Hughes Subsea CGI Real-time Visualisation

Project Description

Challenge

We were challenged with creating an explainer video for the header of Hughes SubSea Services LTD website.

Hughes SubSea is a subsea services company who are responsible for clearing the sea bed of debris whether it’s removing unexploded bombs, rocks for laying cables, or repairing wind turbines. The video should explain their services, and the tools utilised by the company.

Hughes SubSea has some competitors providing slightly different services and they have explainer videos. The competitor videos all look the same, using the same Revit renderings, very clean, very crisp, but looking quite outdated.

The challenge we faced was to help the customer stand out from the crowd and keep a high resolution of rendering capabilities. Another challenge of this task was to create many of the 3D models; The subsea device, a grabber claw, a cutting claw, a spreader device, a diver as well as being Rigged (allows animations – very time consuming), custom scenes, and many more.

An additional, but not a functional requirement for this project, was the potential to utilise the 3D models, and the visualisation for future projects and applications. These may consist of Virtual Reality explainers and interactive experiences. Utilising the latest in Game Technology, these can be created fairly simply.

Strategy

Before the creation of any digital assets, a story board was needed. The story board was the base of the visual animation explainer. It explained the virtual camera placement, then length of each camera cut, and guided the placement of assets within the scene.

Using the latest in rendering technology provided by Epics Unreal Engine, we created a real-time visualisation. To accompany this, we used 3D modelling software to create rapid visual prototypes that were signed off by the client.

The Process

Story Board

After the initial meeting, and before contracts are signed, we like to create a basic storyboard of the animations to make sure we are on the same page as our clients. After sign off, we use this storyboard to create the outline of the animation camera tracks (the timings) as well as utilise it for the scene creations.

3D Modelling

We utilise open source and licensed 3D modelling software. Open source software (free) allows us to reduce our costs for our clients. Utilising the software allows us to also create highly realistic 3D models of both hard surface and soft surface assets. These where both needed for this project as multiple bespoke assets are needed.

Scene Development

We use the storyboard created at the beginning of the project to generate bespoke scenes, populated with a combination of 3D models from our library of 3D models.

Render

Using the latest in real-time visualisation, we render out our visualisations to be utilised either ‘as-is’ or as the base for additional post processing in video processing software. For this project, we utilise post-processing for adding text and visual overlay details to the rendered animations.