Case Studies
Ghost (Enkelt)
Ghost is a Copenhagen-based VFX house specializing in 3D
animation and visual effects for commercials, film and TV.
Ghost humbly started with four people in a caravan in 1999,
but the company has since moved on from borrowed desks and
leaky tents to a 5000 square feet office occupied by 40 people.
Although Ghost is still fairly small by international standards,
it is big enough to undertake very ambitious projects and
thus strives for the creation of 3D graphics and visual effects
of the highest quality. Ghost has worked on projects for companies
like Sony, Nokia, McDonals, Carlsberg and Bacardi as well
as on a number of feature films.
Ghost was hired by the advertising agency Kunde&Co. to
produce a highly photorealistic 30 second commercial for the
schnapps brand 1 Enkelt. Schnapps has traditionally been popular
with older generations to get the blood circulation going
in the morning, but 1 Enkelt is aimed at a younger crowd and
thus required a different approach.
The advert shows the camera rotating around a bottle of 1
Enkelt, while the schnapps’ ingredients are displayed
one after another. Finally, two glasses slowly fill up with
schnapps and are lifted for a “cheers”. The only
non-3D element in the entire clip is a pair of hands; everything
else including the liquids and the glasses is 3D.
All the liquid simulation was accomplished using Next Limit
Technologies’ RealFlow. Ghost started using the very
first version of RealFlow back in 2000 and it has been part
of their pipeline ever since. Aksel Studsgarth from Ghost
said: “There is currently no other off-the-shelf software
available that allows us to achieve realistic fluid animation
at the same quality level we have come to expect from RealFlow.”
For this particular project Ghost used RealFlow version 3.1.
Fluid simulation artist Alfred Lindahl was the only one working
on the liquid animation, and he worked for three days to complete
the simulation and meshing process. Alfred said: “Because
I didn’t have much experience using RealFlow, and the
project was under a tight deadline, I was at first a bit uncertain
about using it for the task. But after playing around with
alternatives, like Maya’s soft bodies, and blendshapes,
I realized that fluid simulation was the only way to go.”
The biggest challenge for the small team handling this project
was to achieve extreme photorealism and to achieve the same
look as the liquid shot against greenscreen so that everything
could be matched up when compositing. RealFlow enabled Ghost
to do exactly that. Alfred Lindahl explains: “I think
RealFlow worked perfect for this project, and I surprised
both myself and my co-workers with such a realistic result
in such a short time. I studied some reference material and
played around a lot with water at the office, and I found
it pretty easy to set up my simulations to match ‘the
real world’ with RealFlow.”
All the 3D work was done in Maya on Opteron/Xeon processors
and included a Mel script that enabled the artists to peel
the rind of the lemon in a natural way. FinalRender was used
because of its speed and GI facility, as time was precious.
In total it took more than 45 separate render passes composed
in Digital Fusion to accomplish the final, desired look.
Although the final result looks amazing, Alfred reckons he
could have spend another day to fine tune some parts of the
liquid simulation, such as the behavior of the fluid surface
just before settling. He said: “For the time spent,
I think the result is great, and I think this commercial really
shows the strength of RealFlow.”
Copyright:
Ghost / www.ghost.dk
Special thanks to: Aksel Studsgarth and Alfred Lindahl
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