SWAY Studio, one of the top visual effects shops in North America, utilized NVIDIA Quadro technology in a TV commercial for General Mills Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal commercial. For the commercial, SWAY suggested to General Mills that photo-realism should be used to recreate a piece of cereal as it tumbles from the cereal box, lands in a bowl, is doused with milk, swirls around in the bowl, and is scooped up by a spoon. The computer-generated imagery transitions into a live action shot as the spoon and cereal enter the young girl’s mouth. Due to the viewer’s close proximity to the cereal bowl, it was necessary for SWAY to recreate each cereal piece in detail. From the individual cinnamon and sugar crystals covering each piece, to the CG milk, the sequence demanded that huge amounts of geometric data (several million polygons) be displayed

CG cinnamon sugar cereal pieces with CG milk.

SWAY utilized NVIDIA Quadro graphics coupled with the following software solutions: Autodesk 3ds Max, The Chaos Group’s V-Ray, and modo from Luxology. Real Flow 4, a fluids and dynamics simulation tool, also played a major role in simulating the dynamics for the tumbling cereal and the fluid dynamics used to create the milk. Without NVIDIA technology, scenes involving heavy geometric data would have been logistically impractical. NVIDIA’s graphics technology allowed SWAY to work with large amounts of data with relative ease.

CG transformed into a live shot of cereal entering girl's mouth.

Mark Glaser, Owner and Creative Director of SWAY Studio stated: “NVIDIA graphics allow us, as CG pros, the confidence to tackle any project that comes our way, especially those as highly involved and detailed as the General Mills CTC commercial.”

For more information about SWAY Studio, please visit www.swaystudio.com.