While serving as CG Supervisor at Vitamin Pictures Perkins Restaurant and Buntin Group came to the studio with a seemingly impossible challenge. The concept was that a Perkins delivery truck would drive across a united states that is made almost entirely of food and some Perkin's signature dishes would be monuments that the truck passes along the way.

CG food is notoriously difficult and the art direction required to make these landscapes look both credible and appetizing was going to require more collaboration than would be possible with CG.

We felt we could build the sets practically but we were worried about shooting slow graceful camera moves at such a small scale.

After some R&D I developed a technique in which we hired a crew to do a still photoshoot. The client and agency could be on set and work with the photographer and stylist to get the perfect image for each scene. Once the Hero image was shot and approved, the food landscapes were shot from hundreds of angles and the set was rebuilt with photogrammetry. After the Shoot was wrapped we projected the approved photo onto the scanned geometry from the hero camera angle and were able to blend approved photography with scan data we could then animate camera moves and CG elements in Maya. The added benefit was that all the CG elements got GI and reflections from the scan making the CG incredibly easy to integrate with the photography.

The agency and clients loved the look so much that we ended up making 2 more ads with this technique.

You can watch the entire ad Here.

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