Inspiration
A Journey of Light
What brings good luck, is lighter than air, and illegal to launch in Australia?
That’s if you can even get one lit in windy conditions…
Spring Square is a development in the suburb of Bankstown, Sydney. To create an engaging and peaceful journey from Sydney’s iconic harbour, FloodSlicer animated thousands of glowing Kongming lanterns that float south-west and site the location in the context of the wider city.
The film takes place mostly at night, as the lanterns explore the development and are glimpsed in interiors floating past the windows, and in interior reflections. At dawn, Spring returns, symbolically shown in animated growing flowers.
Filmed ground and aerial backgrounds were tracked in Syntheyes, and populated with 3d lanterns which float over iconic sites in the harbour and around Bankstown. The music was composed in-house by FloodSlicer to feature a mystical and romantic female vocal track.
The film takes place mostly at night, as the lanterns explore the development and are glimpsed in interiors floating past the windows, and in interior reflections. At dawn, Spring returns, symbolically shown in animated growing flowers.
Filmed ground and aerial backgrounds were tracked in Syntheyes, and populated with 3d lanterns which float over iconic sites in the harbour and around Bankstown. The music was composed in-house by FloodSlicer to feature a mystical and romantic female vocal track.
Spring Square presented a few challenges, the main one being how to approach shots with thousands of lanterns that all had to have a consistent look, while being produced by two animation teams collaborating from Sydney and Melbourne.
The first step was to create a system for the lanterns that could be merged into every scene, one which was not too mesh heavy and easily amended to fit different environments. The first option we considered was a PFlow system but you cannot attach lights to a particle, unless you bake the mesh or use some other work around, which adds an unnecessary step and becomes challenging for animators to amend if they are not familiar with PFlow. However, all of the location footage was to have thousands of lanterns that would be far enough away that you would not notice a flickering light.
So the decision was made to split the project into two different lantern systems: one would be a PFlow system using thousands of lantern sprites and the second would be a range of 3D lantern meshes with animated flickering lights used for close up shots.
The first step was to create a system for the lanterns that could be merged into every scene, one which was not too mesh heavy and easily amended to fit different environments. The first option we considered was a PFlow system but you cannot attach lights to a particle, unless you bake the mesh or use some other work around, which adds an unnecessary step and becomes challenging for animators to amend if they are not familiar with PFlow. However, all of the location footage was to have thousands of lanterns that would be far enough away that you would not notice a flickering light.
So the decision was made to split the project into two different lantern systems: one would be a PFlow system using thousands of lantern sprites and the second would be a range of 3D lantern meshes with animated flickering lights used for close up shots.
For the close ups we animated a few lanterns with rise and light flicker, duplicated them around 100 times, selected all of their final key-frames and used the Soulburn script to randomly scatter their final position and rotation. We could then easily group the lanterns and merge them into each scene, adjusting them as needed. Once we had this system in place, we could then start working up the animated cameras and how they would interact with the scenes.
Spring Square features an expansive central courtyard which was perfect for long drone-like camera movements through the lanterns, allowing the sense of floating along with them while also emphasising the space. To achieve this we blocked out the point-to-point camera compositions, created a smooth spline between them, path constrained the camera to the spline and then worked on the timing of key-frames, adding banking where necessary.
After the lanterns were solved, we added some GrowFX vines and trees, a moving sun and an animated sky for the final "spring awakening" chapter.
Using depth-of-field shifts in After Effects gave us the opportunity to create moments of softness and flickering lens blurs, using the lanterns as ornaments to the architecture.
The final challenge came when filming talent on a windy beach as she enigmatically lights a lantern, and pretends to release it. The introduction was supposed to prepare us for a whistful, dream-like mood - however the wind would blow out the lantern every time it was relit and gradually turned the paper into a charred black mess that was more Hindenburg than Hopeful.
Eventually we gave up and the lantern was replaced with 3d, showing that not everything is better in the real world!
Eventually we gave up and the lantern was replaced with 3d, showing that not everything is better in the real world!
3DS Max, V-ray, GrowFX, Phoenix FD, Adobe Suite
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