in tact. Same camera move, same object place-
ment, same timing, but on a different set, tailored
for the two different departments of the client.
Essentially: a two for one deal. Combining the
budget of the two departments gave us enough
room to create an intricate project like the Vivo
Tutto campaign.
It was clear right away that regular camera tech-
nology would not be sufficient to realize the idea.
Getting the lens close enough to the devices would already be impossible. Thus we decided to generate
all the objects close to camera as photo-realistic
3D renderings, yet leave as many real elements as
possible to create a surreal world in a seemingly
believable (realistic, accurate) environment.
Instead of planning
the camera
directly in 3D space, we set up a small living room
scene with all the necessary devices and furniture
in our office space. Director Tobi Fueter, post-pro-
duction Manager Denis Spycher and Lead CG artist
Roman Altenburg were able to find (suggest) differ-
ent solutions for the room layout in this little setup.
By gesturing with our hands and recording tests
on our cell phones we could test different camera
path options. The proxy room also quickly showed
us which elements actually had to be rendered in
3D and which were better placed on the reel set.
Due to the big variances (deviations) in scale of
the different worlds of the sets, the real and the
digital camera move had to be a 100% match.
We planned not to have any cuts in the scenes,
which increased the level of complexity. Accurately
matching a camera by any “manual” means, such
The goal was
to create a living room
that had a classy feel but would not look too ex-
pensive and an office that looked small yet busy.
Once the main feel of the camera move was es-
tablished, we were able to start designing a room
around the scenes.
The look of the miniature worlds was driven by
their environment and function. They had to give
the viewer a sense of scale, but still make them
seem to be a plausible working place. It was also
important to have elements that would combine
real and fantasy with a visual transition.
These ideas were realized by Production Design-
er Vlad Vieru (vladvieru.weebly.com), who flew in
from Bucharest to work with us on site. Having
the Production Designer working with us this
closely allowed us to design the set much more
dynamically and try out ideas right away in the
previs scene.
While the shoot
was still in pro-
gress, we were already able to start creating and
testing the CG scenes. All the necessary data was
available and locked.
The client gave us specific objects that they want-
ed to have displayed in the two adverts. General-
ly it was straightforward hard surface modeling.
What made the process difficult though was that
we needed to make sure we could just replace
the digital assets without having to make dra-
matic changes to the scenes. The dimension dif-
ferences from object to object made this .
The given models for the cell phone were the
Samsung Galaxy S2 for the living room and the
HTC Sense for the office scene. The Samsung
phone is very sleek and thin with flat sides. The
HTC phone is a bit bulkier and with rounded
sides. At regular scale, the differences are minor.
These differences were carried throughout the
entire project. The camera would suddenly pass
inside an object in the other advert. The tim-
ing of the respective object’s appearance could
change too drastically as well. We had to come
up with creative solutions to overcome these dif-
ferences.
Due to the extreme close-ups
in the two adverts, we kept the
amount of texture maps at a
minimum and rather focused
on using shaders in our work
flow. This allowed us to get very
close without having to create
maps at an inefficient resolu-
tion. Some text and patina lay-
ers were painted in. The textures
of the tables were big scans of
beautiful scrap wood found at
a carpenter. Motion blur and
depth of field would take care of
the minor resolution issues.
Camera effects such as motion blur and depth
of field were handled post-rendering. This not
only saved us on render time, it also made the
creative process much easier for the director.
The changes in scale required to have constant
traveling focal point without making the viewer
dizzy, yet still keeping the scenes visually clear
and clean.
Once the sets
were designed, cam-
era move working and signed off and all the ac-
tors cast, production was ready to start in Bucha-
rest, Romania.
The 3D components from the previz were com-
posited in real time with the camera feed live on
set. This showed us right away if the moco rig
was set up correctly and if the sets were built
and arranged to specs. We were also able to eas-
ily place actors, props and extras into each scene
and make minor adjustments to the scene.
With the help of the overlayed previz, we were
able to adjust the Rocketman’s performance to
ensure he would not be poking out of the cell
phone. Because the phone covers the actor for a
big part, we were also able to get the timing for
his performace right.
