Houskapreis 2018
About the project
I designed, 3D tracked and animated the golden line for the Houskapreis 2018 - Main Event presentation and for the online video version together with my dear friends from industrial motion art who helped me get this thing done in the given timeframe.
Client: das Rund Filmproduktion GmbH
Software used: 3D Studio Max, Vray, Adobe After Effects, Videocopilot Optical Flares, Trapcode Particular, theFoundry cameratracker
Previz
The previz prozess was hard because we did not have a lot of time to achieve what was desired. I made several different versions which were achievable for me in that time but in the end we all wanted it to be more realistic. So I teamed up with industrial motion art and got access to their renderfarm. Without their help this project would not have been possible.
Intro
The intro animation sequence is just a lot of hand animated point lights in After Effects coupled with Optical Flares and randomized with some expressions. The big blob at the end is an Element3D sphere with an animated noise modifier. The impacts of the small lights are supported by some Trapcode Particular Elements.
Modeling, Shading and lighting
In the end the golden line was just that - a line. A few noise layers, displacements, shaders and global path deforms later we had something that could easily be animated and rendered with connected reflection layers to the background sequence. All we had to do was time the keyframes right and track the scenes.
Tracking
This was the hard part. The final resolution was really big and the After Effects tracker did not do a good enough job so I tracked my scenes with the foundry's cameratracker. This switch was essential! This tracker gives you enough room for error solving and visual feedback on which areas don't work and which are working fine.
Compositing
While rendering the scenes I prepared and rotoscoped some other scenes. I used Trapcode Particular to simulate the water splashes and depth-composed the golden line into the scenes with a lot of z-space.
I used the Max2AE Plugin to export the tip of the golden line to Adobe After Effects in order to attach a light as my Optical Flares source. This worked perfectly in every shot! Awesome plugin!
