Nuii began as a fifteen-second in-house spec piece, built to show off an ice cream’s indulgent ingredients through dramatic CGI. It also gave Frantic a reason to put Cinema 4D’s revamped liquids system through its paces on a deliberately difficult material.
Food and drink is one of the most rewarding categories for CGI. It offers total control over something a live shoot struggles to direct: the exact moment chocolate cools, the precise way caramel ripples, a flawless packshot with no melting clock running. Nuii set out to prove that control on the most tempting subject available.
The challenge chosen was rich, viscous melted chocolate, complete with textured inclusions such as whole hazelnuts. The material was picked specifically to push the solver’s realism and stress its handling of complex, layered detail.
The film opens with molten chocolate flowing thick and slow, its surface tension and weight carefully simulated to mimic real-world behaviour. Getting a high-viscosity liquid to move with that kind of weight, while carrying solid inclusions like hazelnuts through the flow, is one of the harder asks of any simulation system.
As the chocolate cools it solidifies into a glossy shell that reveals the complete ice cream. A dramatic shatter then breaks the shell apart to expose a layered interior: ripples of golden caramel, more chocolate, and creamy core textures that signal indulgence and depth. Each layer was textured and lit to look as good as the finished product promises.
The whole composition then reassembles itself with cinematic flair, converging into a clean, elegant packshot. Choreographing a shatter and a reverse rebuild so both feel natural took as much attention as the flow that came before it.
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Tom Ralls, Motion Lead, Frantic
As an in-house test, the value is twofold. The piece sharpened Frantic’s command of a new simulation toolset on a genuinely demanding material, lessons that carry straight into commissioned food and drink work.
It also stands as a self-contained showcase of appetite-led CGI, the kind of craft any brand with an indulgent product, from confectionery to desserts to drinks, can picture for itself.
