 | The Making of Toyota Matrix "Cell Splitting" May 17, 2005 | Stryker This is an extended section containing more detailed information regarding the production of the Toyota Matrix "Cell Splitting" cinema commercial. Since I am specifically involved in the 3D digital animation industry, this section goes into further explanation of the 3D aspect of the spot, particularly the vehicle splits and the android girl digital effects. Because this paper goes into fairly detailed specifics, an advanced knowledge of computer graphics and animation is recommended. Toyota Matrix "Cell Splitting" was awarded to Redrover in April, 2004 by Saatchi & Saatchi Toronto, and pre-production began immediately after that. Redrover was to produce all digital effects, which were key components of the spot since the requirement was photorealistic Toyota Matrix vehicles splitting into multiple others in much the same way cells do. The commercial was to launch in theaters across CANADA on August 31, 2004. Unfortunately, the live action shoot could only take place in the last week of June/first week of July which left only one month of actual production time - a very short and limited schedule for such a demanding job. Due of the short schedule, we tried to produce as much of the spot as possible during the first three months of pre-production. Without the live action, of course, this too becomes somewhat limiting. Therefore, we focused our attention on modeling the vehicle, research and development regarding the procedure for splitting the vehicles, and creating a full pre-viz of the spot
| | Modeling The model was created by Ben Pilgrim. Because this was going to film and therefore high resolution renders were going to be required, we made sure that every detail was modeled into the car. This went as far as modeling screws on the windshield wipers, and even the tread on the tires. Because Toyota doesn't disclose their CAD models, we had to take a trip up to the Toyota dealership and do extensive photography of the vehicles, from every possible angle, capturing every possible detail, for our modeling reference. This is when we realized that photographing the lights would give us no indication whatsoever of it's form because of its highly reflective complex shape. Therefore, we had a Toyota Matrix front light shipped to Redrover which we could study, take apart, and visually reconstruct accurately. The model took approximately one full month to model and texture. There were also setbacks in the modeling since we still had no procedure for producing the split and the model would inevitably have to be built around that. Once the model was near completion, I began lighting and texturing it, piece by piece. It was important to do this at this particular stage since model problems only became visible during render tests. As soon as a problem was found, Ben would fix it, then hand it back to me and I would continue rendering tests until we had the perfect car.
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