Chris Reilly New Flight Products, Projects

Creating the CGI Music Video for Adhesive Wombat’s “Storm Crusher”

Recently, I had the opportunity to produce a CGI/visual effects-based music video for AdhesiveWombat, an electronic music creator on SoundCloud, YouTube and the like. If you’re into tech, you may even know him as the producer of the “theme song” for Linus Tech Tips’s “WAN Show“. Well, that “theme song”, AKA “Storm Crusher”, got an animated, VFX music video addition this summer! Using a suite of 3D software and compositing tools, I put together a VFX adventure for this track with the help of some live action footage, photorealistic raytracing, and particle simulations! If you haven’t see it yet, check it out!

Adhesive Wombat’s “Storm Crusher”

This video involved many production and post production processes, but I’d like to highlight a few. For this video to work, you’ll notice that the music needed to “drive” the animation in some parts. I used a script to convert certain frequencies from the sound track (typically between 0 and 4 KHz), into usable animation data that could be manicured, amplified, and turned into pulsations, movement, and force field data for particle animations.

Here, you can see the pulsating orb and its particles from the beginning, alongside a graph visualization displaying several parameters driven by the sound from the music. You’ll also notice the music track along the top of the viewport… super useful when you want to match the movements up just right! Here’s another example of the orb, along with its graph view (showing several channels of displacement data driven by sound):

To complete this video, I needed to use “projection mapping”. That is, I needed to partially reconstruct some environments in 3D, and project imagery onto them in order to ensure that the 3D objects in the scene would conform to the lighting situation when the video was shot. Here’s an example of partially re-projecting a building onto a rough box model:

This allows for so many possibilities. Water, for example (of which there is a lot in this video), has a refractive index (the extent to which light is bent when it passes through the object). This means that material needs to be present behind the object so that there is something to “see” through the water when the light gets bent through it. Using this technique, I can recreate real world lighting conditions (with the help of an HDRI backdrop).

Here, you can see how this is accomplished… a mesh’s geometry is “projected” from the tracked camera’s point of view, and the imagery in that scene is applied. This allows me to make actual “chunks” of the parking lot rip apart!

Finally, I’d like to discuss those clouds. The clouds were produced procedurally using dynamic noise mixed with a black/white 3D mask to “guide” the clouds to where they needed to appear (the mask was animated to “steer” the clouds to different areas). You can see how the clouds only appear in a small area, although the mesh is much larger:

These clouds used volumetric materials, meaning that what you see is a subset of the mesh’s volume, rather than its surface. Raytracing render engines are needed to accomplish this, since the light bounces (the paths that the light takes) through the clouds need to be calculated by the computer. Using this technique, you can also get some really crisp volumetric shadows from other objects in the scene, like in the one above, for example. When that chunk of dirt comes out of the field, the crisp shadow edges on the volumetrics certainly help “sell” the effect.

Overall, this was such a blast! I’m glad everyone seems to like the results. Super, super special thanks to AdhesiveWombat for allowing me to bring his already legendary music a visual counterpart. Please go follow him, etc:

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Chris Reilly New Flight Products, Product Imaging

How Can 3D Special Effects Drive Interest in your Products?

Ever see those fancy, flashy product commercials? You know the ones… the ones with the complex camera movements, colorful backdrops, and a hero shot of the main product? Sometimes the product is floating through the air… sometimes it’s a slow motion shot of the product spinning. They’re almost always produced/ funded by large corporate marketing firms for countless products, from hamburgers to facial cleanser. The animations are attractive, sleek… and most importantly, they attract customers by making them feel a certain way about the product. As a small business owner, you might feel that such animations are completely beyond you. After all, your finances are focused on keeping your business running and serving your customers. But marketing is a huge factor of business success… are these types of product shots really out of reach?

The answer used to be ‘yes’, but not anymore. With advancements in 3D technology, the cost of 3D special effects has become manageable for the average small business owner, and they can do a lot for you and your sales. Take this graphic for example:

This animated demo was produced by us in-house, and has everything you might see in a flashy corporate commercial. 3D effects such as fire, smoke, bubbles, water, and sparks can add a uniquely emotional element to your product, and instantly associate it with a certain feeling. But why is creating a “feeling” so crucial, anyway? Coined by P&G in 2005, the “First Moment of Truth” or “FMOT”, is the first 3 to 7 seconds after a customer encounters a product for the first time. In this situation, there are three steps:

  1. Customer encounters advertising
  2. Customer goes to product location
  3. Customer locates product

A customer will not take steps 2 and 3 unless they are impressed in step 1, and most customers are “low involvement” decision makers. This doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their purchases, but it does mean that they rely more on feeling and emotion than facts or research when purchasing a consumable product. This saves time and resources in a consumer’s busy life. This is called a heuristic: a “short-cut” customers take in decision making. The best way to attract a customer is to deliver that emotional punch right in the beginning: in your marketing. And 3D special effects are a great way to deliver a deep, visceral emotional message.

Here’s another image we produced: a still frame from an animation. Fire is almost as old as humans are, so it invokes a deep, almost “evolutionary” reaction. “Elemental” 3D effects are great for that reason.

Whatever your product is, now you can use the same tactics that the big dogs use in their product images. We’ve provided cost effective effects like the ones featured here for companies just like yours, and we work with you to achieve the perfect results. Want to know what we can do for you? Fill out this quick form! We’ll get back to you with a free quote for your project. It couldn’t hurt to ask, right?

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