Reebok ZPump Fusion “Deep Breath” Ad feat. JJ Watt & Ronda Rousey

‘Deep Breath’ is Reebok’s 2015 ZPump Fusion commercial starring NFL star J.J. Watt and UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey. The minute-long spot — Watt’s first commercial for new sponsor Reebok — launched nationally on August 1, 2015, following the Houston Texans defensive end and the title-holder through intense workouts in the gym and on the field, empowering others to take a deep breath and ignite the fire within. On their feet throughout is the ZPump Fusion PU, a version of the shoe featuring an open mesh covering over its seamless upper.

SCANable performed detailed 3D scans of the Reebok ZPump Fusion shoes for the campaign, delivering accurate photogrammetric product models in support of the spot’s visual effects.

When the product is the shot

Most objects captured for film are supporting players. In product advertising the object is the entire reason the commercial exists, and it will be held on screen, filling frame, in sharp focus, for as long as the edit can justify.

That standard is different in kind, not degree. A prop that only has to survive a background pass can carry compromises nobody will ever find. A hero product cannot, because the audience is being explicitly invited to look at it.

It also has to be right rather than merely convincing. A viewer who owns the product will notice a stitch line in the wrong place, and a client certainly will.

Mesh, foam, and surfaces that are mostly holes

Athletic footwear is one of the more awkward things to capture. An open mesh upper is a surface defined by its gaps — thin filaments with air behind them, at a scale where any capture method has to decide what is material and what is void.

Foam absorbs light instead of returning a clean signal. Rubber outsoles are dark and often glossy at the same time. Laces, eyelets and reinforcement panels all sit at different depths within a few millimetres of each other.

Getting all of that from a single approach does not work. Dense photogrammetric capture handles the fine structure; controlled, cross-polarized lighting keeps the dark materials readable and stops the gloss from destroying the geometry underneath it.

Cleanup is where a product scan is won

Raw capture output is never a deliverable. It contains noise, holes where the geometry was occluded, and detail density that follows how the object was photographed rather than how it will be used.

Scan cleanup on a product asset means rebuilding the surface deliberately: holes filled to match the surrounding form, symmetry respected where the manufacturer intended it, topology laid out so the object can be posed and deformed if the spot calls for it, and UVs arranged so a texture artist can work on the material rather than around the mesh.

Our modeling and asset preparation covers that stage, and 3D scanning covers the capture that feeds it.

Related commercial work sits in the portfolio, and the full service list explains the methods behind it.