Case Study: Crown Spot by Lumiere Studios, London
Cheeky, passionate, quirky, sexy or wild? Which trait best describes you? Crown Paints asks consumers to consider their own personalities as the brand makes a splash with its new TV ad.
Our (Lumiere Studios) latest job, Crown Paint, saw us team up with Production Company Partizan.
This was a great project to work on, lots of exploding fluids, dripping paint, photorealistic shaders and lighting, perfect for our team at Lumiere.
The entire pipeline was created here at Lumiere, from modelling, fluids to rendering and compositing.
This allowed us to have full control over our approach to the pipeline, so we could simulate hi-res fluids and see the results very quickly back in the comp, with realistic lighting and shaders.
Our pipeline involves taking proxy geometry from 3D into Realflow, simulating fluid particles, usually at low-res to begin with. These are then sent back to SoftImage as a particle sequence, which are then meshed at rendertime using Next Limit’s Realflow Renderkit (RFRK) with their render, Maxwell Render. The RFRK is an amazing tool; it cuts out the tedious process of meshing the particles. The RFRK allows this to be done on the fly at rendertime, so an artist doesn’t even need to know that the process really exists. It works with mental Ray and Maxwell Render and for this project, Maxwell Render was the way to go. Gorgeous, high quality renders, flicker free, no lengthy photon or FG maps to setup. The interactive renderer (FIRE) allowed us to move around our fluid meshes in realtime (with full lighting and shaders applied) so we could pick the best camera angles.
The latest RFRK plugin for SoftImage had a great new feature that allowed us to layer up the fluid particles and mesh them together, so different Realflow scenes could be combined together at rendertime for one seamless fluid mesh. We took this further and used the offset in time option; this allowed us to blend completely different fluid setups into one main mass of paint. For example, when the word QUIRKY melts and swirls around into a vortex, this is made up of many different fluid simulations, with varying different particle counts and fluid properties. Yet these could easily be brought together, mixed and meshed out as one at render time.
Next Limit’s plugins have allowed us to streamline the process from Realflow, meshing and rendering (Maxwell Render) in such a smooth seamless manor that an artist can sit down with a Director/Client and show them incredibly quickly simulated fluid particles and then control the shaders and lighting in realtime with in SoftImage, using Maxwell Render’s FIRE plugin. Clients found it very insightful to see how we worked and could also pick the colours they were really after, cutting out lots of back and forth time.
Lumiere is always looking for passionate artists who would love to join us on future projects, or if you are a graduate and would love an internship, please visit our site and contact us – www.lumierestudios.co.uk
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