January 26, 2009

Mainframe Shatters 3D Porcelain People for Rehab

Manchester, England - Virgin Media Television/Living's new Rehab program launches with a stunning set of 3D promos created in-house by Mainframe's 3D team, led by Arvid Niklasson and Jimmy Johansson.
In an uncompromising look at addiction, the program follows seven people in the public eye as they look to rebuild their lives through rehab.



Mainframe's goal was to visually represent the concept of people being rebuilt. They answered this brief by recreating people as broken porcelain dolls that reform to their original state, to be symbolic of the rebuilding process.



The promo footage was shot with a Red camera, so Mainframe could use 4K images of the actors as starting plates for their 3D build. The actors were modeled in Autodesk's Maya, and then camera-mapped and fractured in Autodesk's 3ds Max. The fracturing process was achieved with Rayfire, a versatile tool for dynamic destruction which also controlled and stylized the explosion.



The porcelain look was developed through extensive testing and by integrating various layers of shaders because the characteristics of a broken piece of porcelain are very different to an unbroken piece. After the first explosion was calculated and baked, a secondary particle system of more detailed fragments was added, followed by a third system of fine dust. This dust process entailed rendering between two and five million particles. On-set Hdri images were used for reflections and ambient lighting. Vray and Mental Ray then rendered between five and 12 different passes which for compositing in After Effects.



Channel: Virgin Media Television / Living
Program: Rehab TX
Date: 11th Feb 2009 (promos air w/c 26th Jan 2009)
Production / Direction / Post: Mainframe (Arvid Niklasson, Jimmy Johansson)