Sonos — Sonos Play

Commercial · 2026 · by Frame48

Frame48 teamed up with Sonos to announce their newest portable speaker: Sonos Play.

​​​​​​​With four distinct rooms and multiple outdoor environments, the Sonos Play project was an ambitious film for the company’s new portable speaker release. The team went through numerous iterations to showcase the waterproof capabilities of the device, as well as its resistance to impact. Sound is invisible, so visualizing it took form in radiating ripples through the ground, floating flower pedals, and levitating speakers.

For the Sonos Play, our research process involved, well… a lot of play. From grass waves to water splashes, the team explored a variety of treatments that could work in the film. Controlling the timing of splashes involved a range of techniques in Houdini to get the perfect speed and temporal behavior. The environments included a variety of spaces ranging from abstract grass hills to a realistic living room and poolside. Using a USD pipeline our team was able to update assets in realtime as animators explored motion approaches to the various scenes. The look of the worlds were tied together with a consistent lighting story blending realism with an editorial gradient background allowing us to take the viewer from sunrise to sunset showcasing full day battery life.