SPARKLE

TitleSPARKLE
BrandBUNDABERG BREWED DRINK
Product / ServiceBUNDABERG SPARKLING SELECTION
CategoryA02. Computer Graphics/Visual Effects
EntrantCUTTING EDGE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Entrant Company CUTTING EDGE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Advertising Agency PUBLICIS MOJO Brisbane, AUSTRALIA
Production Company CUTTING EDGE Brisbane, AUSTRALIA

Credits

Name Position
Andy Ward/Lee Griffin Creative Director
Vfx Director: Zenon Kohler/Vfx Supervisor: Jeff Gaunt Director
Mike Lange Sound Design/Arrangement
Cutting Edge Post Production
Animation Director: Ian Anderson Animation
3d Animation - Rob Conn/Jake Hempson Production Designer
3d Modelling - Jake Hempson (Rigging)/Richard Deavin/Matt Hanger/Rob Conn/ Special Effects/Computer Graphics
Additional Fluid Simulation: Rangi Sutton Flame Composite: Ant Haberl ProductionManager
Post Producer: Samara Jones Vfx Producer: Flavia Dias Riley. Other Credits

Brief Explanation

The teams embarked on weeks of intensive R&D to create the look they were after for Bundaberg Sparkling Selection. The VFX team then designed and created an entirely CG crystal world, taking colour palette inspiration from the Bundaberg Sparkling Selection drink flavours. Four women sit beside an ocean of jewels extending to the horizon of a late afternoon sky. The setting sun, a large crystalline hotspot shooting rays across the surface of the water, glistening off the crystal waves as their facets move and rotate with the ebbs and flows of the sea. The look was achieved by replicating reflection and refraction physics of real crystals. The design of the characters and environment was approached on a shot-by-shot basis, as the scale of the facets was determined by their distance from the virtual Since no ‘real’ product was featured in this animation, one of the biggest creative challenges was to create a CG version of the drink that poured like real liquid but looked like crystal.

Creative Execution

The VFX team started with storyboards and then cut an animatic for timings. The team then blocked out the cameras and action .The animation of the characters was based on reference footage shot of three of women sitting around a table chatting. The unusual nature of the design meant there was little reference material. The scale of the facets was crucial to the effectiveness of the style. In a wide shot, if the facets were too small, the surfaces would appear smooth instead of crystalline. In the close-ups, the facets couldn't be too big because the objects would lack enough detail and appear chunky. Initially the team tried constructing a faceted mesh from existing models. A few methods were tested in Houdini and Maya, but it was decided to model each object, on a shot-by-shot basis. Each character and asset needed a customised approach. Crystal facets are generally rectangular and triangular, so symmetry was avoided, especially in the faces, because it emphasised the 3D nature of the geometry. The characters were modelled in Maya, rendered with V-Ray and composited in Flame. To get the idea working in the software, multiple layers of geometry were tested with various refractive indexes to find a crystal look that wasn't too complicated. Among the team’s greatest creative challenge was creating a CG version of the drink that poured like real liquid but looked like crystal. RealFlow treated the process of pouring the liquid like any other fluid simulation. An initial concern was that the facets would change shape and position every frame resulting in a flickering appearance. RealFlow has a few algorithm options for mesh building. Some flickered more than others, but the most recent version achieved the desired look. The colour palette was based on the drink range. To avoid the crystal appearing cloudy, the R&D process involved exploring whether to colour the crystal or render it clear and assign colour at the compositing stage. In the end, adding the colour in the render achieved a more aesthetic result. Global illumination wasn’t used because everything was so transparent. The raytracing of the refractions and reflections combined with depth of field made for heavy renders. In particular the first shot, wide with a pull focus, took two days to render, and had to be re-rendered several times, tweaking animation, lights and refractive indexes each time. The style of the characters dictated the animation, as the hair and body were made as one continuous mesh. A secondary joint chain rig was added with a couple of controllers to achieve minimal motion of the hair. This limited approach to the animation was also the key to the look of the characters, but it did produce a few tricky animation issues. One of these was the hair intersecting with the rest of the body geometry, and also the need to keep it looking soft and ‘hairlike’ but at the same time made from crystal. The amount of secondary animation was reduced to achieve a more crystal-like motion.