Are you ready to race?
Global Formula Racing is an international cooperation between the BA Racing Team from Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg-Ravensburg (DHBW), Germany, and the Beaver Racing Team from Oregon State University (OSU), USA. Every summer GFR ships their car to Germany and races it against hundreds of other universities. As part of the competition, they are judged on a mock business presentation in which they pitch the car to "investors"(judges) in hopes of acquiring funds to mass produce their car and sell it on the market to weekend racers. Check out GFR's website for more.
The Job
GFR contacted me to create an animated explainer video that would be used during their live presentation at their competition in Germany.
My Roles
Storyboarding
3D Modeling of the track and race environment
Previsulization
Animation
Compositing
My Process
STORYBOARDING
GFR came to me with a concept for a 40-second explainer graphic that highlighted the features of their race car whilst it drove around on a track. I worked with them to flesh out a feasible concept of and we went from there. Below is the rough storyboard I laid out to help guide me through the rest of the process.
3D Modeling
GFR supplied me with their CAD files of the car model, which sped up the process quite significantly, as I only had to create the racetrack, cones, and environment to surround the car in Cinema 4D.
Animation
Once the entire scene was created, it was time to work on the camera movements in Cinema 4D. Below is a first round animatic preview I sent GFR to get approval to move forward with texturing and lighting.
Look Development & Other Motion Tests
With approval from GFR for the initial animation, I moved onto look development and other motion tests. I utilized this project as part of my daily render series to test a variety of looks and other motion concepts we could go with.
For rendering, I chose to use Octane Render for Cinema 4D because of its interactive viewport and render speed, which allows for quick visual feedback for developing more look iterations in less time. Below are the two daily renders I created using the GFR car model as well as some more screenshots of the look development process.
Compositing
Once the look of the car and track was established, it was time to render out of Cinema 4D and bring the animation into After Effects for compositing. Below are some screen grabs from my After Effects project.
Final Frames
Below are some still frames of the final composited animation
Thank you to all those who helped make this a successful project!
