SHEBA® Hope Reef

Made up of three complex-CG environments, based on low-res footage of the reef in its early growth stage and working with leading coral biologist Professor David Smith. The 90-second film follows the journey of a tropical Chromis fish from tragedy to hope as it weaves through an area of the Indo-Pacific, passing over a devastated coral reef and on towards a healthy reef bed, which serves as a bittersweet reminder of what’s at stake. In the final act, we see the Chromis encounter ‘Hope Reef’ a man-made coral reef, carefully planted to spell out the word ‘H-O-P-E’, which sits at the heart of the  SHEBA® brand’s mission to support vital reef-growing projects and marks the start of the world’s largest coral reef restoration program. The final reveal of the HOPE reef was based on drone footage from the actual location, but showcases what the reef will look like in five years when the coral has fully re-grown.

Due to the pandemic, filming Hope Reef in real life was out of the question, and that's where Framestore’s experience and elegant solution came in. When Framestore pitched to work on the project it was clear to AMV BBDO and Mars Incorporated that they were uniquely placed to showcase an underwater ecosystem on an unprecedented scale.

This initiative was underpinned by the know-how of Framestore's VFX Supervisor, Grant Walker, and Framestore's CG Supervisor, Hernan Llano, who also happened to study biology at university before becoming a VFX artist. Alongside the creation and animation of the photo-real schools of fish seen teeming in the verdant coral, the team proved they could actually grow corals in real-time for the scenes and keep them stable.

“The coral was something that we talked about extensively in the early pitch meetings. We knew we could demonstrate stylised time-lapsed growing sequences, which is something that I hadn’t seen anyone do before, especially at scale and with the amount of scientific detail we could create at Framestore. I knew we had a unique proposition.” said Walker.

Working collaboratively, Framestore Pictures’ Director Butler, and Framestore’s VFX team got to work on the creative vision for the piece and the intense task of bringing the campaign to life technically and narratively. The whole team discussed early on that it was important to them that they captured the balance between the environmental message and the stunning visuals, so they worked in tandem to realise this. 

Although there are plenty of ways to create geometry that grows in coral shapes, the team needed to replicate specific species using Houdini. Everything they meticulously created in CG and then added to the reef environment including the Chromis fish, grouper, and all the other marine life encountered in the film including the mosses and sediment had to be approved by specially appointed scientist Professor David Smith, before being green-lit for the spot. “Nature is extremely complex and we can't fully replicate its behaviour, so we needed to come up with smart approximations and develop very specific setups that will give us similar shapes and textures to how corals look when they are fully grown, and how they look through their growing process.” said Llano. 

“This is about growing coral reefs and restoring the ocean - and my goal was to show viewers what that looks like in a way that they can't possibly see, even when filming nature in a time-lapse," said Walker. "With this campaign we were able to lift the lid on nature and take everything away that would hinder the spectacle of watching it evolve, and in my mind this is exactly what CG should be used for.”

The biggest challenge that the team faced was being able to display and render all the geometry including the huge amount of polygons, points and assets. In one shot alone the team had over eight million individual assets. “Almost everything in the ocean scenes is procedurally generated by our artists using Houdini," said Walker. "We could create multiple versions of the same asset so we built, reseeded and grew as many iterations of the same coral as we wanted, but in unique structures, and that's how we ended up building such a huge landscape with very few duplicate assets.”

Remarkably, everything in the scene was alive and moved in time with a velocity field, a simulation system which Framestore’s VFX team also created in Houdini. If a large species of CG fish swam through the middle of it, the velocity field would react, sending a ripple effect out, and just like in real life this would cause everything in the scene to act appropriately. For efficiency all the look dev including the blue of the sea, the volumetric lighting of the sun rays peeking through the ocean, the foggy haze in the distance, and details like the particulate plankton glimmering across the ocean was done in Nuke, in their compositing tool. 

“How colour reacts within a body of water was the key. Grant and the team strived to ensure the foreground action was a true colour balance, with colours fading the further we travelled away from the lens," commented Framestore’s colourist Steffan Perry. "I helped further this principle in the grade. We also wanted to try to ensure the sunlight hitting the top of the water had separation as we travelled lower to the seabed.” 

Photorealistic animation was essential to the work and the animation team built a library of keyframed actions from locomotion to nuanced behavioral performance. “These were used to initially populate shots, then the animation was polished and tailored to that shots requirements,” added Framestore’s Animation Supervisor, Jed Fisher. “Working this way allowed the animation team to maintain high standards whilst also being adaptable to creative changes."

Directed by Butler, a seasoned director with a background in both live-action and CG, the film needed to be powerful enough to create a call-to-action. Especially as the reef and accompanying campaign has been designed to inspire people to take action to restore coral reefs. “We have a marvelous strength within our VFX team at Framestore to create really powerful images that no one else can, and for me this project was about how I could leverage our talent and represent it in the best way, whilst telling this compelling story.” said Butler. 

Butler worked closely with Walker to study how to make the underwater cameras feel natural and ensure that the fish and corals were behaving naturally within the camera shots. “It’s important to have the discipline not to make a move that feels like a fake CG move. We spent a lot of time taking anything out that was behaving differently to real life," commented Butler. "For example, if a certain species wouldn’t naturally drift that far up from a coral into view it was removed from the shot.”

The environmental aspect was a real motivator for the whole team. “It gave everyone an extra impetus to really push the envelope of what’s possible with the technology, and we’re all really proud of what we’ve achieved, but as a director to be able to have that much level of detail in every frame was jaw-dropping," said Butler. "The VFX team worked immensely hard to create that level of quality.”

The kind of attention to detail that the whole team put into each element of this campaign is a masterclass in CG, and the ground-breaking VFX work is a joy to behold. Using the coordinates shown in the closing titles you can explore Hope Reef on Google Maps for yourself, which makes this project all the more inspiring. 

The SHEBA Hope Reef Brings Hope To Coral Reefs Everywhere—You Can Help Too - FORBES

Why Sheba Is Regrowing Its Own Coral Reef - AdWeek

SHEBA® unveils Hope Reef: World's Largest Coral Restoration Program Announced - PR Newswire

Framestore Creates Stunning CG Underwater Environment - Computer Graphics World

Hope Grows: The Underwater Visual Wizardry Behind SHEBA’s Hope Reef - Little Black Book