R/GA Digital Studios

The top image is from the final spot, the bottom two are earlier tests.

The stuff inside the bottle is about 25000 little sparkles that swim inside the bottle, you really have to see it move.

Most CG projects are done by a team: Modelers, lighting people, compositors, animators, technical directors. We had a small team for most of the project, so I wound up doing a lot of double duty. I modeled and textured the sea shells in the top image, I also wrote the code and worked on the look of the swirling pixie dust that emerges from the bottle, in R/Greenberg's proprietary render Imrender. Which is incredible flexible, but for some reason that I never figured out Reverse Polish Notation, now take it from me, Linear algebra should not be done in RPN.

Well this is my first and only flying logo, There are two particle systems. The shooting star and the sparkling (as the PM would call it skinkly) logo that slowly emerges. The whole thing is a rather complex compositioning job that makes the stars only form where the logo is and gradually change color to match
Doug Johnson did most of the animation, including the waves on the beach, which are probably one of the hardest things to do in CG, Arman Matin: The Eddie God worked on getting the bottle to glow and appear in the water, Irene Kim did most of the lighting on the beach. Mark Vopel Directed I'm sure I'm leaving people out sorry.

For this Sunfire commercial the car had to be placed on top of a compact disc. (if you think that is silly try working on a Kool-Aid commercial) A CD is rather tricky to film due to the fact that it is a really quirky surface which will reflect the camera and react to light in rather unpredictable ways. Well actually it will react to light in an extreme predictable manner. However the likelihood that the average Director will be able to do multi variable calculus in their head while yelling cut is just not good.

So we had to fake the disk, this involved a bit of modeling and coding a procedural shader that simulated the anisotropic rainbow reflections on its surface.

HUH?!? well take a look at some brushed metal, a hub cap or a pot, notice how the light moves. It is always going thorough the center of the disc, that is a anisotropic specular highlight that is caused by the scratches in the metal (anisotropic mean not the same in all directions). There are similar groves on a CD however the groves are so small that they create a defraction grating and the light reflections interferes with each other creating interference patterns on the disk,.
Movie of just the CD