Saudi Motorsport and Extreme E, being all about their carbon footprint and sustainable values, knew that The Berry Boys were the perfect directors to bring a future-thinking approach to this exciting project.

The VFX + CGI team at The Berry supported the creative vision of The Berry Boys, to create a photoreal CGI film, that looks as if it was shot on location in Neom, Saudi Arabia!

The Berry’s ‘post-first’ approach avoided the need for a large crew with filming vehicles / equipment / flights… etc… ensuring the production was fully sustainable and delivered breathtaking, top quality visuals and high-speed, racing action.

The Berry’s VFX team created a stunning photo-realistic CGI film, that not only showcases the thrill of Extreme E racing but also highlights the beauty of Saudi Arabia’s Neom desert. The aim was to transform the desolate desert into a lush landscape full of life and to make every frame from the film look like a cinematic painting.

To achieve this, the team went for a warm, sunset/sunrise aesthetic, by replicating natural lens flares… almost as if it was shot for real during magic hour 😉

All CG animations were rendered using Redshift’s GPU-accelerated biased renderer.

As desert racing is famous for its rocky terrains and bumpy rides, it was important that the CG Extreme E race car, was rigged appropriately to interact with the uneven terrain.

So, with this being the case, The Berry created a dynamic and physically accurate car rig, which could be simulated to react with suspension, no matter what obstacles the car would be presented with. This meant no manual keyframing animations was needed, instead, the Berry team could essentially hit ‘play’ on their simulation and watch the XE car move. A steering controller function was also added, meaning the car could be steered very easily… by simply moving a mouse cursor.

The environment was created starting from a simple plane geometry, with noise modifiers to produce dune-like bumps and wind-swept caverns. Rocky canyons, sandstone ridges and grass elements from Quixel Bridge’s Megascans library were used for the photo-realistic environmental elements in each scene. 3D Quaker’s Forester plugin was also used to scatter general grass and trees in to fill the gaps and ultimately tie everything together.

Sand simulations were created in Houdini, which allowed The Berry to create physically accurate simulations of how the sand would emit from the tires and scatter in the air with wind turbulence. On top of this, The Berry created generated tire markings on the desert surface, which visualises the car’s interaction on the ground.

Adapting an existing 3D model file of the Extreme E race car, The Berry designed bespoke liveries to texture the Saudi Motorsport Company & Extreme E branded cars.

As well as this the team were also able to perfectly replicate McLaren’s already existing Neom XE car livery with an uncanny result.

Sand, dirt and surface imperfection maps were also designed as an extra final layer, to give the cars an authentic seasoned racing look, which convincingly blended them into the CG desert environments.