We're On It Injected

Look around!

ALCOA  presented this Virtual Reality piece at the 2016 summer Farnborough International Airshow to rave audience reviews and hours-long waiting line.  Design company Digital Illusions commissioned me for MAYA  animation, AFTER EFFECTS compositing and VR 360 stitching of the history of flight segments.  

Shot design, layout, final modeling, textures, shaders, animation, lighting, and compositing by yours truly, Isa Alsup.  Additional super-graphics were added in post by Digital Illusion, who also did a final grading and added additional shots to complete the piece.

Throughout the project, Ann DeVilbiss at Digital Illusions and Chuck Chubbuck at C-Squared Communications  maintained unwavering confidence and inspirational creative and production leadership throughout a tough schedule with the usual management of client changes and approval process.

History of Aviation
360 frame without VR viewer

Visualizing the history of aviation
- and ALCOA's important role

In my shots, our super camera flies through the scene following the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of Saint Louis and a DC-3 aircraft before encountering the Orion spacecraft.  Viewers can look around this virtual scene, checking out the other aircraft coming from behind and sides,  or follow the main aircraft.  After the Orion encounter we journey through a jet engine, then the camera pulls back and through the fuselage of the commercial airliner as it assembles mid-air around us before zipping up and away...

Orion Spacecraft
360 frame without VR viewer

Artistic Constraints and Technical Challenges

To meet budget and schedule constraints, the three shots were given a stylized look.  hotos of terrain were painted and blended for the landscape.  Textures were painted and seamlessly dissolved for the ground-level and high-level segments of the shot.  A stylized globe was built for the Orion shot.  A stylized cityscape was used in the aircraft assemble shot.

Initially conceived as a one minute shot, the storytime expanded to three shots over 2 minutes total length.  Getting the speed of the aircraft while keeping the motion easy for VR viewers was essential.

Technical challenges mainly revolved about changes in scale and controlling the camera animation to keep subjects in view as long as possible while allowing a more natural movement.

Photoshop, Maya, After Effects and Mettle 360

A master camera was used to drive the animation, with additional scene cameras for the director (Isa) to keep tabs on all the action of the planes and aircraft parts.  To accommodate immense scale changes, some animation cheats and forced perspective were subtly employed, controlling to protect the VR sensation.

A six camera box set-up was used to render the final Maya scenes, using a combination of Maya legacy and Mental Ray render engines.  The three sequences were rendered at 2880x1440 60fps in several passes.

The Maya elements were assembled and composited in After Effects then stitched using the Mettle plug-in for AE.  Textures were painted using Photoshop.

CG and Comp production time 

for history of flight, Orion and aircraft assemble :

5 weeks, one artist.

Some cg modeling cleanup support from other Digital Illusions artists.

Building the FutureToday
360 frame without VR viewer