This project was a big challenge from start to finish. Of course, creating realistic CG animal is always difficult, but there were two main challenges specific to this project:
– First, the Director (Mum, Mum Films) wanted a very fast paced commercial, with lots of action and unleashed camera. I didn’t want to constrain him with technical limitations, so I gave him freedom do any camera move he wanted. The result was that the shots were mostly handheld, very shaky and difficult to track.
– Secondly, at some point in the commercial, the doberman runs in front of a shop and sees his own reflection in the glass. Even though this shot appeared to be technically challenging, I thought it would be a very interesting shot to have in the commercial. For the reflection issue, I had to track the reflection separate from the real character, which was challenging because of the distortion of the mirror. The compositing for this shot was also very tricky, because we had to replicate the distortion effect and apply it on the reflected dog. To achieve this effect, we developed a technique based on custom displacement map in Nuke which was then mapped on a tracked geometry of the mirror (more in the making-of below).

Credits