Nike Evolution and a community thank you

[Andy Moorer]

Hi gang. I wanted to give a shout out to the folks who worked on Nike Evolution, it just posted. Those who weren't involved, this is a pretty nice story...

A young studio, Royale, got interested in this ICE buzz and invited a number of us from the list to visit the studio and work on a commercial. Their designers had been watching cool stuff on ICE for a while, admiring Tim Borgmanns work and the tools Eric was writing, and had tried Exocortex's tools for maya. They decided this was pretty neat and when they got a chance to reach out, they took it.

The brief was to take what Digital Domain had accomplished (about a year ago?) with "Biomorph" and introduce a new product with an effect similar to the Biomorph knitting sequence... But with a small team, for a very short produvtion duration and a fraction of the budget. 

Oh and three commercials, not 1.

These are the times we live in.

Given this challenge, Royale turned to the ICE community they had been eyeing... names were passed around and folks talked to and consulted. In the end I wound up CG sup, leaning heavily on Ciaran Moloney as lighting lead and Leonard Kotch as a tool builder. Steven Caron took a short break from Whiskytree to lend a hand with some pipeline tools and general expertise, Billy Morrison dove in with me on VFX, and aside from that we had the help and assistance of Royale's maya artists and designers. And not a few of you on the list helped by offering the studio names and advice when contacted.

So the job was greenlit and we started the clock - about three weeks, from installing Softimage to delivery. 

http://youtu.be/932FiLPe4kc

We rented a farm and populated it with 25 Arnold nodes, the folks at SolidAngle were awesome, plugged everything in and made the spot. Our principal tool was ICE, specifically a very cool and robust system Leonard Kotch put many hard hours in to create which we called "LKFabric" and inspired by the example Psyop's Jonah Froedman has set earlier, Anto's "knit the strands," and earlier work Polynoid did with their "carbon" spot.

Leonard went all the way with LKFabric... it let us manage some of the complexity of trying to get the major components of the shoe to weave themselves procedurally, from fibers, to threads, to cloth. Because the next spot, which we're wrapping up right now, required us to get in on individual fibers in extreme macro shots, Leonard built the system in an abstracted out manner, unsimulated, and supporting motion blur etc. I would send him pages and pages of feedback and requests, and he chewed away at it like a trouper. Pretty outstanding Leonard, I owe you many beers. 

Royale has been kind enough to agree to share the system out to the community, through Leonard, some time after the final project wraps.

Ciaran, Billy and Steven worked similarly hard and with the same good cheer we see so often here on the list. This is why I like Softimage so much, it attracts artists of this calibre and can do mindset. I should add that emTools, emTopo and polygonizer were used as well, though largely in the design phase and for an effect that was later cut (no fault of the tools lol the idea just didn't gel with the client.) Thanks Eric!

It's very rare for a small studio with literally no staff using Softimage to get excited over ICE and have the courage to jump in with it no hold barred, for multiple spots, like Royale did. I can't express more admiration for their willingness to try something new and embrace ICE the way they did for these jobs.

The results may not be earth shattering but the client and the studio are happy and the other ice-heavy spot is looking cool too. In a time where we are all concerned with where Softimage may be headed it was really gratifying having a maya studio step out of their comfort zone and place all their chips on Softimage with one of their major clients like that.

So I wanted to take a minute to share the story and thank the people on this list who contributed, both those of us who worked on the project directly and the guys who extended advice and friendship to the studio willing to take a chance on softimage like Todd Akita, Rob Chapman, the gang over at Whiskytree and many others. Thanks guys.

[David Barosin]

Well done!  That put my Softimage spirits in a better place. ;) 

[Steven Caron]

congrats guys!

i totally forgot about the 'biomorph' ad, here i was thinking the inspiration was the g-star raw denim add by glassworks.

s

[Andy Moorer]

That's the next one. :) A tough hurdle given a small and now exhausted team, and 4 more weeks.  We won't be trumping "raw" lol, but it's looking cool enough.

[Orlando Esponda]

Thanks Andy, very inspiring story, it sheds some light these dark days.  :) 

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[Morten Bartholdy]

Your story brings a little sunshine into the picture, given all the gloom and doom lately - thanks Andy!

 

Great work on the spots - cool execution!

 

Morten

[Vincent Fortin]

Well done guys, great team =)

[Darren Macpherson]

Awesome spot guys, well done to everyone involved.  Thanks for sharing Andy, a nice little ray of Soft sunshine after some heavy reading on the list this week.  Looking forward to seeing the others.

