Brian Knapp’s Orb Nomad Concept Video Imagines Accessible Aviation for All

January 4, 2024

Brian Knapp, 3D Generalist — Brian Knapp

Meet Brian Knapp, a visionary 3D artist hailing from Grand Rapids, MI. He has the incredible job of bringing bleeding-edge technology that only exists in prototypes to life through his work. Brian recently undertook a captivating project, a 4K film promoting the Orb Nomad. This awe-inspiring personal electric aircraft exists only in scale prototype form… basically, it’s the flying car of our childhood dreams!

Brian was hired by Ozone Films to create visual effects for a film about the Nomad, a new vehicle. The goal of the film was to increase public awareness and understanding of the Nomad. The film was also used to secure more funding for ORB, the company that developed the Nomad. ORB and Ozone Films were both very happy with the film. It gained over 360,000 views on YouTube and had a positive impact on their exposure and investment.

Not only did the investors love the film, but Brian’s 4K film for Nomad has set the creative world abuzz. The film clinched the prestigious Gold Telly Award, and not one but two Silver Telly Awards. On top of that, it earned a pair of Silver Addy Awards. Plus, it won the Best of GR at the 2022 Grand Rapids Film Festival.

Orb Nomad Film – 4K

Brian, who has been using Autodesk 3ds Max for the bulk of his career, took client-provided CAD files and harnessed the power of 3ds Max to transform the prototypes into ultra-realistic scenes in the film.

Brian works with a small team of 3D generalists. “We have been using 3ds Max forever, so part of it is comfort level. Max is a very robust, industry-standard platform with a wide array of available plugins, scripts, and support documents, as well as a very large user base.” In their workflow, one animator would take on a shot or series of related shots, and work them from start to finish.

Typically, Brian’s clients send him .stp files, which are Standard for the Exchange of Product Data files. .stp is a popular format for transferring 3D geometry and data between different CAD programs. Then, Brian and his team tessellate the models with Pixyz, a very fast and reliable tool for preparing and optimizing complex CAD files in Unity. Tessellation is the process of converting a Solids model (engineering model, CATIA, SolidWorks) into polygons that 3D visualization software requires.

However, in the case of the Orb Nomad, the team received a pre-tessellated model. The polygonal geometry provided wasn’t unwrapped very well so the team found the files difficult to work with. They had to redo the unwrap in Max, then adjust the provided maps and use them with V-Ray textures.

One reason he prefers to use 3ds Max is that “Max has a really great base-level animation tool.” The team set up the vehicle with simple rigs wired to controllers that allowed the panels and canopy to open and close. It made it easy and clean to shift the plane between animators. However, they used their imagination to fill in the blanks, because much of the mechanics of the plane had yet to be engineered at that time. So, they were clever about hiding areas that were not yet complete in the prototype.

One of the project’s most challenging and time-consuming aspects was simulating the wake behind the aircraft carrier. Fluid simulation is a very long and laborious process. Any simulation is time-consuming, but the larger it is, the longer it takes. Everything was simulated at a 1:1 scale, which means that Brian and his team had to deal with an entire aircraft carrier! The wake simulation involved around 50 million voxels, all interacting with the vessel, as well as foam and splash sub-simulations. Additionally, every time the team made a small change the settings, the software needed to simulate it again to see the results. The team used Chaos Phoenix, which is a powerful fluid dynamics simulation plugin for 3ds Max, Maya, and other 3D applications, and the results were highly realistic and detailed.

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Brian personally handles all compositing. Matching CGI elements with live footage is always a challenge for 3D artists. The lighting and reflections on the CG elements must match as closely as possible, or it will appear fake. For the Nomad Film, Brian provided the film crew with a 360-degree camera setup for spherical reference images. A spherical image, or High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI), combines different exposures of a scene for maximum detail.

Since the scene was shot thousands of feet off the ground, the Director of Photography held the 360º camera out the side of a helicopter to capture the 360º video. After the helicopter landed, he also shot some reference videos for compositing scenes of the Nomad parked on the ground. The data from the 360º camera enabled Brian and his team to use image-based reflection and lighting. This allowed them to accurately simulate the light in 3D, ensuring that the fake 3D elements looked realistic and blended in seamlessly with the live footage.

Working in 4K with complex models can impact render times, so Brian created an extensive render farm. But all in all, Brian is a fan of Chaos V-Ray, explaining that it’s a fast render engine.

Over the years, Brian and his team have developed many workflow tricks to help improve render times. For example, in a few shots, he simulated some of the depth of field with z-depth masks and motion blur in After Effects.

Brian never imagined that he would be working on creative, futuristic work like this. He started his career as an office furniture designer for Haworth, and later for Steelcase, but he had a lot more creativity to give than furniture work offered. So, in 2000, he started his own animation studio, Externa CGI. Over the past two decades, Externa CGI won multiple awards for its animation and design work. But, as in life, change is inevitable. In October 2023, Brightly acquired Externa CGI, making Brian its new Creative Director. This acquisition gives Brian more resources and will allow his creativity to flourish even more in future projects.

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