Case Studies
GOPLANA
Polish computer animation studio Platige Image took on the tastiest commercial ever and constructed a story of love and romance in a beautiful land of RealFlow-chocolate. We spoke to VFX Supervisor and Compositor Piotr Sikora to discover what went on behind the scenes – and to find out how much he still likes chocolate.
Next Limit: So, tell us about the commercial.
Piotr Sikora: “The final client GOPLANA is one of the major producers of sweets and chocolates in Poland. The commercial show the passion, love and trust of a couple traveling through a land of chocolate.”
NL: Which parts were created with RealFlow?
PS: “The idea was to create a world completely made of chocolate, including the characters, and our biggest problem was to seamlessly mix the fluids with animated characters, which we wanted to give a fluid-like look.
The first step was to create the animation and set cameras for all the shots. When this was done, all the models were replaced with their low-poly versions. These low-poly objects were used in all RealFlow simulations because high-poly models tended to create unstable simulations in RealFlow. This was caused mostly by mesh intersecting in fingers and face areas.
We used lots of forces with turbulence to create interesting fluid behaviors as well as plenty of killer gizmos to eliminate those parts of the simulation that were not visible from the camera perspective.
The hair was created in a few steps. First, a set of splines was simulated with our in-house solver. These were exported to RealFlow as particles. Then, the fluid part was emitted from the little disc-shaped objects placed at the end of each spline. Emitters (visible as yellow and brown circles) were divided into three groups to achieve some variation in the length of strands.
To seamlessly merge the fluids with the meshes, we created particles attached to objects and exported them to RF. To create the final meshes, we used these particles along with simulated fluids and particles from the hair simulation. This gave us a single smooth surface for all objects. However, it also led to some deformations, which could especially be seen in the face areas, so we also rendered hi-poly meshes. Using masks, we blended them in with the final meshes in areas where we needed more detail.”
NL: Why did you decide to use RealFlow?
PS: “We already had some experience with RealFlow and knew how to interchange data with 3dsMax. We knew it was quite fast and stable, so on our tight schedule we didn’t want to use any other software.”
NL: What was the most challenging part of the project and how did you overcome that challenge?
PS: “The tight schedule was challenging, as was the seamless integration of the fluid simulations with the animated characters. But the most challenging part of the project was to create a working pipeline that could handle the complex task of putting out complicated animations and time-consuming fluid simulations. We managed to fix this issue by creating a single smooth surface for all objects, as described above.”
NL: What about that tight time schedule? High stress levels?
PS: “Our deadline was extremely tight. We had nine weeks from the very start to the very end of the project… We shot real action with actors and horses and that material was then edited. This saved us about two weeks that we could spend on animation development. Anyway, we worked under high stress and time pressure because the nice effects started to appear only during the last two weeks of postproduction. This project would have been impossible to execute without the agency’s and client’s great understanding of the difficulty of the matter. They really trusted us and gave us a lot of freedom.”
NL: For how long have you been using RealFlow?
PS: “We already had four years experience with RealFlow from previous projects. Besides, RealFlow is quite easy to “get into”.”
NL: How easy or difficult was it to integrate RealFlow in your pipeline?
PS: “Really easy. The only problem for us was the amount of data generated from the various simulations. Our IT team wrote special scripts which copied mesh data files to individual rendering computers. The standard network rendering did not work because of the huge transfer of mesh files over the PI network.
NL: How can we improve RealFlow further?
PS: “We would really like to see multithreading improved. Often RealFlow was using only 50% of every core.”
About Platige Image
Platige Image is a multi award-winning computer animation studio with the technical, creative and production capabilities to provide post-production visual effects services to the entertainment industry. They specialize in complex and in-depth 3D animation and digital visual effects both for feature and commercial markets. Platige is also the producer of short animated films such as the Academy Award nominated "The Cathedral", and Tomek Baginski’s newest project "Fallen Art". The film division offers filmmakers an experienced creative production team whose combined expertise draws upon the studio's unique array of technology and talent.
Platige’s clients value the studio for its professional work and reliability, which is the key issue in film postproduction.
Copyright:
Platige Image - www.platige.com
Credits:
The commercial was produced by Platige Image
Agency: GPD Advertising
Brand Manager: Romana Ratkowska (Goplana)
Art Director: Sambor Mordalski
Copywriter: Bartosz Kaluga
Account Manager: Sylwia Jurkiewicz
Character animators: Zbyszek Lenard, Beata Musial
Additional animation: Michał Husiak
TDs: Adam Wierzchowski, Lukasz Sobisz
Render artists: Robert Sarlej, Marcin Filipek
Matte painter: Michal Dziekan
VFX Supervisor and Compositor: Piotr Sikora
Commercial Producer: Agnieszka Furmaniak
Editing: Magda Mikolajczyk
Art Director: Arkadiusz Wróbel
Direction: Marek Dawid
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