JL Design - Al Jazeera

In recent years, the CG industry in the Asia-Pacific region has seen tremendous growth. Many Asian-based studios are thriving alongside satellite facilities setup in the region by established Los Angeles and London based studios. Coinciding with this growth, Side Effects Software recently introduced SESI-Asia Pacific to service the region as interest in Houdini grows in the Far East.

Asia is now an industry hot spot and home to the Taiwan based studio JL Design. ChiChung Tso, head of production at JL Design, became interested in Houdini only a year prior to working with it on a real project. Already familiar with The Foundry’s Nuke compositor, Tso recognized the benefits of working with a node-based solution and was eager to apply the same approach to his 3D work.

As he expanded his knowledge of Houdini, Tso turned to online resources such as od[Force] for its helpful community-based feedback, and 3D Buzz for learning materials. He also picked up a copy of Will Cunningham’s book “The Magic of Houdini” and, after learning the ropes, was ready to tackle his first Houdini-based project.

Tso found the perfect project for incorporating Houdini as JL Design began working with news service Al-Jazeera as part of a re-branding initiative. Together they created a series of short motion graphic interstitial spots to be used by the network as a station ID. Each short clip in the series typically features a series of organic-looking wavy lines that snake their way around our globe.

On the surface of the globe there were continents represented as geometric plates. Because of the up-close detail that would be required in certain shots, the plates had look be aesthetically pleasing and be realistic. The continental plates would also have to curve and follow the globe’s contour and would have to appear extruded from the surface.

“To achieve this we considered using other applications, but in each case we could not simply apply Extrude to all the earth plates at once and would have to adjust them all individually,” Tso explains. “Then we learned how to use Partition and For Each in Houdini and we were able to bevel all of the earth plates simultaneously saving us an incredible amount of time and energy”

To create the wavy lines, TDs at JL Design created a Houdini Digital Asset involving VEX Operators that would let designers easily manipulate the height and speed of each wave. Once the Asset was created, the team had a re-usable tool that they could use to create similar patterns throughout the project.

The project was rendered using Mantra. In fact, after completing the Al-Jazeera rebranding project, JL Design made the decision to implement Mantra as the primary renderer within their pipeline. Mantra helped to simplify their workflow because of its ability to export files to the OpenEXR file format that they already use on a regular basis. “Mantra does an amazing job when rendering scenes with displace, depth of field and motion blur” says Tso.