For a commercial spot for Q8, Ubik had to combine 3D modeling with 2D elements to make boats appear to be sailing on asphalt through a business park.
According to Ubik, the principal difficulty in modeling the boat in 3D was the reconstruction and digital animation of the sails and spinnaker. To obtain maximum realism, the team scanned the textile of the Q8 boat spinnaker, then painted a bump map, a black and white representation of the sail wide open. This provided the optical illusion of depth from seams and folds of the textile. The backlit sails also needed to be given a translucent quality so that background elements could peek through as they would naturally.
The interaction between the boats and asphalt involved melting the pavement by way of a sea simulator that applied the natural laws of fluid dynamics to digital particles. Ubik also modeled a 3D hull that could interact with the asphalt.
CREDITS:
Art director: Gabriele Diaferia
VFX supervisor: Marco Revelant
2D artist: Josè Sala
3D supervisor & lead animator: Rickard Soederstroem
3D artists: Nicola Scarpinato, Rosalinda Malibiran
Texture painter: Silvia Buttignon
