Case Studies
Amp’d Mobile (With a Twist)
US-based digital creation studio With a Twist produced the stunning visual effects for a TV spot promoting the latest and greatest in cell phone technology from Amp’d Mobile.
The spot shows a flood of metallic mercury bursting out of
a crack in the concrete, leaving splashes and puddles all
over the pavement. While the slivers of silver, gold and bronze
colored liquid slowly slide over the asphalt to become one
again, images reflect in their surfaces, representing music,
gaming, sports and entertainment features offered through
the Amp’d Mobile service. Finally the flood of reflections
transforms into an Amp’d customized cell phone, to be treasured
by a man holding it up in the sky. RealFlow4 was used for
all the liquid VFX in the spot.
Although relatively new to RealFlow4, the With a Twist team was not afraid to dive right in. “RealFlow4’s interface is very simple and comprehensive. We were able to jump right in and start developing the look of the liquid,” says Pam Hammarlund, Executive Producer at With a Twist Studio. “RealFlow4 has great help files, which answered many of our questions and aided in familiarizing us with the tools, options and workflow. We also used a tutorial DVD from Digital Tutors.”
- “With RealFlow4 we were able to control
all the behavior of the liquid, giving it a life of its own.”
- David Burton, With a Twist VFX Supervisor
The liquid mercury, although based on real-life mercury,
is the spot’s storyteller, and thus needed a certain artistic
sense of mystery and drama. “We had some motion tests in progress
with a different particle system package but were not pleased
with the outcome. We needed a program that could give us a
realistic result and offer better control,” says With a Twist
VFX Supervisor David Burton. “RealFlow4 enabled us to produce
fluid dynamics that interacted and behaved naturally. We were
also very pleased with the meshing capabilities of RealFlow4.
The meshing of the particles gave us the ability to specifically
define what type of surface the fluid was to have, enabling
us to have finer control over the look of the liquid. With
RealFlow4 we were able to choreograph and control all the
behavior of the liquid, giving it a life of its own,” Burton
concludes.
Choreographing the liquid required a lot of experimentation with RealFlow, with some simulations taking two days to compute. “We were obligated to run all the versions of
the simulations day and night at our studio,” says Frank
Synowicz, Project Lead at With a Twist.
The result was (apart from the impressive final VFX) a massive amount of data from the simulations and the meshing. “When it came to render time, piping all the data through our render farm increased the rendering time for each scene,” continues Synowicz. “So when everything was finalized we collapsed the elements in the scene and simplified them to decrease the final render time.”
- “It’s like creating a kinetic sculpture”
- Frank Synowicz, With a Twist Project Lead
Hard work indeed, but also a lot of fun. “Setting up particle systems, manipulating those systems with RealFlow’s tools and developing and refining the look of the mesh are parts of the production pipeline that I find most intriguing,” states Synowicz. “It’s like creating a kinetic sculpture.”
Very pleased with the final results of their hard work, With a Twist does expect to use RealFlow again on future projects. Boy, are we looking forward to those!
Many thanks to: Pam Hammarlund and Kelly Brittingham.
Copyright:
www.withatwiststudio.com
www.vfxtalk.com/forum/twist-gets-amp-d-t10724.html?t=10724
Studio credits are as follows:
David Burton VFX Supervisor
Pam Hammarlund Executive Producer
Brandon Bartlett CG Supervisor
Kelly Brittingham CG Producer
Frank Synowicz Project Lead
James Kells CG Artist
Matt Nowacki CG Artist
Matt Hammarlund Scene Integration
Ryan Romans CG Artist
Paul LaFond CG Artist
Chris Bloyer Matte Painter
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