Untold Images: Roaming Lion05/04/11

Working with agency Untold Images, we created this lion entirely in CG for telecommunication brand Celcom’s latest ‘Roaming Lion’ campaign. The main challenge lay in creating realistic fine hairs on the lion at a high enough resolution to be used for print; working on such a technically demanding brief meant our R&D team worked closely with our CG artists in order to achieve the desired look.

Technically, hair is one of the most challenging FX to create in CGI. Mark Knowles, lead CGI Artist on this project, explains the steps to achieving a great mane- find out how on our blog, just click here.

“Off-the-shelf plug-ins generally doesn’t give you the level of control nor speed needed to produce a realistic look and feel. However, we have recently been using Hairfarm which has changed the way we both model and style hair on our CG characters.”

It is these modelling tools that bring a new approach to styling allowing for quick iterative styling changes, which is great for both the TJ team and our client. Knowles continues, “Its speed and efficiency is unparalleled in comparison to other off the shelf plug-ins. It integrates into our workflow well and allows us all the control needed in compositing/retouch to finesse the final look.

“The texturing and shading of the hair is driven by texture maps. If you imagine a lion without fur and took just its base skin colour that would be the map we use to drive the colour of the fur. The fine styling such as “Frizz”, “Kink”, and “Clustering” effects are controlled by modifiers and again those modifiers can be driven by what we term “distribution maps” to control how much of the effect appears on certain parts of the lion. Obviously you want a really long mane but very short hair on the back so it’s important to be able to isolate these characteristics.”

On this particular job, it was difficult to rely on lights and shadows to create the overall look and feel o f the lion as the fur is in an atmospheric effect. This meant going back to ‘old school’ methods of production and simulating global illumination with GI light domes, rim lighting, key lighting and fill lights by placing numerous lights selectively by hand. Knowles continues:

“It’s important to be aware of what each and every light is contributing to your scene. Thus, we built our lighting rig one light at a time, comparing the before and after renders to see what it had added to the overall look. Hair generally is very sensitive to rim lighting and it’s easy to blow out the hair which makes pulling it back in comp impossible, so it’s important not to over light your scene. It’s better to be darker and brighten in compositing than to be too overblown and not be able to rescue it. Fewer lights also make for quicker renders.”

The key to making great looking hair is to observe the subtleties of real-life in terms of lighting and colour and to then integrate those into a render. With all of our work, the initial stages of creative development and R&D are crucial in bringing a concept to life. We were fortunate to acquire some great reference from our in-house photography stock library which helped us to analyse the anatomy of a lion and recreate it realistically.