Glassworks, a London post-production house, has recently completed work on a commercial for American car legend Cadillacs new Escalade sports utility vehicle. The commercial showcases Glassworks skills in 3D modeling and animation in some explosive action sequences during a high-speed chase with missiles. The smoke effects were created using Glassworks' own smoke effect plugin which was integrated into Mental Images' Mental Ray. The plugin has the capability of adding an unlimited amount of smoke trails to any 3D scene and can be fine-tuned to create a precise look. The smoke plugin accurately represents the convection, billowing and expansion of smoke using many millions of implicit particles, explains Peter Reilly, member of the Glassworks research and development team. Light can penetrate through the smoke giving it nice halo effect when backlit. As the smoke is raytraced it interacts fully with the scene. Its visible in reflections, it casts shadows, occludes objects and allows the camera to pass through it. The realism this effect gives has allowed us to produce impressive results and achieve a highly sophisticated overall look to the project. The commercial aired on April 6, 2001 in the U.S.
