Catch up with CG Supervisor Feargal Stewart to find out all about the software used to create these well-groomed bears and their habitat

You might have seen Animal Logic’s epic commercial, but we thought you’d like to know how it was made too…

Animal Logic worked on all aspects of this six-minute animation, produced by Ridley Scott and directed by John Stevenson (Kung Fu Panda).

“It was great working with a large team on an extensive project that had fur, feathers, snow and water FX and doing it all in stereo,” says Animal Logic’s CG Supervisor Feargal Stewart.

Watch the Coca-Cola Polar Bears short

“We relied heavily on our proprietary in-house software in particular ALF, Quill and MayaMan,” says Feargal Stewart, CG Supervisor. “As well as Maya, XSI, Houdini, Renderman, Nuke, RV and Nucoda which are all part of our suite of off the shelf tools.”

Animal Logic’s bespoke software

“ALF is an acronym of Animal Logic Framework,” explains Feargal. “ALF includes both a powerful processing kernel, and a rich library of plugin nodes to perform a variety of data processing tasks in a range of domains including particles, fluids, fur and feathers, as well as general tools for creating and deforming curve and surface geometry.”

“ALF is designed to augment existing industry-standard modelling and animation systems,” he contiues. “In particular, ALF has been integrated with Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Softimage XSI.

“These applications provide the front-end user-interface for interactively building ALF node networks.

“ALF has also been designed to interface with industry-standard rendering systems. In particular, ALF generates rendering instructions for the Pixar Photo Realistic RenderMan 16.0 renderer. Generally there is always some level of development on ALF. The main development that was done for the Polar Short was mostly related to Alfro.”

“Quill is a full featured feather system that allows for artistic control over fine details along with a suite of tools for rigging, animation, dynamics, de-intersection, LOD and baking.”

“The feather grooming and dynamics are done inside of Maya while the animation and rigging was done in XSI. All of the this was taken care of by ALF Graphs in software agnostic way. Quill was developed for ‘The Legend of the Guardians’ and is capable of creating feather systems with an incredible photo-real quality.”

“MayaMan has been around for a long time and basically converts our lighting scenes into ribs for RenderMan.”

All about Alfro

“Alfro was first used for some of the DigiDoubles in our work on Sucker Punch,” says Feargal. “There has been considerable development on it since then much of it driven by the early development phase of the Polar short.

“The area that attracted the most attention was the dynamics system. It was important to maintain a high level of creative control but still be able to solve the fur’s motion underwater, wind on fur and finer secondary motion due to the movement of the bears’ bodies.

“The client was after a particular look for the bears and we needed to stay true to that when introducing the fur dynamics. The Alfro developers ensured that we could blend attributes of the static groom with the dynamics solve.

“Dynamic rigs could also be copied from on groom to another as they are essentially an ALF Graph that connects the Alfro Groom. This meant that we could perfect the dynamics on one character and then copy it on to another.”

What was it like to work on such an epic short?

“In a word ‘Great’, says Feargal. “The initial set up for the project was done by one of Animal’s most senior CG Supervisors, Aidan Sarsfield, so the majority of the pipeline tools and automation had been created. I learnt a lot from that and continued to adjust and introduce a few things as the show continued through to completion.”

Why Houdini was a great choice for the short

“It is hard to pick just one piece of software as the most useful,” Feargal explains. “Our proprietary tools played a vital role in the look of the short and in overcoming a large number of the technical challenges. After that I would say that Houdini was very useful for the water. The high particle count and the fast simulation times made Houdini a good choice.”

What was the most challenging aspect of the project?

“I think that the fur was the most impressive technical aspect of the project,” says Feargal. “It was achieved by using our own software called Alfro.

“The level of control that it gave us over the look of the fur was crucial for the characters in the short. We had very fine control over the groom which helped make sure that the characters looked good in close ups as well as in wide shots.

“The dynamic controls for the fur allowed us to be flexible with the amount used which enabled the animators to have more freedom. We could also blend the dynamic properties which allowed us to have different behaviour for the fur when the bears were underwater.”

Thanks to Animal Logic and Feargal for giving us this interview. We can’t wait to see more epic shorts from you.

Want to know more about amazing adverts?

Check out the Projects section of the latest issue of 3D World, where we bring you the inside scoop on loads of recent commercial projects – including this one. There you can find out how top studios are using different 3D software to produce awesome CG spots each month.

Have you worked on a cool CG spot?

Send us your work and you could be published online or in the 3D World mag!

▲ Fuel VFX delivered 150 visual effects shots for the Avengers Assemble film from Marvel Studios

Animal Logic today announced that it has finalised a deal to buy the business assets of Sydney-based studio Fuel VFX which recently went into voluntary administration.

Animal Logic has formed a new company, called Animal Logic Fuel, which will trade as Fuel VFX, based in Newtown, Sydney. The five original founders of Fuel VFX – Jason Bath, Paul Butterworth, Andrew Hellen, Simon Maddison and Dave Morley – will remain in-situ and drive all aspects of the new business.

Animal Logic CEO Zareh Nalbandian said: “Fuel VFX represents some of Australia’s best design and visual effects talent and capabilities. Highly regarded around the world for its advertising and film VFX work, it is a name with a great pedigree and a solid future. I am excited to welcome it into the Animal Logic family.”

Paul Butterworth, VFX Supervisor and Art Director said: “This is an exciting development for our clients: the talent and expertise of both companies will be combined under the Fuel VFX banner to create one of Australia’s most creative and skillful design and effects teams for advertising and short form design and post production.”

Animal Logic and Fuel VFX confirmed that both companies will operate their own film VFX divisions retaining distinct identities and individual client relationships.

Read our interview with Fuel VFX about their work on Avengers Assemble

2011 was a great year for visual effects in commercials – and pleasingly there’s not a talking meerkat in sight. Check out the list and making of featurettes…

As FX Guide takes a look back at some of the year’s best VFX work with its top ten TV spots of 2011, we’re glad to see that our favourites were included here too, and that many were covered in our Projects section of 3D World, which showcases commercial and short-form work.

See what made the list (below) and also check out the breakdowns and behind the scenes featurettes on how the ads were made (via fxguide).

1. Canal+, Bear: Mikros Image (Featured in issue 152)
2. Kia, One Epic Ride: Animal Logic
3. Coca-Cola, Seige: Framestore
4. DIRECTV, Hot House: MPC LA
5. Muller, Wünderful Stuff: The Mill
6. Kia, More Soul: Method Studios
7. NBA, Nash: a52
8. Twinings Tea, Gets You Back to You: Psyop
9. Gears of War 3, Dust to Dust: Digital Domain
10. Réseau Ferré de France: Buf

See FX Guide’s top 10 VFX TV spots of 2011

Find unmissable VFX scenes from films