MainFrame was commissioned to create a concept film for Pratt & Whitney to demonstrate the GTF engine. I once again had the pleasure to be able to work on it. I was responsible for the metal crystal formation and the rope simulation shots. All built in Maya and rendered in V-Ray.
Link to full project Below
https://www.behance.net/gallery/84502057/GTF-Features-%28Development%29
This film for Pratt & Whitney involved creating abstract representations of the features that collectively make up the Geared Turbofan engine. Key features included strength, weight, heat resistance and durability.
All visuals were produced in-house at Mainframe North, with MASH getting heavy billing Other tools used include nCloth to inflate fan blades, nHair for twisting ropes and Maya Fluids for a layered smoke simulation. The shots were then textured and rendered in V-Ray and composited in After Effects.
Lightweight
One of the many tasks was to convey the lightweight aluminium construction of the fan blades. Pratt & Whitney were looking for a more whimsical approach here, resulting in us inflating a model of the fan blade. This was produced using Maya's nCloth to control the different parts of the inflation process.
Metal Crystals
The GTF turbine blades are grown from a single metal crystal. This makes for an extremely strong and heatproof blade capable of withstanding temperatures "hotter than volcanic lava".
Taking the volcanic theme further we animated a high number of platonics scaling up around the 3d mesh of the turbine. The shot was set up procedurally using one master ramp to animate the scale and colour of each platonic giving us a lot of creative control to go back and make adjustments as required.
3:1 Reduction Gear
The Fan Drive Gear System creates a 3 to 1 ratio between the core and the Fan Blades. We decided to use ropes twisting as a visual representation for the different speeds of the gears. Here we used Maya's nHair tool, where dynamic splines where constrained to the outer rim of the rotating gear system. As the gear system rotates, the ropes tighten at different rates.
