1923 TREE CONSTRUCTION (Completed 2022)
1923 Acacia tree construction. Play me.
Our metal tree plan with branch placements for greens and fabricators.
1923 Acacia tree construction.
Lidar scan of Acacia. We used Z-brush to rebuild the point cloud. Now Rhino 8 will come prebuilt with point cloud reducion and shrink wrap!
My grasshopper algorithm in all its glory!
Close up on former. Each piece was cnc'd with notation. The square notches held rebar bar. Once I ironed out all the kinks in the algorithm I could make an entire branch in minutes.
Close up of a branch with interlocking formers.
Early days, the base was reinforced with rebar and square tubing.
When fully constructed, the tree would weigh many tonnes and require extreme rigidity. Thus we created the cross-platform foundation.
In terms of sheer engineering I must say I admire trees more than ever before.
Finnaly in studio. The fabricators filled the used a combintation of urethane and concrete texture stamping to get the bark to match the hero Acacia tree.
The tree had a diameter of nearly 17 M and a height of roughly 9 M.
Greens spent several days getting the Acacia to match.
Final tree ready for shoot.
Can you spot the difference.
Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer in the tree.
Brandon Sklenar and Julia Schlaepfer in a . . . "action" sequence.
While lions and hyena's prowl below.
Alls well that ends well. Proud to have been a part of this series.
1923 TREE CONSTRUCTION. Since a large portion of the episode played out in the tree. The decision was made early on to rebuild the hero Acacia tree in studio. Using drones and lidar we rebuild the point cloud in a mesh.
Next, using grasshopper, I developed an algorithm to make a steel skeleton that replicated the organic geometry of the branches.
Our construction team then under the direction of Brendan Smithers, created an amazing replica of the tree.