CG Masters Nvidia
CG Masters Nvidia
CG Masters Nvidia
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P R E S E N T
FILM
BROADCAST
COMMERCIALS
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Computer Graphics Masters
WELCOME
To a celebration of artistic creativity and the technology that makes it possible.
In Computer Graphics Masters, we showcase some of the extraordinary imagery
being created for todays movies, broadcast TV and commercials, and explore
how hardware from HP and NVIDIA helps artists make the magic happen
Empowering creativity
At NVIDIA, we develop technologies that
enable artists to create dazzling images
more quickly. NVIDIA Quadro is built for
professionals: it brings more performance to
your professional applications, provides higher
color fidelity and enables display management
like Multi-4K or Mosaic multi-display support.
It designs on large datasets and enables a pro
ecosystem using our CUDA parallel computing
Cesare Zavalloni | HP
FILM
VISUAL EFFECTS
AT THE MOVIES
VFX have never been more important to the continued success and
popularity of films at the cinema than they are now
SECTION CONTENTS
VFX: THE BIGGEST STAR IN
MOVIES TODAY _______________________ 8
REAL-TIME ANIMATION
WITH PIXAR PRESTO _________________ 14
PAINTING FILM WORLDS THAT ARE
BIGGER THAN REALITY_______________ 18
BUILDING A REALISTIC
DIGITAL UNIVERSE___________________24
COLOUR MATTERS: BEHIND
HOLLYWOODS HUES ________________26
CERTIFICATION: THE
KEY TO RELIABILITY _________________32
GOING BESPOKE: THE INEVITABILITY
OF CUSTOMISATION _________________33
HOW REMOTE WORKING
IS BECOMING A REALITY _____________38
PRE-VIS AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT ______39
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION:
REAL TIME, RIGHT NOW _____________ 40
Anything goes
Since those early days, CG in film
has gone from strength to strength
with projects wowing audiences
with ever-greater realism, subtlety
and visual impact. Indeed weve
pretty much reached the point
where anything a screen writer or
director can imagine can now be
realised on screen, with incredible
FILM
Introduction
FILM HIGHLIGHTS
We speak to
Framestore,
Double Negative
and Whiskytree
about their work
on big-budget
VFX blockbusters
including Gravity
and Elysium.
Pixars Presto an
NVIDIA-powered,
GPU-accelerated
proprietary
animation tool
looks to change
the way animators
work. Read all
about it here
14
24
26
When it comes to
film production,
bespoke software
is inevitable,
but the types of
customisation
happening might
not be what
you think
33
18
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FILM
The evolution of VFX
FE AT U R E : T H E E VO LU T I O N O F V FX
A BLACK BOX
One of the major shifts undergoing
VFX is the sheer scale of the work: the
number of shots, the amount of data
generated and the complexity of the 3D
projects. Having worked in the industry
since the mid-1990s, Jonathan Harb,
PROFILE
Guardians of the Galaxy was one of
2014s most awe-inspiring movies,
delivering epic battles in stunning 3D
JONATHAN HARB
Harb owns and operates
Whiskytree. He manages
client relationships,
supervises and produces
its work, directs various
productions that it takes
on, and has contributed to
more than 45 feature films
and dozens of commercials.
whiskytree.com
PROFILE
VOTCH LEVI
Levi is Whiskytrees
computer graphics guru.
The Amiga Computer
was his introduction to
CG, but these days he
spearheads all CG and
pipeline-driven tasks at
Whiskytree including
Distill, its proprietary
pipeline framework.
whiskytree.com
PROFILE
PAUL FRANKLIN
After a stint as a game artist
at Psygnosis, Franklin cofounded Double Negative
in 1998, and has grown the
company from a team of 30
to the huge effects vendor
it is today. Franklin was joint
recipient of the VFX Oscar
in 2010 for the studios work
on Chris Nolans Inception.
dneg.com
PROFILE
MARTIN PRESTON
Preston completed his
PhD in computer graphics
at Manchester University,
followed by stints in
computer games and then
software development for
animation houses. He spent
five years at Weta, and then
joined Framestore as Head
of Research & Development.
framestore.com
PROFILE
KYLE MCCULLOCH
McCulloch has been in
visual effects for more
than 15 years, working at
many studios including
Curious Pictures, The
Orphanage and ILM. He
joined Framestore in 2009
and was most recently one
of two VFX supervisors on
Guardians of the Galaxy.
framestore.com
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FILM
The evolution of VFX
1. Double Negatives groundbreaking work on Inception garnered an Oscar for best visual effects
2. A lot of the development work on Gravity helped Framestore deliver Guardians of the Galaxy
10
SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS
This combination of knowledge
and more accessible software has also
changed the visual effects industry
from being a niche field to an incredibly
sought-after profession. But despite
this, there are still areas that need some
work, suggests Harb. Theres definitely
still a portion of work where constant
innovation and invention are required,
even now. No doubt, there are still black
boxes, but now theres an awful lot of
work that can be done by so many people
in so many places. And thats a major,
major change.
In pursuit of realism
Photorealistic characters, like Guardians of the Galaxys Rocket, drive
technology forward, says Framestore VFX supervisor Kyle McCulloch
[For Rocket] we implemented
UNIQUE OPPORTUNITIES
than hair.
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11
FILM
The evolution of VFX
sequence of exercises.
the box.
If the machine still works when removed from its
EFFECTS HEAVY
Another company thats had a front-row
seat in the evolving VFX industry is
Framestore. Formed in 1986, Framestore
has become one of the worlds leading
VFX vendors, providing all manner of
12
Render
power
The new wave of
GPU-based tools
With the number of effects shots
in a typical Hollywood movie
steadily increasing, VFX studios
CENTRAL ROLE
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13
FILM
Pixars Presto
C A S E S T U DY: PI X A R S PR ES TO
REAL-TIME ANIMATION
WITH PRESTO
Pixars new proprietary animation system
harnesses the power of NVIDIA GPUs, enabling
animators to work faster and be more creative
PROFILE
DIRK VAN GELDER
Van Gelder joined Pixar
in 1997 as a software
engineer working on
subdivision surfaces. He
has worked on software
for each of the studios
movies since, and
played a key role in the
development of Presto,
Pixars new in-house
animation system.
pixar.com
PROFILE
BILL WATRAL
Watral is FX TD at
Pixar, having joined
the company from
VFX facility Charlex.
He has won two Visual
Effects Society Awards,
for his work on Pixars
CG features WALL-E
and Brave. He was
supervising TD on
LAVA, Pixars new short.
pixar.com
14
ROCK SOLID
For LAVA Pixars new short, due
to be screened alongside Inside
Out in spring 2015 the animators
were running into problems when
creating the expressions for its
volcanic hero, Uku. We had huge
pieces of rock geometry that
made up the mouth pieces of the
characters sliding past each other,
explains Bill Watral, the films
supervising technical director.
It was difficult for the animators
to see what was happening and
how much motion was going to
be perceived by the viewer. We
needed representation of rock
textures on these characters in
real time on the animation rig.
3
1. Presto gives animators unprecedented real-time feedback
as they work, with hair, shadows and textures
2. The system harnesses the power of NVIDIA GPUs to give
animators a free and playful environment in which to work
3. Presto can handle multiple characters, with real-time fur
and shadows, providing a high quality preview of the final
rendered image
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15
FILM
Pixars Presto
16
CUDA POWER
Presto is continually under active
development, driven by the needs
of Pixars animators to view their
work as near to final quality as
possible. The system already
utilises Pixars OpenSubdiv system,
which uses massively parallel
CPU and GPU architectures to
display subdivided meshes so the
animators can view limit surfaces
within a pixel of final render.
Previously, animators could only
work with unsubdivided geometry
as refresh speeds were too slow.
Now the trick is to be able to keep
that same speed, says van Gelder,
but amp up the visual quality to
give more accurate visual cues to
the animators.
Using the power of OpenGL
and CUDA acceleration with
NVIDIAs GPUs, Pixars Presto is
able to deliver better texturing,
better reflections, real-time fur
and faster geometry drawing but
theres more yet to come. As we
stress our OpenGL pipeline more
and more we realise some of our
The evolution of Uku, the star of LAVA, Pixars latest short 1. A black-andwhite concept sketch 2. A more detailed coloured concept image 3. A clay
sculpt of the volcano 4. A 3D scan of the clay sculpt 5. The 3D geometry
cleaned up for animation 6. Fine details: the geometry of Ukus brow
regions was crucial in order to enable the character to convey emotion
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17
FILM
Matte painting
F E AT U R E : M AT T E PA I N T I N G
PROFILE
PROFILE
DAMIEN MACE
DAVE FREEMAN
framestore.com
PROFILE
ROBERT JUNGGEBURT
DAVID LUONG
Junggeburt is a matte
painter who has worked
at Framestore, Double
Negative and MPC. Starting
out as a character animator,
he worked on games and
in broadcast design before
switching to matte work
around six years ago.
Luong is a senior
cinematic artist at Blizzard
Entertainment, having
previously worked at
Rhythm & Hues and Luma
Pictures. He has worked on
a wealth of famous films
and games, including Diablo
III and Superman Returns.
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
davefreeman.prosite.com
PROFILE
vfx-digitalpaint.com
davidluong.net
19
FILM
Matte painting
LIFE ABOVE 4K
Like every other part of visual effects,
the scope of the work matte painters
create for movies is getting larger.
In 3D, where you once did
a building collapsing, now
you do a city collapsing.
Its the same for a matte
painting, says Damien Mace, a digital
matte painter with over a decades
experience in the industry, currently
working at Framestore. You used to
do one big still frame of a castle and a
mountain now you go through the
castle and the mountain and back into
the valley.
