This project began in 2023 as a small assignment from Bacon Oslo for Volkswagen Norway, commemorating 75 years of safety on their cars. They needed the ID3, ID4, ID5, and IDbuzz models (purchased from 3D Squir) to be digitally added to real footage shot on a Norwegian countryside road. On the day of the shooting, the weather was terrible, so we ended up creating the full environment too and rendering the whole shot in Unreal Engine. Recently, in an attempt to tidy up my old projects, I decided to improve the cars and create an environment that matched the weather of that shooting day. I took advantage of the latest Unreal features, such as Nanite for foliage, PCG for generating the forest layout, Substrate for the cars’ shader with the water droplets, as well as the improvements in ray-traced reflections, Lumen, and Ultra Dynamic Sky. Last but not least, I had a go with the Virtual Camera Actor and used my phone to walk around the cars.

The original film:

My short film: