Term 2
Collaborative showreel with all our teams efforts (2D-animation, 3D-animation and VFX)
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Welcome to my VFX blog
Author: Roos Stolk
Term 2
Personal work in the collaborative unit
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Collabrative: Critical report
In this collaborative unit has been a very hard working experience for me. Over the little time that we had for this unit we had to, decide on which theme/group we want to work with, gather all these group members and create something from that decided theme. Concluding on what you want to work on for the next 7 to 8 weeks with your group members is a very important part and has to be decided as a team. due to lack of time you would also need to decide fast on this matter and can’t make the biggest of changes. It is very important that as a group you are good in having an overall acceptable time management which in our group due to dreaming big with the project sometimes had some issues but in the end we pulled it through. Every week we had a meeting with all our group members to discuss our process of everybody’s individual role.
Looking at our group members we are a very diverse people from different degrees and specialities. having to work with all these different courses has been very in siding and has giving me the opportunity to learn from different spectrums of this industry.
The part that I had in the group project was working on the 3D design and creating a scene of the ideas that we had thought of during our meetings. my role in the end concluded of environment visualisation, 3D modeller, texturing and assisted of animation and lead in rendering the multiple images. looking back on the project I have worked on many different things and would say I was a generalist during this process. There were a few times where we would walk into a wall and I decided to search for a solution of the problems we were fighting against. due to this issue I had a lot more on my shoulders then anticipated but ended up learning a lot more through the process that I would have imagined. I ended up also working on the rigging part due to it having some problems and changing our time management. This has gave me a lot of very intensive work to do in the end. This is all for a better learning experience as well on how to really work in a group and how to manage your time. It is really important to know what everybody can deliver in these kind of collaborative projects, this will make it to where you will know when doing a project who needs to do what. As a group we discussed this quite well but overlooked the fact that no one in our group had a very good ability to make a working rig, this is something I will have learned and bring into my next group project. A very positive matter in this project is that all the group members supported each other throughout our hard and long working days. I believe that supporting each others work will increase the value of their process.
To summarise my experience, in a project there can be lots of frustrations, lack of sleep and you will always run into some sort of problem that you did not count on. But having supportive members that will work and support each other for 2 weeks in absurd working hours is something that won’t happen every time you’re in a group project and is in my mind very helpful. In the group I have taken the role of a generalist and in some times a leading role helping out the members around me.
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Week 19: Garage work Nuke (Q&A)
This class was many for asking Gonzalo questions about things we had not finished yet or problems we have with the different homework assignment. For me I only had one bigger problem with my garage. This problem has been with the shadows that are suppose to be casting on the wall from the objects I had made. While asking the question Gonzalo also pointed out that My color correction on the machine should be a bit different.
So far I will show what I had worked on for my garage project:
I wanted to create my own 3D object for our garage project so I firstly created a 3D space of the Garage room so that I could transfer this to maya and start creating my own object for in the scene.
I already had an idea to start of the creation I wanted to make in my Garage. I wanted to give it an industrial feeling by using big pipes through my scenes. As seen below I have some reference images of scenes that have that industrial feeling to it.
I imported the 3D scene into maya and started to work on a pipe system that I wanted to have in my Garage scene with the machine. I started of with making two different pipes (a straight one and a 90 degrees one). with these two pipes I could just copy and past to create a whole system.
I tried to texture the pipes old and rusty, I rendered out the pipes from maya in an alpha setup so I could import it in nuke and try to match all the different elements together. as you see in the image all the different elements don’t fit in with each other. The colors on the machine are too green and the pipes eye too blue for the background. This is something I still have to work on but one of the main things im also missing is the shadows. I have tried this in different ways but still cant figure it out so I will have to work on this for the next class. Gonzalo told us he sent an example for the shadows to cast.
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Cyberpunk: animation
When we were working on all the parts we noticed that between scene 6 and 7 there was something missing. In scene 6 the character kicks a can that is played out in front of his feet but then in scene 7 he is already picking up this can. So concluding a discussion with Li the 2D animator we decided to try and fill in this weird shift of scenes by adding a close up of the animated can. Since we did not have enough time I decided to animate the can by my self. The result can be seen in the video below and I think it adds a good change of camera perspective and movement from scene to scene.
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Cyberpunk – Texturing and lighting
As I said after the scenes where created we devide the different scenes over Jesse, Eddy and me. Eddy started working on the Beginning scene textures which are block 1,2 on the storyboard, Jesse started doing the textures for the Mainstreet which are block 3,4,5,6 on the storyboard and I (roos) started to work on the alleyway textures which are block 7,8,9,10,11,12 and 14.
Pan down
We all went off from the 3 scenes I put together in Maya. Eddy started to work on the starting frames which is a wide view image of the scenes created in the story board. this is supposedly the broader view of the city that our character will be walking around in. Eddy has been working on the texturing of this environment and Jesse has created the implemented the fish and the lighting of the scene.
Mainstreet
This is the first Main Street that our character will be walking around in. As in the story the character is walking down this street and stops walking because he gets a message about his payments and since he lost his jobs gets angry and kicks this can infant of an alleyway. This scene has to implement the lowlife city hood of his cyberpunk world. This scene has been textured and lighted by Jesse and I added in the animation of the billboards that Li (a 2D animator) has created frame by frame.
Alleyway
Lastly we got the alleyway, In the alleyway there is a light portal that shows another dimension. Our character feels drawn to this portal and is curious what would be on the other side and if it can help him be reborn out of this hyper electronic world. The scenes are textured by me (roos) and I added the a basic light which Jesse added extra depth to by adding some more lighting and a sense of smoke.
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Week 18: clean up markers
During this nuke class we learn how to clean up markers from someones face. We also learn how to add textures and how we use the technique to add some corrections as well. We start off by learning that we need to degrain the footage we are using before removing the markers. The idea is to first degrain the footage then remove the markers and then apply the regrain to the finished plate. For degraining and regraining we have different techniques we can use. We can denois the plate by using the “Merge (Minus)” node followed by the “Merge (plus)” node. Or we can use the “F_ReGrain” node This is a more precise way to degrain/regrain.
After Learning about how to degrain the next thing on the list was about how to Patch correctly. We have learnt about how to patch before but now we learn how to work with uneven lighting. As normally not everything is even we work with how best to remove these trackers. To get the Low frequency we use blur to tackle it and for the high frequency we use from, after we use the plus “merge” node to merge them.
For this class we got assigned a Small homework assignment regarding the patch clean up work. For this homework I used the techniques we learned during the class. I created a denoised plate and I did a simple track for each separate tracker point on her face and Rotopainted this and used the roto blur tool to individually blur the parts that needed the low frequency to work. I kept it simple Since this video does not have big light play.
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.
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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)
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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.
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.