Case Studies
"Artificial Paradise, Inc" (Condor)
When we first saw “Artificial Paradise”, a new experimental film by Condor, we by loved its stunning mixture of the organic and the technological. We got in touch with director Jean-Paul Frenay to find out more about the challenges involved in creating the film’s eerie creatures and why he knew immediately that RealFlow was the only tool for the job!
Next Limit: Can you give us a brief summary of what the film is about?
Jean-Paul Frenay: Artificial Paradise, Inc is an experimental film anticipating a future where a major corporation has developed a unique software, based on organic virtual reality, which holds all the lost memories of humankind. A user connects to this database of the forgotten…what is he searching for?
NL: Sounds intriguing! What made you decide to use RealFlow?
JPF: We’ve already used RealFlow on previous productions and immediately felt it would be the right tool to create these organic creatures. We were able to "give birth" to the creatures in one fluid motion and extract a solid mesh to build the perfect organic shape. This would have been impossible with Maya or any other software we own.
NL: What challenged you the most?
JPF: The main challenge was, definitely, to find the right look for the organic creatures, which led us to experiment in different ways within RealFlow. We did a lot of quick tests to see how the particles would react to different fluid properties when combined with various daemons.
Another challenge was the creation of the tentacles in the first shots. We came up with interesting results by combining the fibres and the RealFlow mesh, which gave us the look we wanted.
Then came the really tricky bit: the organic projector. It had to come out from a liquid wall in a precisely defined shape creating a nice organic fusion between the wall and the tentacles. To achieve this, we had to animate the shape going through the wall in Maya and then import everything in RealFlow. Then we wrote a script to build a RealFlow mesh around the Maya geometries. This was accomplished by creating fixed particles on the imported surface geometries and in these volumes. We also added some fibres to generate the tentacles, connected to the wall, behind the projector. When everything was cached, we just had to create a single mesh around the result.
NL: What kind of time schedule were you on?
JPF: We didn't really have a schedule for “Artificial Paradise, Inc”. It took us about 5 months, from development to final simulations, as the project was only done in our spare time between other studio productions.
NL: And how long have you been using RealFlow? Did you find it straightforward to use?
JPF: We’ve been using RealFlow for almost 4 years now for anything from classic water simulation to complex experimental simulations, so we didn’t really have any problems with integrating it into our pipeline. We just had to cache all our geometries and export them into RealFlow before importing the final mesh into Maya.
NL: Is there anything you’d like to see added to RealFlow?
JPF: A big improvement would be to give us access to all the functionality of RealFlow with multi-threading. For instance, we had to develop multithread batch scripts to improve the mesh creation speed for this project.
[For info - you can find these scripts on the RealFlow scripting website http://www.nextlimit.com/nlscript ].
In terms of GUI, it would be really nice to have a new graph editor. I find it sometimes very hard to animate and have full control over the keys. A Maya-like graph editor would be awesome.
NL: And what other software were you using for this project?
JPF: Maya was the main software we used for this project with a combination of mental ray and 3delight for the rendering. We also used Zbrush to sculpt the creatures before importing the designed mesh into RealFlow to start our simulation. The compositing was done in After Effects.
In terms of hardware, we used an Intel quad core with 4 gigs of ram and Windows XP 64 bits.
NL:And do you think you will be using RealFlow again?
JPF: Yes, it is a powerful simulation software. It can really produce amazing things.
NL: Finally, could you tell us a bit more about Condor?
JPF: Condor is a post-production company based in Brussels, Belgium and part of Condor International, which is the largest independently owned post-production network in Europe, with offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Capetown and Kiev. Specializing in cutting-edge solutions for film, video and digital media, Condor is a network of creative boutique facilities. Creatively focused and digitally linked, the Condor international post-production network creates and delivers award winning content for commercials, broadcasts and features from low-cost film production centres such as Cape Town right into the heart of Europe. Condor's boutique facilities pride themselves on attracting the most creative post-production talent. In Condor's boutique setting, operators have the freedom to explore creative solutions that often don't fit into the rigid workflow of larger facilities.
NL: Thanks very much Jean-Paul!
Credits:
Director, editor and compositor: Jean-Paul Frenay
Main 3D artist and compositor: Sandro Paoli
Realflow and 3d artist: Sébastien Desmet
3d artist: Sylvain Jorget
Sound design: Seal Phüric feat. Neptunian8
Condor post-production: www.condor.tv
Sound studio: www.ambivalence.be
Jean-Paul Frenay: www.frenayjp.be
|
