When Cape Town animation and visual effects studio BlackGinger got involved in a Top Gun spot for client 1st For Women showing two male pilots flying recklessly at low altitudes, they were told to make it “as believable as possible’.
The brief was from advertising agency Black River FC in Johannesburg and director Anton Visser from Velocity.
BlackGinger’s Hilton Treves explains: “It had to be believable from the modelling and build of the 3D planes to the behaviour and physics of the planes. Lighting and rendering was critical to the look achieved as was the integration of the planes into their environments.’
According to Treves they spent four weeks doing pre-visualisation (pre-viz) for the shoot as well as modelling and texturing the planes. “After the shoot, which was delayed several times due to weather, we spent eight weeks in full production until delivery.’
He notes that their software pipeline consists of a number of key applications including Houdini, Softimage, PF Track, Nuke and Flame.
The rendering was done on Houdini Mantra, and Treves explains that they used physical based rendering (PBR): “This means it bounces and takes into account real world lighting, surfaces and shadows.
“Once we had the shots at a near completed stage, we finalised everything in Flame, with the director hands on in the suite with our Flame artist.’
According to Treves, the edit was the biggest challenge. “Even though we had done extensive pre-viz, performance from the actors dictated changes in the flight sequence – so much so that the edit was changing up until a week from delivery. Without our pipeline and the ability to quickly go back to animation and feed it through to compositing we would never have finished in time.’
The key people involved in the project included VFX supervisor Darrin Hofmeyr; producer Gabriella Harris; Marco Raposo de Barbosa on Flame; Ash Ryan and Dave Clark on Nuke compositing; Hayden Barnett on modelling and texturing; Dexter Schenk on rigging; Andre de Villiers and Jonathan Searle on pre-viz and animation; Jonathan Searle and Roger Wellard on matchmoving; heads up displays and graphics by Rob Muir; VFX, lighting and rendering by William Harley and JC Phillips; and cleanup and roto by Angelo Beceiro Collinicos, Dylan Palmboom and Chris Bekker.
By Linda Loubser
screen africa magazine – september 2012
