Avolites
—Unveiling
next-generation
creative visual control
brief
Known for their top-of-the-line lighting and video control solutions, Avolites and Proxy approahed Klok&Co to create high-end 3D graphics and animation for the launch and marketing of their new flagship console.
I directed a set of visual narratives – a moodier launch teaser and a more subtly styled visualisation, which would capture the whole device.
creative
approach
We created a set of still and animated shots. We begin by first teasing the new product and end up to key features and functionality. We captured multiple angles both in magnificent full shots and intricate vignettes, with different lighting conditions.
Renders are visually clear and readable, yet have a dramatic lighting and tone. We aimed for photorealism by emulating real-world studio setups. Large number of versions demanded a thought-out pipeline and streamlined production methods.
Still Shots
Animated Shots
Process
From the initial meetings with the agency and client, I realised that the production had a few pressure points, which would need to be addressed early on. There was a lot of emphasis on production planning. We needed to have a clear understanding, what it would take to be able to meet high production stardards and process computationally intensive geometry while keeping on schedule and budget.
One of the concerns was how well the CAD-model we got from the client would perform once converted to a polygonal representation. The console featured a lot of small geometric detail and these would need to be shown in large resolutions. Luckily we had to retopo only a few elements. Alembic proxies helped to lighten the scene files, reducing computing time and in turn allowed for faster iteration.
The other challenge was to make sure surface materials and colours would match that of the real thing. References were scarce, since the whole product was still being prototyped. The team at Avolites was super helpful during review sessions, giving us valuable feedback. In pursuit of realism, we even added small imperfections here and there, which helped to create more believable results.
Alongside look dev we explored different lighting setups and perspectives, that would render a stylised and shadowy appearance, yet show all the details we wanted to see for each shot. I opted for narrow focal lenses, as I felt that a more cavalier perspective would really complement the repetitive details seen in the console layout.
Viewport-type pre-visualisation was utilised at the beginning to lock down each angle and layout. Redshift’s fast GPU rendering allowed us to move quickly to a sort of half-final rendering, where we could demonstrate lighting and shading as they would look like in the final versions.
I wanted to have as much control in post as possible and have the ability to transfer and update 3D renders with automation. In compositing, lighting was graded, geometry lights masked and recolored. We added screen captured UIs to the displays accompanied by custom screen light bouncing gizmos to tie everything together. The usual set of AOVs allowed for a lot of novel adjustments to be made in comp and we were able to shave off a few rounds 3D roundtripping.