Skyler Liu
Reach for the Stars,
Reach for a Coke
2025
In this project, I partnered with KitBash3D to create a short Proof of Concept for the Advertising Campaign of Coca-Cola’s new brand campaign: "Reach for the Stars, Reach for a Coke."
Softwares
Assets Source
Houdini
Nuke
After Effects
Cinema 4D
01
Concept&Storyboard
✅Plan A-Giant Coca-Cola Lift Platform
At the center of the base stands a lift platform. The platform slowly raises a bottle of Coca-Cola, as if it were undergoing a pre-launch inspection. The camera then pulls back to reveal a picture-in-picture effect, showing another bottle of Coca-Cola on the table.
Plan B-Cola Delivery
A vehicle transports an enormous bottle of Coca-Cola, but the bottle has toppled over. With a motion-cut transition, a small bottle of Coca-Cola falls onto a table, against a vast scene unfolding in the background.
02
Processing of Cola Bottle
The core of this idea lies in deconstructing the logo itself. We noticed that the Rookies “R” is composed of eight irregular geometric pieces, which became the foundation of our concept. We explored whether these eight elements could be separated so they appear like scattered components from a side view, yet align perfectly into the full “R” when seen from a specific angle.
In Cinema 4D, we should reorganize the file by connecting and deleting all component groups so that the model structure becomes as clean and clear as possible. After that, we will export the Coca-Cola bottle model in FBX format. We use FBX instead of OBJ because FBX preserves significantly more information, including materials, animations, lighting, and even camera animation, whereas OBJ retains only basic material data.
Next, we move into Houdini and open Solaris to process our FBX Coca-Cola bottle within a Component node. We separate each part of the bottle using individual Asset Reference nodes, which allows us to add details and make adjustments to each component independently.
After that, we create an asset library and assign materials to each component. Once the materials are roughly adjusted, we end up with a Coca-Cola bottle that looks generally correct but still lacks detailed refinement.
Next, we add surface details to the Coca-Cola bottle, such as scratches and condensation, and then export it as a USD file to be stored in our asset library.
Cola bottle turn table
03
Large Asset Processing
In this step, I use the Custom Component Builder template to process the large-scale models downloaded from KitBash3D. Within this template, we can create two types of variants for each asset: lighting and texture. This allows us to freely toggle the lights on or off and switch between different texture resolutions when using the asset in the future. After configuring all the parameters, we export the asset as a USD file and store it in the asset library.
04
Layout&Animation
At the center of the base stands a lift platform. The platform slowly raises a bottle of Coca-Cola, as if it were undergoing a pre-launch inspection. The camera then pulls back to reveal a picture-in-picture effect, showing another bottle of Coca-Cola on the table.
camera motion test
light render test
05
Render
06
Nuke breakdown