What is real? And what is hocus pocus (otherwise known in the video world as special effects)? The graphics department here at Crystal Pix was recently challenged with creating a video to sell a concept before it existed in reality. The concept: mall kiosks displaying full motion graphic advertisements and an interactive map; the reality: ads needed to be sold and created before the kiosks were installed. So the best way to do that? Anyone can explain a concept and hope that potential customers understand and buy into the concept, but that leaves a lot to the imagination. Walk Up Advertising wanted to sell ads by creating a video showing the kiosks in action inside the mall as if they were already there. Brilliant idea!
So how did we go about doing this? First, live actions scenes were shot from the perspective of a customer walking in the mall. A foam core “stand-in” kiosk was used for the actors to interact with. From there, camera tracking software was used to develop moves that could be imported into Softimage 3D animation software. A CAD file from the kiosk manufacturer had been provided, so after customizing the look it was time to place it into the different scenes. The biggest challenge was the lighting. The mall has a lot of natural lighting provided by large skylights in the ceiling which cast lots of grid-like shadows everywhere. So in turn we needed to create ceiling grids in 3D for the lights to cast similar shadows onto our computer-generated kiosk. Many different rendering passes were created to allow separate control of shadows and reflections in AfterEffects. Rather than rendering the ads in the 3D world, mattes for the screens were created and then tracked for use in compositing. This way we could easily change out the ads as needed due to editing changes and have complete control over luminance in the final composite. Like a cake with many layers, each one added to the success of the final product and help to create the “reality”. Watch the video to see it in action.
