Bike Animation

Trek Mountain Bike Animation

Client: Personal Project
Objective: Animate a bicycle assembling and go on an adventure
Software: 3ds Max, TyFlow, Phoenix, V-Ray, After Effects

Process: The studio was lit with an HDRI and various strategically placed lights. The forest environment was built with planes and displacement maps surrounded by a spherical environment map and lit with a V-Ray sun and a few additional lights. TyFlow was used to scatter trees, bushes, stumps, and logs. For the bike, I also modeled and surfaced various internal components that were needed which did not exist with the original bike asset.

TyFlow was used for 90% of the bike assembly, mainly with event driven flows. Animated tyBooleans and a few hand-keyed elements are also in the mix. After the bike assembly, the transition to the environment was done by animating the ground as a cloth object that flares up from a flat black studio floor to the final mountain terrain all while animated trees, bushes, etc. are along for the ride. There are two rigs for the bike itself, one traditional rig for some hand keyed elements in the studio and a fully dynamic tyFlow rig that includes the rider with a dynamic tyActor. Chaos Phoenix was used for all tire/ground dust interaction.

Compositing was done in After Effects, adding 2D fog elements, depth of field, and a host of other adjustments.

Lastly, I have to admit, I did all of the audio editing and sound effects in After Effects vs Pro Tools or another appropriate DAW.

Additional Credits

Trek Bicycle Model: Hossein Nazeri