One obvious way in which matte
shots are getting larger is the
dimensions of the images that matte
painters create. As Mace points out,
matte artists typically work at at least
twice the resolution at which the movie
will eventually be displayed. If youre
working on a 2K project, you paint at 4K.
When you compress [the matte
painting], you retain a lot of highfrequency detail, he explains. It will
still have a lot more information than if
you were working at a 1:1 scale.
But with the advent of new digital
cameras such as the RED EPIC,
Hollywood movies are increasingly
being shot at resolutions higher than 2K,
while the photographic source material
used to create matte paintings may be
shot at even higher resolutions still.
Images are getting bigger and
bigger, says Mace. Where before you
were working at 2K, now its 4, 5, 6, 10
even 25K.
PROCESSING POWER
To work on images at such high
resolutions, increasingly powerful
hardware is required. Adobe has
been gradually incorporating GPU
acceleration in Photoshop since CS4,
while Mari, The Foundrys digital
painting software, has been GPUaccelerated from the outset.
Such tools make use of the processing
power of professional graphics cards
like those of NVIDIAs Quadro series to
enable artists to work on even very large
images without a creativity-breaking lag
while the software recalculates the onscreen display. Mace himself currently
uses a Quadro 4000 graphics card,
running in an HP Z600 workstation.
20
INSIGHT
TH E HISTORY OF
M AT T E PA I N T I N G
Two different examples
of contemporary digital
matte painting, both
from Framestores work
on Edge of Tomorrow
1. Background
details from the dam
sequence of the movie
2. A complete digital
backdrop of the war-
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21
FILM
Matte painting
22
FYI
1.
DONT RUSH
8.
landscape or similar.
5.
2.
9.
6.
MASTER PERSPECTIVE
three-point perspective
7.
10.
3.
4.
Expertise provided by: Alp Altiner welcome.alpaltiner.com | Dylan Cole www.dylancolestudio.com | Charles Darby www.eyeqube.com
Dave Early www.davidearly.co.uk | Lubo Hristov www.christovfx.com | Damien Mace damienmace.blogspot.com
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23
FILM
C A S E S T U DY: G R AV I T Y
BUILDING A REALISTIC
DIGITAL UNIVERSE
Alfonso Cuarns Gravity wowed audiences and bagged
awards by the armful. And as we discover here, most of
it was created digitally...
PROFILE
STUART PENN
CG Supervisor Stuart
Penn was a research
physicist before joining
Framestore in 2000. His
credits include Avatar,
The Dark Knight and
Gravity, for which
he helped develop
many innovative
shooting techniques.
stuartpenn.co.uk
24
he definition of
cinematography is
changing. Digital
lighting, composition and
camerawork are at the centre of
big budget projects, Oscar winning
films and 3D masterpieces. Want
proof? Look no further than
Gravity, the big budget, Oscar
winning 3D masterpiece created
by director Alfonso Cuarn,
cinematographer Emmanuel
Lubezki and Tim Webbers VFX
team at Framestore.
Aside from one Earth scene
shot on 65mm film, Gravity
was shot digitally, mostly on
Arri Alexa Classics. And in the
majority of space scenes such
as the 17-minute continuous take
showing the Earth below with
three astronauts floating, then
hurtling, around a space station
the only real elements are the
actors faces.
That doesnt mean the
cinematographer wasnt present
on set, lighting and shooting live
action. What it means is that
Emmanuel Chivo Lubezki was also
involved in every stage of creating
the images that make up the film
both those shot on set and those
generated digitally.
I had to learn some new
tools that are part of what
cinematography is becoming,
Lubezki told American
Cinematographer. We wanted to
surrender to the environment of
space, but we couldnt go there
so the only way of doing it was
through all of these technologies.
How to make a film set in
zero gravity look believable?
FYI
O n set in
zero gravit y
Framestore built the
thousands of models needed
for Gravitys universe
Framestore built more than 2,200 models for
Gravity a number more like a CG animated film
than a visual effects-heavy title. From incredibly
detailed interiors for the International Space
Station to props for the space shuttles, most of
the models were later destroyed too. Far from
generic space design language, familiar and
iconic sets had to be made photo-real.
The biggest asset build, the ISS, was a
100-million-polygon model, made possible by
rendering in Arnold, which is fast at raytracing
polygons. Cuarn was involved in moving virtual
props like space station posters and changing
colours in individual modules. In collaboration
with Cuarn, Framestore built everything that
physical set builders would create and fine-tune.
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. and Framestore. 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment.
We wanted to surrender
to the environment of
space, but we couldnt go
there so the only way of
doing it was through all of
these technologies
_ Emmanuel Lubezki
G ravit y in numbers
l
Thirteen shots are longer than one minute in length in total they
make up 68% of the movie
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25
FILM
Colour Matters
PROFILE
PROFILE
PROFILE
DAVE COLE
MIKE SOWA
JASON BAYEVER
Twitter: @davec555
technicolor.com
rhythm.com
26
F E AT U R E : L I F E O F P I | O B L I V I O N | PA C I F I C R I M
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27
FILM
Colour Matters
1
LIFE OF PI
TH E COLOU R
OF MAGIC
Ang Lees 2012 Life of Pi is a real
technical achievement. CG animals, CG
sky, CG ocean and real actors are brought
together with impeccable craftsmanship.
But its the colours that stay with you
colours that tread a fine line between
magic and reality.
In a different type of film a dark
sea would have raged against a grey sky
and all would have been misery, says
Sophie Monks Kaufman, Staff Writer at
Little White Lies. Yet Ang Lees vision
sometimes instils peace in a small boat
via the azure blue of the lapping sea,
swarms of tropical fish and a merciful
gold sun that lights up the world. The
contrast between the facts of the matter
and the feeling created by this colour
palette is a cinematic way of expressing
emotional transcendence from a
desperate situation. Its also a technique
for staying loyal to the magical realism of
Yann Martels book.
Lee and his director of photography
Claudio Miranda had plenty of visual
cues to work with from the source
material. Martel had hoped a film
would one day capture the cinematic
aspect of his book. The novel is full of
contrast colours, he told The Hollywood
Reporter. The blue ocean, the white
lifeboat, the brown boy, the orange and
black tiger. And India is very visual. In
some ways, it was a very visual novel.
ROSE-TINTED MEMORIES
You want to have ebbs and flows in
terms of colour contrast to follow the
story, says Dave Cole, lead digital
colourist on the film who graded using
Lustre and won the 2013 HPA award for
Life of Pi. Its like having a good score,
its there to accentuate what
youre feeling. The big thing
that Ang wanted was for
Pondicherry and India to be
almost hyper-real. To be believable but
through the minds eye a fond memory
of a childhood. So you have that rosetinted glasses view of what that world
was like. We wanted to express that
through the colour.
Cole is most proud of the DI work
on the montage scenes of Pis uncle at
a French swimming pool. We wanted
to have the heightened feel of postcards
28
OBLIVION
TA K I N G A M I N I M A L
APPROACH
Joseph Kosinskis 2013 post-apocalyptic
film Oblivion uses the near absence
of bold colour to produce a believable
sense of reality. It shows the versatility
of Claudio Miranda, the DP on both this
project and the hyper-real Life of Pi.
The action of Oblivion takes place in
four main environments: exteriors on
Earth, the clean and clinical Sky Tower,
the underground Raven Rock and
protagonist Jack Harpers hideout.
POST APOCALYPSE
Oblivions Earth in 2077 has been
ravaged by nuclear war, earthquakes and
tsunamis. The directors choice to shoot
in Iceland, in order to keep as much of
the look of the film natural, lent itself
well to a story set in desolate, snow-
SKY SCRAPER
The Sky Tower is the most traditionally
sci-fi set on Oblivion in visual terms.
Home and workplace for Jack Harper
and Vika Olsen its a clean and clinical
all-glass apartment in the sky with
white, shiny surfaces and minimalist
designs. Kosinski and Mirandas
masterstroke is the floor-to-ceiling
windows which wrap all the way around.
Why a masterstroke? This meant
that Sky Tower scenes could be lit by
projection. A 500-foot wide by 42-foot
tall painted white muslin wrapped
around 270 degrees was used with 21
projectors for real-time front projection.
It played 15K images of sunrises, cloud
formations and night skies, captured by
three cameras over a volcano in Hawaii.
For me, that was a first in a 30-year
career, says Sowa. Claudio and Joe
pulled it off beautifully. It didnt feel like
the scenes were lit. Again, its supposed
to be very natural. Its influenced by
sunlight or moonlight. When the sun
is setting, you have a beautiful orange
sunset while there is a confrontation
between the two characters. Then a
night time scene with the dinner and
the swim is a very cool blue. Because the
whole movie is so desaturated, those two
scenes come across as very saturated.
Again, colour signifies life. During
the argument, Harpers gift of a purple
flower is rejected by his lover as he urges
her to leave the cold, lifeless Sky Tower.
with the EXR file system, says Mike Sowa, the colourist
resolution and the bit depth and be able to play that back
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29
FILM
Colour Matters
Colour
unit y
The importance of
colour management
Properly colour-managed
workflows are essential and, as
ever, the technology isnt standing
still. NVIDIA is speeding up the
processing of high-precision
graphics, including 30-bit colour,
with its Quadro line of GPUs.
Combining a Quadro-powered
system an HP Z620 for example
with a HP DreamColor Z27x
professional monitor (above)
which can display over a billion
colours, makes for a formidable
setup. The 27-inch HP display
achieves a completely accurate
rendition of both sRGB and the
Adobe RGB Colour Gamut and has
DisplayPort 1.1 connectivity.
