“Porsche is a company synonymous with excellence: they have an incredible history, universal brand recognition and extremely high-quality products. Working with C-K and @RadicalMedia to execute this grand vision for Porsche was a real honor,” noted Asylum EP Michael Pardee. “This project was a challenge on many different levels, but our team came together and produced something really special.”

Coordinating several vehicles in 57 separate shots presented a myriad of challenges for Asylum. Each scene needed to be camera tracked perfectly to provide exact camera data to create a realistic landscape. The cars had to be matchmoved and roto’d in every shot so that the tracks in the surface and the dust could be procedurally generated from each vehicle. The tracks laid in the surface were crucial to the story, allowing us to see where other cars had already been and, by curving the tracks away from the pack, suggesting the direction the cars moved to form new branches, giving credibility to the end reveal - the formation of the family tree. All previs were done to scale using satellite views of the set at El Toro Airbase to coordinate the action on the tarmac.

A realistic-looking desert plain, with tracks and dust trails from the speeding cars, had to be created in CG for the 50 live-action cars to live in. All the environments, tracks, dust and previs dynamics were done in Houdini for its scalability and procedural capabilities. Houdini’s Digital Assets allowed Asylum to modify the look of the terrain, tracks and dust in a single shot, quickly propagate the changes to all shots and handle pre-composites of certain elements prior to handing them off for compositing.

Most of the shots required adding additional cars and some needed cars removed and replaced with CG cars. A number of different techniques were utilized to achieve this task.

Live-action cars were roto’d from other takes, stabilized and retracked into new plates. Hi-res photos of each car were taken and relit before being animated to create certain shots and CG cars were modeled and animated to replace unwanted cars or to populate shots with too few Porsche models. Every car in the commercial, irrespective of being from the original shoot or being added digitally, was modeled and matchmoved so we had digital assets to generate tire tracks and dust. Animation and matchmoving the cars was done using Maya software.

Asylum incorporated sun, flares, shadows, dust and tracks to each scene to balance the lighting irregularities caused by the sunup-to-sundown shooting schedule. The Paint and Roto department had an enormous task of extracting a large number of cars from their original backgrounds. The Paint team needed to remove camera vehicle reflections, tracking markers and runway markings that were either reflected in the cars or removed from their shadows. Matte paintings were created in Photoshop, with camera tracking done in Syntheyes and roto handled in Silhouette v3.4. Final compositing and integration was done on the Flame.

“To prepare for these multiple challenges, Asylum was involved in extensive pre-vis and on-set supervision ensuring the smoothest integration of the VFX with the photography,” stated Asylum’s CG Supervisor Zach Tucker. “We built a system to animate cars that included procedural systems for car dynamics and tracks being laid on the surface, allowing us to quickly visualize the number, year, make and model of cars needed in each shot. Finding the correct balance between live action and CG was tricky. The spot always had to be believable, or we would have failed. Once all of the elements were created and refined, it was quite an undertaking to mold the imagery into a place which was both consistent and convincing.”

“We worked closely with both the director and C-K to ensure that we succeeded in achieving both the look of the commercial, including which cars were showcased in which shots, and delivering a spot that convincingly told the introduction story of the newest member of the Porsche family and the heritage that inspired its creation,” noted Asylum’s VFX Supervisor Tim Davies. “The launch of the Porsche Panamera was definitely an exercise where Asylum’s expansive array of talent was utilized across each and every department. Everyone had a major role and every department delivered seamless work.”

About Asylum:
Asylum is a premier visual effects and design company, handling high-profile features, commercials, music videos, and emerging media content for web and mobile platforms. Asylum created the visual effects for such films as the upcoming Terminator Salvation, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Pirates Of The Caribbean ll & lll, Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (Academy Award and BAFTA nominated), Moulin Rouge, Minority Report, Phantom Of The Opera, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, Tony Scott’s déjà vu, Man on Fire & Domino and Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. Asylum has done spot work for brands such as Hershey’s, Nike, Sony Playstation, Coke, BMW, Gatorade and Apple. In addition, Asylum Design has created award winning title and graphic design work for such films as Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Bedtime Stories, X-Men I & II, The Island, Bad Boys II and XXX.

