This Weird Naked Vehicle Rig Can Mimic Almost Any Car Through Mechanical And CGI Trickery

The Mill 'Blackbird' may look like a giant Tamiya RC car with no shell, but it's actually a very clever platform which is intended to make shooting car adverts much, much easier

Matt Robinson

24 Jun 2016

If you’re going to shoot a car advert, you’d think the actual car would top the list of things you’ll need to proceed. But, that’s not necessarily the case thanks to this electric-powered filming rig from a company called Mill. You can extend and reduce the width and the length, swap the wheels and play around with the suspension geometry so it behaves - according to the company - like whatever car you’re supposed to be shooting. It even mimics the right body movements for gear changes. A realistic CGI ‘shell’ is overlaid, and boom: your subject is in the video despite the fact it actually isn’t.

When you think about it, the concept makes a lot of sense. Getting hold of brand new models for adverts isn’t always going to be easy, something that this rig solves. Plus, you could easily update an older advert to a refreshed model or even an all-new one.

What the company doesn’t mention is if the drive layout can be changed. Indeed, the promo video above shows a very front-wheel drive Chevrolet Aveo doing smoky drifts…

Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.

Comments

Wow! Imagine the Fast and Furious movies and cars… suddenly every FWD car goes sideways. And crashing Bugattis in Dubai… :/

Its the Matrix all over again

Lets see it simulate an alfa or an austin

Wait the BlackBird is a FWD or RWD or AWD?

It’s all. Electric motor on each wheel

Aside from the wheel base that change, there is no advantages of using this thing.
If they can generate a body over that, they have no problem doing it over another car!

And since they are aiming at auto manufacturer, it makes even less sense… I’m pretty sure they can have a car with similar dimensions and behaviour (like the previous version of the new model?) for a fraction of the price of that thing.
They even show it in their video, a c6 being turned into a c7!
Hell, in their promotion video they show a hyundai being turned into an aston martin!

The 360 camera on the top record environment then map it to 3d which make doing CGI 1000 times easier, with all those data job that would take weeks could be done in a few hours.