30
PACIFIC RIM
THE MONSTER
MAKERS
A giant monster movie from Guillermo
del Toro is the simplest way to sum up
the intriguing visual beast that is Pacific
Rim. The end credits dedicate the film to
Ray Harryhausen and Ishiro Honda but
del Toro, together with his Director of
Photography Guillermo Navarro, creates
a unique, new world for Kaiju creatures
and mecha Jaegers to fight over.
The aesthetic of Pacific Rim clashes
big, bold colours against dark, stylised
environments without straying too far
into the comic book style favoured by
most summer blockbusters. Del Toros
aim was a graphic feel, close to painterly,
to enhance the ILM effects throughout.
Take the Hong Kong scene, where
scientist Newton Geiszler hits the
streets before a Kaiju attack: deep blacks,
The
stor y of
I LM
From a small team
working on the
original Star Wars to
the kings of VFX...
2
EYE PROTEIN
With dialogue often giving way to fight
scenes, del Toro uses colour to provide
visual cues for characters. The film has
been criticised for being a dumb action
movie, but the director has said he doesnt
do eye candy he does eye protein.
Moris female fighter is clad in grey
for the majority of the film, but the tips
of her black hair have been dyed blue.
Later, we see a flashback scene in which
FYI
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
31
FILM
Certified solutions
CERTIFICATION: THE
KEY TO RELIABILITY
Graphics professionals need to know their hardware
will work flawlessly with their software of choice
and thats where certification comes in
PROFILES
JOSH PETERSON
Peterson is director
of worldwide product
management for HP
desktop and mobile
workstations, based at
the companys offices in
Fort Collins, Colorado.
Part of his role is to liaise
with third-party hardware
manufacturers and
software developers during
the certification process for
workstation PCs.
hp.com
MICHAEL STEELE
Steele is strategic alliances
manager at NVIDIA and is
responsible for technical
partnership with Media and
Entertainment ISV partners
for GPU visualisation and
parallel computing. He
joined NVIDIA in 2008.
nvidia.com
www.hp.com/eu/workstations.
32
Images courtesy of Warner Bros. and Framestore. 2013 Warner Bros. Entertainment.
F E AT U R E : C U S TO M I S E D S O F T WA R E
33
FILM
PROFILE
PROFILE
STEVE MACPHERSON
MARTIN PRESTON
framestore.com
34
framestore.com
Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Framestore. 2013 Paramount Pictures/Marvel Studios.
Customised software
ALWAYS CHANGING
Bespoke is, by-and-large, inevitable. But
the conversations dont start with, How
do we customise this piece of software
to do what we need? They start before
and they involve putting those features
in off-the-shelf software. Vendors will
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
35
FILM
Customised software
36
SOLID PARTNERSHIPS
G aining G PU
acceleration
with Fabric
Engine
The development system lets TDs
build custom tools with the added
bonus of free CUDA acceleration
Fabric Engine is a
any changes.
standalone applications, or
HP Z workstation.
FYI
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
37
FILM
The rise of virtualisation
I N S I G H T : T H E R I S E O F V I R T UA L I S AT I O N
www.nvidia.co.uk/grid
HARRY SKOPAS
Harry Skopas is director
of technology at The
Mills New York studio.
He has over 30 years
experience in building
and managing stateof-the-art systems
and technical teams in
complex digital video
and film environments.
themill.com
Shared access
38
Freedom to animate
This option to use even complex
graphics software on lowerpowered laptops and mobile
devices by accessing a remote
server running GRID GPUs enables
3D artists to work in new ways.
You can animate at any time,
anywhere, Wade enthuses. Its
freeing to be out of the confines
Data security
Another key concern for studios
working on high-profile movie
projects is data security. By
enabling artists to access assets
stored on a central server
remotely, virtualisation systems
reduce the need for them to
transfer sensitive commercial data
to their own personal computers.
We asked Harry Skopas,
director of technology at The Mills
New York studio, if he thought
virtualisation would offer more
security for a companys assets.
If working remotely, yes, he
concurs. It would allow artists to
access work while the assets live in
the data centre.
Such clear and identifiable
benefits suggest that virtualisation
is likely to soon become the de
facto workflow in computer
graphics. By providing GPU
processing power on demand and
freeing artists to work securely
on any device, virtualisation
stimulates creativity, making it
easier to create quality 3D work,
even against tight deadlines.
Find out more about GRID
PRE-VIS AT THE
SPEED OF LIGHT
Built on NVIDIAs OptiX technology, MPCs Dekko
renderer visualises complex CG scenes in real time.
We explore how it will shake up VFX workflows
PROFILE
DAMIEN FAGNOU
Damien Fagnou is global
head of VFX operations
at MPC. His production
credits include Pirates of
the Caribbean: On Stranger
Tides, the Harry Potter
films, and Prometheus
moving-picture.com
Visualising complexity
Weve tried to do real-time
previews in the past says Damien
Fagnou, MPCs global head of
2014 MPC
FYI www.moving-picture.com
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39
FILM
Virtual production
40
FE AT U R E : V I RT UA L PRO D U C T I O N
VIRTUAL PRODUCTION:
REAL TIME, RIGHT NOW
New technologies enable directors to view CG worlds in real time. Discover
how this new breed of virtual production tools is redefining the way movies are
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
41
FILM
Virtual production
1
42
PROFILE
DAVID MORIN
Morin is senior director of industry relations
and business development for Autodesk
Media & Entertainment. He has chaired
the industry steering groups the Autodesk
Film CTO Advisory Council and the Virtual
Production Committee.
autodesk.com
PROFILE
CEVAT YERLI
Yerli is president and CEO of Crytek,
the game development company he
co-founded in 1999. As well as creating the
multi-award-winning Crysis game franchise,
Crytek develops game engine CryEngine
and new virtual production tool Cinebox.
crytek.com
PROFILE
JOHN GRIFFITH
Formerly director of previsualisation at
20th Century Fox, Griffith is president of
CNCPT, specialising in pre- and postvisualisation work for movies. The studio
used Cinebox in its work on Dawn of the
Planet of the Apes and The Maze Runner.
cncptla.com
a cinematographers camera
reality system.
calibrations or environment
(www.ncam-tech.com): a real-
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
43
FILM
Virtual production
M aking movies
with Cinebox
Real-time rendering powered CNCPTs
pre-viz for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Crytek has used Cinebox, its virtual
concept paintings.
vimeo.com/channels/782595.
to a new level.
44
a virtual camera.
20thCentFox/Everett/REX
Cryteks Cinebox is a
version of its CryEngine
game engine built for
virtual production work.
One of its earliest public
uses was the Path of
Vengeance TV spot for
Ryse: Son of Rome 1.
CNCPT created five shots
for the end of the spot,
using Cryteks in-game
assets 2. A final render
3. The same shot inside
Cinebox 4. Crytek also
used Cinebox on Ryse
itself to help with on-set
performance capture and
virtual set viewing
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
45
BROADCAST
REAL-TIME GRAPHICS
AND VFX FOR EPISODIC TV
We explore the state of the art in broadcast graphics: from virtual sets
and real-time infographics to offline work on effects-heavy TV series
SECTION CONTENTS
BRINGING STATS TO LIFE
FOR SPORTS FANS___________________48
THE CHANGING WORLD OF
ON-SCREEN GRAPHICS_______________54
VIRTUALLY REAL: HOW DIGITAL
SETS ARE CHANGING TV _____________56
THE GOLD STANDARD OF
LIVE BROADCASTING ________________62
TACKLING THE 4K CHALLENGE________64
THE VFX OF DOCTOR WHO ___________65
46
roadcast graphics is a
complex field, spanning
many different disciplines.
Some of these will be
familiar from the previous section
of the book: the process by which
the visual effects for an episodic
TV series like Doctor Who are
created is similar to that for a
feature film although the time
pressures can be far more intense.
But live broadcasts present their
own special problems, and need
very specific solutions.
BROADCAST
Introduction
BROADCAST HIGHLIGHTS
54
Running on NVIDIA
GPUs, Elemental
Technologies'
video processing
platform helped
the BBC to bring
the 2012 Olympics
to today's range
of viewing devices.
62
As European
households
begin to move to
50-inch-plus TV
sets, we explore
how NVIDIA
GPUs are powering
UHD-ready
graphics tools.
64
65
70
72
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
47
BROADCAST
Augmented reality in sports broadcasting
FE AT U R E : AU G M EN T ED R E A L I T Y I N S P O RTS B ROA D C AS T I N G
48
Coates/LAT/REX
PROFILE
PROFILE
PROFILE
PROFILE
IAN FINCH
REBECCA HOPKINS
ANDREW PAGE
Hopkins is co-founder of
the Sports Technology
Awards, set up to
recognise the growing role
technology plays in sport,
and managing director of
sports PR agency ENS.
bbc.co.uk
vizrt.com
POWERED BY HP WORKSTATIONS
Of course, its not enough to have
the right software tools to pull off a
production like Fox Sports did at the
Super Bowl you need powerful and
capable hardware too.
Thats why, when Vizrt demoed its
graphics products at last years IBC
trade show, it exclusively used HPs
high-performance and visualisation
workstations and monitors to show
its software working at its highest
possible performance.
Based on our long, rewarding
relationship with HP, all of our product
displays and demonstrations at IBC were
running on HP Z-Series workstations,
sportstechnologyawards.com
nvidia.com
Augmente d realit y
heads outdoors
Its one thing to do augmented reality in
a controlled TV studio, but it can be taken
on the road with the right equipment
Fox Australia has been using
Stypes GRIP system feeds the positional data of a camera directly to major render engines.
