Chipotle

Another example of mental ray in production is this spot for Chipotle.

A nicely art directed piece shows another example of art directed realism using mental ray in Maya. The haunting audio is a remake sung by Fiona Apple. (We’re hoping someone saved that cow. . .)

Find out more in the article on AdWeek: Ad of the Day: Chipotle

Learn more about Moonbot Studios at their site: http://moonbotstudios.com/

Like a Boss

RTT Germany recently released a short animation using mental ray for the exterior shots.

Using Unified Sampling and a combination of the user_ibl_env and a physical sun or the native IBL, they rendered the frames with motion blur, taking anywhere from nine minutes to two hours a frame.

From one of the artists involved on the project, Adrian Chifor:

The unified sampling also allowed me to have 3d motion blur and the biggest render time was no longer than a couple of hours with most of the frames rendering below 30 min per frame. Since the lighting was very simple the render times were never an issue. As far as passes I only had the beauty and on some shots I used an AO pass. I think for one shot I used a normal pass for a post relighting tweak, the rest were just masks and shadow.

Take a look at the finished animation below as well as the RTT Showreel here: RTT Work

chase like a boss from adi chifor on Vimeo.

The World of Rolex

Welcome to the World of Rolex.

This spot was created in London and despite the seemingly simple look of some shots, contained many area lights across an expansive space and quite a bit of glossy reflection. The rendering of the depth of field was accomplished in-camera (in render) using Unified Sampling.  The longest frames were 2 hours a frame at HD. Take a look below:

The Layering Library in Action

*Disclaimer*

The Layering Library (MILA) shaders are currently in Beta and are not designed for production use. However, here at The Mill in LA, we spent some extra care (and time) in the lookdev process to use the MILA shaders in a commercial spot for Norfolk Southern.

You’ll see many trains rendered using the MILA library for mental ray.

Feedback was very positive and we were able to better layer effects on objects with different material types and labels easily all while keeping render times under control (some complex 1080HD frames with motion blur were about 2+ hours a frame with brute force settings and the Environment Light) Artists also found the glossy reflection much easier to handle and faster to use than the mia_materials.

One artist said of their experience with the MILA material, “I will never use the mia_material again.”

Take a look at the spot below.