Together with Team Detroit, we created the 360 for the 2017 Ford Fusion. The vehicle was shot over the course of 24 hours to capture the car in both day and night conditions. In post-production, our specialized automotive CGI team rebuilt the parking lot, the surrounding buildings, and animated other Ford vehicles in the garage. Using our proprietary hydraGen®software, we produced the car in multiple colors which you can view on Ford’s website.

Using our Digital Scouting service, we pre-visualized the shoot in CGI. We used geo-positioning to make sure sunlight visualization was accurate based on the shoot location and the day of the year. From this, we identified the ideal vehicle position and were able to understand how long the shoot would last.

Our VFX Technical Director and team attended the shoot to ensure that imagery captured was optimized for the post-production process. They also shot extensive reference photography and took accurate measurements of the parking garage to later fully recreate it in CGI. Capturing quality photographic textures enabled our CGI team to produce the highest quality photo-realistic work.

Our team took reference photos of a Ford Fusion on set, which enabled the automotive CGI team to study the parts of the vehicle in different lighting conditions: under spotlights at night, the pattern the highlights made on the ground, and how the sun reflected on the car during the day.

To provide an accurate reference for lighting, we sequenced a time-lapse footage that allowed us to have realistic clouds in the background, a beautiful sunset, and a night sky that came to life as individual lights began to turn on.

hydraGen® was used to manage the many render passes needed to produce and deliver the car in multiple car paint colors. We understand the effort that goes into making each paint—we study the swatches to make sure we replicate the falloff of color, the flake angles, and the level of metallic. We render each car paint separately so that each reacts uniquely under the lighting; pearlescent white will look very different from gloss black or metallic gray.

Check out our CGI composition to the below left and the final deliverable to the below right.

The final 360 campaign included 9 variations of the Ford Fusion. It is running across digital platforms and can be explored further on Ford’s website.