TP is a 45-second advertising project made in 2K definition in November. From the very beginning we struggled with two technical problems. The first one concerned placing luminous screens which were to contain TP’s thematical offers of television programmes on water.

We began with concepts by Michał Dziekan and Rafał Wojtunik. Quite quickly we achieved the visual effect that Marcin Ziębiński had been looking for. As it usually happens, we began with horribly difficult tracking. It was Adam Wierzchowski who faced with that.
My task was to find a way to achieve such an effect (using the concepts) in 3D - planning reflections so that water rippled under the surface. It turned out that the use of a simple surface and a fluid shader of an ocean gave excellent control over the length of waves, their speed and fairly smooth rendering in 2K. So I used smooth surfaces with a screen texture which was refracted by water. Here Maya was very helpful.

An example of such a layer below:



I used Shake for this composition so that we could achieve the effect resembling screens the closest in moving frames. This phase also went smoothly and quickly.





Searching for video materials to fill the above mentioned screens turned out to be troublesome. They had to fulfill the requirements of promotion and look good after the composition.

I will present dolphins in two takes: 23 and 24. Their not too geometrically heavy object was modeled by Radosław Nowakowski based on the director’s references. As usually with Radek, the effect came really quickly. The texture for the model was made by Michał Dziekan. Andrzej Zawada took care of animation under the directors careful supervision. This duo spent many hours working on the initial vision.

Making splashes was another, much more difficult phase.
After the animation had been approved and everything completed the dolphins went to Łukasz Sobisz who was responsible for simulations. Initially, we assumed that water would come from RealFlow. But after a week of tedious tests it turned out that we were not able to simulate such amount of water on such a scale. Its height reaching 4 metres made by a jumping dolphin and 23rd take beginning the sequence with our mammals was animated in a spectacular way and the dolphin swims 10 metres on its way towards camera.
Everything caused huge RealFlow simulation times and brought us closer to the limits of 3ds Max in terms of rendering. Because the dolphins were animated using spectacular slow motion – about 50 frames a second while the background had 25 frames a second. Łukasz had an additional problem.
It created a dissonance where all the layers were put together. So we decided that some splashes would be simulated with e.g. 36 frames a second and others with 50. The layer of water had to be simulated for the take. Then we had to check whether its pace was appropriate and finally, repeat the process. After brainstorming the team, we decided that Łukasz would do the simulation of a rippled surface of water (it included drops splashing from the water crests), the main spouts and water running down the dolphins.







We had to shoot additional drops of water and several layers adding details during a technical session. It meant that the project was made in 2K and unfortunately in this definition all the imperfections on the simulated water became visible. There were two attempts at the technical session. The first one took place in a pool and the second one at night in front of the company building in a small inflatable garden pool. Alek Szkudlarek, Tomek Siatkowski and Adam Wierzchowski were responsible for the technical session. After many tests and trial runs the end result went to Marcin Waśko who rendered technical layers in V-Ray. After many composition trials it turned out that we needed the following layers to make water: refraction, reflection, translucency and fall of.





Drops of water on the jumping dolphins were rendered in Maya, MentalRay.



The dolphins were rendered by Marcin Waśko in V-Ray. He also created the basic layers such as diffusion, reflection, Z, Fallof, but also the extra ones such Bump which simulated water running down, little dirt on the texture and additional light passes.





It gave excellent control over a fairly difficult lighting of dolphins because Venice does not have the main direction of light at night. In turn it has many feeble sources of light which dance on the wet surface of the dolphin. Unfortunately, the dolphin is naturally dark and even in sunny conditions it does not catch too much light from the surrounding but only reflections. Our reflections came from the HDRI map made on the spot by the photograph supervisor, Jarek Sawko. The water coming from the technical sessions (the ones at the pool and in front of the company building) was submitted to colour correction in Nuke. Then it was masked and retimed where necessary and added to the other layers lending realism to the image.



All the rendered components went to me and then to Nuke where they were put together. It can be said that the composition was two-phased: first I made a composition out of screens in Shake, then it went to Marcin who rendered water in V-Ray. At the end the layers came back to me for further composition.

All the take of water was added in composition. It required huge amount of work in the stage of simulation, rendering or technical session. Apart from the dolphins and water there were much more special effects. Almost 20 takes in the whole advertisement had some additions/ cleaning/ grounds. It was Damian Bajowski's job.
We should also mention Piotr Dutkiewicz's painstaking work. He was responsible for the whole rotoscoping (abundant in this project) as well as for parts of work associated with cleaning the material. The hat thrown by Mr. Zamachowski was modeled, rendered and animated by Adrian Klimczak.
Below some takes before and after.

I would like to thank all the team,
Kuba Knapik.

 

 

 

Simulations: RealFlow
Animation: Motion Builder
Rendering: V-ray; MentalRay
Compositing: Nuke; Shake
PackShot Online: Flame
3D: 3ds Max; Maya; LW
2D Matte Paint: Photoshop

Project Supervisor:
Jakub Knapik/Jarek Sawko

Compositing:
Jakub Knapik
Piotr Dutkiewicz

Online Demo:
Jacek Skrobisz

Rendering:
Marcin Waśko
Jakub Knapik
Adrian Klimczak

Animation:
Andrzej Zawada
Adrian Klimczak
Grzegorz Paluch

Simulations:
Łukasz Sobisz

Matte Paint:
Damian Bajowski
Michał Dziekan

Concepts:
Michał Dziekan
Rafal Wojtunik
Marek Okoń

Zdjęcia techniczne:
Tomasz Siatkowski
Alek Szkudlarek
Adam Wierzchowski

Modelowanie:
Radek Nowakowski
Piotr Suchodolski
Adrian Klimczak

Tracking 3D:
Adam Wierzchowski

Animatic:
Marcin Filipek

Offline:
Robert Gryka

Offline for the client:
Magda Mikołajczyk