V-Ray：FOLLOWTHE RABBIT INTO AN AIRBNB VR EXPERIENCE BY BIPOLAR STUDIO

V-Ray：FOLLOWTHE RABBIT INTO AN AIRBNB VR EXPERIENCE BY BIPOLAR STUDIO

Findout how they made that incredible rabbit, and the role V-Ray playedin making virtual apartments look real

Developedby VR master BipolarStudio,Follow the Rabbit employs a CG bunny to take the viewer from a lazymorning in a classy Barcelona apartment to the day’s end at acomfortable family home in Sicily, via Auckland, San Francisco, andCape Town.

UsingVR to build the experience is genius marketing move which helps sellthe unique Airbnb experience of staying in someone’s home. It helpsthat Bipolar Studio has shown painstaking attention to detail, usingprops, lighting, weather, sounds, and music to give a very realsense of time and place in a virtual world.

BipolarStudio's managing partner David Karapetyan told us aboutcreating this city-hopping tour.

Youworked out the concept for this project. What did you want toconvey?

Themain thing we pinned on the board when we started concepting ideaswas the feeling that time flows faster when we travel. 

Wealso wanted to highlight that one of the unique things about Airbnbis that you’re staying in someone’s home. Just by looking at thesigns of life, you can do some detective work around who lives there,and we brought this into the concept. If you look all around in 360,there are lots of details that give us these hints.


Whatmakes BiPolar Id different to other studios?

Weare a small but capable team that can crunch out big work. One of thebiggest differences is that we do everything in house. We’re superobsessive about pushing every little detail to maximum quality withour unique internal approach to CGI. We love working on ideas andbringing them to life, and we hope that this care shows in the finalwork.

Whatmakes you different in your VR work? 

Weliterally do everything in a VR headset from making eggs in themorning to taking a shower with it. Actually, none of us have seeneach other outside the VR world.

Just kidding! Tomake a VR project there has to be a strong unified involvement fromthe creative to the execution. We keep harmony between the creativeand technical sides, so that both are very strong, but don’t get ineach other's way. Being a single but efficient team is what makes usdifferent.

“We also strap EEG neuro headsets onpeople to map their engagement for R&D purposes. That helps ustoo.

Wepay attention to every element from the scale, down to the materialsof the objects based on distance from the viewer, where the lightfalls, the art direction and the colors.”

DavidKarapetyan, Bipolar Studio

VRexperiences are a little different to a more straightforward video.How do you plan them out, and what additional elements do you have toconsider?

Thisis a great question that people don’t spend much time thinkingabout. Our spatial experience is very different in VR than in 2D. Ifyou’ve seen a set in VR, you can quickly interpret everything aboutit. That’s because we associate and remember the VR setting as ifwe had actually been there. So when we start to design a setting, wethink of everything about the geography of it. We pay attention toevery element from the scale, down to the materials of the objectsbased on distance from the viewer, where the light falls, the artdirection, and the colors. It’s completely made as a VR experience.

Therabbit is the star of the show. How did you create it?

Wewanted to create a very realistic bunny, so we thought it would be agood idea to start with the skeleton for anatomical proportionalaccuracy. We spent a lot of time working on the fur — the finalbunny was probably version 30. We didn’t have a real bunny forpersonality and characteristics reference, so we watched every bunnyvideo on YouTube we could find. We might have even kicked some ofthose videos to the trending category.

We then tookthe videos we liked and edited them together into a single flow forthe bunny, and started to hand animate the character. You don’tfully see the bunny until the end, but when you do there is a lot ofdetail and realism. You can see the individual hairs on the fur, thewhiskers, and even the veins inside the ears when the sun backlightsit. It was a fun process for us.

“V-Rayfor 3ds Max saved us here. It was the only renderer that could handlea big 360° scene with lots of light refractions, and a characterwith fur, and not sacrifice the render speed.”David Karapetyan,Bipolar Studio

Howdid V-Ray help you realize your vision?

Thiswas a challenging project for any renderer. We needed everything torender as fast as possible, but we had complex light refractionshappening with the environment and the character’s fur. And we hadto render in 4K for VR, which is already four times slower than atraditional 2D format.

V-Rayfor 3ds Max savedus here. It was the only renderer that could handle a big 360° scenewith lots of light refractions and a character with fur, and notsacrifice the render speed. With any other renderer it would havetaken at least double the time we needed to render it, and that'smassive in a 4K scene with 1800 frame length! We could not have doneit with any other renderer. We are thankful for the amazing support,and we are all big fans of V-Ray.