Archive notice: This article was originally published on December 10, 2010. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The requirements were high. Holger Schaal, managing director of Berlin’s Effekt-Etage, reported at the animago AWARD & CONFERENCE on the pipeline workflow used to handle 21 vehicle models in 49 perspectives each. His conclusion: good planning and automate a great deal. Successfully: within five months, MINI, MINI Convertible, MINI Clubman and MINI Countryman were visualised for the new website and international roll-out in July of this year. For this online project, all MINI models were realised completely digitally for the first time.
In a short interview, Holger Schaal explains the requirements and why the use of Cinema 4D proved itself so well:
DP: In the current MINI project, you had to handle immense volumes of data.
Holger Schaal: We produced 500 renderings at 4K resolution of 21 MINI models and
49 camera perspectives. Each model had around 1.5 GB of 3D data.
At first, that does not sound like very much, and the purely digital data volumes were not the challenge either. The decisive factor was the vehicles’ many equipment features, which ultimately had to be staged photorealistically
and correct down to the last detail. Since the vehicles
were not yet 100 percent finalised during our project period, we were supplied with updated 3Ddata until shortly before the end of the project. Naturally, the production pipeline had to be right.
DP: Why do you rely on Cinema 4D? What advantages and disadvantages does this create for
your pipeline, and what other tools do you work with?
Holger Schaal: Even though the tools used have increasingly less influence on the quality that can be achieved, the workflow certainly plays an increasingly decisive role. Cinema 4D has been established with us for years and has proven itself extremely well in hundreds of projects. It can be learned very quickly and
does exactly what one expects. It is also very fast and extremely stable.
In the current issue of DIGITAL PRODUCTION 01/11, in the “Automotive” focus topic, you can read the complete interview in which Holger Schaal reveals which trends will drive the industry in future and how Effekt-Etage is
positioned for them.
