Alpenliebe latest TVC: making of Mr. Mach : Bollywood News

R&H crew on the sets

A small group of people from the team were present throughout the 3 days of shooting. Following are the things that had to be done on the sets from the visual effects and animation perspective -

Collection of set data, camera information, reference photographs

A lot of information had to be collected in terms of set measurements, camera data, photo-modeling reference images for camera tracking matchmoving work.

HDRI, chroma, matte ball and stuffy references for lighting

The chrome and matte balls were used as a visual reference for highlights and diffuse lighting. These balls were shot on all locations after every take and were placed exactly where the crocodile would be seen in the frame. This helped the R&H team in getting a better understanding of the lighting conditions in the environment which further enabled them to do more realistic integration of the CG crocodile in the shots. A crocodile stuffy was also made and stuffy reference footage for every scene was shot. The stuffy reference was used to get an idea for the CG crocodiles contact and cast shadows.

CG production

Modelling/texture painting/look development

The director, the client and the agency were very clear about the crocodile looking realistic, so the model had to be created accordingly. Every little detail and features of the crocodiles anatomy were studied and a number of references were looked at and the model was then created. Part of the details in the croc were modeled whereas some details like the scales on its back were painted using displacement maps. After the model was built the texture painters then started painting different types of texture maps like diffuse, bump, specular, subsurface, reflections, etc.

The texture painters provided the textures and the modelers took care of doing the texture coordinate assignments as well as creating the necessary material groups on the crocodile model. Each part of the crocodiles body had to be painted as a separate set of maps. Since the crocodile model was very detailed it could not accommodate all the texturing information into one UV space. A total of 300 different maps were painted for the crocodiles different body parts. After the textures were painted, the look development artists took over. In its most basic form, the lookdev stage involves pre-lighting a 3D computer generated object (the crocodile in this case). A very important point for the lookdev artists, apart from making the model look good, was to ensure that there are appropriate controls available for scene lighters to perform common modifications or tweaks. These types of controls include: specular intensity, bump heights, diffuse intensity, color variations across the model, etc.