With the release of its Statue project, London-based creative studio Saddington Baynes has created a frozen moment of a Muay Thai battle, utilising full-body 3D photo scans created in partnership with body-scanning experts FBFX.
Saddington Baynes is well-known for pushing the boundaries of technical innovation in the creative industry, establishing its R&D arm SBLabs to showcase this in-house ability. For Statue, SBLabs used advanced procedural displacement techniques, complex shaders and dynamic particle simulations to deliver a fierce fighting showcase. The results are already sweeping up accolades across the creative community, including a Platinum in the Creativity International Media & Interactive Design Awards.
Saddington Baynes, executive creative director, James Digby-Jones comments, “We wanted to create a project to showcase our expertise working with complex simulations and highly detailed 3D talent, while also demonstrating our imaginative storycraft and VFX capabilities. The Statue project quickly picked up a Platinum award and we’ve entered it into others. It’s a great piece that shows off a variety of high level skills, applicable to multiple market sectors.”
Scanning and capture
To achieve unparalleled detail required meticulous planning. SBLabs blocked out early concepts in Cinema 4D to explore strong poses, choreography and to direct the camera path.
SBLabs then approached SFX costume and 3D scanning specialists FBFX who captured key moments of the Muay Thai battle in live action. One at a time the combatants jumped and punched and kicked, all the while being captured as high resolution point clouds and image maps from multiple cameras. Besides being martial arts enthusiasts, both models were actually part of the Saddington Baynes team – a production assistant and a CG artist.
Saddington Baynes, creative director, Andrew White says, “FBFX helped us build separate scan captures in ZBrush with seamless results. They were a huge asset, delivering exactly what we needed in line with our vision.”
Particle simulation
Alongside these scanned models, Statue also features complex Houdini simulations. The models land blows on each other, cracking open igneous husks to reveal the searing heat below. SBLabs ran a series of customised fragmentation and tessellation processes on the geometry with look development performed in Mantra.
White explains, “We found that by outputting some custom AOV (Arbitrary Output Variable) passes we could create a hot metal look inside Nuke. Using holdout mattes and base beauty elements gave us a great way to time and control the intensity of the heat effect.”
Based out of London, Saddington Baynes has a long history of technical innovation. Besides being the original pioneer of digital retouching in 1991, it was also one of the first production studios to harness the potential of CGI in-house. More recently, the team developed an Engagement Insights service – the world’s first use of neuroscience techniques to measure emotional impact of imagery. Recent commissions include Honda’s pan-European ‘Real View Test Drive’ campaign.
