For the new edition of the Winamax Poker Tour 2022, Soixante-Seize got back to us, this time with a new and challenging spot for TV and Digital featuring the Poker tour online-onlive in a very special environment: the magic of the forge of a blacksmith.
A challenge that makes us grow and become, better, faster, and smarter. That would be the big title of our process.
We challenged ourselves again the software Unreal to create a very realistic blacksmith in his forge shaping the Sword that represents Winamax Epic Tour. With each hit, there is a projection of sparks representing 5 scenes explaining the Poker tour highlights. That was the second challenge, modeling and animating these scenes and then adding millions of particles that we created, and moving them as they were coming from this metallic hit.
Nevertheless, it took us a million headaches that become a very well-shaped accomplishment, and to add a bit more difficulty on top, how we would be able to integrate these 2 worlds, the realistic and the particle poker world.

We wanted a photorealistic appearance for the blacksmith. Using face and motion capture techniques, we recorded all the movements and expressions of the character with the help of an actor. With a previous clean-up, we transferred all to UNREAL ENGINE’s METAHUMAN, for 3D development.
In addition, the face was created from scratch in Character Creator, to be able to have an original character without presets from Epic games. In addition, our hero’s clothes were created by Marvelous designer to emphasize texture, quality, and realism. This helped us achieve the look we were looking for our main character and to shorten post-production times.

We started the environment process with an in-depth investigation of what a blacksmith workspace looks like. Our 3D team modelled and textured all the objects using Cinema 4D and Substance Painter. All of them were imported into Unreal Engine, to create a complete space and end up giving the last lighting touch. Finally, to give a cinematic view, fire, and smoke details were added in post-production achieving the look and feel we were looking for.

Each hit of the blacksmith, in the 5 scenes, explains the highlights of the Poker Tour in particle form.
All 3D characters were modelled and animated by our team in Cinema 4D. Sparks of fire were created using the simulation of millions of particles, synchronized with the character movement, which was done and rendered in Houdini.