|
 |
We've
all heard about "tree huggers," those environmental
activists determined to save humankind by saving Mother Earth,
but how about vice versa?. To create a lush, realistic, and
decidedly human-loving tree, the effects artists at Framestore
NY reached deep into their bag of tricks. Asked by ad agency
BBDO to make the scenario a believable one for a new spot
highlighting GE "green" products that reduce both
energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, the Framestore NY
team knew they had their work cut out for them.
"We performed a variety of movement tests early on in
the process, just to get the right personality for the tree,"
says James Razzall, Executive Producer at Framestore NY. "With
a photorealistic, moving tree, there is a fine creative line
that has to be walked. It can't look like a crazy tentacle
alien creature from a horror film, but it also can't be all
cuddly like a cartoon character. We wanted it realistic, but
we had to take it beyond simple realism to get the right look."
Directed by Traktor, the spot opens with a lush, yet lonely
oak tree in the middle of a verdant field. To the strains
of tango-like music and the woody groans of the tree uprooting,
the tree begins a centipede-style cross-country march. Moving
slowly yet steadily towards civilization, the tree pauses,
then scampers across a road before coming upon a spacious-looking
home. Peering in the windows, the immense oak sees a multitude
of "green" GE products, including kitchen appliances,
laundry machines, and solar panels. Seemingly overcome, the
tree envelopes the house in a huge embrace, leading a farm
hand to sniff and say "House hugger!" The spot is
informative, amusing, and entirely photoreal.
"We really pushed ourselves on this one," says David
Hulin, Director/Head of 3D, Framestore NY. "We went beyond
our comfort zone to make the tree seem real, because we believed
it would make the spot that much more funny. We wanted to
keep the tree looking like a tree until the very end, when
the hug would imbue it with some more human qualities. In
order to pull of that hug, we had to give the tree very long
"arm" branches, then reverse engineer them back
into looking like a real oak tree. And that wasn't all. Traktor
shot the live action just outside of San Francisco, which
made for some beautiful vistas, but we actually ended up having
to 'reurbanize' the landscape with extra houses. And that
was aside from creating a very complex hero character in CG.
This was a challenging job."
The live action shoot was supervised by Hulin and fellow Framestore
NY artist Murray Butler, and actually involved a puppeteered,
animatronic tree. While the puppet tree provided great reference
for the animators, and does appear in a couple of the spot's
final shots, the vast majority of the shot stars Framestore
NY's fully animated 3D tree.
"We used the animatronic for the initial shots where
the roots are coming up through the earth and the tree is
coming to life," says Hulin. "It was an excellent
starting point and gave everybody a great point of reference,
but we needed 3D animation to get the movement right. In the
end, our 3D tree stood up very well, especially for the close-up
shots. This was an excellent marriage of CG and animatronics."
A tight schedule and an incredibly complex tree further enhanced
the already challenging job. Says Razzall:
"This tree had approximately 2.5 million leaves. There
were 5.5 million branch sequences. We modeled a rough architecture
for a tree with the ability to hug, with a general shoulder
and head area that would let it nuzzle in, but that was really
only the larger branches. All the extra detail was largely
taken care of by a piece of proprietary software, written
by our own Theo Jones, that essentially filled in all the
rest of the smaller branches and leaves. The plug-in also
gave the leaves the ability to move and rustle as if they
were blowing in the wind. That software was invaluable on
this job."
While the team shot a variety of greenscreen elements that
were later composited in Autodesk Flame, they also turned
to the extensive Framestore NY archives for some elements:
"The schedule was so tight that we didn't have time for
all of our greenscreen elements," says Hulin matter-of-factly.
"We relied on our effect reel that we've accrued over
the years to embellish some of the spots. We did a lot of
work on this job besides the tree, including creating the
hero house and dressing it into the set. Murray did a lot
of work with our CG team to fully integrate the house into
the scene. The eventual rendering amounted to about 1 gigabyte
per frame, which took about 24 hours to render. That gives
you some sense of the complexity of this job. We're very happy
with the results."
|
