Rhinoceros X-Rays For Dockers Spot
Rhinoceros has wrapped on a new Dockers pants spot for ad agency FCB/San Francisco. In the spot, a woman uses x-ray glasses to survey a restaurant and its patrons. "We didn't just animate people's skeletons," CG director Arman Matin, said, "The characters' clothing also had to be visible in the x-ray vision. We had to be able to see people's underwear and other items, so it was more sophisticated than what an actual x-ray looks like." The actors were photographed against a measured grid, so that Rhinoceros artists could build an appropriate skeleton for each of them. All small objects on set were also photographed -- chairs, silverware, glass, cups, watches, eyeglasses, purses, briefcases, cell phones -- and were modeled in Maya to replace the objects shot in live-action. "It became quite a painstaking process, because we had to see every object behind each person and thing being x-rayed," explained Matin. "Some shots required moving cameras for which we placed markers and used Maya software to track the camera information. For some shots, we even had to film subjects against green screen and composite them into the plate later." Rhinoceros artists cleaned up the back-plates in inferno*, eliminating markers and unwanted objects like smoke detectors. "The skeletons had to be rigged and animated to match even the most subtle motion of the actors," said Matin. "Every time an actor moved, we had to animate their skeletons to move right along with them. In other words, it was literally a frame-by-frame process. Animators then added layers of clothing to the skeleton. This step was essential to a key gag in the spot, wherein an irate businessman is revealed to be wearing a bra and panties beneath his suit." Rhinoceros artists also developed an x-ray shader using Maya software, which was used to render the set, objects, clothes and skeletons. The layers were composited in Adobe After Effects. The composited images were color corrected and the final transition from live to x-ray effect were done in inferno*. The commercial was directed by HIS Productions' Jim Sonzero. Rhinoceros' team consisted of exec. producers/partners Michael Miller and Rick Wagonheim; senior producer Yfat Neev; CG director/digital artist Arman Matin; digital artists Natalia Saenko, Patrick Porter and Jeff Guerrero; inferno* artist Niklaus Schlumpf; and production coordinator Linda Gallagher.