Valorant Roster Announcement 2023 | Team Liquid
Enigma
"After the success of the last TL Valorant Announcement, I knew I had to find a way to go beyond than before!
TL reached out to me to come up with a concept and direct this piece, I had 1 month to do it but like I mentioned above, I still wanted to risk it and go beyond even though the time wasn't really on my side. So I knew I had to put together a team in order for this to work, while they worked on some shots I worked on others. I'm extremely proud of what was created here. Everyone did so so SO well! I also can't believe I finally manage to shoot something underwater! Something I always wanted to do since I can remember.
This behind-the-scenes is more focused on the technical side of the video, the art in the making of this piece."
"After the success of the last TL Valorant Announcement, I knew I had to find a way to go beyond than before!
TL reached out to me to come up with a concept and direct this piece, I had 1 month to do it but like I mentioned above, I still wanted to risk it and go beyond even though the time wasn't really on my side. So I knew I had to put together a team in order for this to work, while they worked on some shots I worked on others. I'm extremely proud of what was created here. Everyone did so so SO well! I also can't believe I finally manage to shoot something underwater! Something I always wanted to do since I can remember.
This behind-the-scenes is more focused on the technical side of the video, the art in the making of this piece."
Still Frames:
Direction
Enigma
"I not only worked with 3D/VFX/SFX/etc but I also had the opportunity to be a DIRECTOR ON SET! This was quite a big deal for me as I finished my 3-year university film course in 2021 and I completely stop doing film-related stuff... So working on a professional set (I got to work with a DOP/ACs that worked in films like Indiana Jones, Fast & Furious and more Netflix shows) was a huge opportunity! Of course, I took advantage of that and learned so, so much!
"I not only worked with 3D/VFX/SFX/etc but I also had the opportunity to be a DIRECTOR ON SET! This was quite a big deal for me as I finished my 3-year university film course in 2021 and I completely stop doing film-related stuff... So working on a professional set (I got to work with a DOP/ACs that worked in films like Indiana Jones, Fast & Furious and more Netflix shows) was a huge opportunity! Of course, I took advantage of that and learned so, so much!
The story for this film was basically to have the 2 remaining players from the older team, underwater "in deep sleep" or "reflecting" on past failures, eventually reaching the surface to face new paths with new teammates and a new future together.
For the cinematography, I wanted to do night scenes, not only it is beautiful but it's also when you can see the bioluminescence (more on this below). I wanted to have silhouette shots to reveal the players and shots where we can see them after the reveal, so we needed to work a lot with light. So I decided to go on a colour scheme with white and blue shades. White highlights (as it was emitted from the moon) and blue (as it was emitted from the bioluminescence), both of these colours make TL colour brand, so it just made sense.
Also, there is so much to say about 3D lighting and camera, but mostly I follow up the same strategy as my other projects, I have BTS about those on my Behance, just have fun checking them out! Now!! about the Sova shot with the grillz the reason its so detail its because i used a real skin as a texture in the bump map.
Knowing our players aren't actors, I knew it would be harder to get certain expressions out of them, but I'm really happy that I did finish my film university course last year as I could take a lot of what I learned into practice!
Finding a place to film underwater was quite the challenge, but Rhys (the Producer for this project) will explain a bit more about it below.
Big shoutout to @soulcas_ and @Jamppicsgo, it doesn't look like it but it's quite hard to learn how to breathe underwater and perform for the camera! Here are some BTS Photos of the set (Pictures taken by Rich Lock)"
What's liquid, and it has blue?! BIOLUMINESCENCE! How could I never think of this before?! So I brought up this idea to TL and they loved it! A backdrop was even made so we could have it behind the players when we were shooting them. You have no idea the number of references I got to make this video possible, I'm sharing some with you because it's just magical...
Animation
Joel Ho:
"For this project, Tiago had a specific set of shots for me to work on. I worked on a couple of shots that required hand-key animations, some of those that would have to mesh well with fluid simulations. This time, we're working with less stylistic shots and more of an artsy outlook. His ideas are clear and I am very happy to help bring his vision to fruition."
"For this project, Tiago had a specific set of shots for me to work on. I worked on a couple of shots that required hand-key animations, some of those that would have to mesh well with fluid simulations. This time, we're working with less stylistic shots and more of an artsy outlook. His ideas are clear and I am very happy to help bring his vision to fruition."
