Project showcase: Watch idents

3D World | Commercial | Shorts | Showcase | 03/08/2012 14:50pm

How Analog Studio turned some research and development projects into a set of mesmerising idents

The team at London-based production studio Analog first heard about this project, the creation of idents for TV channel Watch, through creative agency DixonBaxi. Having seen a number of research and development and VFX projects on Analog co-director Matt Chandler’s personal Vimeo site, DixonBaxi approached the team to discuss how some of the sequences could be furthered.

“The main challenge was how these four-to-eight-second render tests could evolve to take on high-end editorial production values,” says co-director Arvid Niklasson.

Keen to take on the challenge, Analog ended up being responsible for the complete production and co-development of four ident sequences: Smoke, Liquid, Crystal, and Hair. With such different effects to achieve, the team used a host of 3D software including 3ds Max, V-Ray, Brazil, RealFlow, Fume FX, Krakatoa and Hair Farm by Cem Yuskel.

“Each sequence presented its own challenges and essential requirements,” says Chandler. “It was fun to be able to flex the toolkit across each ident – smoke, fluid, hair and simple fractured geometry for Crystal. FumeFX allowed us to create some wonderful detail for the smoke sequence, and piping huge amounts of particles through the data channels created many terabytes of data for the detail and quality required. RealFlow was essential for the fluid sequence and Hair Farm was incredible for the Hair ident, its speed and quality still unsurpassed within a 3ds Max pipeline.”

Posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012 at 2:50 pm under Commercial, Shorts, Showcase. You can subscribe to comments. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.