different colours and different types of clumping or curliness. We had to create a new ‘groom’ department to handle the work and upgrade to new fur software that could hand realistic simulation of the fur’s gravity and inertia. Data overload! Another problem we faced was rendering thousands of frames of animation, each with thousands of hairs and millions of rays of light bouncing around them. We will spare you the geeky details but to summarise we had to perform some clever technical tricks in the rendering pipeline in order to optimise the amount of data we had to deal with. A well disciplined pup Everyone was thrilled with the adorable cute...
by tompainter | May 6, 2016 |
The World in Your Hands Stop motion style animation Corporate communications For this project, the brief outlined the need for a short video that combined live action footage and CGI, to promote international banking services. He’s got the whole world To help get across the script in a visual and engaging way the video would star Steve, holding the Earth in his hands, to show just how small the world can feel thanks to modern banking. A mix of old and new We wanted to develop our CGI in a visually engaging style but there were a number of things to consider, we needed to ensure that the important message wasn’t lost in the visuals and that the style worked well. It was agreed that there should be a handmade charm to the campaign with a stop motion style, but our schedule was extremely tight. To combat this we used a combination of traditional techniques and modern CGI to achieve our desired look, this gave us the flexibility to incorporate the best of both techniques in a short space of time. Hand painted props To give our computer generated earth a quirky handmade look, we carefully studied how hand painted wooden props look. Inspired by this we incorporated these ideas in our design, striking a nice balance between clean, simple design and a quirky artisan look. Talk to the gaffer On set we used a real basketball painted blue as a placeholder for our CGI world, which meant all we would need to do in post production is swap the ball for our digital earth. Catching polygons! The last shot...
by tompainter | May 5, 2016 |
mCommerce Financial services explainer video CGI advertisement We were approached to help promote a new B2B business mobile app. As well as live action, our client wanted CGI to help explain the concept of the app. An engaging concept The film would show a typical banking customer in their home using the app, demonstrating its features and benefits in a real life situation. We would then need to combine footage of the phone with a high-end 3D animation of a fashion boutique coming out of the screen. We refined these ideas by developing the script into a highly detailed storyboard. Pre-visualisation The complex relationship between the live-action footage and the CGI elements meant that it was critical we locked down all the camera angles and movements before production began and so we created a pre-visualisation to help us with this. Pre-vis allowed us to tweak any aspects of the cinematography, such as lighting design and equipment choices, before any work began and gave us a great feel for how the final video would look. When it came to shooting the video we were able to use the pre-vis as a strict guide, which made the shoot day run very smoothly. Dummy modelmaking A large portion of the project would be done digitally in post production, and it was important to consider this on the day of the shoot. To help us visualise where our CGI elements would be, we created a cardboard version of the shop to act as a placeholder. This really helped us to perfectly frame and set the focus of the shots as if our digital...
by tompainter | Apr 20, 2016 |
TIPPS Ear Plugs Product demonstration video 3D instructional video Marlborough Communications came to us with a very typical issue, they were struggling to get users of their high end tactical ear protection plugs to read the instructions properly. The answer, of course, was an engaging video that could explain the method in an elegant and visual way in a fraction of the time, all the user would need to do is press play! Detailed animatic Our first step was to arrange the old instruction manual in a rough, animated form. This way we could start tweaking the text and setting the timings for different elements, whilst our 3D modellers were busy working to develop all of the 3D content. Working with CAD files Even though the actual product hadn’t been manufactured yet, we were easily able to create a 3D visualisation using Marlborough’s Computer Aided Design (CAD) files from the prototype stage. Using these allowed us to produce extremely accurate models very quickly. A simplified visual style We wanted to ensure that the focus of our animation was on how to correctly use the product, and so we decided to adopt a simplistic white style for all the human elements. This meant that there would be no visual distractions from the message we wanted to portray to the audience. We carefully set the camera focus on the ear plugs so that less important areas were defocused, helping to direct the viewers attention to exactly what they needed to know. Similar Projects Circle Health September 13, 2022 TMPW AAbot Augmented Reality December 3, 2019 Buhler Sorting Machine Explainer July 18, 2018 BBC Doodlebugs July 2, 2018 NSS...
