Incredible Mechanics
A stereoscopic 360° film for Roger Dubuis, built as one continuous camera move through their watch calibers.
A single-shot 360° journey inside Roger Dubuis mechanisms
For Roger Dubuis, I directed and handled the art direction of a stereoscopic 360° film built around their watch calibers. I worked with the brand creative director and proposed a two-minute single-shot animation: one smooth continuous camera movement through a fully 3D world, with the mechanisms assembling around the viewer.
That format made the project unusually demanding. In a 360° film, the viewer can look anywhere, so there is no off-screen space to hide unfinished elements or convenient transitions. Every part had to appear, move and disappear intentionally, while the camera kept guiding attention from one piece of the caliber to the next.
Designing the film as a precise storyboard
I started from the real 3D models of the watch mechanisms and built the storyboard around the key camera angles, reveals and mechanical moments. To make the images quick to read, I rendered the 3D assets as sketches in Cinema 4D, using advanced custom Sketch and Toon shaders.
Jerome Levilly then reworked the frames in Photoshop to illustrate the lighting intentions. The result was a precise and polished storyboard that made the structure of the film easy to validate before we moved into the full 360° production.
Building the 3D watch calibers
We built the shaders and materials for three calibers from scratch, using photographic references from the real watches. Every surface had to respect the level of finishing Roger Dubuis applies to the physical mechanisms, from the metals and bevels to the way light catches the smallest parts.
To handle the hundreds of components without manually unwrapping every piece, I created custom Arnold shaders that could procedurally map radial gradients and noise across the model. That setup generated the brushed metallic surfaces directly in shading, while keeping the assets flexible enough to update during production.
The red energy flux
I developed the red energy flux that became the main visual element of the film. It was built as a fully procedural Arnold shader, giving the effect a rich illuminated look while keeping the underlying geometry simple enough to art direct.
I created one continuous spline setup that runs across the full two minutes of the film. Those 3D curves guided the energy from mechanism to mechanism, shaping its trajectory and helping the viewer follow the assembly of the calibers in stereoscopic depth.
Rigging real mechanical movement
Donald Simonet developed a custom Cinema 4D plugin tailored to the project. With Jerome, we spent a lot of time rigging the actual watch mechanisms end to end, so the gears and components could move in a realistic and automated way.
The whole mechanism could be driven from a single speed parameter, while still letting us animate individual parts in 3D space for the component reveals without breaking the rig. At that time, it was a very ambitious setup for our hardware and software, especially with the final film rendered as a stereoscopic 360° experience. I also forked a custom camera shader to enable proper stereoscopic rendering with C4DtoA and Arnold inside Cinema 4D.
Still images
Credits
Roger Dubuis
- Creative Direction
- Alvaro Maggini
- Art Direction
- Cédric Zangrilli
- Production
- Lotfi Oulebsir
Sound Design
- Obny
Point Flottant Studio
- Direction & Art Direction
- Mattias Peresini
- Storyboarding, Camera & 360° Design
- Mattias Peresini
- 3D Animation
- Mattias PeresiniDonald Simonet
- Rigging & Custom C4D Tools
- Donald SimonetJerome LevillyMattias Peresini
- 3D Modeling / Mapping
- Jerome Levilly
- Shading
- Jerome LevillyMattias Peresini
- Stereoscopic Rendering & Compositing
- Mattias Peresini
