Airlift: Frame Grabs

This is a sequence of still frames from a single 90 second long CG shot establishing the overall scene.

The full video is posted on my Vimeo page: [link]

The camera tilts down revealing a huge refinery in a heavy snowstorm. The view moves downward to focus on an industrial vehicle as it carries a group of soldiers up a ramp and out onto an expansive airfield. In the distance, gigantic ore carriers taxi through the blizzard, preparing for takeoff. military.

I've done a lot of animations of various scenes, but this is probably one of the most elaborate. The scene had to be split into several pieces when rendering it, just to fit into memory. As a result, each segment was rendered on its own and seamlessly blended together to make the final shot without apparent camera cuts.

In addition, there were separate passes for the snow and atmospheric elements, which were composited into the base render to produce the final look. The snow was a mix of techniques, using both particles and 2D textures animated across large pieces of simple geometry.

The 3D was created using Lightwave 3D, with textures painted in Photoshop. Compositing was done using Adobe After Effects.