How'd they do this?

tdsilk wrote on 8/28/2006, 8:48 AM
Hello,

Can someone explain how the new HP Centrino Hands Commercial is done?
Especially the part where the actor appears to be holding paper or animations in their hands. Is it all special effects or a mixture of real objects and special effects? Btw, the commercial can be seen here:

Thanks,
Troy

P.S. Can this be done easily in Vegas?

Comments

DavidSinger wrote on 8/28/2006, 9:12 AM
Read down the list a little farther. They made a video explaining how they made the video.
Here:


Now, they didn't give away any animation techniques; but sure, you could do this in Vegas. Just take a good look at the studio and lighting they had on the actor. SERIOUS light control.

David
johnmeyer wrote on 8/28/2006, 9:47 AM
I see a lot of special effects wasted in movies and advertising, but this sure isn't the case here. I hadn't seen that ad, but I think it is positively brilliant.

As to how they did it, I haven't a clue, although I can think of ways to do a "poor man's" version in Vegas. However, just doing the animations must have taken a good-sized staff of people quite a long time to create.
tdsilk wrote on 8/28/2006, 2:14 PM
I think I will try the "poor man's version" in Vegas :-) Btw, here's a response from another board:

The person's hands for this would be performed filmed empty and tracked in 3d (this is often done manually, but there is an increased use of "witness" cameras filming from aditional angles to help pinpoint the 3d position of things like finger tips throughout the shot).

Once the position of the hands & fingers were plotted in 3d, the remaining effects are added with various 3D/CGI applications.

In the instances where fingers cover some of the CGI effects, the finger masks would traced/painted manually, frame-by-frame (rotoscoping or "roto").
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 8/28/2006, 8:28 PM
if you want to do this right you probably need to gain an expertise in something like Combustion or something of the sort.

Dave

P.S. - this can't be done easily in anything, but MOST CERTAINLY not in Vegas. Not that I don't Love Vegas - but it's not designed to specialize in this type of thing, and you'll need specialized software to do this.
Stonefield wrote on 8/28/2006, 11:08 PM
Agreed, this is NOT a Vegas project. After Effects at least and then that would be a huge undertaking.

Probably higher end compositing program with about two or three composites assigned to different comp artists.

Excellent add. Kinda reminded me of the futuristic computer menus that were used in the movie Minority Report.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 8/28/2006, 11:31 PM
same here stone, I'm betting that's where they got the idea (unless they were the ones that came up with it for that too) but who knows.

Dave
grh wrote on 8/29/2006, 5:14 AM
Look closely at the list of videos: there's more than one:









Impressive stuff.