02/2014making of

Platige image

interview withTomek Bagiński and Jarosław Handrysik

BBC Winter OlymPiCs - nature

CreaTing a maJesTiC seTTingThe Director at Platige image Tomek Bagiński, said he really wanted to work on the spot because he believed it had the power that is unique in commercial production. He was shown a very good script from London’s stink. “We convinced the rkCr/Y&r agency and stink that the film should be longer and more epic than originally planned,” he said. “We proposed creating this heroic subject in really majestic, heroic, unforgettable scenery, and the agency accepted the image.” Platige teamed up with the agency and Juice post house. fifty artists produced the project in around four months.

making ofBBC WinTer oLYmPiCs - naTure

PLaTige image 022014

Poland’s premiere VfX studio Platige image recently teamed up with London’s stink productions and the Juice post house to create a special visual spot for the BBC coverage of the sochi Winter olympics.

PLaTige image on iCe

ProDuCTion CHaLLengesJarosław Handrysik, a rendering artist at Juice, spoke about the challenge. “most shots with the mountainous landscapes were created by combining camera projections and matte paintings,” he said. “That meant we could render them in V-ray without global illumination. The caves scene where we were creating the icicles and rendering the simulation of breaking the ice in the curling scene was difficult. The main challenge was the render time. at the beginning, one full HD frame rendered in about nine hours. after optimizing the scene with V-ray, we cut it back to three hours per frame, even with gi, sss and refraction.”

THe roLe of V-raYHandrysik added it was the efficiency of V-ray that helped most in this iconic project. “V-ray showed speed, great quality and trouble-free cooperation with all the plug-ins,” he said. V-ray’s render elements allowed the compositing artists to very precisely regulate all the values in the rendered image. This helped them to deliver the highest quality renderings for the job. for compositing they used a range of render passes like Diffuse, reflection, refraction, specular, multimatte, global illumination, Light select, normals, object iD, shadows, sss, Velocity and ZDepth. “V-ray’s materials also came in handy to build the snow shader,” Handrysik said. “This was based on the V-ray Car Paint material, with little sparks and flakes added in. There was also a healthy dose of normal bump and displacement in the frosty mix.”

making ofBBC WinTer oLYmPiCs - naTure

PLaTige image 022014

MAKING OFBBC WINter OlyMpICs - NAture

plAtIGe IMAGe 022014

Watch a “making of” breakdown by Platige image

mounTaineering fiLms as insPiraTion for simuLaTions Platige and Juice ran a lot of simulations before reaching the desired effect. some shots were quick, dynamic close-ups, while others showed mountainous scenery in the far distance that required a completely different setup for simulation, balancing the wind speed and turbulence seen from a long distance. To recreate all these phenomena, the Platige and Juice crew studied many mountaineering films and libraries of mountain landscape images. The main tools for creating the snow were fume fX, Particle flow, krakatoa, as well as some iCe particles in softimage. Together with Chaos group’s V-ray, they created a heroic setting for this impressive TV spot.

Edited by Paul Hellard

making ofBBC WinTer oLYmPiCs - naTure

PLaTige image 022014

MAKING OFBBC WINter OlyMpICs - NAture

plAtIGe IMAGe 022014

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02/2014making of

BBC Winter OlymPiCs - nature

Platige image interview withTomek Bagiński and Jarosław Handrysik

platige.com