3D FX
Joao:
"I was tasked with doing the FX for this amazing promo video Tiago challenged me to. We had under 1 month to do 15 different water simulation shots, ranging from closeup rain, bubbles and droplet interaction, creating a believable Bioluminescent effect, meshing and rendering huge amounts of polygons. A system had to be built for quick iteration and feedback, importing and exporting of the animations and caches. Each shot had alot of different passes, for example, the rain in viper's face had 3 different droplet simulations, the rain is fully interactive with the ocean and her body, the ocean had to ripple and Bioluminescent in a believable way. The ocean simulations by far were the most complex, since we had to export the shots to Cinema4d, polygon count had to be taken into account. A custom meshing solution was created for the ocean with adaptive camera subdivision and spectrum blending. Then with a custom solver inside the FLIP sim we could solve the Bioluminescent particles and export them to render as points. A custom ocean shader was also created in Cinema4d. To be honest this was super risky to do in 1 month time, luckily we had some prior experience working together from Past projects and If it wasn't for Tiago's Pre-Production work and instant feedback there was no way this could be delivered."
"I was tasked with doing the FX for this amazing promo video Tiago challenged me to. We had under 1 month to do 15 different water simulation shots, ranging from closeup rain, bubbles and droplet interaction, creating a believable Bioluminescent effect, meshing and rendering huge amounts of polygons. A system had to be built for quick iteration and feedback, importing and exporting of the animations and caches. Each shot had alot of different passes, for example, the rain in viper's face had 3 different droplet simulations, the rain is fully interactive with the ocean and her body, the ocean had to ripple and Bioluminescent in a believable way. The ocean simulations by far were the most complex, since we had to export the shots to Cinema4d, polygon count had to be taken into account. A custom meshing solution was created for the ocean with adaptive camera subdivision and spectrum blending. Then with a custom solver inside the FLIP sim we could solve the Bioluminescent particles and export them to render as points. A custom ocean shader was also created in Cinema4d. To be honest this was super risky to do in 1 month time, luckily we had some prior experience working together from Past projects and If it wasn't for Tiago's Pre-Production work and instant feedback there was no way this could be delivered."
3D POV's
Veise:
“I was responsible for the 3D gameplay scenes for 5 different clips. each POV and ingame cinematics. It is impossible to get the 3D data of gameplay inside valorant, so I had to match the 3D scenes to the reference clip. The workflow is basically putting the reference clips as the background and then animate the viewmodel and character so it matches to the clip. After the animating was done, I worked on the environment side. It was a night theme with slight moonlight, the green glass box was also an important element. to keep the continuity throughout the whole clips,I tried to keep the three colors blue, orange and green, those puddles on the floor, and volumetric fog. I wish I had more time to put more details, like the hit impact, textures, better sampling, but still I’m so proud of this project, one of the best projects I had this year!!”
“I was responsible for the 3D gameplay scenes for 5 different clips. each POV and ingame cinematics. It is impossible to get the 3D data of gameplay inside valorant, so I had to match the 3D scenes to the reference clip. The workflow is basically putting the reference clips as the background and then animate the viewmodel and character so it matches to the clip. After the animating was done, I worked on the environment side. It was a night theme with slight moonlight, the green glass box was also an important element. to keep the continuity throughout the whole clips,I tried to keep the three colors blue, orange and green, those puddles on the floor, and volumetric fog. I wish I had more time to put more details, like the hit impact, textures, better sampling, but still I’m so proud of this project, one of the best projects I had this year!!”
GreenScreens
SYQ:
"For these shots I have set myself a goal of turning the scenery into this magical place with running water, deep atmospheric fog and crystals that cast light on the surroundings. The method I settled on was to separate parts of the background by masking and projecting them onto separate elements effecively recreating a set in 3d space. That would later be helpful referencing lighting conditions when recording. Since players could only be recorded last minute we had to be very strict with the light setup we used. However due to difficulties on the way recording had to take place at different locations and so light setup had changed. The deadline was just around the corrner as I had only few hours from receiving the footage to sending it back in its final form. Luckly with massive help from Tiago, Great feedback from Will and Rhys and Awesome grading work done by Jeremy, we went back and forth on it and managed to deliver a final result at around 3AM. Seeing Team Liquids Roaster looking soo epic felt soo satisfying at the end!"
"For these shots I have set myself a goal of turning the scenery into this magical place with running water, deep atmospheric fog and crystals that cast light on the surroundings. The method I settled on was to separate parts of the background by masking and projecting them onto separate elements effecively recreating a set in 3d space. That would later be helpful referencing lighting conditions when recording. Since players could only be recorded last minute we had to be very strict with the light setup we used. However due to difficulties on the way recording had to take place at different locations and so light setup had changed. The deadline was just around the corrner as I had only few hours from receiving the footage to sending it back in its final form. Luckly with massive help from Tiago, Great feedback from Will and Rhys and Awesome grading work done by Jeremy, we went back and forth on it and managed to deliver a final result at around 3AM. Seeing Team Liquids Roaster looking soo epic felt soo satisfying at the end!"
