Recently we, ProMotion Studios, completed a short film for the American insurance firm Liberty Mutual commissioned by the ad agency Hill | Holliday, for the LA creative studio Exopolis. Lighthouse appears as part of Liberty Mutual’s ‘Responsibility Project’, a series of short films distributed online, centred on the theme of responsibility.
>> View Lighthouse Online at Responsibility Project (flash player)
>> Making of/rigging/breakdown video (lo-res)
Modelling was done in Zbrush and 3DS Max, texturing in Photoshop, and animation, rendering and compositing (HD) was done in Blender. With a small team, tight deadline and complex set of shots to complete, Blender’s referenced character system, skinning and rigging tools, and built-in render pass compositor helped a lot to keep the project manageable.
During the project we did some custom open source development, including new ocean dynamic simulation and shading tools, and integrating code to render refractive dispersion. Patches for these are now available, and the functionality may likely appear in the next release of Blender.
ProMotion Studios:
James Neale (producer), Stefan Wernik (animation director), Matt Ebb (lighting/shading/td), Tristan Lock (lead modeller), Jeremy Davidson (lead animator), Kim Neale (matte painting), with Lee Salvemini (animator), Hamed Zaghaghi (ocean sim development), Enrico Valenza (assistant texture artist)
Exopolis:
Charlie Short (director/writer), Ming Hsiung (director/production design), Michael McCarthy (producer)
Agency: Hill | Holliday
Full credits available in the film
High-res stills:
Front page please
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