Mill Kicks off Latest Puma Campaign

5th February 2008 - This is no ordinary football match. In a stadium of the future, two teams battle it out in front of a huge roaring crowd. But the players aren’t wearing hi-tech boots – they’re wearing hi-tech legs. This is ‘Until Then’, the new commercial for the Puma V1 08 Speedboot.

It was, says the Mill’s VXF supervisor Jordi Bares, ‘a fully fledged CG project’, demanding sophisticated digital choreography to create from scratch the city, the players, the arena and the crowds. And it had to be a believable vision of the future, not a scene from the furthest reaches of sci-fi.

The first task was to scan the faces of real-life soccer superstars Eto’o, Anelka, Ljundberg, Crouch, Buffon, Frei and Gomez, while the footballing moves came from a team of stand-ins (themselves sports pros) filmed during a three-day mocap shoot. While Rob Petrie and Eva-Maria Kuehlmann were busy creating a cityscape of futuristic buildings, streets and flying vehicles, motion editors Josh La Brot and Michael Mumbar and senior CG artist Tom Bussell were in LA working closely with director Nicolai on the complexities of the game editing.

Back in London, an 18-strong team worked flat out on the development of the stadium and the crowd, and the design of those amazing bionic legs (from a look initially established by Ross Urien, Matthieu Bessudo and Jimmy Kiddell). The rigging was by Chris Rabet, ably assisted by Daniel Elliot.

All the motion editing was later passed to character animators Melanie Tonkin, Jesus Parrra, Virgil Manning and Simon Clarke, who gave the film a sense of immediacy, so that the viewer is right there in the thick of the action. Martin Contel’s shader development, involving multiple shape animation, skin and hair sub-surface scattering and eye development, was a tour de force, leaving Eto’o and co easily recognisable.

Zbrush sculpting was by David Knight and Tom Blake. As well as the stars of the game, the film also needed fans: crowds of supporters were created, cheering and chanting in response to the action on the pitch. This was done in Massive to give a sense of perspective, incorporating the Mill’s new mental-ray-based approach in place of RenderMan. Further FX were set up to enhance the realism: the mud flying up as the players kick the ball, their footprints on the pitch, the movement of the fabric of their shirts.

‘The whole project was quite scary,’ says Jordi. ‘It was an all-parallel, ever-evolving beast and required quite a leap of faith on the part of the whole team, as the pace was very fast and multiple decisions and modifications were taking place at once.’

Neil Davies, lead Flame, adds: ‘The compositing was as huge a challenge as the CG itself, because of the one single shot approach… Given that everything was generated, the challenge was to get the look right.’ Neil used The Mill's Telecine department to develop the initial look, which became the principal photography reference. The multiple layers provided by 3D were pre-assembled in shake to minimise loading times and to take advantage of the Mill’s Shake renderfarm. And only when more than 50 layers had been pre-processed three times in Flame could the compositing start. While the main compositing was in progress, a second team worked on the establishing shot of the stadium exterior – a key shot since it establishes the whole future-world idea.

Says Neil: ‘The key complex issue was the single camera move, and the need to eliminate the remaining game look by using any combination of tools we could use, from lens flares to a grading pass, film grain to lens aberrations. On top of that, multiple effects passes like volumetric lights and atmosphere clouds were added to bring some sense of space to the huge pitch.’


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Product - Puma / Title - Until Then / Agency - Robert/Boisen - Likeminded / Producer - Niels Kau - Jacob Raben / Creatives - Michael Robert - Jannik Davidsen - Peter Metcalfe / Production Company - Nobody CPH / Director - Nicolai Fuglsig - Nobody CPH / Post Production - The Mill / Producer - Darren O’ Kelly - Stephen Venning / 3D Producer - Charlotte Loughnane - Miles Petit - Sarah Cloutier / VFX Supervisor - Jordi Bares - Neil Davies / Lead 3D Artist - Tom Bussell - Chris Rabet - James Rogers - Rob Petrie / VFX Artist - Daniel Elliot - Andy Nicholas - Sam Driscoll - Ed Boldero - Sergio Xisto - Tom Blake - David Knight / Character Animation - Simon Clarke - Virgil Manning - Melanie Tonkin - Jesus Parra / Lighting and Rendering - Martin Contel / Motion Editing - Micheal Mumbar - Jo La Brot - Kevin Wang / Matt Painter - David Gibbons / City Design - Rob Petrie - Eva-Maria Kuehlmann / Concept Design - Matthieu Bessudo - Jimmy Kiddell - Ross Urien / Flame - Neil Davies - Richard Roberts / Telecine - Paul Harrison - - Shake - Mike Outlaw - Peter Hodsman - Grainne Freeman - - Support - Rob Ward - Oli Dadswell - Andy Bate - Ilia Mokhthreizadeh - - Kit - XSi - Shake - Flame - After Effects - Massive

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