While SpeedTree® is playing a visible role in a growing list of major feature film productions, we wouldn’t want to miss an opportunity to share how our toolkit is being artfully used in all kinds of productions, large and small—including TV commercials. One recent example involved Ingenuity Engine, a Hollywood-based VFX studio that used SpeedTree Cinema in the opening and closing scenes of a TV commercial for the Fairy Tale High® line of dolls and animated series, shown below . . .
Ingenuity’s CG Supervisor, Grant Miller, recently shared a few comments with us about his team’s work with SpeedTree on the Fairy Tale High spot . . .
“SpeedTree strikes a great balance between procedural generation and artistic control and allows us to get exactly what we’re looking for without sacrificing our deadlines.”
According to Miller, his team was able to make efficient use of SpeedTree’s modeling flexibility . . .
“With SpeedTree we’re able to make exactly the trees and bushes we’re looking for very quickly. The ability to edit and groom trees after they are generated in SpeedTree is crucial.
“We previously used ‘packs’ of trees that we would purchase from various online resources. This resulted in inconsistent quality as some trees would be much higher resolution than others. The look of the final product also tended to suffer, as we’d find ourselves stuck with the trees that we could purchase instead of making the tree we needed.”
As Miller explained, Ingenuity Engine was able to maintain this high level of quality, while reducing the rendering load in final post . . .
“We used SpeedTree Cinema for this project as the quad output allowed us to keep the base geometry low while still rendering the trees as smooth subdivision surfaces. The quad output in SpeedTree Cinema allows us to export medium resolution assets and then subdivide them at render time, keeping our scenes light without sacrificing quality.”
With the recent release of SpeedTree Cinema/Studio v7, we’re eager to see how users like Grant and his team at Ingenuity will find it even easier to model Subdivision Surfaces, export quads and much more.