Gorilla Energy Drinks Commercial

In 2019, I was tasked with creating the effect of a sports arena packed with spectators for a Gorilla energy drink commercial. Extras were used for part of the crowd during the shoot, but achieving the required scale meant adding several thousand more people digitally.

Here is the final result:

For the wide shots, I used fully CG characters. The models were created in Fuse and animated in Mixamo, then refined in Blender and replicated with variations in Houdini. In total, 3,399 CG characters were used in the shots.

Camera tracking was done in Blender. I used Octane Render for Houdini to render the CG elements and After Effects for compositing.

For the medium shots, we used specially shot footage of extras seated in the stands.