Video production outfit UNIT9 pulled off some neat visual tricks in a recent project for client Gatorade. Using a custom-built 'rain rig,' precisely timed water droplets fall to the ground in the shape of a figure. Strobes illuminate the droplets and give the effect of freezing them, and frame-by-frame the water figure appears to run, jump and kick right in front of our eyes.
The figure's movements were informed by motion-capture, and the rain rig had to be timed to turn water pressure on and off at millisecond intervals. The camera, strobes and rig were all synced to work in concert with each other, and each frame was processed to correct for gravitational acceleration of the drops as they fell.
Photo courtesy UNIT9 and Gatorade
Photo courtesy UNIT9 and Gatorade
Photo courtesy UNIT9 and Gatorade
Manipulating falling water to this extent hadn't been done before, so the rig was custom built. It's a neat piece of innovation that plays with the most basic principle of video capture: string together a certain number of still images every second in front of a viewer's eyes and they'll look like a moving image. For more, check out the behind-the-scenes video and visit UNIT9's website.
Wow, branding aside, what a visual treat. And incredibly complex to set up where timing is crucial. I wonder if they could've done this say 10-20 years ago? This could be one way to create 3D holographic imagery.
When the man landed on the platform, how was the splash not using CGI? Talking about the animation was done using many frames combined together. How is the motion of the splash kept in sync? Doubt that is actual Gatorade ad indeed.
The splash might just have been a timing thing. If you delay the flash, then lots of water has already hit the platform, and therefore you see the splash. I do not think this needs CGI as an explanation.
To clarify: Overlay strobed images snapped a second apart as each droplet image must fall out of the way to make room for the next one. Taken a bit further the processing of each image separately might have been eliminated by means of passing the image signal through an algorithm on its way to the storage medium. That is if the tech in the photo is doing that processing.
1) Not much new tech here. I saw a similar installation at the Chicago Navy Pier Art Expo about 20 years ago. The only more sophisticated part is that computing now allows slightly more complicated animation.
2) To those who say "could've done this in CGI"; maybe some things are better experienced in reality. So my question is: Why not make a fleet of rigs and spread them around to popular events where the audience can enjoy the illusion ? Would have gotten much more "bang" to have thousands of people sharing their personal videos.
Kind of cool that this was done using a method like this rather than simply through animation. But if I am telling the truth, if it wasn't for this article I would have assumed it was animation and all of this work would have been lost on me. I am glad Dpreview did a write up on it.
Quote from the UNIT9 site: > "The technical infrastructure was designed and built in less than ten weeks, bringing together more than 20,000 individual parts and custom-made components. More than 5000 man hours were taken up in the design and build of the system. Our custom-made “rain rig” dripped water in complete sequence and harmony, to recreate the figure of a real athlete – in a liquid animation. Each unit contained 64 litres of water, with 8 units running at any one time – a total of half a tonne of water to bring the system together."
5000 man hours would translate to $500.000+ Unit9 must have claimed to produce the clip. We're talking a $1 million for a 1 minute clip here!
Impressive in both result and achievement. But it isn't a product photographer's ordinary work load.
Yeah, and I'll bet you really paid $100/hr for each and every man hour you claim it took. Does man hours include programmer hours? Or is it the other way around? Does 5000 man hours = 2500 woman hours? Or have you fiddled with them too? Gatorade could have done it in house for half. You're Fired!
I liked it until the moment where the vertical drops gave a horizontal punch to the sandbag. It totally spoiled my impression that this is not fake. (The making-of video didn't enlighten me on that.)
I didn't like the punching bag shot either. The bag was punched, so it had to be punched by somebody (not just pulled by the string or something), then edited out, or the bag is rendered by CG. Either way it took away the 100% no special effect, just simple water drops and strobes feel to it. I rather just see the entire clip of the water drop man running and doing some moves, knowing it's 100% practical effects.
Awesome animation, but real crappy product. Off topic: Recent mass deaths in farm workers in South America was due to liver failure. Turns out with climate change, when you are dehydrated, and you drink sugar water, you accelerate permanent liver failure. Gatorade probably killed many people!! Sugar as athlete are starting to find out is also a very bad source of energy, you have to train your body to burn fat instead for sustained performance. Gatorade started with little sugar 3 decades ago. As they gained market share, they added more and more sugar. Now is like a soft drink. Conclusion: Never drink Gatorade when you exercise or when you lug your full frame camera up a mountain!
