To launch the all, new Holden Colorado we put it through its paces in an abandoned sports complex. A call is received, ‘Quick we need your Colorado’. The driver responds to the call, surging through the rough terrain and derelict stadium until he reaches his main challenge. A coach’s three quarter time address seems to seep from the stadium walls. It’s as if the Colorado is channelling the coaching greats. With a roar, the mighty, all new dual cab Holden Colorado drags the tip truck loose from the bogged crater. Our driver has turned certain adversity into memorable triumph.

The visual effects mission on the Holden Colorado spot is easy to sum up. Take footage of a car driving in a muddy quarry and simply replace the quarry with a stadium that's being demolished.

Easy to say, hard to do.

We started by building a full 3d stadium so the camera was free to point in any direction. Because so much extra debris, wreckage and detail had to be added to make it look half-destroyed, this ended up being the largest digital asset we ever created. Just loading the stadium into memory was a challenge, let alone texturing, lighting and rendering it in VRay.

From here selected sections were then rigged for destruction by building extra internal geometry, which was then sent to the physics simulation plugin Digital Molecular Matter. This collapse simulation data in turn was fed into FumeFX to create the billowing clouds of dust that spilled out from the rubble.

Digital extras populate the stands driven by mocap data and matte paintings were used in a few key shots to create the world beyond the stadium and extra details in the bleachers where needed.