FORD Explorer 2024
Steering Wheel Animation
Finally releasing the first larger project I did for Ford Motor Company.
This animation showcases the intricate details that go into the one thing you will be in most contact with while driving the vehicle. Here's the video:
The animation was part of a larger concept featuring I had pitched together with a colleague in mid 2022, which would have featured multiple parts of the vehicle. As the cocept as a whole wasn't realised I continued working on the steering wheel part on the side.
I divided the model into three main sections:
1) Central elements/wheel hub that are displayed in an exploded view
2) Ring elements/the actual wheel
3) Fabric coat and yarn stitches
Everything was setup in Houdini and rendered with Redshift.
Behind the scenes
First step was preparing the CAD data. I used ZRemesher and a bunch of custom-made tools for that. I basically duplicated most objects, so there's a version with UVs for rendering and a VDB-variant for simulations.
As the stitches in the CAD were only individual C-shaped elements, I first made an elaborate setup to generate proper splines from the available geo.
Turns out that the generated splines looked okay on static images, but didn't quite work for animation. So I redid the whole thing and made a stitches-generator from scratch. It generates fully customizable seams that are well suited for animation.
While the cloth coating is obviously simulated using Vellum, the yarn is animated using only SOPs.
Finally everything was rendered with Redshift in Houdini. I used a custom TOPs setup to manage the setups, including preview-flipbooks, dark/bright lighting, different cameras and certain scene elements visible/invisible. So in the end everything could be rendered at once, without having to manually manage all the different outputs.
