Project

Reef - One with the Reef

In this spec piece, all brand marks are the property of Reef and no affiliation has been made between them and myself. This was purely a personal passion project that I used to explore and expand upon my motion design skills. I wanted to experiment with Fields in Cinema 4D, so I created this spec project to discover the cool things it can do. I came up with this very simple concept for Reef sandals, in which the sandals themselves are formed by coral reefs. Everything in the concept would take place underwater as if you were a diver witnessing the transformation of these sandals. This was also a great exercise for me to experiment more with Redshift and Xparticles. I used Redshift to render all of my 3D shots, and Xparticles to help create some flowy particle simulations. In addition, this was my first time using Adobe Audition, which proved insanely helpful in creating the soundscape I desired. The sound design attempt definitely lacks a professional's touch, but I was happy to have created something close to what I was imagining. Overall, this project served as an extremely helpful study as I continue to expand my skills in 3D.

2019

Role

Design
3D
2D
Compositing
Edit
Sound Design

Credits

Some quick shout outs:
Nikola Damjanov, for his detailed Substance textures that were used and slightly altered.

HelloLux, for in-depth C4D Fields tutorials

Mario Tran Phuc, for his Xparticles tutorials

Process

Visual Reference

Underwater photography and organic coral reef structures were sources of inspiration for the aesthetic of the piece.

3D Sandal Modeling and Texturing

For the sandals, I took some photos of my dusty old Reef sandals to use as my guide for 3D modeling and texturing.

I then modeled the sandals in C4D and texture and lit them using Redshift.

Coral Textures

From the beginning, I knew the coral textures were going to be the most tricky part for me to create. Thankfully, I came across some awesome Substance Desinger files created by Nikola Damjanov. In Substance Designer, I altered his files to get the look and colors that I wanted.

Animation

After watching countless tutorials about Fields in Cinema4D, including some from HelloLux, I began animating. I experimented with animated Vertex maps and Displacements using different kinds of Fields. I also used Xparticles for some particle advection and to help me create the Reef Logo shot using a flow field.

Compositing

I composited all the shots in After Effects and added atmospheric lighting and particles to help me achieve the underwater look.

Sound Design

Finally, I used Adobe Audition to create the sound design for the entire piece. This was my first time using Audition, but thankfully it was really easy. Using the Underwater sound effects library, I was able to layer up different files to achieve the aquatic sound design I desired.