GRADE
Jeremy:
"It was clear working with Tiago and Rhys that they had a strong vision for the look of their project which always makes my job as a colorist a little bit easier. This piece is heavy on blues so finding the right contrast and tones was key. Fortunately we started working through the grade as production was still ongoing which gave us a little time to establish the look but getting the blues to match across the live action an animation required a couple different approaches. While the majority of the pallete is deep blues we still wanted those little pops of color from skin or background elements and still fit with the overall look which required isolating some portion of the frames to give them a little contrast and life. I think the end result really works for this project and feels like a piece that speaks to the Team Liquid brand and style."
"It was clear working with Tiago and Rhys that they had a strong vision for the look of their project which always makes my job as a colorist a little bit easier. This piece is heavy on blues so finding the right contrast and tones was key. Fortunately we started working through the grade as production was still ongoing which gave us a little time to establish the look but getting the blues to match across the live action an animation required a couple different approaches. While the majority of the pallete is deep blues we still wanted those little pops of color from skin or background elements and still fit with the overall look which required isolating some portion of the frames to give them a little contrast and life. I think the end result really works for this project and feels like a piece that speaks to the Team Liquid brand and style."
PRODUCTION
Rhys:
"Early in the creative process, we quickly became very excited about the theme of water. In particular ; shooting underwater & simulating water in 3D. I still can't quite believe we managed to pull it off.
It would be a big understatement to say that things didn't go as planned. Special thanks to Bart for joining me on a 24hr adventure to Serbia & for the mental support throughout the entire process.
It goes without saying that Tiago is a creative genius, but it's easy to underestimate the inhuman amount of hard work and dedication he puts into everything he does. I'm really grateful I got to work with him again on this (and finally meet him in person)"
"Early in the creative process, we quickly became very excited about the theme of water. In particular ; shooting underwater & simulating water in 3D. I still can't quite believe we managed to pull it off.
It would be a big understatement to say that things didn't go as planned. Special thanks to Bart for joining me on a 24hr adventure to Serbia & for the mental support throughout the entire process.
It goes without saying that Tiago is a creative genius, but it's easy to underestimate the inhuman amount of hard work and dedication he puts into everything he does. I'm really grateful I got to work with him again on this (and finally meet him in person)"
GRAPHICS
Hendrik:
"Working with a project like this is always a delicate balance, the general note is if you don't stand out you've done a good job. Especially with the high quality and stylistically intense renders most of my work is framing or adding context for the consumer to know more about what's on the screen. The main goal is to not take away from the visuals and letting them do what they do best, draw attention. I'm always incredibly happy to get to work on productions like these because the collaborative efforts come together to create this massive final project. The final project in this case is beautiful and creates waves all throughout the community. In order to set the bar the way our previous announcement did we all had to step up to create something that will be a lasting moment in the audiences' memory."
Felipe:
"Collaborate with these graphics it was an amazing opportunity to finally be part of some of the Enigma's project. We're based into the video as the core of the graphics and since the video actually it's a masterpiece, it wasn't too hard to find the exactly frames that can be highlighted in these pieces. To make a composition that works into social channels we worked to make each player with a character/scene highlighted and for this individual graphics we made some improvements in details, sharpen details and glowing even more some of the light details so fans can have a more detailed frame about that scene"
"Working with a project like this is always a delicate balance, the general note is if you don't stand out you've done a good job. Especially with the high quality and stylistically intense renders most of my work is framing or adding context for the consumer to know more about what's on the screen. The main goal is to not take away from the visuals and letting them do what they do best, draw attention. I'm always incredibly happy to get to work on productions like these because the collaborative efforts come together to create this massive final project. The final project in this case is beautiful and creates waves all throughout the community. In order to set the bar the way our previous announcement did we all had to step up to create something that will be a lasting moment in the audiences' memory."
Felipe:
"Collaborate with these graphics it was an amazing opportunity to finally be part of some of the Enigma's project. We're based into the video as the core of the graphics and since the video actually it's a masterpiece, it wasn't too hard to find the exactly frames that can be highlighted in these pieces. To make a composition that works into social channels we worked to make each player with a character/scene highlighted and for this individual graphics we made some improvements in details, sharpen details and glowing even more some of the light details so fans can have a more detailed frame about that scene"
Full video: https://youtu.be/M9uuF6TTut0
