A Universal Studios commercial by Pixeldust: CGI test-dummy heads composited onto live actors, reacting to the park's newest rides.
What is the best way to prove a vacation is thrilling? Put the experts on the rides. For Universal Orlando Resort’s “Testing the Limits of Vacation Thrills,” actors dressed as crash-test dummies, the TIMs, took on the park’s newest attractions, from the VelociCoaster to Hagrid’s coaster. Their reactions were the whole point of the campaign, and test dummies don’t have faces.
Pixeldust gave them one, replacing every practical helmet with a CGI dummy head that gasps, laughs and talks through each drop. The commercial went on to air during the 2022 Super Bowl and the 2022 Olympics.
How the dummies came alive
The dummies’ heads started in Autodesk Maya, where Pixeldust built a super-detailed 3D test-dummy helmet with a full range of intricate facial expressions. The same design was 3D printed, fitted with tracking markers and worn by the actors on site, then replaced in post with the CGI head, animated to capture each actor’s emotion and dialogue.
The first and most essential step was to seamlessly 3D-track every practical helmet with Foundry Nuke’s 3D object tracking. Shots of actors on roller coasters, like the VelociCoaster, needed micro-tracking with additional setups, and mirroring the camera data inside Nuke for every plate gave the 3D helmets an exact match.
The TIMs don’t just ride, they react out loud. Pixeldust animated their lip sync in Autodesk Maya as they voiced their thrills, working from the provided footage plus in-house reference videos of our own artists to capture every priceless expression, with a robust facial rig giving the animators efficient control.
Our VFX Supervisor captured 360° HDRs on site, using rigs built to record the environment while the rides were in motion. That data became image-based lighting for rendering the helmets in Redshift inside Maya, chosen for its GPU speed and lighting quality, so every light and reflection matches. Every helmet was then composited in Nuke over the original plates, the toolset Pixeldust has trusted for live-action CGI for years.
Stills
