“Nike “Speed Chain”” by Fincher

  • ©David Fincher

Conference:


Title:


    Nike “Speed Chain”

Length:


    3:55

Director(s):


Description:


    In this commercial for Nike directed by David Fincher for Weiden & Kennedy, Digital Domain, led by Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Barba,was tasked to create the illusion of animals and machines engaged in a relay race. Eric and his team created photo-real seamless animation of a jellyfish, a snake, and a train, and employed photogeometry to create POVs of all the participants in the race.The characters, photogeometry, and renders were done inLightwave. The compositing was done in Nuke and Flame.

Hardware:


    HARDWARE: PC Intel dual 2 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM.

Software:


    SOFTWARE DEVELOPER: Modeling and animation: Maya 4.0, Lightwave 7.5. Rendering:
    Lightwave 7.5. Compositing: Nuke 3.0, Inferno. OS: Windows 2000,
    Linux.

Additional Contributors:


    Executive Producer: Ed Ulbrich
    Visual Effects Supervisor: Eric Barba
    Visual Effects Producer: Stephanie Gilgar
    CG Supervisor: Jay Barton
    Compositor: Dave Stern

Additional Information:


    PRODUCTION
    Modeling: Polygons and subdivision surfaces. 2D rotoscoping used only to create mattes from live action plates, not for animation.Rendering technique used most: Proprietary HDR lighting environ-ment implemented through NewTek’s Lightwave 3D. Average CPUtime for rendering per frame: approximately 4-5 hours. Total produc-tion time: 45 days. Production highlight: Very fast schedule for a full-minute commercial at 2K resolution and anamorphic aspect ratio.

Animation / Video Overview:


Type: