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

sorry, but the silencerz beaten you already

Where can I get one of these?!

Isnt that a Sonic? Not an Aveo?

The coolest part is how they are using the chrome and flat spheres on the corners of the car to calibrate the reflections & lighting on the rendering; the camera can map the spheres in 3D and then correlate the surface plane to the light intensity value, and then apply that calibration to the 3D model of the car and bam, perfect lighting & reflectiveness.

From reading Youtube comment, I feel like a lot of people don’t understand this part and though that this car is useless, I guess only people who work with CGI will understand how cost and time effective this car is.