Case Studies
Skipping RealFlow rope (Smoke & Mirrors)
Skipping a rope made of water might sound difficult, but actually creating the water-rope sounds nearly impossible. Not with RealFlow though. London-based visual effects studio Smoke & Mirrors worked with a team of expert urban rope skippers jumping liquid RealFlow rope for the latest Strathmore Water advert “Double Dutch”.
Involved in the creation of the ad from beginning to end, Smoke & Mirrors first provided the professional skippers with specially created transparent skipping ropes with bottles for handles, and then filmed the performers in their urban environment. Once the routine had been shot, it was over to the 3D fluid dynamics team to replace the transparent rope with simulated liquid rope.
RealFlow was used in combination with Maya for the close-up shots, the formation of the skipping ropes at the start of the shot, for the core ropes throughout, and for the final product shot at the end. Lead fluid artist Kristaan Cain explains: “I had a week of R&D, creating a pipeline between Maya and RealFlow using roto-scoping techniques to simulate the motion of the ropes. I also exported object containers to RealFlow for the simulation. The end shot was a combination of roto-scoping the ropes and animating them to make them snap apart, and then letting RealFlow do the rest! The start and end shot were both done using containers and various fields within RealFlow, and Noise and Drag were particularly useful.”
“It had to be believable as a real event and also defy the laws of physics.”– Kristaan Cain, Smoke & Mirrors Lead Fluid Artist.
On a tight deadline of a week from start to finish after having received the cut, Cain says it wasn’t an easy job to get done. “The most challenging part was to sculpt the final effect to the director’s vision,” he explains. “It had to be believable as a real event and also defy the laws of physics. However, after we got past the first stage of finding out whether it was possible to pull this off in the given time scale, we realized we were even able to add extra details. That was an exciting time.”
Typical of high-quality RealFlow simulations, the Double Dutch spot looks incredibly realistic and dynamic. “RealFlow was the fastest and most stable software available for getting a realistic looking simulation,” says Cain. “We had a few problems when starting the objects off in nurbs, but once we switched to a poly construction it ran a lot smoother. The stability of rendering meshes and the accuracy between scene scale was great.”
“RealFlow was the fastest and most stable software available.” – Kristaan Cain, Smoke & Mirrors Lead Fluid Artist.
However, there’s always room for improvement. “It would be great for there to be an inbuilt batch rendering command, and maybe some presets to get an idea of the engineer’s point of view,” suggests Cain.
Bringing together the old “techniques” of rope skipping and the new techniques of RealFlow fluid simulation, Cain is incredibly pleased with the end result. Indeed, he is already using RealFlow on two new projects for Smoke & Mirrors.
Please take a look at the Strathmore Water Double Dutch video
Copyright:
Smoke & Mirrors - www.smoke-mirrors.com
Credits:
Lead Fluid and Maya Artist – Kristaan Cain
RealFlow and Maya Artist – Paul Rowley
Flame Operator – Aly Burnett
Post production – Smoke & Mirrors
|
