Nissan Micra
Saturday, 12th January
The original commercial was filmed in 2006 in New Zealand (I believe). Come 2007, a new model of the small car had been made, and rather than the expense of totally re-shooting the ad, it was decided the best way would be to replace the old car with the new one via 3D and Compositing.

Huge amounts of reference were shot, and it was decided for the opening shot that only the front of the car (which had changed the most) required being built in 3D. The rest (an additional door, handles, rear quarter panel seam and new wheels) would be done with Shake.

An early version of the 3D Car. Later, it was properly textured.

I build the shape of the car from various profile shots I had photographed, and textured it with two maps. One was projected from the front and one from the side, both using different mapping channels. A mask was then painted on with vertex painting. This worked out substantially faster than unwrapping the UV's.

The shot data was long gone and potentially unobtainable, so the preliminary track was performed by hand within 3D Max, and mildly tweaked afterward with Shake.

The CGI Car in action!

Everything was rendered off in various passes and colour matched by eye in Shake. The reflection on the car was actually made by taking the left side of the screen and wrapping it around as an environment. The rear door handles were taken from the front door handles and tracked back on with an animated offset and the motion blur was done in Shake.