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Archive notice: This article was originally published on January 1, 2019. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The 90-second advertising film “Guter Stoff” was Sehsucht’s first collaboration with its client EnBW. The studio had already co-operated with their agency Jung von Matt on several projects. Sehsucht was awarded the contract for the realisation through a classic pitch; the team prevailed against the competition with work samples and their own creative interpretation of the basic idea. “The basic idea for the film was already roughly outlined by the agency during the pitch phase: talking bird characters on a power line having a funny dialogue,” says Daniel Jahnel, who was the 3D lead on the project. After the project was awarded, the Sehsucht team had a significant influence on the further development of the dialogue and in particular the scenic resolution by translating the script into the visual language and character actions.
Lots of R&D for a solid spring base
“For about five months, the core team consisted of a modeller, a rigger, two character FX TDs and a look dev/lighting TD. In addition, several CG artists worked on various departments for shorter periods of time. In the two-month animation phase, two to three animation artists were added and finally a matte painter for the environment. Finally, a comper finalised the almost 35 shots,” explains Daniel.
The time frame of 5.5 months was a tight schedule for this type of project with birds and feathers – especially because Sehsucht was dealing with the topics of feather generation and rigging in detail for the first time. “Early on in the project, we decided to take an unconventional, procedural and technically untested approach to feather generation in order to achieve a more realistic result and behaviour of the feathers and to be able to react more flexibly to changes,” recalls Daniel. “Looking back, the R&D phase was certainly the most difficult because of this decision, and it also cost us a lot of time. However, this step was necessary to create a solid foundation, as it made it relatively easy to transfer to three completely different birds as soon as the actual workflow was defined.”
For the Sehsucht team, the time investment was definitely worth it for future projects: “The design of the pipeline for the project was complex, but the effort was worth it not only for the result, but also for the many tools that we developed and can now transfer to other projects.” In addition, the artists were able to acquire a lot of new expertise in a topic that was new to Sehsucht because, as Daniel is certain: “Only those who jump in at the deep end and try something new can develop further.” The biggest challenge of the project, especially in the initial phase, was therefore to have the courage to go back a step and either completely redo it or change it significantly, which in turn had an impact on already completed work steps. “Questions such as: How anatomically correct does the base mesh have to be modelled so that it works later with the spring layer on top? Or: Where exactly do the joints have to be placed in the rigging so that the wing can be correctly positioned and unfolded later? We certainly had to answer these questions several times,” summarises Daniel.
Stoner films and real feathered animals as a reference
Even during the pitch phase, Sehsucht had the clear idea of basing the talking birds less on cartoon and animated characters and more on real film characters: “Right from the start, we found the contrast between a very human dialogue and realistic-looking birds funnier than transferring this to overdrawn characters à la Angry Birds. After all, viewers would trust such cartoon characters to do anything anyway, including smoking weed and talking,” says Hans-Christoph Schultheiss, Creative Director at Sehsucht in Hamburg.
Due to the realistic visual approach, the team visited the Hamburg Zoological Museum during the research phase and spoke to ornithologists and taxidermists. As a reference for the stoned behaviour of the animals, the team watched famous stoner films such as “Half Baked”, “Pineapple Express” and “Lammbock”. The characters from “Half Baked” in particular served as role models for the birds, especially in the way that each character in the group has a specific function. “We then translated the different character traits and emotional states onto the birds’ faces and bodies in a number of illustrations,” explains Hans-Christoph. All in all, there wasn’t as much visual design involved as in other projects, but the content development, i.e. the definition of the different personalities, was all the more intensive.”
One feather setup for all
The owl in particular was complex to design due to its shape, especially the deformation of the neck. The many different types and patterns of feathers, which are very characteristic and detailed on an owl, also presented challenges. Daniel comments: “Texturing each feather individually and placing them correctly was not possible within the time frame of the project, so we used our tools to recreate the overly complex appearance as well as possible in the given time.”
The setup for the feathers is the same for all birds. First, the team built a Houdini Digital Asset (HDA), which was used to define semi-automatic feathers using the Houdini Engine in Maya. The hero feathers in particular (primaries, secondaries, retrices) had to be completely species-directable in shape, because each bird species has a very different plumage. Thanks to the HDA, the team was able to recreate the correct feather shape based on reference photos using simple input objects such as polygonal outlines or feather and barb flow curves. The artists then used the HDA output in Houdini for the actual feather generation: “This consists of a polygonal feather shape and thousands of curves that define and render the barbs and barbules of the feather,” explains Daniel. “The feathers also have a planar UV set for texturing and various attributes were used for shading.” The team rigged the hero feathers, a polygonal low-res object, in the classic way. The animator deformed them using bones and lattices before the feathers were sent back to Houdini. There, the plumage consisting of a total of 4,500 individual feathers per bird was created based on a groom, simulated with the Numerion Carbon Plumage plug-in and then all the feathers generated were transferred to Arnold as ASS files. The final rendering was done in Maya.
“Depending on the type, a wing has over 100 hero feathers,” says Daniel. “Weighing them individually by hand would be far too time-consuming and unnecessary, which is why we calculated and generated the weights mathematically using a script.” These weights served as an initial starting point, which the artists used to fine-tune the feathers by hand for a more beautiful deformation according to the shot requirements.
Subtle humanity
“In the animation, we had to give the animals subtle human behaviour so that we could better develop the characters’ personalities,” explains Daniel. “They speak anyway, so the corners of their mouths could be pulled up to support a laugh or their eyes could be rotated independently of their heads to create a line of vision.” In terms of geometry, the eyes are modelled on a real eyeball: The sclera, iris and pupil are modelled individually. This alone created more realism and liveliness in the shading and lighting.
The facial expressions are based on a few blendshapes and various rigged controls for the beak, eyebrows and eyes. “We had no feedback on the plumage in the rig because it was only created in a later step. This naturally raised questions about how legible the facial expressions would ultimately be in the rendering,” says Daniel. “That’s why we had to feel our way around until it was clear which facial expressions would work and which would be completely swallowed up by the feathers and therefore have to be animated in a much more exaggerated way.”
Easy data exchange
Arnold has been the standard render engine at Sehsucht for years, first in Softimage and now in Maya. Daniel is very satisfied with the engine: “The reliability with which you can simply throw any geometry into the engine is unrivalled. The quality of the GI engine and the ease of use are further advantages.” The team exported ASS files from Arnold, which made it easy to exchange between different software packages. This meant that feathers created in Houdini could also be rendered in Maya without the artists having to worry about data exchange. In the end, the total amount of data rendered for the complete film was 15 Tbytes.