Vancouver, B.C. - Virgin Media Television/Living's new Rehab program has launched with a set of 3D promos created in-house by Mainframe's 3D team, led by Arvid Niklasson and Jimmy Johansson. In a 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 succeeded, by recreating people as broken porcelain dolls that reform to their original state, symbolic of the rebuilding process.
The promo footage was shot with a Red camera; that is, Mainframe could use 4K images of the actors as starting plates for the 3D build. The actors were modeled in Autodesk Maya, and then camera-mapped and fractured in Autodesk 3ds Max.
The fracturing process was achieved with Rayfire, a tool for dynamic destruction which also controlled and stylized the explosion. T he 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, says a representative.
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 2 million and 5 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, after which compositing was performed in After Effects.
Channel: Virgin Media Television/Living
Program: Rehab TX
Date: 11th Feb 2009
Production / Direction / Post: Mainframe (Arvid Niklasson, Jimmy Johansson)