Did I Just See a Paper Man Walk Past?"

Human Rights Charity Liberty Has Released an Attention-Getting Short Film With Visual Effects Created in CINEMA 4D

Imagine sitting in a café in London by the window, watching the world go by, when all of a sudden, something out of the ordinary catches your eye. Yes, that really was a pile of paper in the shape of man that just walked past you!

Graphic designer and film maker Will MacNeil used MAXON's CINEMA 4D to pull off this impressive effect. Will created the short for the human rights charity Liberty to support the campaign against the introduction of identity cards in the UK.

MacNeil, who has produced graphics for UK broadcasters, including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Sky and Virgin, talks about how this attention-getting effect was crafted in CINEMA 4D.

Which elements were completed in CINEMA 4D?
Every sheet of paper in the ad was modeled, animated and rendered in CINEMA 4D. I also rendered out separate passes for shadows. For several of the shots I created and rendered matte objects in CINEMA 4D.

What parts of the project were completed by you?
The original concept was from me. I also planned, shot, edited and tracked the backgrounds in addition to animating, lighting and rendering the paper scenes. I also created the first pass of compositing. After my initial work putting the shots together I handed things over to my friend Richard Scarlett who took the compositing to a much higher level. The sound and final grade were handled at Unit Post-Production in London, who offered their services to the project by dubbing mixer Roz Wilson and colorist James Willett. The music was donated by Chris Joss."

How long did the project take to create?
"I spent about three weeks on and off creating the first cut. Because this was a volunteer job I had to fit it into my daily schedule next to my regular work. But it provided a nice distraction. I tweaked it for another few weeks - again, just in my spare time. Final work like the voiceover, sound mix and grade were spread out over the following months.

Which software tools were used?
Aside from CINEMA 4D, which was really the hub of the project, I used Pixel Farm Track for the tracking and matchmoving, Final Cut Pro for editing and Shake for compositing. At Unit Post, Pro-tools and Apple Color were used for the sound mix and grade."

Were some parts of the project easier to complete than expected?
"One thing that was probably easier than it looks was matting out foreground objects. Wherever the character or papers move behind a real-world object, like the seats in the boat for instance, a matte is necessary to block out parts of the 3D animation that would otherwise overlap the real objects and ruin the shot. Typically this is done by hand painting mattes in a compositing application. We did do a few shots this way but because most shots are match-moved I have a pretty good idea of where all the real-world elements are in my 3D scene. So for the seats in the boat I simply modeled them roughly in position in CINEMA 4D and rendered this out as a white-on-black image. In Shake, this is imported and used to block out parts of the 3D animation. This is a huge timesaver.

How did you create the motion of the paper that falls from the window and is then blown by the wind?
I played with several methods of animating the loose papers. In the end I settled on a mix of particles and Clothhilde. I ran cloth simulations on several sheets of paper and cached them. These were simply suspended sheets with only a gentle flapping motion handled by the sim. Then I put these into a standard emitter and added various environmental forces like gravity and wind. Along with that there are several 'hero' sheets which are straight cloth simulations. The majority of shots have multiple layers of paper. I would render out the main action and then add 'behind' and 'in front' layers. Doing it this way also allowed me to add some depth of field in the composite as well.

How did you get the papers to form the paper man?
I imported FBX files from a motion capture library in the form of a standard human skeleton with various animations. I attached the papers to the animated skeleton using parent constraints. These are great because I could move the papers around and even animate their position but still have their principal movement handled by the MoCap animation. I used this often when papers where intersecting - just slip them a little and watch the animation again. This was also a great way to animate the 'birth' shot where the man comes to life. All the sheets were positioned in their correct places for the human form and connected to their respective bones by parent constraints. But they also had PSR constraints locked to nulls on the ground behind the man. By animating the strength of the PSR constraints the papers would move from their original ground position to their place in the man's shape. The gradual build-up look comes from offsetting the strength animation for each sheet. It took a while to decide on this approach, but once I did I realized it was a good solution.

How did you integrate the CINEMA 4D rendering with the real footage?
Richard spent a lot of time adjusting the color of the rendered paper. We used references in the background plates to line up the lights, darks and shadow layers. Occasionally my original render would lack a certain light source, such as an orange light cast through a doorway. The renders were so quick, I'd just go back into CINEMA 4D add the needed light and render again. Usually Richard could make this work.

Was CINEMA 4D reliable?
CINEMA 4D is the most stable 3D app I've ever used.

More Information

The Paperman Animation:
http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/issues/3-privacy/index.shtml

Project Title: "Where do they go?"

Client: Liberty

Brief: To highlight the loss of the public’s personal information and to promote opposition to the identity card scheme proposal.

Writer: Will MacNeil

Art Director: Will MacNeil

Planner: N/A

Director: Will MacNeil

Animator: Will MacNeil

Editor: Will MacNeil

Compositor: Richard Scarlett

Music: Chris Joss

Post Production Company: Unit - Sound design: Roz Wilson, Colourist: James Willett

Software: Pixel Farm Track, CINEMA 4D, Final Cut Pro and Shake

Exposure: Online at ITV, The Guardian, YouTube and http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk