Baccarat Rouge 540 & Lunar New Year Campaign

1. Business Context & Objective

To celebrate the Lunar New Year honoring the Year of the Snake, Maison Francis Kurkdjian wanted to roll out a major international campaign showcasing its iconic creations — led by Baccarat Rouge 540 (Eau de parfum and Extrait de parfum), alongside its scented candles, perfumed body care, and gift sets.

Produced in collaboration with production company Wizz (https://wizz.fr/), this project represented a full-scale 360° production: we were commissioned to design and deliver 20 high-definition prints and 5 videos (comprising 1 animated greeting card and 4 videos dedicated to the House's flagship products) to cover their entire CNY communication (out-of-home, retail, e-commerce, and social media). The entire scope was completed over 2 months, with a substantial portion of the schedule invested upfront in creative research and back-and-forth iterations before launching intensive print and video production.

2. Art Direction & Technical Challenge

On a production of this scale (25 deliverables in 2 months), the challenge is not only designing an elegant set of woven red ribbons and golden scales for the Year of the Snake, but solving two concrete high-end production problems:

1. The trap of STEP files on blown glass (the interior glass base thickness): in luxury perfumery, many studios assume importing the CAD / STEP file supplied by the glassmaker is enough to get a convincing packshot. However, when glass is blown, the internal thickness of the glass (the bottom weight and inner walls of the bottle) is non-uniform and impossible to predict in a STEP file. STEP files are only useful for external proportions: rendered as-is, they produce a flat, lifeless bottle. To capture the true refraction and visual weight of a Maison Francis Kurkdjian flacon, every internal thickness and every light-catching edge must be reworked by hand and verified by eye. Our teams have honed this exact craft over more than 10 years working on these products.
2. Securing the delivery of 20 prints and 5 videos after a long creative phase: as is often the case on major luxury campaigns, upfront creative iterations absorb a significant share of the 2-month timeline. The production key is building a master scene and glass shaders so robust that once art direction is locked, the team can output all 20 prints and 5 films in parallel without compromising quality or missing deadlines.

3. Deployed Pipeline (3D CGI / Motion / Hybrid AI)

To deliver these 20 prints and 5 videos with consistent craft, our Digital Atelier mobilized our Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Houdini, Redshift Render, and Nuke pipeline:

1. Artisanal Glass & Product Re-Modeling (Maya & ZBrush): complete manual rework of the bottles' interior geometries beyond the STEP files to sculpt the non-uniform glass base thickness, bevels, and light edges, alongside modeling of the gift boxes, candle, pump bottle, and greeting card.
2. Glass Shaders, Gilding & Woven Ribbons (Substance Painter & Redshift): lookdev in Redshift Render of the red and crystal-clear glass shaders, brushed gold metallic labels, matte porcelain candle jar, and embossed hot-foil maps across the Snake ribbons.
3. Animation & Print/Video Compositing (Maya, Houdini & Nuke): fluid animation of the snake-like ribbon weaving through the red lattice and around the products for the 5 films, paired with high-resolution Nuke compositing to ensure seamless visual unity between the 20 prints and 5 videos.

4. Production Cadence & Methodology

Executed over 2 months in close collaboration with Wizz and Maison Francis Kurkdjian, the production was structured into two main stages:

• Phase 1 — Research, Product Craft & Creative Iterations: a major share of the timeline was invested upfront to lock the compositions of the 20 visuals, tune by eye how light travels through the glass thickness of the bottles, and validate the animatics of the 5 films with the art direction team.
• Phase 2 — Parallel Production of the 20 Prints & 5 Videos: once the product assets, woven set, and Redshift lighting rigs were locked, our teams ran high-resolution rendering of the 20 prints in parallel with the animation and rendering of the greeting card and 4 hero product films, integrating finishing notes right up to delivery.

5. Delivered Formats & Adaptations

This 2-month production supplied Maison Francis Kurkdjian with its complete global Lunar New Year campaign:

• 20 High-Definition Prints covering all flagship references and gift set compositions for out-of-home, press, boutiques, and e-commerce.
• 5 Master Videos: 1 Greeting Card film for the Year of the Snake and 4 films dedicated to the House's flagship products, adapted across all digital and social media formats (16:9, 9:16, 1:1).