Roland Karlsson: Really? Only take about 5 seconds to google it! Do that before your knee jerk reaction to the words "climate change"
My point was not even climate change. Point was as cool as the video was, don't drink Gatorade during exercise like they advertise because it can damage your liver!
JACS Yes, Gatorade claim to fame was electrolyte for reasons similar to over hydration. But is the added sugar that kills. Electrolyte does not taste that good. Gatorade use to have this strange taste that not everyone likes, so they add sugar to cover the taste. That was stupid. So they bounced from one problem to a bigger problem that kills people.
You can point me to as many links as you like. The climate change on earth has not raised the temperature so much that it seriously kills people. And I do not think the South American farmers drinks so much Gatorade that it is causing a mass death. This is alternative facts. You can always prove your alternative facts with well chosen links.
I will just quote from this “alternative fact” and “fake news” site called BBC news. This is from Richard J Johnson, a kidney specialist at U of Colorado: (Maybe you call him fake scientist too?)
“From these studies, Johnson believes that heat stress and dehydration drive the production of fructose and vasopressin, which also damages the kidney. However, he believes that another mechanism may also play a part in the epidemic: rehydration with sugary drinks. Frequently, not trusting the quality of local drinking water, workers drink sodas and soft drinks, and experimental evidence suggests that doing so can lead to even more kidney damage.”
Anyway, climate change is just trying to explain the pattern of liver failure over multiple regions. May or may not be true like any investigation.
Anyway main point was no Gatorade during exercise!! I think Gatorade being bad is well supported, but you believe whatever you want.
That soft drinks with sugar is bad for health is well know. It makes the kids fat and also grown ups. It also destroys your teeth.
And sure - if soft drinks with sugar has become more common in South America, it has severe health problems. Overweight is not good. Not good at all. And - it actually kills.
But mass deaths among farmers caused by a combination of electrolytes and sugar and global warming is a bit too much take in in one breath.
And regarding this Johnson being fake. I am only saying that you can prove almost anything by pointing to selected specialists and researchers or articles. A certain percentage of all research results are false. There are several millions of research results out there, and even if 99 percentage is correct, hundred of thousands of the results are false. And, 99 percent is a way too high number.
The same goes for articles and news. Most is kind of correct. But a certain percentage is totally wrong. And if you collect all those wrong data, you can make quite convincing web pages and cases.
If this came from right wing or left wing media or any commentators, those are always half truths, but BBC news tend to be much more accurate. One of my link is a science journal as well. To me, that is basic research. Look for creditable source and compare to see if they say the same thing.
If you have bad teeth, there is dentist. If you are overweight, go on a diet. However, if you have permanent liver damage, that is serious.
I go to these endurance sports events, and many times you only get Gatorade at aids station! This sports energy food industry has dominated the message. All the coach and star athletes now instruct you to eat these sugar laced food as standard practice for performance.
This is like the trans-fat and margarine to replace butter debacle.
There is off-topic and then there is completely off-topic. This thread adds to the background of the work. Just like a concerto by Bach, you are discussing the history behind the piece. My opinion echoes the same sentiment multiple people had expressed. In photography or video, there is the artistic element, technical element and subject matter. In this case, the artistic and technical elements are top notch. Unfortunately, the subject matter and the story line, which is just as important to the work, detracts the viewer from the finished product. Has the subject matter been something better, this would have been perfect. I am giving the background on why the subject matter, in this case Gatorade detracts from the final product. Obviously, not many people are aware of the extent of physical harm Gatorade can cause. Hence as good as the work is, the viewer keep cringing (at least some viewer) as they watch the video.
I have never ever tasted Gatorade in my entire life. But, I am quite sure I will not die from doing so. I am so brain washed by our fake news that have not ever written a word about the thousands of people that die due to this drink every year in Sweden.
As marketing driven as the whole endeavor is, you'd think Panasonic themselves would be vying for some name dropping... Their US marketing is non existent tho, all the mirrorless players kinda suck at it but Pana is particularly bad, and their distribution isn't much better.
yeah definitely, the existence of another panasonic video camera is the fascinating part of the story.