The Creds:
Client: Porsche Cars North America
Spot Title: Family Tree
Air Date: October 15, 2009

Agency: Cramer-Krasselt/Chicago
Chief Creative Officer: Marshall Ross
Associate Creative Director: Rick Hamann
Copywriter: Gary Doyle; Rick Hamann
Art Director: Matt Spett; Luke Partridge
VP/Director of Broadcast Production: Sergio Lopez

Production Company: @Radical Media
Director: Jeff Zwart

Post Production: Asylum
Visual Effects Supervisor: Tim Davies
Executive Producer: Michael Pardee
Producer: Mark Kurtz
Coordinator: Jennie Burnett
Bidding Producer: Michael Hanley
CG Supervisor: Zach Tucker
Compositor(s): Tim Davies, Jonathan Hicks, Tim Bird
Lead Technical Designer: Jeff Willette
Lead Modeler: Greg Stuhl
Modeler(s): Toshihiro Sakamaki, Josh Robinson, Lersak Bunuparadah, Chad Fehmie
Animator(s): Samir Lyons, Michael Warner, Michael Shelton
Texture/Tracker: Ryan Reeb
Texture: John Hart
Tracker(s): Eddie Offermann, Michael Lori, Lauren Van Houten, Michael Maker, Tom Stanton, Ian Doss, Danny Garcia, Apirak Kamjan
Lighter(s): Aaron Vest, Austin Das, Sean Durnan
Effects Animator: Jens Zalzala
Lead Roto: Elissa Bello
Roto(s): Hugo Dominuez, Laura Murillo, Daniel Linger, Jason Bidwell, Stephanie Ide, Scott Baxter, Midori Witsken, Mark Duckworth, Zac Chowdhury, Huey Carroll, Chris Cortese, Bethany Pederson Onstad
Matte Painter: Tim Clark

One of the things I learn along all those years working with architectural visualization, especially for interior design projects, is that we don’t have a group of settings that can be applied to all scenes. In fact, each project represents a new challenge to the artist, based on the materials and lighting of the scene. If you want to learn a few tips to create great interior design scenes with YafaRay, there is a thread at the YafaRay user forums discussing the best settings for Photon Mapping in interior design projects.

The discussion was started by an artist called Yaroslav_L and the objective was to show the setup and a few render tests for a kitchen scene he created with Blender 3D.

And to encourage other artists to make render tests with YafaRay and Blender, this scene is available to download along with all textures required to render the scene. The scene itself is a great resource to see all Photon Mapping parameters used to create the image.

For artists that never fully understood the relations between Diff Radius, Search and the number of Photons on the scene, the tips will be very useful, along with some render tests. Another point discussed is how the 2d model should be represented. The scale of the model and how much of that can influence the final result.

The tips from the artist worth the visit to the thread, but things become more interesting with the discussion on the subject. If you are an architectural visualization artist working with YafaRay, I strongly suggest a visit to the thread and read carefully all messages.

Our brand strategy for Voila is to position them as uniquely Haitian,” said Rebecca Lyman, Principal, Garrigan Lyman Group. “This differentiates them from the competition and reinforces Voila’s strong commitment to the people of Haiti. The spot launched in time for Voila’s 10-year anniversary and is a part of a larger integrated campaign that celebrates Haiti’s rich and vibrant culture.”

Superfad shot the live action performance of Wyclef Jean on location in New York and returned to Seattle where the animated world was created. This imaginary realm, stylized representations of Haiti, is an homage to Haitian Folk Art style - an aesthetic previously unknown to the Superfad team and one that required copious and extensive research.

“This was one of the more challenging, but also one of the most exciting projects I have been tasked with in my career,” comments Superfad Art Director Carlos Stevens. “Our main goal for this project was to use the Haitian style of artwork to drive a meaningful narrative that would support Wyclef, his actions and his words throughout the commercial. The task itself was difficult because Haitian art is done in a unique style that is unfamiliar to our artists. We all had to adapt to an illustration style we have never encountered before, which made the project all the more challenging, but also fresh and compelling.”

The goal was to integrate Wyclef into his narrative, which sparked the idea of having his actions deliver the visuals. Superfad chose to use a mix of cel animation, 2d artwork and 3d animation to create the most dynamic visual presentation possible. The result is a commercial that reads as a love letter to Haiti and its people.

VOILA “MESSAGE”
Agency: Garrigan Lyman Group
Account Director: Naomi Ruiz
Chief Creative Officer: Bryan Cummings
Creative Director: Kalie Kimball-Malone
Senior Producer: Kathleen Minnis Olson
Senior Art Director: Jim Nesbitt
Senior Writer: Darren Vance

Design Production: Superfad
Executive Creative Director: Will Hyde
Art Director: Carlos Stevens
CGI/VFX Director: Dade Orgeron
3D Artists: Phiphat Pinyosophon, Andrew Butterworth, John Cherniack, Herman Kim, Yas Koyama, Chris Hill
Compositors: Carlos Stevens, Loren Judah, Paulo Dias, David Viau Additional Compositing: David Holm, Justin Pae Cel Animation: Dave Creek
Editor: Duncan Sharp
Flame Artist: Joe Vitale
Producer: Nick Hegge
Head of Production: Chris Volckmann
Executive Producer: Rob Sanborn

“Ryan was an important part of the success of ZBrush 3. His blend of a traditional artistic background and technical prowess was key in helping us shape the next-generation of digital sculpting software.”
Jaime Labelle, COO Pixologic

Read the Press Release: click here