For this commercial we had to add all the dynamic vegetation, the matte and scene extension in the shots needed and to composite those.

Breakdown:

All the vegetation was animated and rendered in Maya.

This is a preliminary test for internal use only.

Then we tested the animation. The timings of the animation are not final. In the end we prefer to render all the animation ’slow motion’ and accelerate these afterward in compositing. The camera track animation keys had to be scaled also. The reason behind this is that the shots were very short (12frames – 18frames) and the speed of the animation will create unpredictable results when morphing.

This is the plate for shot 83. We used image modeling to approximate the geometry under the vegetation in order to get as accurate shadow casting as possible.

The rendered result of the vegetation plus approximated geometry

The environment was supposed to have a transition between a barren land and a grassy look one. We have matte paintings of both environments and we use camera projection to add the correct camera move and parallax. The transition itself was done in compositing.

rock environment

grass environment

This is the integration proof. This was the template for the rest of the shots to be followed.

The final shot (83) with the correct timings for animation.

Dorna commercial – Shot 86

On the original footage from edit we tested the animation timings and camera parallax within Maya. These small files were then used in the edit to get an idea about how the end product will look like. Most of the alteration of frame composition and animation were done this way. It is a sure method to relate the animation a continuity trough the entire spot.

pre-visualization shot

This the quick time preview of the grass layer.  We used those to make sure we don’t have flicker or bad frames during render.

The final shot composited

Dorna commercial – Shot 91

Another example on shot 91

grass layer

final shot