It's very strange they left it out, instead of obsessively focusing on the trivial, unremarkable combination of water droppers linked to strobes and camera, to produce carefully choreographed animations simulating a moving person, in a way that's never been done before.
Obviously they are being paid off by the 3 players who comprise 90% of the market, in a sneaky effort to crush the looming threat from the other 10%. Panasonic's 1% market share has got them shivering like a dog sh*tting glass.
Exactly this is the value of this effort: IT IS REAL. It is great to see things like this in our "cheap world". I find it disgusting, that for e.g. the car "photos" (e.g. in commercials) are not real anymore, rather created with computers. This is fast and cheap, but I do not like living in the Matrix...
Because now they could build and sell these rigs to places like Disney World where people could view it in person, from all sides, and perhaps even interact with it.
@JackM - no they can't. This is not real time. Its a time lapse movie. Maybe one image taken every second or two, and then combining them to a film. The crowd at Disney World will not see a thing.
That's phase two then. And anyway the machine as it is now can produce a still figure in each "frame", which could be observed in real time. The possibilities are numerous.
At any rate, it's incredibly naive and short sighted to call this a waste of time and effort. Is it going to cure cancer or save lives? No, but neither does most art.
It works the other way, it's not some marketing whiz who said "let's do this", it's certainly a film production company who wanted to work on a project like this and had great fun doing it, just happens that it fit the bill for that brand and could get funding for it through that.
Now granted, what's annoying is the fact that in order to fund that kind of project you have to bow down to having it be used for a stupid marketing campaign for a BS product.
99.9% of the time, I would disagree with the suggestion that CGI is just as good as live capture. Yet, having watched this impressive ad a couple times, I can't see any difference. Maybe it is due to the way the set is lit, or the editing, but it simply does not look real to me. So, I am not seeing the aesthetic benefit of real over CGI. Life imitating art?
I don't think it is the same technology. The one you're referring to seems to be using water spray as a curtain to project an image on. The one for the Gatorade ad is using strobes and carefully timed drops.
Talking about the animation is created by combining frames taken between very short intervals. We can see the pattern of the water droplet forming the running figure, which is quite irregular. We can also see the droplets are traveling perfectly in their paths, regardless the fact, they should be from different falling droplets. And I think we can agree water splash is a random thing?
A few years ago the moma had an installation called the rain room that featured a large area of pouring "rain" but it would use cameras to turn the nozzles off as you stepped under them so you wouldn't get wet. It was pitch black except for a single klieg light at one side to highlight everything. It was pretty amazing and worth the multi-hour wait.
First I thought this was real time. I.e., you could be standing there seeing the drop girl run. But, thinking some more - it is hardly possible.
It is a time lapse. Each strobe take one image, and then several images are combined to a running girl. Clever anyhow. Sometimes the ad industry shows considerable creativity.
There is an assumption that the thing that looks like a sandbag is actually filled with sand. It could be filled with, for example, polystyrene beads - offering a much reduced mass and thus inertia. In that case the water droplets, if projected with sufficient force, could impact the bag as seen.
As a former cg artist, it certainly could be, but I'm at a loss as to which method would be cheaper. On the one hand animation is expensive to produce. On the other hand their rig is not cheap either, and clearly required a lot of R&D as well. I'm sure part of their decision here was to generate some publicity for themselves. And they did great.
Lets say that there is no sandbag there. It is actually another film, taken with the sandbag horizontal. And the droplets are actually falling to the sandbag. Then, those two films are combined. The reason I think so is that the water on the sandbag seems to be running on the side of the bag, from left to right.
Last time I checked, 3D printers extruded a fine thread of plastic and moved it around (or used light to cure/bake the resin or powder). Never seen a 3D printer with the "same concept".
idiocracy .....mike judds unheralded magnum opus ....virtually ignored to the point where articles were written in newsweek speculating the movie was supressed
it mist be seen to be believed .... it takes place eventually in the 25 century ... no one could hav e guesses it would all come true. 500yrs early
It is impressive but the claim that this water droplet rig is a completely new technology is a bit exagerated. I have seen similar installation in MoNa museum in Hobart Tasmania years ago...
I saw a similar installation at Photokina 2016, on the Panasonic's stand. They didn't use strobes, but some colored spots IIRC. It looked like falling curtains, kind off.
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