Recently, one of our car commercials incorporated the use of a 2+ million polygon car model. To make matters worse, we had to motion blur this car, along with many background elements at twice TV resolution. Using Air, we were able to achieve the stylized photo-real look the director wanted, utilizing high dynamic range images and motion blur, all while keeping render times very low. The use of AOVs [arbitrary output variables for saving extra information during a rendering pass] was also a great time saver.
In one case, we had to motion blur the wheels on the car. After contacting support, we were promptly accommodated with our request for more motion samples. By utilizing all of these motion samples, we were able to achieve a circular-shaped motion blur with the look and accuracy we wanted.
For each shot we had to raytrace the complex polygon model of the car, so it would line up perfectly to our footage. A production quality rendering was produced in just over 5 minutes per frame.
Air proved to be a cost effective and reliable rendering solution which we look forward to using much more in the future.
Christopher Moore, Technical Director, RhinoFX.
The rendering of our feature film Renaissance was quite challenging. Air managed to meet the high quality demand that stylized black-and-white shading implies. Along with BakeAir which efficiently helped us to create large crowds by using displacement maps, it seamlessly fit into our in-house rendering pipeline. Its amazing stability enabled us to shoot the huge sets of Paris futuristic urban landscapes and to cope with massive memory requirements. All the more so as every issue raised by specific production needs was solved almost overnight. It is a real pleasure to work with such a responsive developer, always eager to bring new features and thus to make their cutting edge tools evolve rapidly.
Thomas Metais, Research & Development, Attitude Studio
SiTex Graphics' Air and BakeAir are an integral part of Crack Creative's Previs 2.0 pipeline. High-quality lighting plus standard, easy-to-program RenderMan shaders make Air and BakeAir the only solution for us. I have worked with the full spectrum of renderers, and Air has proven the best in every application. Add this to the incredible price and the most responsive support I've ever worked with, and you've got the best rendering product on the market bar none. Because of this and the ease of customization and integration with our custom pipeline and tools, Air and BakeAir were the perfect fit for Crack Creative's work on "The Day After Tomorrow". SiTex tools now form an essential role in Crack Creative's ground breaking visualization technology. Thanks for the fantastic software.
Joshua Kolden, Crack Creative
The Orphanage used Air extensively for the opening "Abbey Ruins" sequence in Hellboy, this spring's blockbuster monster movie. Air was used to render nearly every effect in the sequence. Massive amounts of digital rain involving millions of particles, "dry for wet" environment enhancements which required custom shaders and fast ray-traced reflections, silk robes with intricate small stitching details, and stylized lighting were but a few of the things Air helped us bring to life. We also relied on Air, along with a custom subsurface scattering shading solution, to light and render a totally computer generated, full-screen human being. We were very happy with the end results in all cases, and that speaks volumes about how well Air fits the bill as a low cost, high performance renderer.
Kevin Baillie, The Orphanage Inc.
At Animal Logic, we have made heavy use of AIR for dozens of shots on our most recent film projects. AIR really impressed us when we started throwing literally millions of particles at it - it chewed through them quickly and efficiently and produced great images. Because of its solid RenderMan compatibility, AIR slipped straight into our production pipeline, which was fantastic. And the level of support from SiTex was superb. AIR has absolutely earned its place in our visual effects toolkit.
Justen Marshall, R & D Supervisor, Animal Logic Film
Using the DBO feature of AIR to render the level set implicit surfaces produced by our fluid simulation system, Flood, was straightforward to implement, and the results look incredible. SiTex Graphics support was extremely responsive to our needs by adding motion blur support for the deforming fluid surface in a very short period of time.
