A MAGIC HORSE FOR ARIAT

A really amazing and FUN assignment came our way just before the end of last year and it went live on Ariat's site this week. An image for Western Boots involving a pretty Western girl on a magic horse to be made out of the fancy embroidery you see on the side of these boots. Warhorse meet fashion challenge. Since the image is to be seen in Western lifestyle magazines and speaking to an audience quite knowledgeable about horses, it's probably needless to say, I learned a few things about horse anatomy and equestarian jargon in the process. This gig also gave us a chance to team up with the incredibly talented Claudia Götzelmann again to create the beauty shot of the girl. If you're familiar with this blog, or just the Raygun work, you may remember Claudia's name from the collaboration a while back with Pacifica, the water goddess. Something we just riffed on back then to explore how CGI could mesh up with fashion photography. And here we had our chance to collaborate on a real job. Take a look behind the scenes, outtakes from the shoot and a bit of the process that led up to the final image. Giddy up!

To start we needed to figure out a prop to shoot our girl on. We wanted her to look like she's actually sitting on a horse and at the same time capture her inside back leg on every take, since the magic horse would be partially see-through. A specialty acrylic manufacturer in LA who was a bit baffled at our request (later to be known as the giant glass mailbox) provided us with the solution in record time. Seen here, my wingman John who assembled the final rig and main CGI gunner Kevin doing the giddy up stress-test the day before the shoot.

It's working!

No green screen here: We had a few quick renderings with a simple glass material of the CGI horse in various poses on-set to try them out with a some of the shots coming out of Capture right away.

And continued post shoot with the same technique to explore at a wide number of selects and horse poses to find the best combo.

The finalized model complete with mane and tail details, ready for the render room.

We used the embroidery designs on the boot for reference to design the pattern that was to make up the final magic horse.

Some call it UV map, we call it a canvas. It linked to the model of the horse in the render room, allowing us to play with an array of designs and see them on the horse in real time.

One of the pattern designs on the model.

Close to final render pass.

FUN FOR TYPOPHILES

First the kerning game, now this — Typeconnection.com, a typeface dating game. Whether to spread the love, procrastinate, or just to kill some time, you'll be working your typography chops.

OUR FORAY INTO 4K

Or as they say in Silicon Valley: The Future is Now. This new year also brought a new challenge in the form of a CGI motion piece we developed for a friend and client, Amine Chabane of Marseille Inc. His Silicon Valley start-up company develops 4K video chips while revolutionizing the way chips are designed and prototyped on the side. Marseille unveiled their first 4K video chips at CES in January and needed a demo loop with killer 4K content to strut their stuff, content that would actually do their massive display and new 4K chips justice. You might be asking yourself, what in the hell is "4K"? Simply put, it's when HD is just not good enough. Another way to understand it, is to think of it as video running at print resolution. Roughly four times the number of pixels of today's HD runnning on these 5 foot flat panel HDTVs you can pick up for less than a grand at BestBuy nowadays. When you think about it, even though they are called "High-Definition" those TVs are actually quite low-res, given that they have continued to get larger and larger but the resolution has stayed the same. So you don't actually see more detail on a bigger HDTV, just bigger pixels.



Compare that to your Retina iPhone or Samsung HTC phone, where the displays are basically staying the same small size, yet the resolution or the amount of pixels in that space keeps getting higher and higher with every generation. An iPhone 4 packs about 10 times more pixels into every inch than a large HDTV, while the iPhone 4s' camera shoots pictures that are now twice the resolution of what even the highest-end HDTV can display right now. It looks like 4K displays are not that far off.

For the demo then we created a motion piece that exceeded what the chip and display can deliver rather than just barely meeting it, as most RED 4K footage would and pack in tons of detail and tricky things that would tax the system enough to show where its maximum performance tops out.

The result was a four minute 4K loop that weighed in at 56 gigabytes incorporating timelapse Nikon photography, RED camera footage, and the cherry on top... a 360 of our CGI Hot Rod, the 1932 Ford Roadster you may have seen around here. This time around with a custom Marseille California Sunset Orange paintjob and personalized vintage California license plate. And then imagine having to render out 5000 print magazine pages at 300dpi and you get the idea. We let this render over the holidays, spread out over several 12-core machines, cranking the quality settings to the max.

