Brunel approached me with the task to create a full CGI animation about the new boat and what’s going on at the Volvo Ocean Race.
In approx. 2 months I had to tackle different tasks like creating a nice planet to show all the legs around the world and for my first time a moving boat in the ocean with all what it needs for that.
For the intro we used a new node based particle generator in AE called stardust from superluminal. It was super fun to work with and we were able to solve all the things we aimed to do, like moving around the planet, creating the trails for the different legs etc. It’s definitely worth to have a look at this nice AE plugin: superluminal.tv/downloads/stardust
Brunel provided me with an almost finished 3D model of the yacht, so I didn’t have to spend much time on modelling the boat from scratch. Therefore I was able to dig deeper into FUSE and create the crew with the actual clothes they will wear in this years competition.
The greatest challenge for sure was the fluid simulation itself. Thankfully Chaos Group gave me great support throughout the whole project. Shout out to you guys at this point. It was all done with the latest version of Phoenix FD. With the new flip solver and Ocean render mode it’s a pretty straight forward process now in my opinion.
Of course it's always those little things that give you a headache and there was plenty: Boat interaction, wave behavior, connect sim to ocean surface, still so much to learn but already addicted to dig deeper into fluid sim…
Client: Brunel / Magenta Films
Software: 3Ds Max, Vray, After Effects, Fuse, Phoenix FD
