Autodesk AEC - Add water and its done

Client: Autodesk
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe
Production: Syndicate

A technical assignment about architectural work flow.

Former "Daddy" now Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe, awarded Syndicate with the job of producing, filming and post-producing a film for Autodesk's AEC software. (AEC stands for Architectural engineering and construction.)

Syndicate strive was to deliver a film that had a technical edge that would appeal to the audience using those tools.

Björn Benckert, Syndicate creative lead, describes the process:

"I believe that any architect or engineer would be quite interested to view the behind the scenes for this film. Every shot was pre planed, and drawn out like a major construction site. Most of the scenery is built as architect models driven from 3D pre visuals and some parts was designed virtually, then 3D printed to real life just to be filmed together with water. There where a high level of complexity since most scenes was shot in layers and all layers had different scales. It truly was an autodesk production, all pre visuals and milo animations was done i our proprietary Atodesk 3D Studio Max / milo plugin also the post was preformed using 3DS Max and Autodesk Flame. So the film was made for the most part with the same tools the film promoted. The only thing added was water."

The limited budget and the complexity of the camera moves in the film demanded the shots to be driven directly from the animatic. All shots where preprogrammed in the Syndicate proprietary Milo 3ds max plugin.

The animatic also worked as a direct construction drawing for the models used in the different scenes. This way most of the creative decisions could be done long before the studio was booked for the actual shoot.

More images

The Syndicate team looks forward to do more production like this and develop further within the field of working with miniature sets. The approach of shooting 3D models with elements like real water is something that could be taken a lot further.

One thing to consider when working with water is that most things get wet and it takes time before everything is dry enough to shoot another take. A hot air gun divided the shooting time in half. A few buckets helped aswell.

The stair was built in MDF according to drawings driven from the animatic. A slight tilt of the set helped the water to run for the drain in the end of the room.

The house was designed in Revid and passed trough 3DS Max before Mitek printed it out as a 45x45 cm scaled modell in thier 3D printer.

The pipe scene where shot with beautifully bent plexi pipes and highspeed camera. Sadly those shots did not make it into the final edit due to timing issues. So the material was only used as reference for the 3D water renders that was done in post.