The Mothership To celebrate their 5th anniversary, Studio FutureDeLuxe wanted to create an animation that stood out from the usual studio look - and Cinema 4D helped them do exactly that.

Studio Future DeLuxe has made a name for itself over the past five years with a rather unorthodox approach: an experimental use of graphics programs is used to generate know-how that is in turn used to create spectacular results for clients.

Cinema 4D is one of the team's favorite programs for experimenting, not least because of the endless and diverse possibilities its features have to offer. After the decision had been made to create a fitting animation to celebrate their 5-year anniversary, the FutureDeLuxe team had a treasure trove of experimental material and techniques that they could use for their project. The film they created - Mothership - is colorful and trippy and full of flying shapes, swarms, strange creatures and fantastic formations that fly through a magical world using dynamics.

The team at FutureDeluxe, together with artist Nejc Polovsak, used instances in Cinema 4D to make it possible to handle this vast number of objects in a single scene. "In particular for the part where the camera flies through the tunnel it was especially important to determine the total number of instanced objects that we could use without exceeding our limit. We resorted to using low-poly objects that used less memory, which let us add even more objects to our scene", remembers Nejc. "When viewed from a distance you can't tell the difference between high-res and low-res proxies." The most elaborate scenes had about 1.5 million polygons and ate up 650 MB of memory.

"Numerous Cinema 4D tools and features ranging from modeling to BodyPaint 3D, character tools and the Motion Camera for the soft camera moves were used - without which it would have been impossible to create this film. But what was really indispensible were Dynamics and the simulation features, which were used to create large parts of the animations."

Most of the FutureDeLuxe team was involved in the initial creation phase of Mothership. As the animation phase began, fewer team members were needed and Nejc Polovsak was essentially the one who animated the short film. "I could still count on the entire team at FutureDeLuxe who also supplied me with plenty of great feedback and outstanding art direction," remembers Nejc. "It took ten weeks until the scenes were completed and rendered. Rendering was done using VRay for Cinema 4D on a single PC (6/12-core i7 3930, 32 GB RAM). After all the work had been completed on the scenes I was really ready for a vacation. I started rendering before I left and when I got back after 5 days the rendering was done and Mothership was ready to be edited and finalized in After Effects."

"This project definitely provided a lot of valuable experience that made it evident why I love working with Cinema 4D", explains Nejc. "It's the ideal software for generalists like me who want to single-handedly complete entire projects with a single software package. Artists want to realize and experience their visions without having to worry about technical issues. This is exactly what Cinema 4D does," concludes Nejc.

FutureDeLuxe website:
www.futuredeluxe.co.uk

Nejc Polovsaks website:
www.twistedpoly.com

Process video:
www.vimeo.com/109013667