Read more about it at www.stypegrip.com
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
49
BROADCAST
Augmented reality in sports broadcasting
1
Tracking
problems
Making AR look real means
not letting anything get in
the way of your tracking
Ian Finch and his team at BBC Sport worked
with Motion Analysis to get the tracking precise
enough for Match of the Days virtual graphics.
The tracking is crucial to the success of this
system and, despite it working perfectly now,
we had a bumpy landing getting it all up and
running, says Finch.
If you have a black hole in your virtual space,
then the tracking data will fail and the graphic
will jitter or disappear, ruining the illusion of the
graphic being a physical object in the studio. In a
studio as large as ours, with lights and structures
blocking line of sight to the tracking cameras, its
important we have enough infrared cameras to
capture the data we require for solid graphics.
Our initial tracking problems were resolved by
adding a further eight infrared cameras.
50
NVI DIAs AR
c ar buying
experiences
Augmented reality doesnt have
to be a sit-back experience, as
NVIDIA and Audi proved
different environments.
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
51
BROADCAST
Augmented reality in sports broadcasting
Viz Arena
Viz Arena is Vizrts specific software
measurement devices.
52
A CREATIVE CHALLENGE
The combination of new advancements
in broadcast graphics software and
hardware processing power frees
broadcasters creativity.
FUTURE TRENDS
Realism is king, then, and broadcasters
have the tools and the technology to
achieve it using augmented reality.
Is this just the beginning of a wave of
AR on every screen thats so realistic the
audience doesnt think about whether
its augmented or not? Or will virtual
graphics on the big screen make way
for the sofa-friendly, app-driven second
screens of smartphones and tablets?
NVIDIA has already begun to push
augmented reality for mobile and
wearables with its Tegra K1 chip:
the first step towards the kind of
heads-up displays previously seen only in
superhero and science-fiction movies.
At CES 2014, Neil Trevett, NVIDIAs
VP of mobile ecosystems, said: The Iron
Man display is what many of us have in
1. NVIDIAs technology
has helped to power
on-screen graphics for
many of the biggest live
sports events
2. The BBCs use of AR
has won it awards and
H ow to handle
4K AR graphic s
at 60f ps
recognition as a leader
in the field
us through an impressive
NVIDIAs Quadro product range goes from the entry-level 1GB K420 to
the high-end 12GB K6000. See the full range at bit.ly/nvidiaquadros
FYI
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
53
BROADCAST
Real-time infographics
C A S E S T U DY: R E A L-T I M E I N FO G R A PH I C S
PROFILE
OLIVER PEARSON
Pearson is creative
director of broadcast
graphics specialist
Alston Elliot, having
joined as a graphics
operator 13 years
ago. The firms clients
include Sky Sports,
BBC Sport and ESPN.
aegraphics.tv
A CHANGING INDUSTRY
Each broadcaster is trying to
outdo its competition by using new
techniques, says Oliver Pearson,
creative director at UK broadcast
graphics specialist Alston Elliot,
whose clients range from Sky
Sports to the England and Wales
Cricket Board. [As they] strive to
keep the viewer more appraised
54
2
1. Some of the graphics that
Alston Elliot produced for
the Indian Premier League
cricket tournament
2. On-screen graphics
arent just for the viewers
they can be a useful tool for
sports commentators, too
NEW CHALLENGES
While the speed of the human
eye may limit the complexity of
on-screen graphics, advances in
technology continually throw up
new challenges for Alston Elliot.
One such challenge was posed
by the growing availability of 3D
televisions. We had to learn a new
Tools of
the trade
Hardware from partners HP
and NVIDIA powers Vizrts
on-screen graphics tools
Even powerful graphics tools are nothing without
the right hardware. For tools like Viz Artist and
Viz Engine, Vizrt recommends hardware from
a limited range of partners, including HP and
NVIDIA. The firm has recommended hardware
configurations for different use cases: for
example, render engines. Most are based on
standard HP systems, including its Z420 and
Z820 workstations, running NVIDIAs Quadro
K5200 and K6000 professional graphics cards.
Vizrt also makes use of HPs ProLiant ML350
and DL380 servers.
For Gerhard Lang, Vizrts chief engineering
officer, a key benefit of HPs hardware is its
reliability. Its both the QA [HP is] doing on its
side and [its ability to] deliver systems on time,
he says. Sometimes we get notification from a
customer that they have an important production
that they need new machines for in three to four
weeks, and HP has proven to deliver.
FYI
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
55
BROADCAST
Virtual sets
56
FE AT U R E : V I RT UA L S E TS
PROFILE
GERHARD LANG
Gerhard Lang joined Vizrt
in 2000 as the Head of R&D
Austria. Fourteen years later
he is now the companys
Chief Engineering Officer.
vizrt.com
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
57
BROADCAST
Virtual sets
58
Electione ering
at the B BC
Discover the technology used to turn a
studio into one giant infographic
Used for the first time during the 2014 European and local
elections and more recently for coverage of the 2014 Scottish
referendum, Vizrt, Idonix and BBC Studios & Post Production
united to provide the Corporation with a true virtual studio.
Types of tracking
There are a number of different methods for tracking your subject for the creation of a
virtual set. Here are the key mechanical and optical systems in use
A tracking system simply sends out
feedback as to position.
available are:
the set).
other cameras.
shadows on pre-generated
video footage in realtime
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
need for:
A video mixer to combine the video
feeds and the rendered set and graphics
to produce a final composition for output.
Video and audio delay systems
to compensate for the lack of
synchronisation inherent in most
systems. Millisecond delays, while
still effectively real time as far as the
computer industry is concerned, can
59
BROADCAST
Virtual sets
Vizr t
and H P
A partnership built
on power
HP Z workstations are the
preferred system for running
Vizrts range of applications,
including Viz Engine. HP desktop
computing hardware is the proven,
trusted solution for our customers
demanding, mission-critical,
real-time media and graphics
applications, says Gerhard
Lang. Integration with NVIDIA
GRID also enables up to eight
concurrent users to share the
same application with workstation
performance and Quadro
compatibility.
AUGMENTED REALITY
Virtual studio technology has to cope
with everything else that the broadcast
industry has over the years, with the
move from SD to HD and the subsequent
rise in resolutions proving a particular
problem when it came to real-time
processing. But you get the feeling that
with the rise of Augmented Reality, the
technology has really hit a sweet spot.
AR roughly consists of virtual
elements, information graphics or
images placed in the set along with the
real character or other objects. It can be
achieved in a number of ways, although
some techniques may require additional
tracking for moving objects in the
scene that display additional graphics.
Given the importance of datasets and
data analysis on screen real estate in
sports productions in particular, its
been a significant development and one
that looks set to break out into other
programming genres as producers try to
find ways to integrate social media more
60
A VIRTUAL FUTURE?
One of the interesting stats from the
2014 World Cup that has been largely
ignored is that three times as many 8K
matches were broadcast than 4K ones,
Japans NHK beaming nine games
back to four cities in Japan in its epic
76804320 format. But while virtual
studio developers get on with the task
of ramping up to cope with that in real
time, what does the future hold for
the technology?
On the one hand, it gets more
functional: Orad has developed the
Virtual Studio in a Box, a turnkey multicamera virtual studio production system
which consolidates all the important
production elements, including virtual
studio, switcher, on air graphics,
chromakey, video delay, video server
control, and newsroom integration,
into a single product. Indeed, the entire
Virtual Studio in a Box production can
be controlled by a single operator from a
single user interface.
On the other, its enabling new
uses of graphics within sets, virtual or
MoSys StarTracker
system enables the
creation of virtual
sets in real-time
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
61
View Pictures/REX
BROADCAST
Delivering the Olympics
C A S E S T U DY : D E L I V E R I N G T H E O LYM P I C S
PROFILE
KEITH WYMBS
Keith Wymbs is Chief
Marketing Officer at
Elemental Technologies
where he leads the
development and
implementation of
Elementals worldwide
marketing strategy
elementaltechnologies.com
ith 34 Olympic
venues and 26
sports many
of which were
scheduled to run at the same time
broadcasting the 2012 London
Olympics was no easy feat.
And the millions that would
view the event were no longer
doing so solely through traditional
means: viewers were able to
follow the games on multiple
platforms including the internet,
Streaming H D
content worldwide
2. ENCODE
With complex content, typical
encoders have a hard time
delivering acceptable video
1. CAPTURE
adds complexity,
and consumes
processing
resource.
62
PARALLEL PROCESSES
Elemental makes use of
NVIDIAs GPUs to optimise video
streaming over IP networks,
taking advantage of NVIDIAs
parallel processing architectures
to process multiple bitrates at
the same time. This means that
content can be streamed based
on the users connection speed so
that its always ready to go.
Elemental standardised
our graphics processor
FYI
4. DELIVER
Adaptive bitrate content is delivered over
the web, generally by a dedicated content
delivery network (CDN). A CDN is a system of
software, hardware and network components
that acts as one large distributed computer.
Services performed by a CDN may include
digital media delivery, network transit, website
acceleration, file storage, server co-location
and cloud processing. In addition to these
services, most CDNs provide both analytic
and provisioning control panels. CDNs provide
critical infrastructure and play a crucial
3. PACKAGE
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
63
BROADCAST
The future of 4K
1
TACKLING THE
4K CHALLENGE
The 4K workflow has arrived. For broadcasters
striving to make the transition worthwhile, is
2014 really the year of Ultra-HD?
PROFILE
ANDREW PAGE
nvidia.co.uk
he hottest phrase in
content creation at the
moment may very well be
4K UHD, but decisions
by broadcasters and pay TV
operators to greenlight a channel
carrying it are far from cut and
dried. They hinge on a resolution
to the increasingly vexed debate
about the most appropriate
implementation of the UHD format,
a debate which impacts directly on
consumer value perception of UHD
TV sets and services.
