Friday Flashback #203


The Hive Creates Festive Fun For Legoland
14/12/2000

construction

The commercial was created using SoftImage

3D animation house, The Hive, was commissioned by Cartoon Network Sponsorship & Promotions department to create a magical virtual advent calendar for the Windsor-based theme park, Legoland.

The commercial was created using SoftImage and airs throughout December on the Cartoon Network.

4th

The Hive’s brief was to create something bright and colourful that really screams Christmas to promote the fact that Legoland is opening its doors over the festive period for the first time.

The Hive worked closely with Cartoon Network Producer, Tracey Cleland, to create 24 different versions – one for each day of December leading up to Christmas day. Each commercial opens with an optical pan in which a Lego Santa welcomes the viewer to a winter landscape of snow-capped hills and trees. The viewer is then drawn to one of 24 Lego advent calendar boxes that open to reveal either a mystery prize or footage of one of Legoland’s Christmas attractions.
landscape

“To maximise efficiency we decided to produce a limited number of advent boxes which could change colour and date and be rotated to fill all the days required,” comments Adrian Wyer animator/compositor at The Hive. “The clever trick with this advert is that because every day is different the viewer is not left with the usual Christmas commercial fatigue.”

santa

The advent calendar commercial follows on the back of a ten second teaser created at the Hive that invited people to ‘Leg it to Legoland’. This aired on the Cartoon Network in November.

Credits
Producer: Tracey Cleland @ The Cartoon Network
Animation Company: The Hive
Post Producer: James Niklasson @ The Hive
Animator/Project Leader/Compositor: Adrian Wyer @ The Hive

Friday Flashback #201


SOFIMAGE|3D screenshots for Motherdroid, from CG WORLD December 2000

Screenshots originally posted on softimage.jp:
UpA

Step3B

Step2A

Other screenshots I found on a blog:

MotherDroidA5BBA5C3A5C8A5A2A5C3A5D7

MotherDroidA5EFA5A4A5E4A1BCA5D5A5ECA1BCA5E0

Motherdroid-MEKARATE

And finally, the MEKARATE video that includes the MotherDroid.
Mekarate, directed and produced by Hiroyasu Shimo, was part of the SIGGRAPH 2003 Computer Animation Festival. It focuses on an inept office worker who is haunted by a self-destructive wish and plagued with anti-social behavior.

The late Emru Townsend wrote this about MEKARATE:

On the other hand, Hiroyasu Shimo’s Mekarate eschews nature entirely; an office worker nods off at his computer late at night, and has disquieting dreams—only to awaken to find that there are worse things happening in the waking world, with much more in store for him. Contemporary Japanese anime and cinema directors have a singular talent for depicting alienation, and this film practically reeks of it, amid all the horrific biomechanical creatures that torment the lead character. Distressing audio and a visual aesthetic that faithfully mimics a handheld video recording contribute to make Mekarate so disturbing you can’t look away.

Installing aaOcean


Download
https://bitbucket.org/amaanakram/aaocean/downloads

Install for mental ray

  1. Extract the aaOcean download package.
  2. Create a new workgroup (or use the Softimage User location).
  3. Copy the aaOceanDataShader.dll and aaOceanShaderDefinition.dll from here:
    aaOceanRev255\aaOcean\MentalRay\Softimage2014

    to

    $MY_WORKGROUP\Application\Plugins
  4. Copy aaOceanDeformer.dll from here:
    aaOceanRev255\aaOcean\Softimage\Softimage2014\

    to

    $MY_WORKGROUP\Application\Plugins\

$MY_WORKGROUP is just my workgroup location. For example:
C:\Users\StephenBlair\Documents\softimage\workgroups\aaOcean

Did you notice that the mental ray version of aaOcean doesn’t have a SPDL file? That’s because it has a shader definition plugin instead.
aaOcean

Install for Arnold

  1. Copy
    aaOceanRev255\aaOcean\Arnold\Arnold-4.2.0.6-windows\Shader\aaOcean.dll 

    to

    $WORKGROUP\Addons\SItoA\Application\Plugins\bin\nt-x86-64
  2. Copy
    aaOcean\Arnold\Arnold-4.2.0.6-windows\SItoA\aaOcean.spdl

    to

    $WORKGROUP\Addons\SItoA\Application\spdl
  3. Copy
    aaOceanRev255\aaOcean\Softimage\Softimage2014\aaOceanDeformer.dll

    to

    $WORKGROUP\Addons\SItoA\Application\Plugins

$MY_WORKGROUP is just my workgroup location. For example:
C:\Users\StephenBlair\Documents\softimage\workgroups\sitoa-3.2.0-2014

Friday Flashback #200


Softimage poster circa 1997: PoweredbyPassion | Virtua Fighter 3 | The Lost World: Jurassic Park | Chevy Baby | The Fifth Element | Reboot

Basically all the highlights mentioned in the Softimage 97 SIGGRAPH exhibitor blurb:

Softimage develops computer animation software for artists who animate dinosaurs for “The Lost World: Jurassic Park,” artists who animate singing babies for Chevy commercials, artists who create weekly half-hour animated television shows, and artists who animate Sumo wrestlers for Virtua Fighter 3. See the software that helps it happen: Softimage/3D, Softimage/Eddie Softimage/Digital Studio, Toonz.

Thanks to Rui S. for sending me this image
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