AixSponza’s ‘Seed’ Blooms at AEAF Awards
One of the most visually beautiful animated 3D projects at AEAF this year is ‘Seed’ from AixSponza in Munich, Germany, in the Short Film category. This in-house film was born partly from the director Manuel Casasola Merkle’s interest in photoscanning objects, including people, and using the scans in a photoreal project. They started by testing various ideas as scenes in their main 3D package Cinema 4D to reveal some possibilities that would work best in the software and, from there, give the team some direction.
“Photoscanning of nearly all objects, Octane and Arnold rendering, Softimage ICE for a few shots, Houdini for a few others and heaps of Cinema 4D for all of the rest gets the shells flying and glowing,” said Manuel, project TD as well as director. “Add a bit of WorldMachine for landscapes - with ZBrush and Modo for cleanup and retopo - and you've got our pipeline for this piece.”
Getting started with the music for the soundtrack at the same time was also important for direction, and included experimenting with a new electric musical instrument for a new sound.
A technical advantage they had was early access to the new Release 17 of Cinema 4D, still in the testing stages at that time. R17 has its own spline tools for modelling instead of having to switch to another software, edge detection for sculpting hard-surface models, and a Sculpt to PoseMorph function supporting character animation. The motion tracking is more accurate, and the rendering in R17 gives more control over shaders and materials. www.aeaf.tv
