This teaser animation was done to showcase Impact Theory's line of NFT cards that they released in 2021.
I directed and produced the animation using Cinema 4D and rendered it in Octane.
I drew several frames and organized the best shots together on a whiteboard. I figured out what the overall flow of the animation would be then and got the clients sign off.
From there, I put together test environments and played with composition, shading and lighting to achieve desired style frames. I knew what mood I was for so I knew when I had found the right vibe.
Multiple artworks needed to be displayed, so I set up animated textures to transition between two artworks on a card
During the macro shots of the card, I'm using the animated textures in an Octane material to achieve the transition.
​
The start and end frame range is based on my After Effects project that allows for precise timing of cards transitioning when rendered.
The client had few requests, one being that a katana needed to split the card pack open. I used C4D to fracture the katana model, and used plain effectors to animate the pieces into place.
I then exported out the fracture animation into an alembic cache to optimize my scene. The alembic cache animation swaps to a simple 3D model once the fractured pieces are in place.
The particles are cloned spheres being controlled by both spline and effectors.
Particles have an effector that move all the particles to the shape of the katana in order to make it look like the particles are forming the shape of the katana.
The cards are fractured by using a plane as a reference in the fracture settings. This way I was able to control the size of the squares that break off.
The card disintegration was done using fracturing as well, with animated effectors so I could art direct where the pieces went. This setup was then duplicated across the 6 cards.
While the cards disintegrate, I have a cloner with cubes following a spline around the scene, to pull the effect off that the cards are breaking off into this moving 'clump'.
All combined:
Compositing involved taking specific AOVs out of Octane, layering them over the beauty
Final color correction was then applied globally across shots.