For anyone in any doubt, the
basic fact is that Ultra HD delivers
four times as much detail as 1080p
HD, technically 3840x2160 pixels.
The large screen real-estate of
displays 55 inches and above are
deemed the perfect place to
enjoy the greater immersion of
UHD entertainment.
Ultra-HD adoption
2
64
BBC 2014
FE AT U R E : T EL E V I S I O N V FX
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
65
BROADCAST
Television VFX
PROFILE
WILL COHEN
Milk's CEO and executive
producer was MD of Mill
Film and TV for five years.
Under his guidance the
team won two BAFTAs and
a VES award for its work on
Doctor Who and Merlin. His
feature film work includes
47 Ronin, Les Misrables
and 28 Weeks Later.
milk-vfx.com
PROFILE
MURRAY BARBER
Prior to becoming one of
the founders and owners
of Milk, Barber was a lead
2D compositor and visual
effects supervisor with
credits that include three
of the Harry Potter films,
Black Hawk Down, Troy
and Kingdom of Heaven.
He is Milk's VFX supervisor.
milk-vfx.com
PROFILE
DAVE GOODBOURN
Goodbourn started out in
1999 in the videogames
industry, before moving
into online editing in 2001.
In 2010 he moved into VFX
facility infrastructure design
and implementation, before
taking on the role of Head
of pipeline/systems at Milk
in June 2013.
milk-vfx.com
66
BBC 2014
1.
2.
We took lots of
photo scans of the
3.
4.
We had to be
careful with the
5.
6.
We created an
automated cycle for
rotational movement
animation in there.
information we needed.
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
67
BROADCAST
Television VFX
BBC 2014
68
WHOS BACK
While Milk has built up a good portfolio
of both film and broadcast projects, its
already best known for its association
with Doctor Who. While luck was on
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
69
BROADCAST
Rendering solutions
C A S E S T U DY: R EN D ERI N G S O LU T I O N S
PROFILE
BENOIT LEVEAU
Leveau is head of
pipeline at Milk, where
he is responsible for the
design, implementation
and maintenance of all
aspects of the Milks
technical pipeline.
milk-vfx.com
PROFILE
DAVE GOODBOURN
Goodbourn is head
of systems at Milk. On
its launch in 2013, he
readied the facility
to accommodate up
to 100 artists' seats
and provide ongoing
technical support.
milk-vfx.com
PROFILE
BRIAN JOUAN
With over 15 years
experience in various
roles in post-production,
Jouan is the principal
creative director at
StaticJoe Studio in San
Diego, California.
staticjoe.com
RENDERING ON DEMAND
Cloud solutions remove the
need for a studio to buy its own
hardware, or for that hardware
to be physically present in the
building. Instead, it can access
render nodes located in a remote
data centre via the internet, paying
by the processor and by the hour.
For smaller facilities, cloud
services have the benefit of being
A QUESTION OF SCALE
For Brian Jouan, creative director
of small commercials and broadcast
house StaticJoe Studio, it all
depends on the size of the job.
If the scope is large enough,
the convenience of sending the
project to a cloud-based render
farm is wonderful, he says. But
if time allows, I try and render
internally. When uploading
projects to cloud render farms,
theres a risk of not getting what
youre expecting.
However, Jouan notes that the
availability of cloud solutions is
reducing the need to add to his
existing mini render farm: I think
expanding the farm internally
doesnt make business sense. A
beefy internal render farm requires
70
FYI
Clouds of
all sizes
A brief overview of the range
of cloud services available
for solo artists and studios
A range of services exist for artists looking to
explore cloud rendering. At one end of the
spectrum, developers are working to build
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
71
BROADCAST
GPU processing
72
FE AT U R E : G P U PRO C ES S I N G
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
PROFILE
ANDREW PAGE
Page is a senior product
manager in the Quadro
Professional Graphics
Solutions Group for NVIDIA,
working across its scalable
display solutions and
advanced technologies.
nvidia.co.uk
PROFILE
NIELS STEVENS
Stevens is business
development manager
for video at Adobe, where
he has worked for the last
four years. He previously
spent four years working
at Avid Technology.
adobe.com
73
BROADCAST
GPU processing
O penSubdiv
How GPUs are shaking up the display of organic forms
Until recently, organic forms like characters were difficult to display accurately in real time in the
viewports of 3D software, meaning animators had to depend on low-poly proxy versions of the
actual model. This left a lot to the imagination until render time. OpenSubdiv, a set of graphics
libraries developed by Pixar and now released as open source, is starting to change all that.
Designed to run on massively parallel CPU and GPU architectures, and implemented in tools like
3ds Max and Maya, it displays curved surfaces accurately in real time, improving visual feedback.
74
HYBRID ENGINES
One task on which many software
developers are now focusing is dividing
tasks between GPU and CPU so that each
type of processor concentrates on the
type of operations that it is good at.
Applications like Adobe Premiere are
already hybridised between GPU and
You can view the full family of NVIDIA Quadro cards at www.nvidia.co.uk/object/quadro-desktop-gpus-uk.html
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
75
BROADCAST
GPU processing
76
ADOBE ANYWHERE
http://aws.amazon.com/ec2
www.adobe.com/uk/products/adobeanywhere.html
NETWORK PROCESSING
The simplest way to increase your GPU
processing power is to upgrade your
graphics card or to add another one to
your system. But there are other ways to
enhance your arsenal.
One is to use external GPUs housed
within their own breakout box directly
connected to your workstations. Systems
from Cubix and Netstor provide a
dedicated enclosure into which you can
slot a number of GPUs. This enables
software applications to access the
GPUs as if they were plugged into the
computers motherboard.
NEXT-GENERATION WORKFLOWS
So what does the future hold for the
creative pro, with the ability to use GPU
acceleration everywhere? One of the
first real visions of how acceleration
can enrich an artists life is the
Adobe Anywhere platform. This is a
collaborative working platform for video
professionals based around a centralised
data centre which houses assets such as
video files. Using the platform's Mercury
Streaming Engine, team members
around the world can edit content stored
on the hub non-destructively, without
the need to transfer files or create
proxies. All of the processing is done on
the server only the on-screen display is
streamed to the local machine.
Such solutions mean that artists
can work on devices that wouldn't
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
FYI
77
BROADCAST
Switching from Apple to HP
PROFILE
ROB LEGATO
Legato is one of
the movie worlds
leading visual effects
supervisors. He has
worked with Martin
Scorsese, James
Cameron and Ron
Howard, and has been
nominated for three
Academy Awards for his
work, winning twice.
imdb.com/name/
nm0499215
PROFILE
MARK RUSSELL
Russell is a director
and visual effects
supervisor with an
extensive resume in
movie, broadcast and
commercials work. His
recent projects include
The Wolf of Wall Street,
Tower Heist and The
Adjustment Bureau.
russelling.com
HOLLYWOOD CALLING
PROFILE
DEVIN GRAHAM
Graham is a
videographer producing
adventure and extreme
sport videos on
YouTube under the
name devinsupertramp.
He has over 2.4 million
subscribers to his
channel, and his videos
have been viewed over
400 million times.
devinsupertramp.com
78
ADVANCED MODEL
VFX supervisor Mark Russell,
who has worked on everything
from Minority Report to The
Adjustment Bureau, tells a similar
story. He switched from Apple to
HP workstations while working on
The Wolf of Wall Street. Having
been an exclusively Mac guy, I
now use HP nearly all the time, he
says. HP platforms are definitely
built by people who understand
what were doing. And when
youre constantly adding new
peripherals, HP has advanced the
model of being able to open up the
computer and add them yourself.
Russell gives two examples of
how HP systems offered him new
creative possibilities on The Wolf
of Wall Street. One was a scene
shot with a camera affixed to a
drone. We had to review footage
before we left the location, he
explains. At the time, the Canon
4K raw files could only be coded
2
YouTube star Devin Graham uses an HP
ZBook and Z820 workstation to deliver
his videos to over 2.4 million subscribers
BROADCAST
REVOLUTION
Whats happening in movies is also
happening in TV. Case in point:
Jonathan Waltons production
company, My Little Eye, which has
brought bands like The Killers,
David Bowie and Paul Weller to
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
79
BROADCAST
Switching from Apple to HP
FASTER WORKING
Working on an equally intensive TV
show is underwater photographer
Jonathan Bird. Hes the producer,
80
THINKING IT THROUGH
Its not all about speed and power,
though. Some professionals
ONLINE HERO
But what about the new generation
of online video creators? Are
those indie producers, raised on
PROFILE
JONATHAN BIRD
Bird is an Emmy
Award-winning
cinematographer
specialising in
underwater work.
He directs and hosts
the family-oriented
underwater adventure
series Jonathan Birds
Blue World, broadcast
via his website.
blueworldtv.com
PROFILE
JONATHAN WALTON
Walton is owner and
broadcast video editor
at UK-based studio My
Little Eye, specialising
in multi-camera music
performance work.
His clients include
Channel 4, ITV, NBC,
BBC and Sony.
mylittleeye.tv
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
Jonathan Bird.
81
COMMERCIALS
VISUAL EFFECTS
FOR COMMERCIALS
Ads compound the problems of creating high-end effects with tight
production schedules. We explore the art of making magic on a deadline
SECTION CONTENTS
THE EVOLUTION OF ADVERTISING _____84
EMBRACING THE NEED FOR SPEED ___ 90
HIGH DEFINITION, HIGH GRADE _______92
AN APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION______93
VISUAL EFFECTS:
THE AD MANS VIEW _________________99
ZEN AND THE ART
OF DATA WRANGLING ______________100
A MIRROR TO LIFE: GLASSWORKS ____ 102
THE MULTI-LIMBED ART
OF ADVERTISING VFX _______________106
NEXUS PRODUCTIONS:
CREATIVE POWERHOUSE ___________108
82
A celebration of creativity
Over the next 30 pages, we will
explore these technical advances
in more detail, and look at the way
that HP and NVIDIA hardware is
already smoothing the production
pipeline in commercials houses
throughout the world.
