Cinema 4D Helps Visualize Heavy Excavator What's the best way to introduce a 120-ton excavator at a major trade show when it only exists as a blueprint?

A talented team of artists met this challenge and used Cinema 4D to create a stunning visualization of a Liebherr LH120C excavator/loader in action. Even if this behemoth had already gone into production at the time, transporting it to the trade show and demonstrating its full range of capabilities at the show itself would have been a monumental and very costly task. The manufacturer wanted to demonstrate everything the Liebherr LH120C was capable of doing so it was decided that this could best be done in a video. The Lintije Group was given the job of creating the visualization, which had to include last-minute construction changes.

Henning Weidhase supervised a team of three artists who used Cinema 4D to model the LH120C and create an environment that reflected the excavator's real-life working surroundings. Details such as puddles, dirt, grime and graffiti helped make the scene look more natural. In the middle of it all stood the Liebherr LH120C ready for action.

The scene's complexity and the hydraulic hoses were the biggest challenges the team faced. Henning Weidhase remembers, "We rigged the loading arm and the hydraulic hoses using XPresso so the movement of the excavator's arm would be realistic. In the end, the scene size reached a whopping 450 MB, with more than 4.6 million polygons - which was no problem at all for Cinema 4D. Due to the tight deadline we had to meet we rendered the project without Global Illumination. We instead used Advanced Render's Ambient Occlusion feature, which itself produced fantastic results. What we got was a great-looking visualization that showcased the product as it really works in a realistic environment, which met and exceeded the manufacturer's expectations."

Lintje GbR
www.lintje.de

Liebherr International Deutschland GmbH
www.Liebherr.com