Turning Water into Wine - a New CG Twist!
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Turning water into wine is one thing, but turning fabric into shiraz? Come on! That's exactly what Fusion CI Studios did in a collaboration with zspace, Australia, for the Rosemount Wines sponsored Sydney Fashion Week commercial, "Expressions". The spot won 'Best Campaign of the Year' from The Foster's Group, beating out Animal Logic’s Pure Blonde beer ad and was selected on BestAdsOnTV.com. The 30-sec spot features cg fabric flowing from a Rosemount wine bottle, then elegantly & playfully forming designer dress shapes as it soars through mid-air before transforming into red wine and pouring beautifully into the Rosemount logo. Zspace asked Fusion CI Studios to provide the fluid assets because getting fluid to mimic complicated geometry and to move in this highly art-directed way is an incredible challenge that few have the expertise to accomplish. "Simply getting fluid to ‘stick’ to fabric was a true feat as the fabric was a rapidly billowing geometry on which we needed to create a smooth, continuous, unbroken layer of fluid. Anyone who works with fluids knows how difficult that can be!" says Mark Stasiuk, co-founder and CG Supervisor at Fusion CI Studios. "Rather than adhering to the surface, particles tend to spin off into space when the fabric whips through air forming complex surfaces. It was difficult to come up with the technology to spread fluid particles evenly along the sculpted, highly-detailed geometry and then have them adhere well enough to maintain a continuous fluid surface." Fusion developed a technology using its proprietary python plug-in for RealFlow which analyses any geometry and distributes particles evenly and adhesively across its surface. It holds the fluid onto the geometry using a series of stabilizing forces that allow control over how loosely the fluid stays in position. "The result is that we can make fluids morph into any geometry and react dynamically to whatever the geometry is doing - even highly complex and rapidly deforming geometry," says Mark. "This new development results in a totally unique look has an infinite number of exciting applications. We could create entire characters out of fluid. And when the characters move or dance, for example, fluid droplets could fling off them, maintaining and enhancing that organic 'fluidness', rather than simply using geometry that's shaded to look like water." "We've recently made great strides in evolving this technology even further so we can control how fluid morphs into objects and then morphs from object to object," says Fusion's co-founder & executive producer, Lauren Millar. "Look for that achievement in an exciting, innovative commercial that's coming out this year." The wine pouring into the Rosemount logo had to be exceedingly realistic for the client to approve. It had to look like their wine and like wine you'd want to drink! In addition, the pour is forming the product logo and it's the last shot you see in the commercial, so it was vital that it looked highly appealing and realistic. The challenge of this shot was that the wine had to look like it was filling a red wine glass, however the object it was filling was far different than a goblet-shaped wine glass; it was a diamond-shaped vessel that was extremely thin. "To do this, we designed an animation rig made of forces which drove the narrow pour into the thin top of the diamond, swirling the wine from side to side to create a nice filling action, and curling the flow over on top of itself on the sides of the diamond in whirlpool-like swirls", says Mark. "The simulation rig was set up to change easily, according to our client's needs. The entire simulation was then run at extremely high resolution to achieve the tiny droplets within the splashes that make this look like a low-viscosity wine pour." The final challenge was to pour precisely enough fluid to exactly fill the diamond shape, with absolutely no room to spare. "If we got even one particle too many into the diamond, the fluid would explode out through the diamond geometry because of the internal pressure that would build up." Ah, the joys of physical simulations. "There were intense challenges on this project, but that's what we enjoy the most!" says Lauren. "Fusion focuses exclusively on fluid & particle fx, so we expect to create the complex or unique fluid fx that our clients don't have the time or resources to create themselves. That's why our working model works so well. We collaborate with vfx studios around the world to create a final product far greater than what either of us could create as individual studios." In fact, Rosemount liked the shiraz commercial so much that zspace was asked to create two additional white wine spots. For that, zspace reused the fluid assets that Fusion supplied for the shiraz, but they also needed to create air bubbles moving up from the neck of a wine bottle in that classic ‘glug-glug’ fashion. For that Fusion used its proprietary bubble behavior technology -- a python plug-in for RealFlow that creates a force-field on pockets of gas, mimicking the forces applied by a surrounding fluid, thereby generating all the characteristic motions of air bubbles rising in water. "We're very proud of our work on these projects," says Lauren, "and it was a great pleasure working with the team at zspace." Badjar Ogilvy Creative Director, Pam Kaplan says, "It's no secret that fabric and liquid are very difficult to faithfully realise in a CGI environment, but every new development in the project reassured us that we had chosen a team that would work day, and many nights, to get the job done. The end result is amazing, the animation really sets a new benchmark for the industry." http://www.if.com.au/2008/10/28/article/Zspace-turns-fabric-into-wine/TZMAWQIKSM.html See shiraz spot: http://www.fusioncis.com/projects/television/rosemount-sydney-fashion-festival/ Fusion CI Studios focuses exclusively on fluid & particle effects and provides studios around the world with fluid assets and rendered images for television, commercial and feature film projects. For more information see www.fusioncis.com For more information on the creation of the fluids for the Rosemount commercial "Expressions" look for a casestudy coming soon on Next Limit's website: www.nextlimit.com For more information about the creation of the outstanding cg fabric, contact zspace.
Credits:
Client: Rosemount
Agency: Badjar Ogilvy Melbourne Zspace: Fusion CI Studios: | |||||