Along the way, we will examine
how some of the most striking
ads from the past year including
Gramercy Park Studios This Is
Play spot for Betfair, and The Mill's
triple VES Award-winning PETA
ad, 98% Human, were created.
The result is a showcase for the
cutting-edge of computer graphics
and a celebration of how
creativity can thrive even under the
most demanding of deadlines.
1. Commercials require
VFX studios to deliver
Hollywood-quality effects
in a fraction of the time
available to movie artists
2. New real-time workflows,
such as those pioneered by
Blur Studio's Kevin Margo
on Construct, his recent
short film, may hold the key
COMMERCIALS
Introduction
COMMERCIALS HIGHLIGHTS
90
92
We examine the
explosive growth
of destruction FX
for ads, and how
technologies like
GPU computing
are helping studios
create particle
simulations faster.
93
Nexus Productions
Betfairs
This Is
has twice
Play
spot won
features
the
a
rather
Cannes
unusual
Grand
Prix and
table
tennis
picked
player.
up
twoexplore
We
D&AD Black
how
Pencils.
Gramercy
We
Park
explore
the
Studios
pipeline
brought
that
the beast
powers
to its
life
award-winning
on HP hardware.
ads.
106
Nexus Productions
has twice won
the Cannes Grand
Prix and picked up
two D&AD Black
Pencils. We explore
the pipeline
that powers its
award-winning ads.
108
84
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
83
COMMERCIALS
CG in ads
Originally mocked up on a
tabletop with a Pritt Stick and
mug, ManvsMachines idents for
4seven won the agency a coveted
D&AD Yellow Pencil
FE AT U R E : CG I N A DS
THE EVOLUTION
OF ADVERTISING
Advancements in hardware and software technology have enabled production
houses to be more creative and bring their clients more options than ever
84
PROFILE
FABIAN FRANK
Frank is an accomplished 3D supervisor,
concepting and developing some of
MPCs most iconic and innovative work.
He has created work for brands including
Panasonic, Citroen, VW, Audi and Channel 4.
moving-picture.com
PROFILE
ADAM JENNS
Jenns is founder and director of Mainframe,
a creative production studio based in
London. Mainframes clients include Dyson,
MTV, Virgin and Harrods.
mainframe.co.uk
PROFILE
SIMON HOLMEDAL
Holmedal is a 3D artist/designer currently
working for ManvsMachine in London.
He specialises in VFX/simulation-based
animation and often takes on a technical
director role on various projects.
manvsmachine.co.uk
PROFILE
MARC BREWSTER
Brewster is head of technology
advertising at MPC. His previous positions
include chief engineer (MPC) and senior
engineer (The Mill).
moving-picture.com
1 - 4. More examples of
ManvsMachines stunning
work for Channel 4
spin-off 4seven
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
HARDWARE HEROES
Keeping on top of technology is one
of the hardest and most expensive
elements for a production company to
get right. And its becoming harder:
tapeless workflows, cloud-based services
and improved editing, grading, VFX
and audio systems promise to vastly
boost efficiency through increased
85
COMMERCIALS
CG in ads
TECH FOCUS
3D sc anning
ManvsMachine used 3D scanning techniques to create a
dynamic and technically brilliant spot for Nike
86
3D footballers, ManvsMachine
TECH FOCUS
3D Rupert Burton.
as a company.
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
87
COMMERCIALS
CG in ads
TECH FOCUS
S K I N S I M U L AT I O N
MAMMOTH JOB
Working closely with creative agency
Mother London and Smuggler director
Guy Shelmerdine, MPC was tasked with
concepting and developing the 15-foot
mammal. The brief was
to create an epic elephant
dancing in New York with
[MSM mascot] Graeme on
top, recalls MPC 3D supervisor Fabian
Frank. Theyre both having a great
time: theyre a great team.
To ensure the right amount of
attitude was injected into the elephants
dance moves, Shelmerdine and
Mother referenced a number of iconic
characters: Samuel L Jackson in Pulp
Fiction, John Travolta in Saturday
Night Fever and Michael Jackson in the
Billie Jean video, with a healthy dash
of Beyonc thrown in. The biggest
challenge for us was creating an elephant
that could pull out the moves with the
best of them, yet was also believable and
true to life, Frank explains. We looked
at lots of references of elephants. African
elephants dont usually make these kinds
of movements although they could so
we had to add this on top. We wanted
to keep the range of movements within
what an elephant could do. The bum
wiggle was the hardest part because
normally an elephant wouldnt do that.
The lighting also proved tricky,
he admits: In the city we have lots
of different light changes and very
localised light sources that we needed to
recreate. Integrating the elephant into
the shot footage provided an additional
challenge: It was essential to match
the interaction between Graeme and
the elephant, says Frank, so Graeme
was tracked and rotoscoped back into
the shots, using select takes to perfectly
match the elephants walk cycle.
A solid pipeline was crucial to
achieving the interactivity, speed and
quality the client expected. MPC uses
powerful HP Z-Series workstations
ranging from the Z420 to the Z820,
all exclusively fitted with NVIDIA
graphics cards for its production
pipeline systems.
The HP Z-Series
are used as our main
workstations for our 2D and
CG teams, explains Marc
Brewster, head of technology at MPC,
and they use Quadro 4000 series cards.
We tend to keep them all to a relatively
high specification, but some are
equipped with larger amounts of RAM
to enable users to work on especially
complex scenes or increasingly higher
frame sizes and frame rates UHDTV
being one example. On a recent project
88
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89
COMMERCIAL
GPU-based workflows
A GPU-based rendering
workflow would have made it
quicker to finalise the motion
of 98% Humans photorealistic
chimp, believes Baertson
TECHNICAL HURDLES
C A S E S T U DY: G PU R EN D ERI N G
EMBRACING THE
NEED FOR SPEED
The Mill NYs head of CG, Vince Baertsoen, explains
why GPU-based workflows are going to be the future
of commercials production
PROFILE
VINCE BAERTSOEN
Vince Baertsoen is
head of CG at The Mill
NY, where he develops
many of its in-house
tools. He won a Visual
Effects Society Award
for his work on the
PETA 98% Human ad.
www.the-mill.com
90
or Vince Baertsoen,
GPU-based rendering
for commercials became
practical at GTC 2014.
Although the conference featured
sessions from movie VFX studios,
what caught his attention was the
teaser for Kevin Margos Construct.
Created in Chaos Groups GPUaccelerated V-Ray RT renderer, the
workflow enabled Margo to see
near-final-quality CG in real time,
letting him direct both the action
and the look of a shot.
Thats where things are going
to go, says Baertsoen. You can
see that rendering is going to
disappear at some point. It will
become more transparent.
Learning
f rom
Construct
The teaser trailer for Kevin
Margos indie sci-fi short
certainly impresses...
Cited by Baertsoen as the best example of how
a real-time rendering pipeline could work, the
Construct teaser made waves at GTC in 2014.
Directed by Blur Studio VFX supervisor Kevin
Margo, the photorealistic short shows a robotic
construction worker getting into trouble when
he stumbles on colleagues disposing of a human
_ Vince Baertsoen
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
91
COMMERCIALS
Colour in advertising
HIGH DEFINITION
HIGH GRADE
CC Media explains how HP and NVIDIA hardware
helped it build a cutting edge colour-correction
system capable of real-time 4K work for commercials
PROFILE
NIKOLAS REIGEL
Reigel is editor and visual
effects artist at production
facility CC Media. The
companys credits include
commercials for brands
such as HEAD, Swisskalk
and Elysator. See the
companys showreel on
YouTube at bit.ly/cc_media
and more of its work at
ccmedia.ch
lthough 4K workflows
have been making
headlines in the film
industry for some time,
movie professionals arent the only
artists taking advantage of the
potential of ultra-high-resolution
footage. Increasingly, commercials
are being shot on 4K cameras like
those in ARRIs ALEXA and REDs
EPIC product ranges, or Sonys
F55 and F65 a fact that a new
breed of agile, independent
post-production facilities are
poised to take advantage of.
We shoot almost every job at
4K or 5K, says Nikolas Reigel, the
man responsible for the hardware
at CC Media, a Zrich-based
production house whose clients
include international sports brand
HEAD. It gives us a crisper image,
even if we later encode to 1080p;
and using RAW footage gives us a
high spectrum for colour grading.
Bringing movie-scale
effects to small screens,
Sonys Perfect Day
ad treats well-known
PlayStation games as
real-life events, vividly
brought to life through
The Mills VFX work
F E AT U R E : PA R T I C L E E F F E C T S F O R C O M M E R C I A L S
AN APPETITE
FOR DESTRUCTION
Clients desire to see movie-quality smoke and fire in commercials places huge
demands on VFX artists. We talked to the teams behind five recent ads to find
out how to create realistic particle and volumetric effects on a TV schedule
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
93
COMMERCIALS
Particle effects
1
PROFILE
PROFILE
ALLAN MCKAY
JOHN-PAUL HARNEY
Harney is a freelance CG
generalist. He has worked
for The Mill, Rushes
and Smoke & Mirrors,
where he was the
studios head of 3D.
