California Lottery strikes gold with magical CG spot

This magical world for the California Lottery, created by Psyop, is packed with over 50 lucky icons from cultures around the world. "We received pretty comprehensive boards from creative agency David & Goliath - the idea being to create a world of luck," says Psyop director and designer David Chontos.

"We aimed to create a place where all of the luckiest objects and characters lived - a place for the leprechauns to go and hang out after work. We designed and created the environment and characters and were responsible for the entire CG production. We used a combination of Maya, ZBrush, Arnold and Nuke to get the models looking right. Some of the effects were accomplished using Houdini and RealFlow.

"The overall goal was to build a frozen moment in time where you could witness a fluid chain of events unfold," Chontos explains. "But when the world is static like that, the misplacement of even a blade of grassbecomes far more obvious than if it’s animated and blowing in the wind. A lot of attention to detail was required in the modelling, layout and texturing phases.

"Creating, styling, and rendering all of the hair for nine unique characters was also a challenge but our character TD, Victor Garza, skilfully groomed each one using Shave and a Haircut in Maya," he continues. "The grooming and styling tools were perfect for the level of detail we required, and it rendered beautifully using Arnold shaders."

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