Lighthouse (short film)


#1

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:


#2

Amazing quality, rendering is great and the sound helps a lot, also great animation most of the time :beer:

5 stars! I hope you guys do more stuff like this


#3

Wow his was amazing. The story was a little short, but the overall
quality was just amazing. Stunning work there. All was very well lit
and animated and the compositing was very good too. Thumbs up!
5* from me!


#4

Well done guys,

Good to see some quality commercial work done with Blender!
Autodesk should be scared…

Keep us updated with more Blender jobs :slight_smile:

HB


#5

Well done! :slight_smile:


#6

Very very nice, amazing compositing! Five stars form me!
Interesting that once again Blender was used for such studio/team work. I guess it is really becoming a valid member of standard 3d studios tools. I have recently started to use and learn it and have to say it is really great (mainly it bundles all needed production tools, including compositor and editor).


#7

Enjoyed this short!

In particular, the refraction in the glass of the bulb housing and the composition of the little town behind the lighthouse. The lighting of the coastal scene in the opening shot also works very well. Good stuff!


#8

5 stars!
Frontpage mateial I think.


#9

Great work . Looks good overall. Nice ending too.


#10

Very good :wink: Front page please


#11

Really nice short film warm storyline and beautifully lit :slight_smile: nice characters


#12

Again, Congratulations to all the Team!
And thanks to all additions to Blender. :slight_smile:


#13

Front page, yes, yes yes!


#14

Another great work Matt.

I think you should really write something about the integration of Blender in a mixed pipeline. Importing models should have been easy. How well displacements from Zbrush work in Blender ?

The rig also seems pretty advanced, with all those seamless switches. Any info on those , expecially the IK/FK one ?

Cool work

Gian


#15

Wow great work!
Plugged!
Could you tell us a bit more about your pipeline!
-R


#16

hehe… nice story :thumbsup: 5*

.


#17

Nice work, I too am interested in the pipeline.


#18

Yip, would like to hear more about the pipeline! :smiley:

5* from me.


#19

I am downloading it as I type.
Only one thing regarding the screenshots: The guy looks very much like the old man from “Elephant’s dream”

Edit: I watched it, I was mistaking. These people with sideburns look tend to look alike in my memory.
I liked the ending. Nice work


#20

Wonderful!)