Sensual CG: robots illustrate their 'feelings" through fluid movements.(Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. Lexus Div.'s advertisement)(computer graphics)

More and more, television and movie viewers have to ask themselves, is it real or is it CG playing out on the screen?

In a recent set of TV commercials for carmaker Lexus, it is quite obvious from the presentation that most, if not all, of the content is indeed digital. One 30-second spot in particular, titled "Robots," features robotic arms in a production facility gently and lovingly caressing a Lexus ES 350 in the final stages on a production line. The headlamps are fitted by a robotic arm, which lingers for a moment as it drags its "fingers" over the fender's curves. Later, a quality-check arm cannot help but pause in the middle of its programmed duties to run its feelers over the leather headrest. As the car rolls off the production line, the robots' arms can barely let go as they reach longingly for the car as it slowly pulls away. "You can't build and maneuver robots to do what we wanted them to do on a commercial budget," says Eric Barba, visual effects supervisor at Digital Domain, which completed the effects work.

In fact, with the exception of two quick shots, the entire spot is all-CG: the background (the manufacturing plant), the characters (the robotic arms), and the star (the Lexus itself). And the commercial is sparse on ad copy; only six words are uttered in the commercial: "Is it possible to engineer desire?"

As a result, executive creative director Chris Graves at Lexus' ad agency Team One Advertising relied heavily on the visuals to convey the brand's message. Thus, it was especially important that the imagery not only be drop-dead beautiful, but also carry the entire commercial. Simple? Yes. Risky? Possibly. Effective? Absolutely.

Although it is not unusual for car commercials to rely on stunning images, "Robots" differed in that the imagery was computer-generated from scratch, modeled with a variety of software, including NewTek's LightWave and Autodesk's Maya and 3ds Max, all riveted together with proprietary software.

Victor Garcia of MJZ, who is equally as savvy when it comes to CG as live action, directed the commercial. "He is very knowledgeable on both sides of post and live action, and is very much into architecture and beautiful imagery," says Barba. "His directive was to use whatever medium it took to get the story told." Using live action, however, was out of the question; the budget to build actual robots and the stylized set alone would have been prohibitive.

Instead, the environment is virtual, built based on some of the modern, stylized factories in Europe. "It's hard to believe that some of them are work spaces; they are so beautifully structured," says Barba. Next, the artists built the robots, whose movements are more sensual than the typical precise movements of industrial robots found in vehicle manufacturing plants.