I was very fortunate to have been able to work on such an important piece in the gaming community. I am and have always been a hardcore gamer, so I found this especially exciting to see the NEW XBOX before the rest of the world. We unfortunately were unable to get any kind of prototype or good stills of the product before we began because Microsoft was still working out the details, so we just took some artistic liberty on what the materials actually were.
I was responsible for lighting and shading. I created a light rig in Maya and VRay which I then included in 4 different Template files. Those files included a unique light setup for each product and a light setup for the environment. They also included all the render layers, naming conventions, render settings, etc. So all I had to do was pop open the env file, reference in the product I wanted, reposition a few lights a little to work for the camera angle, and send it to the farm. All the background panels were controlled completely in comp to match the music and because we were getting the game footage a few days before delivery. So I rendered out UV Maps, light panels on and off, separate reflection passes for each panel, and their light contributions separately in each scene. It was a really fun and straight forward project to work on, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
