Bringing the Dirt With Pyro Inertia Studios on using Maxon One to create a heart-pounding launch video for Heat Wave Visual.
When Heat Wave Visual asked Inertia Studios to create a product film to launch their new performance goggle to the motocross community, the creative studio reached for Maxon One to convey product features fit for the extreme sport.
A dust storm in a desert landscape proved an apt analogy to capture the speed, and energy of the sport. So with a toolset that included Cinema 4D, Pyro, Redshift, Houdini, Gaea, Red Giant and After Effects, the team crafted an adrenaline-fueled promo for the brand.
We asked founder and Executive Creative Director Thomas Valente, Art Director Henry Yeomans, and Creative Lead Jack Lietti to walk us through the project, unpack the simulation and their approach to capturing detail and drama in a dusty environment.
Please tell us about the concept.
Valente: We called the concept ‘Designed for Dust, Born from Dust’ and set out to show the product in a way that motocross professionals and enthusiasts could relate to. The narrative structure was based on a lightning strike causing a desert storm, representing the product’s disruptive stance in the goggle market.
Yeomans: Using the energy from the blast and dissipating dust clouds to frame the product, we focused on the specific hero features we wanted to communicate, including design, colorways, protection, and durability. We saw the whole film taking place within the moment of the initial dust explosion, and the challenge was to juxtapose the clean lines of the product with the gritty, chaotic context of the lightning storm and surrounding environment.
Please walk us through your workflow.
Yeomans: The Maxon One family was at the heart of the project, and we used Cinema 4D, Redshift, and Red Giant as our primary tools. We were given CAD files and reference imagery and were supported by other specific tools to retopologize and UV the product. C4D’s Pyro and Houdini were used to create the dust explosion, as well as plume and cloud effects.
Essentially, it was a twin-track workflow using XREFs in which we worked separately on the goggle base model and rig, updating materials as we went along while animating the shots and working on the lighting.
More specifically, for the goggles, we tapped a freelancer to remodel the product in SolidWorks and Maya before we brought it into Cinema 4D for shading and texturing. A lot of that was done procedurally using Redshift. For example, using four or five layers of differently scaled noises pumped into displacements, we achieved a foam-like texture with real-world subsurface scattering that caught the light in interesting ways.
Finally, we composited in After Effects, using Red Giant Universe and Trapcode effects to further enhance our shots. Subtle dust particles were added several of our shots using Particular with glows and optical flares to curate and art direct the flashes of lightning.
Say more about how you used Cinema 4D’s Pyro for this project.
Valente: By default, Houdini has been our go-to for smoke or dust simulations. But we recently tested Pyro for an experimental 3D Billboard project in Times Square and were surprised by how strong the system was. As a new tool in our arsenal, we decided to explore its capabilities on this project for Heat Wave Visuals.
Lietti: The shots were built as individual simulations as we needed full control of the Pyro settings to achieve certain animations. Once we had the overall art direction locked in for our environment and dust cloud, it was easy to break away into individual scenes or setups and create bespoke simulations that still felt cohesive and aligned with the rest of the film. After researching how real-world dust clouds behave, we quickly turned to Cinema 4D's Forces, such as field forces and winds, to art direct the look and feel of each shot.
Valente: Visual experimentation and R&D play key roles in our studio and with Pyro, we’re able to continuously develop new aesthetics that keep the work fresh and exciting.
Were there any specific challenges to solve?
Lietti: There were a few shots that required problem solving and reverse engineering. For the shot of the strap appearing out of dust, we wanted to make the goggles seem as if they were traveling forward, but that proved difficult in the simulation. As a work-around we kept the goggles static in the scene, increased the amount of wind and animated the camera instead. It's smoke and mirrors, but it allows the audience to see what we want them to see.
Managing the resolution or voxel size of our simulations was also challenging. The scene we struggled with most was the close-up shot of the goggles coming out of the dust. We wanted the dust simulation to interact with the geometry of the goggles and the rocks around it, so we had to first simulate at a lower resolution to fully art direct the shot, and then up-res to capture all the detail. The Upres feature in the Pyro Output object was really helpful as it allowed us to capture the detailed swirling and vorticity reminiscent of real dust clouds.
What have you been working on lately?
We are working on some large-scale product campaigns for a few global sports brands; we’re also crafting a series of OOH 3D billboard ads for one of the world's most iconic beer, wine, and spirit brands; and developing multi-platform content for a high-end fashion label's summer rollout — just to mention a few.
Helena Swahn is a writer in London, UK.