Cutting Edge dials up VFX in second installment in a series of commercials for Subaru Japan’s XV

Cutting Edge has continued the narrative of miniatures playing on the surface of the car in the second installment in the series of high end VFX spots for Subaru Japan’s XV by dialling up the CG considerably via Asatsu-DK.

Designed to promote the XV Hybrid, the script called for ‘car on car’ action – that is, an XV driving over itself – and this, along with the budget, virtually demanded it be delivered as 100% CG.

WATCH THE SPOT

ADK/ADK Arts first approached Cutting Edge with the idea of the car driving on itself through various weather patterns, and then set them the challenge of how to structure that in one shot, and to establish how it would look and feel.

According to Junichi Tanaka, ADK creative director, it was Cutting Edge’s creative vision that meant they were invited to work on the project without a pitch.

Says Tanaka: “Cutting Edge has wonderful creative insight – they bring ideas to the table that help take the idea and expand on it, refine it and add extra dimensions.”

The result is impressive and viewers will find it hard to pick that the cars are entirely made out of ones and zeroes. However, according to Jeff Gaunt, Cutting Edge VFX director, the trick to making the idea work was to subtly signal that all was not as it seemed.

Says Gaunt: “To draw the viewer in, we wanted the miniature car to have a quirk to its motion, a slight weightlessness in the animation to give a sense that it’s not all quite real. The subtle depth of field effects helped here too.”

Also of note is the fact that both the car and the environments are all CG, with environments traditionally being more difficult to achieve.

Says Gaunt: “Because of the complex camera moves and the way the car was interacting with the environment, we had to create all of the elements ourselves – there was no component shoot for the mud, snow and rain at all.”

This meant a lot of work texturing the car. For example, getting the mud right called for a combination of information drawn from actual mud sprays on cars, pulling mud off a real cars and creating photoshop style brushes to create mud effects.

Says Gaunt: “Getting the mud splats and snow splats right required creating an animated file in Flame for Maya to turn the mud layers on and off as the car was moving through the scene.”

Another substantial challenge was getting into Realflow and creating simulations in 3-D for the environments. 

Continues Gaunt: “Usually sims are contained in small areas. But we were dealing with areas that were really big. For example, the snow on the roof was spread out over hundreds and hundreds of metres; just finding ways to achieve this was a wonderful challenge.”

This brought particular technical challenges: in Maya and Realflow, some sims such as the rain took 48 hours for the computer to do the calculations. Renders too were lengthy, with the opening scene render taking 72 hours.

Agency – Asatsu-DK

Music Composition / Mix Engineer – Mike Lange