PROFILE
PROFILE
STU SCHWARTZ
NICOLAS COURETCHAILLOUX
allanmckay.com
Schwartz is a systems
developer at MPC, focusing
on Houdini and pipeline
development. He previously
worked at SCAD and has
interned at The Mill.
moving-picture.com
jpharney.co.uk
Couret-Chailloux works
at The Mill as a 3D artist.
His recent ads include
PlayStation Perfect Day
and Budweiser Collective
Energy Act 1.
themill.com
PROFILE
VICTORIA OSBORN
Osborn began her career
at MPC in 2002, quickly
rising to the role of VFX
supervisor. She is currently
head of 3D at MPCs
New York studio.
moving-picture.com
94
1. MPC created the striking promo for PlayStation 4 video game inFAMOUS: Second Son
2. Particle simulations were used throughout the spot, often as showpiece effects 3. The
scale of the simulation work demanded an all-Houdini approach 4. Hero Delsin Rowe does
his signature orbital drop move an effect that approaches 80 million voxels
SIMULATE OR SHOOT?
For a small studio, the key question may
not be how to make a simulation look
real: it may be whether to run it in the
first place. Fieldtrips recent Baby spot
for Vision Express (bit.ly/particles-baby)
takes viewers on a journey through
the inside of a human eye. But while
the waving field of rods and cones that
make up its retina are CG, simulated
in Softimage, the colourful plumes of
smoke that rise in front of them are
practical effects, shot in a cloud tank.
While it would have been nice
to simulate the smoke, it would have
Houdinis GPU-accelerated
Pyro FX toolset simulates
realistic smoke and fire
H oudini
For: Standalone | Price: $4,495 (FX edition) | Developer: Side Effects Software
Used by The Mill and MPC in their commercials work, Houdini is a fully featured
3D application. Its procedural workflow and diverse range of simulation tools
make it capable of creating complex effects, and it scales easily to very large
simulations, although the price and relatively small pool of freelance artists
mean it is less widely used by smaller studios. Its GPU-accelerated Pyro FX
toolset, used to simulate smoke and fire, benefits from the compute power
of a workstation-class graphics card like those of NVIDIAs Quadro series.
For more information about Houdini, visit www.sidefx.com
thinkingPar ticles
For: 3ds Max | Price: 1,495 | Developer: cebas Visual Technology
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
95
COMMERCIALS
Particle effects
1
FumeFX provides a
scalable toolset for
creating voxel-based
gaseous fluid effects
Fume F X
For: 3ds Max, Maya | Price: $845 | Developer: Sitni Sati
96
God of War From Ashes trailer produced by Imaginary Forces for Sony Computer Entertainment America
Krakatoa
For: See below | Price: Varies with platform | Developer: Thinkbox Software
ADVANCES IN TECHNOLOGY
New technologies also have a role to play
in smoothing simulation workflow. One
technique increasingly being supported
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
97
COMMERCIALS
Particle effects
EFFEX
For: Cinema 4D | Price: 999 | Developer: Navi
PHOENIX FD
For: 3ds Max, Maya | Price: $960 | Developer: Chaos Group
A simulation tool for both liquids and gaseous fluids. Uses a hybrid
particle/voxel-based approach. Includes a GPU-accelerated preview.
For more details, visit www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/phoenix.html
STOKE MX
For: 3ds Max | Price: $595 (Workstation licence) | Developer: Thinkbox Software
TURBULENCEFD
For: Cinema 4D, LightWave | Price: 399 | Developer: Jawset Visual Computing
X- PA RTI C L E S
For: Cinema 4D | Price: 289 (Pro edition) | Developer: Insydium
98
VISUAL EFFECTS:
THE AD MANS VIEW
In just 20 years, CG has gone from a costly novelty to
a staple of modern commercials work. Two veterans
of the UK ad market reflect on its rise to dominance
PROFILES
JOHN FOX
Fox is owner of Agent BOB,
an illustration studio and
CG artist agency based in
London, specialising in CG
imaging, animation and VFX
for the global entertainment
and advertising industries.
agentbob.co.uk
DAVID MASTERMAN
Masterman is creative
director at advertising
agency JWT London.
The winner of both D&AD
Pencils and Cannes Lions,
he has worked at BMP, BBH,
Fallon and CHI & Partners .
jwt.co.uk
Real versus CG
Today, many commercials use
visual effects to avoid costly live
shoots. The latest TV spot for Mr
Kipling shows a young boy playing
in a park with his imaginary friend:
a huge pink elephant.
We wanted to use a real
elephant, says David Masterman,
creative director at ad agency JWT
London. But then you start to get
into the logistics!
40K in 20 years
Its a far cry from the early days of
computer graphics in advertising,
as John Fox, founder of specialist
agency Agent BOB and a 20-year
veteran of 3D work recalls.
In 1994, the software was
unstable and the machines were
slow, he says. Because of the
hindrances, the finish was very
basic and plastic-looking. Also,
the cost was painfully high a
purpose-built machine and
software cost around 50K.
But in the intervening decades,
quality has risen and costs fallen.
Today, pricing for HPs Z840
workstation with mid-range
Quadro card starts at $2,399: just
under 1,500 at current rates of
exchange. With Autodesks entire
Entertainment Creation Suite of
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
Universal appeal
In fact, CG is now so widely used
in ads that it is becoming a victim
of its own success, as Fox points
out: The process looks relatively
simple, which means that clients
expectations have risen and their
timelines and budgets reduced.
For ad agencies, the appeal
is obvious: CG enables them to
realise even their most visually
ambitious ideas quicker and more
cheaply than ever before.
As Fox points out, the only
thing the computer cant recreate
is human error. The unexpected
accidents that a photographer or
cameraman can capture might
never be achievable with [digital
technology], he says. Its the one
reason I still feel that CG will never
completely replace photography.
Read more about The Mills
99
COMMERCIALS
Data wrangling
C A S E S T U DY: DATA W R A N G L I N G
PROFILE
GARY ADCOCK
Adcock is CEO/CTO
at Chicagos Studio 37,
specialising in creating
and streamlining
workflows for episodic
and feature production.
His clients include
media outlets like CNN,
MSNBC and Discovery
Networks and brands
like McDonalds,
Taco Bell and HBO.
garyadcock.com
100
TWOFOLD JOB
To start with, data wrangler is
actually only one half of Adcocks
job. On many shoots, there will be
both a digital imaging technician
3
Gary Adcock builds a custom hardware
TRADE SECRET
One of the secrets to Adcocks
success his recent movie jobs
include Transformers: Dark Side of
the Moon and Just Like a Woman
is the fact that, tech-wise, he
doesnt stay still. Im constantly
evolving. I build a new kit for
every production I work on, based
on the workflow for the project,
he explains.
So if Im going out doing
high-speed camera work with a
Phantom camera, I need different
tools than for a RED job. In an
environment like film production,
where youre constantly trying to
break down [workflow] to make it
faster and easier, being flexible in
this way enables me to be more
aggressive in how the technology
is used.
Truly tech-agnostic he has
worked cross-platform for 20
years, on both PCs and Macs
Adcock simply hones in on the
equipment that will get the job
done as quickly and efficiently as
possible. In recent years, its HP
that has won him over.
HP mobile workstations
have enabled a guy like me to
do so much, he says. With
embedded NVIDIA cards and
Intels Thunderbolt technology,
we now have an all-in-one system
that gives you the highest data
throughput and the highest
quality. [It enables] you to do
dailies, to transcode files in real
time, and to do on-set colouring
in a way thats just not as easy on
other platforms.
Adcock, who also uses HPs
Z-Series desktop workstations
in production, offers a specific
example to illustrate the point.
On a recent TV commercial I
worked on, we were transcoding
6K RED Dragon material and I
KIT BREAKDOWN
Adcock is currently working on
the second season of Sirens an
American reboot of the British
Channel 4 comedy moving
between 650GB and 1.5TB of data
a day on set. In addition to his
15-inch ZBook mobile workstation
with 16GB RAM, two 500GB
SSDs and 10Gbps Thunderbolt
connection, he is using two
24-inch Sony OLED displays for
monitoring, and G-Technologys
G-Dock ev dual-bay drive system
for storage. The G-Dock enables
me to take that solid state media
from the card on location to my
office for archiving and transfer,
he explains.
But of course, on the next
project, that may all change.
For example, Adcock is excited by
HPs new Z workstations, due
to ship later this year. The topof-the-range model, the Z840,
supports two next-generation Intel
Xeon processors with up to 36
processor cores.
SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL
Perhaps surprisingly, speed of
data transfer isnt even Adcocks
main concern. The thing that has
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
101
COMMERCIALS
Photorealistic compositing
Directed by industry
legend Daniel Kleinman
of Rattling Stick, the
TalkTalk Model Britain
commercial depicts life
TalkTalk/Glassworks.
C A S E S T U DY: PH OTO R E A L I S T I C CO M P OS I T I N G
A MIRROR TO LIFE:
GLASSWORKS
When compositing photorealistic CG with live action,
ultra-reliable HP hardware and NVIDIA-powered
rendering keep the UK post house ahead of the curve
PROFILE
DUNCAN MALCOLM
Malcolm joined
Glassworks as a
compositor in 2004.
A year later, he joined
the board as head of 2D
and now manages the
studios London offices.
glassworks.co.uk
PROFILE
WILL ISAAC
Isaac is Glassworks
head of engineering.
After starting 10 years
ago as a runner, he is
now responsible for
the technical side of
the company.
glassworks.co.uk
102
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
103
COMMERCIALS
Photorealistic compositing
M astering
feathers and f ur
Glassworks charming spot for Freeview
combines two classic CG challenges
in a beautiful example of photorealism
Love, Leo Burnetts 2014 spot
CHOOSING HP
To guarantee this level of reliability,
for Isaac, HP workstations are the
only choice. Glassworks standard
model is a Z400 or Z420, with a
six-core CPU, 72GB of RAM, and
an NVIDIA Quadro 4000 GPU.