To see the final loop on the 4K display at Marseille in Santa Clara was breathtaking.

It's difficult to express other than "you have to see it to believe it". But for what it's worth check the HD version of the video above or click on these still frames to get a taste.





If you're seriously interested in this kind of thing, who knows, I can talk to Amine and maybe arrange a demo for you at Marseille in Santa Clara and you can see for yourself what the future looks like right now.

OUT INTO SPACE, MAYBE?

To search for some extraterrestrial chickens. Have mercy on the cows. Or so the concept brief goes. Although we finished the work on this a while back, the blackout just lifted given that this goes into Chick-fil-A's 2012 calendar. The photographer for this assignment, Andy Mahr, contacted us to create the rocket and the launch platform in CGI for this image. Knowing that Scott Dorman from Smalldog Image Works would be doing the parts wrangling and final licks (aka compositing and retouching) made it easy to say "Yes", as this triumvirate constellation of Photographer-CGI-Retoucher is tried and true by now. Below the final outcome and a few in-progress renderings.


Building the Scene in 3D






It's all about the light, as any photographer will tell you.


Too bad, but this little easter egg didn't even make it past the internal review.


The Final Image

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

It's been a rough week, you might agree, and no one put it better than The Onion right here, which captures pretty well how I was feeling the last few years following the general news. And I always thought they were in the business of satire... Steve's passing definitely beckons the question "Where Do We Go From Here?" and I think we all need a little pick-me up, which I'll share with you if you can spare a dollar for this great little diddy of the same name from my favorite 70s movie Vanishing Point. And if you don't have a dollar, I'll gift it to you, just drop me an email. It's a great tune about another fearless explorer with big ideas and an even bigger drive to make them happen. Christopher was his name. And that's my segue to wishing everyone who reads this little blog a great weekend and Happy Columbus Day.

CINEMA 4D AND THE ART OF SURGERY

It's been a while since the last post, but there really hasn't been much time to look over the edge of the monitor or leave alone in my "To Be Blogged" folder for that matter. Sharing with you that we're officially on Cinema 4D version 13 now, which really should have been version 12 it's that good. I love how the UI is cleaned up and it makes a lot more sense now. Most of all the physical renderer. It's getting to be one hell of a 3D program and the renderer is getting close to being real time and allowing us to work things up visually and in real time, artistically rather than methodically. So check it out if you're into 3D. Cinema is of course what we used to model this little sculpture for an image we did in collaboration with Hunter Freeman. For final render I much prefer KeyShot still, but Cinema 4D is getting there and I am glad KeyShot is getting into 4D at the same time. It will be great to have both legs to stand on.

INTERVIEW IN RESOURCE MAGAZINE

RESOURCE, a photo production magazine wanted to take a look under the hood of Raygun Studio and granted me an interview. The issue just arrived in our mailbox. I have no idea why of all images we offered, the rats breaking into someone's home was chosen, other than the people at Resource must share my dark streak. I think Alex Baker did a great job in turning my rants into a good read and it's a pretty accurate reflection of how we do things and what our philosophy is.

Although I was really hoping the part, where Alex asked me what kind of music we play at the studio and I told him about Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, that it would make the cut. I know it's probably about as esoteric as the Raydiosity Esoterica setting but it goes well with bending splines, subdividing polygons and extending long gradients. What's interesting to me, back in Germany where electronic music was pretty much invented in the 70s, there were discussions—fears—about whether electronic music and synthesizers would someday soon displace traditional music and wooden instruments. The discussions in our industry today about CGI and photography remind me of that. And I get this question quite often, whether CGI threatens to replace photography. I don't know the answer to that, but what I do know, is that electronic music has come a long way since the 70s... it's all over the place now... but it really never made a dent into Polka. Or for that matter... Jazz.



Thanks again, Aurelie, Alex and Thomas for the interview. You can find out more about Aurelie's Resource Magazine or subscribe to the print edition on their website.