This spot for the new Toyota Prius was a different horse. I usually do the lighting and look development on projects, with other tasks like comp or general 3D. However, for this one it was Ryan Thompson, the owner of Giant Steps, who did the lighting and shading using his preferred engine, Maxwell. It was my first time working with Maxwell and I liked the ease of getting pleasant results. However the integration with Maya/ pipeline workflows left a bit to be desired, and render times were pretty significant. I must say the Maxwell people were super responsive in helping us work out our pipeline kinks by providing specific guidance and fixes in a snap.

My job was to help determine our asset requirements and assemble shots from elements, create layouts based on our concept art, made by the talented Bruno Werneck and push everything to lighting/rendering. I was a pipeline hub of sorts. The director would come in and sit with me for reviews and notes.  Half our team was offsite, so this required a bit of time zone juggling. Working with Ryan was fun. He has an awesome set of binoculars, too.