Categories
VFX Careers Research

Job Role 3: Previsualisation (previs) artist

This is the non-entry-level job role I choose to write about for the career research assignment. For this assignment, we write about 3 job roles in the VFX industry where 2 of the job roles are entry-level jobs and one is non-entry level. Looking through the site given to us I had a difficult time choosing the different job roles. when I look at all the different roles there are many that catch my interest as well as that I am still learning a lot about composting and combining different images together in this course. There could be something that I still have to discover that would be my prefered favorite, but for now I choose to talk about the previs artist.

A previs artist helps out with creating a plan for what the visual look of the film is going to be. It is a process of visualizing the scene before creating it. It is at the very start of the pipeline before anything is created. The previs creates a rough version generally in the form of 3D animatics. They create a draft version of the different moving images in a sequence and put this all together with their editing skills. When the film is in production a previs artist normally helps around the other VFX artist to see if everybody maintains a consistent style in their work.

As a previs artist you will be more focussed onwhat happenss when and where everythingis supposede to go, it is like creating a 3D animated storyboard for the rest of the crew to work on. This role is as I said at the very start of the film production which makes it to where you have to put less focus on the looks but more focus on if shows what you mean and if it gives a good first impression. For this Job you have to have a good eye for compositing especially for camera shots and movements, and a big part of what a previs artist is good at is being creative, they have to be able to tell a story in their previs work. you have to come up with original ideas. A previs artist also have to be good at communication, they have to work well within a team and they have to understand to get the right vision of the director.

I would want to work in the previs artist role to expand my vision of how to compose different elements together and be able to visualize the created story for the film. I still have a lot to learn in that part. How to look at something use the right angle to work with so the movements and the VFX will look interesting throughout the film. I hope to learn a lot through this course and using a lot of references to get a creative eye on this. One thing I also think is important in this job is to work well together with a team, after creating the storyboard you will have to be able to communicate and help the other VFX departments. As a person I think I am good in the part of my communication skills but would still have to upgrade this to be better.

Categories
Collaborative

Cyberpunk – Scenes [3D story board]

After Last weeks group discussion I decided to create a 3D storyboard on the ‘test scenes’ that I already made the storyboard scenes are based on the story board created by Li. With all the assets that we have collected I added to the alley way scene I already created last week and made sure everything was in the right place. I changed some buildings and made sure everything was ready to texture. I did this for all the parts with environment backgrounds in the story board.

Collaborative presentation

In this week of the collaborative project, we also had to present for the class. I created a PowerPoint presentation that sums up how far we have come over the last few weeks. To sum up what we talked about in the presentation: first of all, we addressed who where our team members were and who had what role in our group you can see this in the presentation video shown above. We started off our project by figuring out what our story was going to be. First, it was a quick draft of our cyberpunk vision as a group and then we sorted a story (the story that I created by doing some research around the topics we spoke about during our group discussion). Basing our story made us go deeper into what we wanted the video to look like visually. Different group members created a story board based on what they thought the environment/character and other parts where supossed to look like. To get a clear vision on our story and character li, phoebe, fan and I sat down to create a visual representation of the storyboard (li and I (roos)) and the character (Fan and phoebe), See in the video presentation above the concept arts of story board and character. Then the process of the 3D model of the character was being created and we were using motion capture to do the different animation on the character. For Jesse, Eddy and me (roos) we started of by creating and searching the correct models for the environment. I created different assets that could be used in the scenes. After we collected the assets I sat down and created the layout of the different scenes. In total we had 3 main scenes to work with: the alley, the mainstreet and the one that is a zoomed out view of the city. From here we all work on one main scene to apply the texture (eddy: Zoomed out city, Jesse: Mainstreet and Roos (me): Alley way)

Categories
Nuke

Week 17: match-up Green screen

For this weeks class we have worked with how to get rid of green screen and add our own backgrounds. During the classes we have talked about many different ways on working with green screen. for example we worked with the Keylight which for many people already is a well known node to work with. it is quite a standard green screen removal node and also a quite simple one. In this node you use one key that selects the green of the green screen to remove it from the scene but by using this you can see in the alpha that is does not perfectly remove the green screen. One other technique we used was with the IBK Colour and IBK Gizmo node this node system is a little bit more clean then using the keylight. Using the IBK nodes you can use the IBK color node to use the plate and try to create as close to a clean plate as u possibly can and then comp this back into the gizmo to get the results of the removal of the greenscreen.

Example used for the homework
End result of the example used

For this weeks class we had to work on some homework for the next week. For this homework we needed to recreate a video that Gonzalo already made, for this video we got given the background plate and the foreground plate. When looking at this homework I went back into Gonzalos tips and tricks file and choose to work with one of the examples he gave during the classes (look at the images above).

Using the example for the green screen removal I started working on how to implement this in my own work. I started off by removing the greenscreen using the IBK nodes as given in the example then I used the core and gave it a filtererode to clean up the edges a bit more. Aside from that I also used a keylight to minus despill from the original footage and desaturated to remove unwanted colors. one more important part was to move the particles from the background and copy it on top of the foreground. I did this by using a grade on the background and changed the White and Black point values and merge this over the end scene.

