Beats Wireless Headphones

In Tech

3D Modeling and animation of Beats by Dre wireless headphones

Using Lightwave 3D, 3DCoat and Blackmagic’s Fusion 8 compositing software; we were able to produce this animated sequence of the Beats Wireless Headphones.

We wanted to give the animation a fluid-like flow, where pieces of the earmuff would join together to become on complete fabric, conforming to the boundaries of the other earpiece housing.

The fluid theme continues when the slider frame forms and binds with the headband.

It was all modeled in Lightwave 3d (2015.3) with texturing done in Lightwave and 3DCoat. We built the whole headset first using the sub-d modeling process in LW (with separate objects for the earcup and driver housing) and then broke the earmuff fabric into segments.

Using bones, we unwrapped each piece and then animated them rebuilding in sequence.

For the cutaway shot, we used a clipmap attached to the earpiece textures, set to dissolve based on the distance from a null. Moving the null closer to the object resulted in the earpiece looking like it was building in a fluid-like motion.

Most shots were sent to GarageFarm.net and rendered out as multi-layered .exr files.

For depth of field, we rendered out a fog pass and then comped in Fusion using the DepthBlur node.