Having used other kit before,
[HPs] is much more reliable, he
reveals. The way the HP boxes
are put together, they work well
together and you know they
always will. And when HP releases
[its next series] of workstations,
you know theyll work just as well
as the last ones, only quicker.
Ultimately its about finding
the right balance between speed
and reliability: Usually the harder
you push something to make it
faster, the less stable it becomes,
observes Isaac.
Our workstations sit in the
suites, and they get a bit messy
and dusty. Its not a sealed
environment like a machine room.
They have to work in a warm
environment, where there might
not be a clean atmosphere,
and not clag up with dust.
Again, he praises HPs Z-Series
workstations. The chassis design
104
RELIABLE FINISHING
Besides its 55 3D workstations,
Glassworks also maintains 14
Flame systems, two Smokes, one
FUTURE TRENDS
As the standard of compositing
work in commercials continues to
increase, Glassworks continues to
To launch its Climachill technology, Adidas turned to Glassworks to create some ice-cool
macro CG. The spot is very intensive from a CG point of view, with a high level of detail in
both fabric and ice
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
FYI www.glassworks.co.uk.
105
COMMERCIALS
Betfair octopus
C A S E S T U DY : B E T FA I R O C TO P U S
PROFILE
MARK BEARDALL
Previously a senior
Flame artist at
Framestore, Beardall
now works as a
VFX supervisor at
Gramercy Park Studios.
gramercyparkstudios.com
PROFILE
FRANCISCO LIMA
As the studios VFX
technology supervisor,
Lima is in charge of
devising new pipelines
and workflows.
gramercyparkstudios.com
106
2
1. A live-action shoot in Latvia is enhanced with a CG
octopus, built and animated in Maya 2. The live-action set
was recreated using panoramas and HDRs to generate
an accurate point cloud 3. The CG cephalopod required a
complex rig so its animators could deliver the necessary
range of movement
CROWD SOURCING
As the spot involved a variety
of effects, including extreme
slow-motion, the live-action team
decided to shoot each member
of the crowd at 100fps. They
captured 80 people performing
a range of movements from five
different angles, so the crowd
would feel alive and natural at all
times, says Beardall. We shot
them against greenscreen with a
variety of props and lit them really
well so that we could pull keys
from the plates very quickly.
To recreate the live action set,
GPS used photogrammetry to
derive a 3D version of the location.
Multiple photos were taken from
different viewpoints and stitched
together in ImageModeler to
produce a 3D model of the
environment. This data was then
brought into Maya, where our CG
team was able to rebuild the set
using basic geometry, including
tables, nets and banners, with
the correct position of lights in
each shot. We then projected the
photos onto this geometry, which
was fundamental in achieving
accurate reflections of the set on
the CG octopus.
The hotshot cephalopod
was built and animated in Maya
and provided its own specific
set of problems. This was
probably one of the hardest tasks
we had to do, says Beardall.
Being such alien-like creatures,
everyone has their own idea of
what an octopus looks and moves
like. Now take it out of its usual
Stadium of
light
How GPS created a virtual
sports arena in Flame
To create the packed stadium, the team turned to
Autodesks Flame, a VFX package that combines
colour grading, 3D compositing and finishing.
To begin, the stadium was built as low-poly
geometry in Maya and then imported into Flame
via FBX. Extras were shot in groups of four
against a green screen, composited into grids of
12 x 12 and rendered out at 4K so theyd stand
up to close scrutiny if necessary. Each seating
block had cards in front onto which the rendered
footage of the crowd was UV-mapped.
Tracking data from the 3D animation was
imported into Flame so that all camera angles
and moves matched perfectly. With the stadium
built, lit, textured and populated inside Flame it
could still be navigated interactively in 3D space
while keeping render times relatively low.
Were running HP Z820 workstations
configured by Autodesk specifically to run
Flame, says Francisco Lima. They have NVIDIA
Quadro K6000 GPUs that are extensively used
by the Flame application and were fundamental
in being able to handle such a big scene inside
Flames 3D environment. The system has 128GB
of RAM and uses an NVIDIA SDI card to output
to a professional broadcast monitor.
FYI
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
107
COMMERCIALS
Animation in ads
FE AT U R E : A N I M AT I O N I N A D S
NEXUS PRODUCTIONS:
CREATIVE POWER HOUSE
Nexus Productions handles every style of animation you can imagine and relies
on HP Z-Series workstations to keep it all running like clockwork
108
PROFILE
PROFILE
JULIA PARFITT
MARK DAVIES
Davies is CG supervisor
at Nexus. He moved from
Toronto to London in 2003,
where he has also worked
at Realise Studio, Jim
Hensons Creature Shop
and Blue-Zoo.
PROFILE
PROFILE
ZION POOL
DAVE WALKER
A seasoned CG supervisor,
Walker joined Nexus in
2012. He is tasked with
leading jobs from pitch
through to delivery and is
involved in every aspect of
pre- and post-production.
nexusproductions.com
nexusproductions.com
hp.com/eu/workstations | www.nvidia.co.uk
nexusproductions.com
nexusproductions.com
109
COMMERCIALS
Animation in ads
1
Cheil Worldwide
1-3. Fx Goby worked with illustrator Malika Favre to create Samsung Free and Active, based on a brief from Cheil
Worldwide. It features 2D animation integrated into 3D environments
Nextdoors Imagination Distilled ad for Bombay Sapphire gin took over bus stops
and underground stations in London (Gravity Road, 2013)
110
HUGE CHALLENGES
In the case of Fx Gobys Free And
Active spot for Samsung in which
he worked with another renowned
illustrator, Malika Favre the challenge
was a little more unusual. In this
case, Nexus needed to make a 3D
environment feel two-dimensional:
These commercials were a combination
of flat 2D animation integrated into 3D
environments that were rendered to look
and feel flat as well, with a photoreal
element of the Galaxy Gear watch,
continues Davies.
The challenge on this project was
that it was intended for five bespoke
outdoor screens around the world, each
of which was a different aspect ratio.
Some were very tall, and others equally
wide. We picked the most average of the
ratios, which happened to be Londons
Piccadilly Circus, and worked to that
master size, keeping all essential action
within a tight, safe action area within
the centre of the composition.
Nexus also harbours larger directing
teams, such as Nextdoor and Factory
Fifteen. The former works across both
2D and 3D for clients such as Prudential
and Bombay Sapphire, while the latter
co-founded by Kibwe Tavares, Jonathan
Gales and Paul Nicholls combines
skills in architecture, 3D, animation and
photography for the likes of Samsung,
Channel 4 and D&AD.
to overcome them.
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CLOSING CREDITS
Contributors
C L O S I N G
C R E D I T S
HP and NVIDIA would like to thank the following industry luminaries for their time and
effort in helping us to create this publication
FI R S T A C T ( FI L M )
Whiskeytree Jonathan Harb, Votch Levi Double Negative Paul Franklin, Dave Freeman Pixar Dirk Van Gelder, Bill Watral Blizzard Entertainment David Luong
Framestore Damien Mace, Kyle McCulloch, Stuart Penn, Steve MacPherson, Martin Preston Technicolor Mike Sowa HP Josh Peterson The Mill Harry Skopas
Rhythm & Hues Jason Bayever NVIDIA Will Wade MPC Damien Fagnou Autodesk David Morin Crytek Cevat Yerli CNCPT John Griffith
Independent creatives Alp Altiner, David Cole, Dylan Cole, Charles Darby, Dave Early, Lubo Hristov, Robert Junggeburt
S E C O N D A C T (B R O A DC A S T )
BBC Ian Finch Vizrt Gerhard Lang, Petter Ole Jakobsen ENS Rebecca Hopkins NVIDIA Andrew Page Alston Elliot Oliver Pearson
Elemental Technologies Keith Wymbs Milk Murray Barber, Will Cohen, Dave Goodbourn, Benoit Leveau StaticJoe Studio Brian Jouan Adobe Niels Stevens
My Little Eye Jonathan Walton Jonathan Bird Productions Jonathan Bird Independent creatives Devin Graham, Rob Legato, Mark Russell
T H I R D A C T ( C O M M E R C I A L S)
MPC Marc Brewster, Fabian Frank, Victoria Osborn, Stu Schwartz Mainframe Adam Jenns ManvsMachine Simon Holmedal The Mill Vince Baertsoen, Nicolas Couret-Chailloux
CC Media Nikolas Reigel JWT London David Masterman Glassworks Will Isaac, Duncan Malcolm Gramercy Park Studios Mark Beardall, Francisco Lima Agent BOB John Fox
Studio 37 Gary Adcock Nexus Productions Mark Davies, Julia Parfitt, Zion Pool, Dave Walker Independent creatives John-Paul Harney, Allan McKay
HP Cesare Zavalloni, Delphine Simiand, Josh Peterson NVIDIA Eric Charriot, Alex Micallef, Jens Neuschaefer, Andrew Page Warner Bros Chris Sharp, Sophie Scott 3D World magazine Kulsoom Middleton
Cover image 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.
S UPPO RT I N G C A S T ( W R I T E R S )
Nick Carson, Sophie Charara, Maya Emilie Enevoldsen, Mike Griggs, Kerrie Hughes, Rebecca-Louise Leybourne, Sammy Maine, Tom May,
Jamie Middleton, Adrian Pennington, Andy Price, Mark Ramshaw, Julia Sagar, Andy Stout
EDIT ORIAL
S E NIO R C RE AT I V E S
PR I N T & PR O DUC T I O N
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