Looking back at my work there are a few things that I had problems with or that I would like to change. One of the things is even though I have quite some detail in the hair it is still missing some of the nice glowing hairs on top and on the sides where it is blowing. I have looked at this for a long time but did not manage to get these hairs back. I need to work on this in the future. Another thing is that if you look at the fore and background together it looks a bit off. My background is quite green/dark and the Girl is quite bright and orange, this makes her stand out from the background. But overall looking at my video I think I did a good job in trying to match Gonzalos video.

Categories
Collaborative

Cyberpunk – Storyboard and Character

Character with UV

Last time I posted about the concept art created by Phoebe for our main character in our collaborative group project. Here is the 3D model created by Fan from 3D animation. He modelled the character and made sure the UV is correct so that Jesse can start working on the textures for the model. I will be working on a basic rig and we went to the green screen room in school to try out motion tracking. you can see some example videos below of the process for the motion capture data. Masi will start working on the cleanup of the motion capture we did. While he was working on it we discovered that there was too much to clean up in the MoCap and that it had to be more exaggerated. We booked the green screen room again to redo the MoCap work we worked on.

Main street view draft

Since our scene is quite complex I decided to start on some of the scene to see how it would look in the end. I started off with trying to make the main street using downloaded assets (FREE 3D Asset Kit: Neo City – KitBash3D). For one of the shots we need one side of a somewhat big street where the main character will be walking. Using the assets I created the image you see above this text, I have to do the Main Street again since it does not really work with the alleyway I created as well. It is too busy and it has to many polygons so it would take for a long time to render.

alleyway top view

The 2 images you see above and under this text are images of how the alleyway will look. It is still a work in progress but it is somewhat what the scene will be looking like. (of course with added textures) Because we don’t have a lot of time left we also decided to work with these assets for the end scene. The 2 views are also like the views shown in the storyboard.

in alleyway to main street view

Assets used for the 3D environment:

Categories
Nuke

Week 16: Green screen

For this class homework we had to green screen out the video given to us and add the background to it. I used the technique of the IBKColour and IBKGizmo node. First I created the IBKColour and tried to make it as an matched up green screen plate then I added the IBK Gizmo to get the green screen part separate and get the right alpha for the scene. I color graded the plate to match it a little bit more with the chosen background.

At the top of the screen there is a microphone that sometimes pops up in the screen, I removed this microphone using a simple Rotoscope and stencil this over the scene there the green screen is already removed. I did not have to do many extra things to the Rotoscope since it is a small area that the microphone pops up in.

Lastely I merged the foreground and background together and gave the background a little bit of an defocus to make the foreground image stand out more and give it a bit more realism.

IBKColour
IBKGizmo
Categories
VFX Careers Research

Job Role 2: Environment artist

We have to do research in what kind of roles we are looking for in the visual effects industry. We have been given a link to a VFX industry careers map that concludes the different roles you are able to take as an VFX artist. for this research we have to pick 3 roles that I would want to do after this course. Two of the three roles have to be entry level roles and the third will be a non-entry level role.

The second job role I choose is also one of the entry level job roles, VFX environment artist, also known as environment modeller, visual effects artist and 3D artist. First I will talk a little about what an environment artist job does using the online career map guide and then I will talk about why I picked this one.

As an environment artist you create a scene/surrounding that is CG made for an actor to move around in. These are environments that are too difficult to create in real life. A 3D environment will be created using different modelling and sculpting tools. Often a concept art is delivered to them as a reference to go off of. An Environment artist works in an earlier stage of the 3D part in the VFX pipeline. After the create environment is created it can be moved on to the texture artist for the elements to be textured.

This is one of the entry-level job roles that I am interested in. as well as the modeling artist this is near the beginning of a bigger project in the industry. The first reason I came to UAL to do VFX was that I took a huge interest in 3D design because I went to a 3D art festival in the Netherlands called: Playgrounds. In this event there are multiple 3D design speakers that will speak about there work and show how they make some things. One of the artists I remembered well from that festival is Leon Tukker. Leon Tukker is an Environment artist that creates these massive scenes that I take great inspirations out of. I want to be able to create these same scenes. This job role kind of also links with the 3D modelling job role I choose. As I said over there as well: I want to create real-surreal images that look powerful and can be a combination of CG and real life.

So far I have worked in quite a few 3D programs but always smaller-sized models. Now I want to have a deeper look into the scenery and create things that I will be proud of showing in my reel.

Inspiration Reel

As seen above this text I also have taken inspiration from another artist that I want to show as an example. The artist shows a good example of how to put together an environment and create a small scene that tells the viewer a story in a few seconds. The story can be to own interpretations but I believe will link to almost the same story line, immaculate creations I would say.

During the making of this job role, I got even more interested in working as an environmental artist. But also if I would not be able to do this as my job I would still be interested in creating this for my own showreel and build a portfolio like this.