D


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[Vladimir Jankijevic]

Very cool! This should actually be something for Autodesk to make a Marketing Case out of it. This is how Softimage should be marketed and sold. This is the real power of the tool we all are using day in day out. Congrats to all involved!

Cheers

Vladimir

[Leonard Koch]

This was intense but fun.

LK Fabric is indeed soon coming to a Softimage near you.

Thanks for the write-up Andy!

[Ognjen Vukovic]

Great work, congratulations to the team.

Ogi.

[olivier jeannel]

Super movie, super story and super pluggin !

[Daniel Brassard]

Thanks Andy for the inspiring story. 

Link added to this story and the ad on "Great Work done with Softimage" on si-community.

Cheers!

Dan

[Ben Houston]

Very awesome work. Andy and Team! :-)

Best regards,
Ben Houston
Voice: 613-762-4113 Skype: ben.exocortex Twitter: @exocortexcom
http://Exocortex.com - Passionate CG Software Professionals.

[Gustavo Eggert Boehs]

Nice job and story tools! Congrats to all involved, and thanks for sharing Andy :D

2013/8/2 Daniel Brassard <dbras...@gmail.com>

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[Sandy Sutherland]

Very Nice guys - ICE just kicks royal.......A%^%

S.

A young studio, Royale, got interested in this ICE buzz and invited a number of us from the list to visit the studio and work on a commercial. Their designers had been watching  stuff on ICE for a while, admiring Tim Borgmanns work and the tools Eric was writing, and had tried Exocortex's tools for maya. They decided this was pretty neat and when they got a chance to reach out, they took it.
...............................................................

[Greg Punchatz]

"Like" 

Sent from my iPhone

[Chris Marshall]

Great Stuff!! Well done!!

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Mint Motion Limited

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[Cristobal Infante]

Great work guys, and thanks for sending this today after all the doom and gloom of the week.

It almost feels like we need a website to showcase all the great softimage work that's produced... I feel a lot of it get's buried on vimeo...

This could help us spread the word about ice, tutorials, jobs, etc, etc

[Meng-Yang Lu]

Nice one Andy!

I really do feel Soft's strengths are these type of jobs requiring creative ways to build various objects.  Just wanted to point out the mark of a great supe is one who graciously credits the team for their hard work.  Again, pretty stellar work considering the time and the budget.  

-Lu

[Rob Chapman]

"Royale has been kind enough to agree to share the system out to the
community, through Leonard, some time after the final project wraps"

bravo! I dont think Royale are a maya only studio anymore after this
and congrats to thier team for embracing pretty radical changes to an
existing pipeline. hopefully other studios will see the swift &
advantageous moves of Softimage joining the party. Its a really good
idea giving this stuff out afterwards as

a) someone could come up with something even more creative with it
b) it forces you to evolve the next level as everyone has the same
capabilities now :)

in my opinion, strands and threading effects are enjoying a bit of a
'lens flare' or 'morph' stage right now and seem pretty popular in
advertising gimmick. but I also think that Softimage strands
implementation have (thus far) only just scratched the surface of what
is possible visually, we are only let down by the so called
advertising *creatives* imagination.. so yes, am looking forward to
seeing the rest of the spots and seeing how the LKfabric turned out
and how this latest fad will evolve.

cue

Rhythim Is Rhythim's 'Strings of Life'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiCEGXGm-z0

have a great weekend y'all

[Byron Nash]

Very nice work and professional writeup Andy. Thanks for sharing the information. Doing comprehensive recaps like that really help build the community and encourage positive mind-share about these workflows and tool choices. 

[Alan Fregtman]

Great work everyone! Thanks for the long writeup, Andy. :) Stories like this warm my heart.

On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 12:05 AM, Andy Moorer <andym...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sylvain Lebeau]

ohhhh yeah!!!!!
very nice looking piece!!! loved it!  And very nice breakdown Andy, very informative.

hat's off

sly

Sylvain Lebeau // SHED
V-P/Visual effects supervisor
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T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM <http://WWW.SHEDMTL.COM>

[Kris Rivel]

Nice work guys...spot looks fantastic...gorgeous.

Kris

[Pingo van der Brinkloev]

Such a good read. Thanks for sharing, and inspiration :) Looking forward to the release of LKfabric!

Pingo

[Mario Domingos]

Great story! Nice work guys!

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