Creating Short Movie about Formula One Racer Ayrton Senna in 3D

Introduction 

I have been working with 3D since 1999, starting as an intern in a graphics computing lab at the university. At that time, the first 3D software was beginning to emerge.

The first 3D software I learned was LightWave, and later on, Maya became my main tool. Alongside that, I developed skills in design and art direction and soon began working in advertising agencies. My passion for photography and image post-production also provided a solid foundation for what I do today.

In 2003, I founded the Z4 animation studio, where I worked for 15 years, and after a short period as a freelancer, I became a director at Lightfarm Studios. Throughout this period, I evolved from being a generalist to becoming more specialized in 3D lookdev/lighting.

Senna: Closer To God

I was fortunate to be invited by Milton Menezes and Ricardo Combat to bring the visual of a completely original project from Lightfarm to life. It’s great to work at a studio that values both creative and experimental work.

Senna is a national icon who became a global legend in Formula 1, so all of our childhood memories – waking up on Sunday mornings just to watch him race – were revived by the entire project team. This is a tribute to the 30th anniversary of his passing, where we had the privilege of collaborating with the Ayrton Senna Institute to bring even more realism to the piece.

Ayrton Senna

One of the advantages of working on such a famous person was that we had a bunch of photo and video material available on the internet. So, the process was more about imitation than anything else.

Additionally, the Institute provided us with access to several real assets that our team had photographed in high definition.

Our goal was always to bring Unreal Engine as the main tool for this project. This facilitated the rigging process since we were working with a custom MetaHuman.

The entire modeling process took place in ZBrush and Blender, using a base developed by artist Diego Maricato. From there, we developed fine details of expressions using shape keys in ZBrush based on the available photos.

After the modeling, we brought the topology and UVs into the MetaHuman standard to ensure the rig worked optimally. The texturing process was done in Substance 3D Painter, using a mix of scans and pore painting. We chose to use Unreal's Path Tracer, which adds more realistic lighting bounce and the SSS random walk.

Another first for Lightfarm was working on post-production exclusively within Unreal Engine itself, without the traditional process of passes and compositing. This brought agility to the feedback rounds.

Environment 

The environment was practically a reconstruction of Monaco. We used satellite photos and some game maps to assist with blocking and building the buildings.

The 1988 McLaren was textured down to the finest details of the paint and decals. We had several rounds just to get the right shade of red. The helmet featured wear maps extracted from photos taken of the actual helmet used multiple times by Senna himself.

The race suit was built in Marvelous Designer and simulated in Houdini, with texturing focused on the badges and stitching.

As the Lookdev supervisor and the one who created most of the textures in this film, I can say that the biggest challenge was bringing a realistic and captivating look to all the elements.

Animation

The animation of the car itself was done in real-time, with another head of the studio, Ramon Saroldi, driving the McLaren like in a video game, and we captured the keyframes. It took several weeks of adaptation to replicate the same movements from that iconic lap in Monaco.

Senna's movements were captured using motion capture for most of the scenes, with traditional animation used in just a few others. The cinematography was developed by implementing dynamic cameras with blurs to convey a sense of speed and tension, along with cameras similar to TV broadcast shots and POV perspectives. For me, the mix of styles made the film even more interesting.

For the lighting, we used Unreal's built-in tools to recreate a physically accurate world where we only controlled the sun, ensuring continuity and unity across the scenes. In certain shots, like those inside the car, we used some additional lighting parented to the car itself to simulate a more realistic bounce.

In the light tunnel scenes, the lighting became surreal, and the lines of the wind tunnel served as the key light to depict the character's imagination.

Rendering

The entire film was rendered in just a few days using two RTX 4090 graphics cards. As I mentioned earlier, we used the Path Tracer for rendering, and Unreal Engine delivered beautiful frames.

We also made use of several post-production resources within Unreal, such as bloom, flare, grain, chromatic aberrations, and a light color correction to enhance the final look of the film.

Conclusion 

The project took about 5 months to complete, and the main challenge was bringing realism to a tool that was relatively new to us, such as Unreal Engine. During this project, I grew as an artist, learning from the team and, as a supervisor, sharing my knowledge.

One of the reasons for developing something like this at Lightfarm, aside from creating something original and artistic, is to develop the team and the Unreal pipeline for future projects, such as AAA game cinematics and realistic animation. We've already secured many projects thanks to this, and the trend is to grow and diversify the kinds of looks we can deliver to our clients.

Marcelo Vaz, Digital Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine