Our group has decided on our project for the quarter: a hot air balloon drifting through the sky for an Expedia commercial. We have 3-4 main effects established for this: the gas burner fire (all 4 shots), the cloth of the balloon for the close up and some smaller details, and the clouds that make up the last 2 shots, including one that the balloon drifts upward through.
This is the previs done by my teammate and FX partner Joonho Bang:
✦ For the clouds, we still aren't sure what method we're going to go with to create them. One option is volumes/volumetrics, possibly involving the cloud node in Houdini. Another option is using pyro simulations as a base. The method of cloud creation for the scene setup will then determine how we should go about the part of cloud that the balloon passes through, which would cause some displacement. Finding specific references of this motion (a balloon or object going through a cloud) that weren't CG was surprisingly difficult. For the aesthetic look, here are some references:
The last 2 shots will consist of detailed clouds in the foreground and possibly some of the middleground, so the key will be making those small details believable and beautiful. We've briefly discussed with our compositor (Jake Diana) using Nuke to create the background clouds and sky.
✦ The gas burner fire will be featured in all 4 shots at different distances from the camera, as seen in the previs, so they will require different simulations and detail variation. In studying references of hot air balloons, I noticed that they occur in bursts while airborne, are quite large, and produce no smoke as they are gas combustion. This first reference video shows what a fire at a distance would look like (similar to shots 2 and 4):
In this video, you can see more of the fire detail, as well as lighting and the heat distortion (done in Nuke):
Some additional reference of the fire and its anatomy:
▶ Joonho and I are still discussing how we will split up the FX for this project. Since he will be doing the cloth of the balloons, I will be focusing on creating the clouds and some of the pyro gas burner sims. Another aspect of this project is that it is flexible, so we can expand and add effects if we feel we are capable and circumstances allow it. This project isn't incredibly flashy as far as FX go, but it does focus on high quality rendering, believability, and subtlety.
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