The dog at the end of the living room scene was
not initially planned. With the 3D augmented re-
ality on set we were quickly able to determine if
it was placed properly and if it would cause any
problems with our layout.
This project explored new avenues in compress-
ing the production pipeline; bringing together
previz, solving of motion control camera moves
from 3D virtual cameras, on-set real time aug-
mented reality and using on-set data in post pro-
duction. We had an amazing team of dedicated
expterts withou whom this project would never
have been possible. We can’t wait for the next
even bigger challenge.
as a match move method, would be insufficient for
a scene of this length. Before the shoot, we already
had to know exactly where each object would be
in the real world, where the speed-ups and slow-
downs of the camera would happen, and what the
room layout would have to look like. This led us to
use the Milo Motion Control System provided by
Together with Richard Widgery from Take4D
(www.take4d.com) we could pre-plan all camera
movements to work on the physical set.
Our next challenge was to deal with the scale dif-
ferences from real world to miniature workers. The
whole advert was divided up into 5 separate sets.
The living room as well as the cell phone and digi-
tal TV box miniature worlds were shot with the mo-
tion control system. I will get to the reasons why
the telephone and internet cable worlds were han-
dled differently in a bit.
The previz, major animation and
data exchange with the moco was
handled in SideFX Houdini. Its
“Takes” system proved a viable as-
set in comparing versions and the
procedural workflow made work-
ing on this complex scene easy.
Changes were quick to make and
publish down the pipeline.
Shading and rendering was han-
dled with Maxon’s Cinema 4D R12
with the V-Ray add-on. Some ele-
ments such as the tube leading out
of the telephone, the ethernet ca-
ble walls and the cell phone interi-
or were rendered with Cinema 4D’s
native render engine. We found
that V-Ray can handle open spaces very well, yet
our cramped sets were better suited for the Ad-
vanced Renderer engine.
Compositing was done in The Foundry Nuke. A
great tool to have an organized overview of the
project and keep the composing process modu-
lar. This was particularly important to make han-
dling the two similar adverts as simple as pos-
sible.
The Vivo Tutto
project for Swisscom,
a leading European telecommunications compa-
ny, was the last in a series of three productions.
The common idea of the campaign was to show
miniature people working for Swisscom inside
electronic products, making them work.
Vivo Tutto is a product from Swisscom that com-
bines landline telephony, Internet access, mo-
bile telephony and digital TV. To display all these
elements of the product, combined with the
concept of the miniature workers, the idea was
to have a single continuous camera movement,
flying from one representing object to the next,
showing the busy workers inside.
Early on it was clear that this project would be
beyond the client’s responsible department’s
budget. We took the opportunity to combine
two commercials in one production.
(more on that subject. Input Yves/Tobi)
The whole campaign was designed in a
way so we could replace the digital ob-
jects and leave most of the rest of the pipeline
idea
planning
pre-production
shoot
post
conclusion
Several challenges surfaced
during this planning phase.
Scaled up sixty times these differences
became quite exaggerated.
The director
Tobi Fueter
created a
rough animatic
to show the
basic concept.
Having a digi-
tal layout of
our scenes
allowed us
to exactly
measure the
many sets.
We could scale the measurements up where
needed, and the sets could be designed and
built to those specs. We were also able to accu-
rately deliver the sizes for backdrops and green
screens, which helped us keep production costs
in check.
To make the camera move work, we had to en-
sure that our animation was even physically pos-
sible for the Milo rig. The miniature elements
needed to be scaled up to a one-to-one size for
the live actors. This had the affect of scaling the
camera move as well. Take4D was specifically
designed to simulate and solve how this cam-
era move would work on motion control rigs. A
movement of 3 centimeters per second at real
world level translated into 30 me-ters per sec-
ond for the scaled sets. This pushed the rig’s ca-
pabilities beyond what is was capable of doing
and hence we could us Take4D to identify exact-
ly what needed to be changed in the animation
to achive all parts of the adverts.
One method was to shoot parts with 12.5 frames
per second and speed up the action later on.
Using this pipeline we could find solutions that
would still allow the Director to keep his creative
ideas, but also stay inside the technical capabili-
ties of the rig.
An invaluable help to
set up each scene was
the Live Virtual Studio
made possible by Take4D.
