First 3D Animation Made Entirely From Water Droplets

What happens when you take half a ton of suspended water, 2,048 nozzle switches (that are millisecond accurate), a motion control rig, motion capture and large flash bulbs? The first 3D animation made entirely from water droplets!
The video was directed by Cole Paviour and produced by Unit 9 for Gatorade’s new ‘Active Water’ commercial. The vision was to capture real water droplets and simulate them in different sporting ways. This involved creating a stop-motion 3D liquid printer that took motion capture data of a person and printed it life-size frame by frame. Machine Shop built the 3D water rig and athletes were used with motion capture to simulate real-life movement.

With the water drops falling, flash lighting was then required to illuminate and “suspend” the water droplets in mid-air. Finally, our Milo motion control rig provided both the means of adding camera movement around the water animation as well as synchronising all the different elements (water, flash, camera) using our Flair software. All this had to be done with millimetre and microsecond accuracy for every single frame.
The result is a beautiful one of a kind piece, which has already won a Golden Lion at Cannes. Click below for BTS.

For more information on the Milo motion control rig, click here