Pedro Conti kept it simple in this video for Brazilian rapper Emicida’s “Acabou, mas tem…” Find out how V-Ray for 3ds Max’s features helped realize the project.
When we last spoke to freelance director and 3D artist Pedro Conti, he told us about his desire to work with Brazilian rapper Emicida. Now, that dream has come true with his music video for “Acabou, mas tem…” (“It’s over, but…”). Started as a lockdown project, the video uses toy-like models and animation to tell a simple but powerful story that we can all relate to.
Fresh from the release of the video, we spoke to Pedro about working with Emicida to create it, how he found creative solutions to self-imposed limitations, and how V-Ray for 3ds Max’s lights, cameras, and materials helped bring the concept to life.
Could you tell us about how you worked with Emicida to come up with the concept?
Pedro Conti: Emicida and I met five years ago when I had the chance to do a 3D print of him. We have often talked about collaborating, and during the pandemic, he sent me his song “Acabou, mas tem…” and told me he was hoping to do an animation project with it. A few years later, we ended up reconnecting about this topic since he was about to release the song. We didn't have much time to produce the video, so we had to come up with a simple yet strong idea that would look beautiful — and hit the deadline.
Where did you look for inspiration?
PC: I had been working on this idea as a personal project for quite some time, based on a poem I wrote during the pandemic.
A person in a boat was a great metaphor for everything we lived through — when you observe the world around you, you can see things from some sort of distance. When Emicida contacted me, he didn’t have a clear idea of what to do, so I suggested that we take this character as someone who is watching the world move around him. I also said that to make this film, we would not have to make him move much. These limitations inspired us to come up with creative solutions and find ways to make it dynamic with editing, camera, and cinematography techniques.
What did you have to consider when modeling the assets?
PC: Diego Maia was the co-director of the film. He has a 2D background, and we thought it would be really cool to mix the techniques. We were mainly aiming for 3D models for foreground elements and 2D for background mixed with some 3D too. So we made everything near the camera look as good as possible while out-of-focus elements were illustrated. As a result, the video looks complex and dynamic.
The materials look super realistic here. How did you get them right?
PC: I'm really enjoying V-Ray, and I've been able to create so much lately. I think to get beautiful images, it's a mix of different things: art direction, materials, lighting, and choosing great angles. Filmic tone mapping is such a big part of making the renders look really good.
On the materials side, we used lots of V-Ray Blend Materials to create wear, dust, etc. One curious thing about this project is most of the elements were textured in a very procedural way. We didn’t paint assets individually, and I tried to treat the scene as a whole and not break things down into props. That really sped up the process and helped create materials that could be used in different elements. And by using V-Ray Dirt as a mask, we could minimize the amount of materials we needed, but still make them look specific and unique.
How did you set up the lights and camera to get that small-scale feel?
PC: I tried to set things up as if I was working with a real maquette. The character is around 10 centimeters tall, which really helped with the lighting and camera behavior. I used a single lighting setup and adjusted its colors and placement depending on the sequence. Other than that, the lighting was quite simple, and the setup worked pretty much for all the shots. I didn't do much shot work unless it was for a very specific shot.
Tell us a little bit about compositing the project.
PC: The cool thing about this project was that I barely composited the shots. We had around 75 shots to produce, and I managed to get it done myself in terms of rendering. I love using V-Ray color adjustments; they really helped me to get the scene pretty much done. The only work on comp was to run a little denoiser, and boom! Job done. Some scenes required extra care in terms of compositing, like the shot where we go from the main environment down to the heart — here, we comped two different shots into one.
How did you render the project?
PC: The project was rendered online at Rebus Farm. Some shots were rendered locally, but everything worked pretty smoothly during production.
What was the biggest challenge here, and how did you overcome it?
PC: It was tricky to come up with creative solutions to tell the story and keep it interesting. So editing was definitely a big challenge, but an enjoyable part of it. More than half of the film was created directly in 3D without storyboards, which was an exciting way to express ideas. V-Ray was involved from the first day of production to prototype what the film could be. So more and more, I love the possibility of using 3D as a pre-production tool. I liked figuring out the camera, too — it’s not easy to come up with different ideas on the same set, but it was an interesting exercise.
How was the project received?
PC: It was amazing! First and foremost, collaborating with Emicida was an amazing opportunity. He is such a relevant artist in the Brazilian industry, and he loved the film. We released the film recently, and it attracted over one million views. Animated music videos aren’t too common here, but people love it. It's a good contribution to the Brazilian industry and a way to inspire more people to do animation.
What are you working on next?
PC: This music video was a fun opportunity to explore some ideas I've been digging into, and it really inspired me to keep creating. So I'm back on track with some projects I’ve been exploring: short films and mixing music, poetry, and animation. I'll share more about how I’ve been working!
