10/20/2016
Back to the Future + NIKE = Rad 3D Sneakers!
NIKE and the Michael J Fox foundation recently unveiled the futuristic autolacing MAG sneaker famously featured in the "Back to the Future" films.The creative team at HIVE is responsible for the beautiful photoreal 3D computer generated MAG shoe featured in the new product launch videos. www.nike.com/mag
HIVE is a Portland, Oregon based image creation studio that employees 30+ artists in two distinct divisions - Film+Television and Brand+Retail with international clients such as NIKE, YETI, Columbia Sportswear, Microsoft and Grimm on NBC - www.HIVE-FX.com
When Industry PDX was approached to execute a photoreal CG sequence of the top secret NIKE Mag for an October 2016 launch, they considered many CG companies for the job, but a call to NIKE's long standing ad agency partner Wieden and Kennedy led Industry co-owner Oved Valadez to HIVE. "We were responsible for the photo real 3D CG MAG shoes when the MAG was launched 5 years ago for the first Michael J. Fox Foundation benefit. When NIKE chose to launch the new autolacing version, HIVE was the obvious partner." says HIVE's creative partner Clark James. "We already possessed the complex 3D asset we'd built for the prior release, and we hit the ground running. Industry expected absolute photoreal imagery and they let us run with a few guidelines - they wanted it to look real and feel like a high-end car commercial, and the movement of the material has to be believable. Challenge accepted!" said Clark.
The small CG team at HIVE assigned to the MAG project was sworn to complete secrecy for 6 intense weeks of production. Clark's producing partner Gretchen Miller reiterates" We even had to keep the project secret from our in-house employees and create a private server with limited access to the core team. Clark led the project and worked remotely with a very talented 3D artist that we've collaborated with before, Zach Cheatham, who's based in Arkansas. It was a very stealth project" says Miller.
Clark describes the process of creating the stunning CG MAG shoes shown in the video. "At HIVE, we use a combination of C4D and Autodesk Maya with custom exchange plugins we had written for our pipeline of photoreal creature shots that we continue to execute for Grimm on NBC. For the first NIKE MAG project we did in 2011, we created the piece in Autodesk 3D MAX and VRAY. Because we already had the 3D model in our archive, we chose to stay with MAX and VRAY." Says Clark. "This time, we did all lighting and camera in-house in C4D with .FBX files as our exchange plugin to surface and render in MAX and VRAY. We hit a few obstacles with the way C4D and VRAY cameras handle DOF (Depth of Field), but we worked them out and created a seamless process. All of the project files lived within HIVE and were backed-up hourly by our automated system." said Clark.
Clark explains that surfacing and model modifications were handled by Cheatham in Arkansas, while Clark set-up and animated the cameras, DOF and lighting in the Portland HIVE studio. "Zach had full access to our private server and render farm, as though he were in-house." Clark described the process as being very streamlined until final render, when they discovered just how much render time the shoe surfaces required. "Once we had finished our test renders and received sign-off on animation and look, we proceeded to final render. We did not expect the render times we experienced and it required our full farm plus 2 outside render services to complete the 2000+ frames of animation. Because I had chosen to keep the entire render in-camera and avoid post DOF, combined with motion blur and complex refraction, it sent some of our render times in excess of 6 hours a frame." Clark said.
Miller went on to say that there was still some complex post work that our Compositing/ VFX Supervisor Guy Cappiccie took on himself. "The shots were fully executed in the render because Clark preferred the in-camera DOF look, vs a post applied version, but we experienced some flickering from the highly-detailed textures Zach created. I was able to remove the micro flickering, track and patch various intersecting geometry issues from the render. It was tricky because we had to work on it like it were a filmed plate with shallow DOF and blur. Mattes were not helpful so it required tedious hand work" says Cappiccie. "Every single threaded knot on the shoe was a displaced surface that required us to use Brute Force settings in VRAY to get the flickering to disappear" says Cheatham. "In the end, the final render is insane and looks entirely real. We strive to fool our own eye and we know the viewer will believe in the story when our work is done well."
"This project was technically and creatively exhilarating to be part of" says Miller. "We look forward to working with Oved, his team and Industry PDX again. We're already bidding on more of these high-level photoreal projects and we want to do more of this work. The MAG project definitely tested our team at HIVE and boosted our overall quality. Please give us a call if you have something we can sink our teeth into. We love big challenges!"
Watch the entire NIKE MAG launch video with CEO Mark Parker: https://www.nike.com/mag
Watch the 2016 NIKE MAG Global Impact video: https://youtu.be/KYO_lko3ljE
WWW.HIVEFX.COM
WWW.INDUSTRYPDX.COM
Contact: Gretchen Miller @ HIVE
Phone: 805.895.0282
Email: [email protected]
CREDITS:
Agency - Industry PDX
CG Production Co - HIVE
Producer - Gretchen Miller
Director+CG DP - Clark James
MAX+VRAY artist - Zach Cheatham
Compositing - Guy Cappiccie
IT - Geoff Shields
