GanzChroma 0046
In June 2004, Mercedes-Benz launched an advertisement campaign for their new SLK-Class series.
The commercial, which used instrumental portions of the Rammstein song "Mein Herz brennt" and was directed by the one-time war photographer for Danish newspapers, Nicolai Fuglsig.
The spot shows two riled 'cloud gods' challenging the supremacy of the Mercedes-Benz R171 and its driver. Eight months before the air date, the intense 2D and 3D work required to transform clouds into gods began at The Mill with intricate research into the complexities of cloud formation.
One of the interesting things they did was to achieve a high degree of realism was to track CG elements onto real cloud formations to enhance them.
The Mill investigated ways of speeding-up render times by using the integration of Maya 6 and Mental Ray for fluids and dynamics. The CG department also implemented a new, streamlined, production-line method of project management. A dedicated cloud website, outlining every setting used, was created purely to see the development of each cloud render and to let everyone involved to track the development of each 3D cloud.
This is the real reason, why I spent all my off hours in the Singapore Military studying Maya.
And this is also why the Mercdes-Benz SLK R171 remains as my favorite car to this day.
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