Categories
Maya

Week 16: Satisfying [2]

Reference links :[Referenceimagedesign] and [Referenceimagecolor]

Categories
Collaborative

Cyberpunk – Buildings

After the meeting last meeting we had I started to work on some models that can be used for our project. We decided to combine some downloaded assets (that we can edit a bit) for the street and some own made objects. I first just started out by creating some building layers that would be easy to copy, past into having multiple layers. Buildings tend to look the same throughout the bottom level and the top level. below this text I have to examples of what I used for a reference and below that the created layered building I made in Maya. One is a little bit more detailed than the other. This was a start of how to make these buildings but I think There still more needed to be created. These would be good for a few background imagery. These don’t need to be very detailed since they would be far away from the focus point of the camera.

Other things I have tried it making some of the objects needed in the scene. When looking at the storyboard and the Cyberpunk city aesthetic you see a lot of the outside stair railings going up various of buildings. so I tried to recreate such a stair so we could add these to our made buildings but also to the assets that we downloaded. Since our world is an cyberpunk world one of the things that is also very important to this is the hanging signs/boards in front of store that points to what the store might be.

Here is also a reference video on a street of a cyberpunk city. This is the kind of aesthetic that I would want to recreate in this Collaborative project. This small street has lots of amazing details and concludes a fantastic scenery of a cyberpunk environment. Where the floating car is stalled is a small alleyway. I think this is a good reference of the alleyway we would want to create for our own scene.

Categories
VFX Careers Research

Job Role 1 – Modelling artist

We have to do research in what kind of roles we are looking for in the visual effects industry. We have been given a link to a VFX industry careers map that concludes the different roles you are able to take as an VFX artist. for this research we have to pick 3 roles that I would want to do after this course. Two of the three roles have to be entry level roles and the third will be a non-entry level role.

The first Job role I have chosen from the career map is an entry level job, modelling artist, also known for doing CG modelling, Character artist, modeller and 3D artist. First I will talk a little about what a Modelling artist job does using the online career map guide and then I will talk about why I picked this one.

A modelling artist will create different models using digital tools such as sculpting brushes and physical graphics pen and tablets. Modelling artists work at an early stage of the CG and 3D part of the VFX pipeline. They create 3D models that later can be animated and textured. They have to be good at certain things to work well in the company or studio they work for. these listed things are: art (able to draw), Interpretation (able to create 3D model of 2D brief), Knowledge of 3D modelling programs, Organisation and Collaboration.

This is one of the entry level roles that I am quite interested in. It is the starting line of a bigger project and has a broad spectrum of different objects that you will be able to work on. One day you will be working on an organic plant while the other day you can make buildings or characters. For myself I would state that I am quite good at figuring out how to make the right model for the right occasion. I have practiced with modelling Characters and create different lifeless object (weapons or so). I would love to create real-surreal imagery that looks powerful in an final project combining real life and CG together. One thing that I am also able to do is create 2D images, having this skill helps me to make a sketch of what I would want to create in 3D. So far I have worked in C4D, Zbrush and Maya so I still have a lot to learn (mostly also in these programs itself).

There are many works which conclude a 3D modeller to work on that I find very aesthetically pleasing. For this sometimes the 3D artist ofcourse also does his own texture to make the whole image look perfect. But not only that but also the work they make take lots of time and practice. the details on various models is something I have to learn to think about for a longer period of time and also getting the right references. Here are some example of modeled inspirations that I would like to level in.

These are two artist that work as modelers and create impressive 3D imagery that would fit in different surreal situations. It feels like they are telling a story through their art. the details on the models are immaculate, in my opinion they give their work a breathtaking experience. Reflecting on myself I need to pay more attention to what I want to create and what the story is in the single model I am creating. even the simplest of object that are modeled have a story important to the scene. So I have to think about what that will be in my work and pay closer attention to my surroundings and resources.

Categories
Nuke

Week 15: CG Machine

For this weeks class we learned how to place CG objects in a composition and figured out how to grade and color correct the object so that it will fit into the plate we are working with. This months work is the Garage project we have been working on in this project we have to add a machine given to us by Nick. After that we also have to add our own environment in the scene to give it our own feeling.

Gonzalo gave us a ready made file so we could explain what we had to do for the machine step by step, one of the steps was to work with Multipass Comp, The 3D model given to us is rendered in Arnold so it is an Arnold multipass. In class we got shown how to work in the specular direct and indirect. after looking into the nodes and changing the grading we use merge plus to add it all to our comp.

split channels in the comp

We also got shown the how to give the model a proper shadow area. The shadow is a n important part to add, these are area shadows over the machine so it looks less fake in the entire scene. When adding the shadow you need to use the multiply merger to add this to your scene. The shadows will give the object more like a 3D feeling to it.

nodes
With shadow in comp

We also got shown to add the relighting and the re-texturing of the object. we got given 3 options on which texture we wanted to add to the scene, as shown I choose the option shown in the nodes image. and as for the relighting we used different passes to help us get the right alpha and then screen merge it so we could add it to a grade and give it a little bit extra lighting

re-lighting and re-texturing in comp

We also have an master CG where we added basic grading to change the basic color of the machine given to us. we used the technique of basic grade matching. for this you pick 2 different colors in your plate, one being dark and the other being a light point.

nodes
Machine in the comp