Esuvee 'Keep it on all fours'

A SHAGGY SUV STORY

BUILDING A BETTER BEAST
A small group of artists at Framestore has been working late recently, racing to beat the deadline for 'Esuvee', one of the most demanding CG projects the company's Commercials team has ever undertaken. That they succeeded is a tribute to their ingenuity, inspiration and sheer determination, and the results are already being seen by millions of people.

The scene is a rodeo. We see familiar shots of the spectators entering and taking their seats, an air of expectancy and excitement is quickly established. But a brief shot of one of the riders – a smirking, perhaps overconfident young man – suggests that he's about to ride a very strange beast indeed. The gate opens and we see that he is mounted on an extraordinary creature. Shaggy, it's long hair matted with dirt, the creature bucks wildly as the rider struggles to stay on. He struggles in vain and, cornering too fast, is hurled violently to the ground, the crowd gasping in sympathy. He didn't have what it takes to control an Esuvee.

SAFETY FIRST
The Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) is big in the USA. One in four vehicles on American roads is a SUV, and they have come under increasing scrutiny of late. Their higher centre of gravity makes them more top-heavy and prone to roll over. As part of the settlement of a lawsuit against the Ford Motor Company, a $27million nationwide campaign of public information was conceived, aimed at reducing the tragically high incidence of rollovers, particularly among younger male drivers, who have the highest incidence of such accidents.

Conceived by BBH (New York), the campaign kicked off on January 31st 2005, with one of its main elements - a 60-second spot - being screened in some 20,000 cinemas across the country. BBH knew that they had to come up with something spectacular and imaginative to get their message across, and they created a mascot, 'Esuvee'. A creature intended to personify the spirit of these vehicles, Esuvee is 16-foot long, 11-foot wide and 10-foot tall and will serve as the campaign's focal point, appearing at events nationwide throughout this year. But in order for the beast to really create an impact it needed to come alive, and for that they came to Framestore.

PREP FOR SUCCESS
Director Danny Kleinman and VFX Supervisor William Bartlett flew out to Calgary in Canada in the autumn of 2004 for the six-day shoot. The amount of preparation that went into 'Esuvee' was extraordinarily detailed for a commercial. But the Framestore team (a core group of five, with up to fourteen others joining as and when possible) were aiming to create a fully CG, photo realistic creature (in fact, a whole herd of them) with long, dynamic hair and full interaction with humans in about 3 months. Nothing like this has been attempted before…

"It was always going to be really tight from after the shoot," recalls Andy Boyd, Head of 3D Commercials, "So we had to have everything set up and in place for when they came back. We had to have all the dynamics and technical elements solved ahead of time, and we spent around 2 months prepping. Even then, it was pretty close towards the end."

Boyd headed the team that took the 2D drawing supplied by the agency creatives and turned it into a bucking, snorting, rolling reality. "It's one thing to draw something flat, and quite another to make it 'work' anatomically," says Boyd, "The skeletons and muscles have to have some sort of logic to them, in order for the creature to function." In addition, Boyd's team had to work out the best motion that Bartlett could shoot to give them movement they could work with. In the end, a bucking bronco machine gave the best results.

HAIR IS THE NEW FUR
But the biggest challenge by far facing the 3D artists was the creature's hair and fur. The Esuvee's coat is bison-esque, and is differentiated, with both thick hair and areas of shorter fur. Jake Mengers, Senior Technical Director, takes up the story. "The fur is not so much of a problem these days – CG has pretty much got to grips with it. But long hair? That's still a real pain. Rather than using the traditional method – geometry - to get the look of the hair, we used Paint Effects. It's a built in part of Maya that allows you to attach brushstrokes to curves. The hair was groomed into its rest position using a combination of forces and collisions as well as painstakingly grooming individual hairs by hand. We used Maya's hair dynamics to drive these curves."

About 80,000 follicles or clumps of hair covered the Esuvee - each containing between 20 and 150 individual hairs. Most time consuming were the simulations that had to be run on the hair. "You run simulations to test the life you've given the hair," explains Mengers, "When first put on, it's just sticking out of the surface, like porcupine quills. You need to give it dynamics – to hang properly, have gravity, friction, and collisions with other hair in the vicinity. Every shot had to be simulated. For 'Esuvee', a 75 frame shot – 3 seconds of screen time – would take 20 hours to run. Some took 3 days…"

In conversation about the project, Boyd pays handsome tribute to the 3D team. "Over 50 shots of a long-haired imaginary creature in 3 months?" he laughs, "All you need is the right team of multi-disciplinary, perfectionist insomniacs!"