Visual Effects Supervisor: Atle Krogstad Berg
Client: Stripe, Norway
Feature: Q-Melk
Agency: DDB

Dynamic Norwegian Post House Stripe, Oslo, recently completed a spot for Agency DDB which helped transform an ordinary dairy farmer into probably Norway's strongest man, and who intoduces us to a whole new flavour of milkshake, complete with cow. With an obvious interest in cattle it seems appropriate that the impressive visual effects in this commercial for Q-Melk were achieved with the help of The Pixel Farms tracking toolset PFTrack, and in particular its powerful geometry tracking element.

The spot opens to a wide lush green landscape where dairy cows peacefully chew the cud. We notice a man (the farmer) man caryring a bucket walking downstage toward a profiled brown cow in the foreground. We assume the farmer is coming to milk the animal, as he positions himself beside the cow and gentley pats it. . Putting down the bucket he goes to crouch down. But then, - pull the udder one,- he is not going to milk it, rather he proceeds to lift it bodily off the ground and starts to shake it so that we hear the milk sloshing about inside, while the beast itself looks to the camera in confusion and consternation. At this point a caption appears asking "Ever wondered how much milk you have left?". It is then revealed that Q-Melk have a new carton with a clear window panel in it, showing the level of it contents.

Improbable and comedic, the visual joke works so well due to the quality of both the CG animation and pinpoint accurate compositing, made possible by the equally precise tracking data courtesy of the The Pixel farms uniquely capable tracking and VFX assist application PFTrack. Visual Effects Superviser at Stripe, Atle K Berg explains why he used PFTrack. "Initially we evaluated all the major contenders in the tracking industry. PFTrack came out as the winner both on a price/feature point and how well it could integrate into our production pipeline. And it still is the best solution for us."

Working with 2K Super35 stock the brief was to create a photorealistic, digital cow that could blend seamlessly with a real cow on the set. "Since the whole film is just one long take, making the transition smooth was the main challenge." explains Atle. "On set we had a blue-clad styrofoam dummy that the actor could interact with. In post we used PFTracks excellent geometry tracking to track the movement of the dummy so that we could transfer this to our digital cow." The unique geometry tracking sytem in PFTrack meant that once the CG cow had been modelled and textured, a low resolution version could be imported into PFTrack and used as tracking geometry, enabling it to be matched perfectly to the live action plate.

Geometry Tracking was key to the success of the spot.

This very sophisticated feature of PFTrack allows for simple or complex geometry to be imported and then matched exactly to sequence by virtually pinning its vertices to the plate and then modifying its position either by use of key frame or per frame if need be, depending on the amount of movement within the sequence. This can be very useful to solve cameras with greater accuracy in problem shots or for tracking set extension models into shots. And of course is ideal for head and facial replacement not to mention blue styrofoam cows.

Exported moving geometry forms the basis for the final effect

The ability to perform object tracking quickly and simply is another element Atle Berg identifies as making PFTrack his tool of choice. "There really were not any complications with the tracking. Although we only wanted the geometry to move and not the camera, this was easily fixed using Motion Groups." This is where an object, or several objects can be tracked seperately to the overall camera motion and designated an individual Motion Group which can then be exported seperatley or together with the scene data. An object is simply matted out before the main camera is tracked and then the matte is inverted so that only the object motion is tracked, creating two seperate Motion Goups. For this project the tracking data was then exported to Maya and the final composite was assembled in Shake.

In the end it's all about the Cow!

The user friendly nature of PFTracks functionality is one of the striking things which sets it apart from other products, as Atle Berg states, "The geometry tracking is a very powerful feature to us and one that we have used on several projects to solve difficult tracks that we wouldnt have been able to solve otherwise. The auto-tracking feature is also very robust and one I like better than other apps I have tried." Noting The Pixel Farms concern about this project Atle Berg was also able to to reassure them that no cow was harmed in the production of this commercial.

Stripe is a Norwegian post facility based in Oslo that specializes in visual effects for the commercial and movie industry as well as new media such as web. Presently we are seven multi-skilled dedicated staff as well as a large network of freelancers that we use on a project to project basis. Our pipeline is mainly based around Maya, Mental Ray and Shake. We also do editing in Final Cut and have a full setup for on-site client reviews as well as a remote feedback process. We primarily use off the shelf tools, but also develop in-house tools like our render-dispatcher HIVE. Our experience ranges from movies like "Lange Flate Baller" 1 and 2, "Elias og Kongeskipet" and "Free Jimmy" to commercials for brand names like Telenor, Chess, Netcom, Mercedes, GE Moneybank, Siemens, Panasonic, Scandinavian Airlines etc. This spring we also finished 5 effect shots for the upcoming Pink Panther movie. Though most of our work is based in Norway our international portfolio is expanding.

To see the a breakdown of the spot here.

More information about Stripe here:

www.stripe.no

Words: Martin Southwood