Day 15
I feel greatly relieved to have completed this studio project. At first before it was all planned and it was promising, then we got complacent and a lot of procrastinating happened. In the end everything wasn't to what we hoped. the building simulation wasn't very good. the smoke simulation nick did, didn't work out either. Edmund worked too long on the establishing shot (one week). The textures Yushi did were didn't look realistic enough and it kept changing. We didn't know how to use the cameras we loaned and resulted in a re-shoot another day which made us way behind schedule. i tried to get things back on track which a shot pipeline with deadlines and everything, but we were not disciplined enough. We resorted to staying overnight in school to finish everything up. Well it is a learning experience as we are all student. We will try better, be more disciplined next time.
As for me, i did learn a lot on compositing. Even though i am a Lighting TD in this team. i did almost all the compositing in this project which resulted me to learn a lot in After effects. Although i did very little lighting because the there were not very much CG elements to light, and Edmund was not satisfied with the establishing shot he had to tweak it and re tweak it which took him a week and he still was not satisfied. i had to make it up for the team by compositing the shots which has VFX elements. Nick tried his best to get his demolition smoke perfect but it was not good enough, it was not thick enough in comp to qualify as smoke. So i had to create the smoke simulation myself. It was a hard and tiring 3 weeks but we made it!
Day 14
Last day of composite and everything has to be done. I did the smoke effects for the demolition shots which is shot 080 090 and 100.
Firstly, This is how i did the smoke. I used a plug in in after effects called Trapcode Particular and it is like a particle plugin which lets me manipulate particles however i want. The render is finally done. So i composited it inside the scene and created Light layers as particle emitters. I animated the emitters in an outward direction.
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| Light layers as Particle Emitters |
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| I tweaked the settings(velocity, x emitter etc) to get the simulation i wanted. |
I used this picture of a cloud as my "smoke"
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| Cloud picture. |
I changed the particles to the texture above
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| Particle shape changed to cloud picture. |
The smoke looks very straight and and still. No variations so i played around with the rotations and random rotations of the particles.
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| After tweaking |
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| Combined smoke with plate. |
I color correction the smoke to show that the smoke was caused by the building demolition and i followed the color as such.
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| final smoke simulation |
I also did the smoke thats coming out of the sides of the building from the so when it explodes internally, smoke comes out of the sides of the building.
I used a stock footage of a dust puff.
and composited it into the building.
Then i added a camera shake to the scene to show that the camera is shaking from the demolition.
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| Expressions used. |
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| Final shot 080. |
I added the smoke simulation i did in shot 080 into shot 090
i made the Emitters into 3d space because the perspective in the scene was not straight i had to make the smoke 3d-like
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| emitters into 3d space. |
Tweaked the color and movement of the smoke to match shot 080.
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| 090 |
As of the remainder of the building that didnt collapse in the demolition simulation. I tried to take it down by animating it in a way an unstable wall would collapse. The thick smoke would cover it anyway so i didn't lean into it.
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| building collapsing animation. |
As for shot 100. i first keyed out edmund and composited him into the shot. He was too big for the scene and it looks like the perspective was wrong, so i make him smaller to match the perspective and also give a little more dramatic feel.
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| 100 baseplate |
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| 100 edmund shot. |
The barrier i added was masked and feather to show that the smoke simulation i was going to composite gets to overcome the barrier and make it like it is going towards edmund.
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| Barrier added |
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| Smoke added. |
I used stock footage of a fog to give the smoke a little more detail because it was the end of the demoliton and remainder smoke was thinning out.
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| fog stock footage. |
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| fog color corrected and composited. |
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| Final of shot 100 |
So there we go, all the shot with visual effects done. i did the compiling of all the shots and passed them to nick for sound fx. PRESENTATION TIME!
Day 13
As i waited for the demolish simulated building to be rendered out, i tried to compile the other shots so there would not be as much hiccups when compiling them together, apparently we are really behind schedule as there were problems with the simulation. i know 2 days before the deadline. wow.
Day 12
Alright Day 12 i did a lot today. I finally completed shot 020 heres how i did it.
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| I combined the two elements with the base plate |
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| I added the lens flare right on where the reflection of the "sun" would be to give it a more sun effect. |
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| I color graded it to give it a more dramatic feel so as to not make the scene look so flat. How i did it was play with the curves tool and the brightness and contrast. |
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| Added a vignette to the scene for a more artistic feel. |
I will put the color grading and the vignette to all of the other shot to match all of them and give them a more dramatic feel
I did edit shot 030 to test if the color grading and vignette will look good on the other shots.
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| Shot 030 |
I realised that the footage had a little brightness flicker to it so i tried to stabalize the brightness with the color stabalizer tool in After Effects.
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| Color stabilizer. |
I worked great but it change the color to a drastic level. After some dicussion with my teammates i turned it off. i added the color grade and vignette to the footage.
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| Color graded |
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| Color graded with vignette. |
Looks good. i wanted to do up on the other shots. but shot 080, 090, and 100 want done yet and we are so behind schedule. So went on for trying to light shot 080. It is always the perspective problem. Edmund had the same problem on his establishing shot for a week and he still wasnt satisfied. The building animation was not done yet and as well as the smoke simulation. Nick was sick for 2 days, Edmund and i was stuck with our shots for a week, Yushi took quite a while to finish up his textures because it was not realistic enough, it kept of changing. thats why we were way behind schedule.
After much tweaking of the lights and playing with the reflections from the IBL, This is what i got for lighting. The textures were not done yet as Yushi said he would edit the uv map of the building after i was done with the lighting.
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| shot 080 unfinished |
Day 11
After much tweaking and dicussion from our teammates and stressful times from our texturer, Yushi, We finally got the final textures for the building and time for me to do the lighting for shot 020.
After days of tweaking and making it realistic, i just realised that just by turning on the Raytrace shadows will make the building way better than before. I tweaking the angle of the directional light to make it perfect.
My lightings are the IBL and the directional lighting in the scene.
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| Master Beauty of the Building |
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| Ambient Occlusion |
So if i turned on the Shadows, and tweaked the lighting of the scene, the lights for the Signboard would change as well, so i rerendered the signboard as well as its passes.
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| Master Beauty |
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| Diffuse |
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| Specular |
Tommorow i shall finalize shot 020 and go on to shot 080.
Wow we are totally behind schedule. Edmund is still working on the establishing shot.
Day 10
on day 9 i continued tweaking the signboard model to make it look more realistic while waiting for Yushi to complete the texturing, i also dicussed with the team on whether or not our Demolition shot should be matchmoved or stabalized, we decided on stabalizing it because we can add the camera shakes onto the shot since our physical camera shake wasnt very intentional.
Today i used after effects to perfect our Close up shot which is shot 020. I used a draft building while waiting for Yushi to finish up the texture as i find it hard to render out the passes to composite. Yushi has been focusing on his textures for a very long time, i have alot of respect on that guy because he will not sleep until it is perfect.
So anyway this is the draft of shot 020.
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| I started our using a still picture as a baseplate. |
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| I clonestamped the tallest building so it wouldnt stand out when i place the Signboard. |
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| Added the diffuse and the specular passes of the sighboard and blended them together. |
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| added a draft building with the textures almost there. it still looks CG so im going to tweak the lighting when Yushi is done with the texturing. Come to think of it, clonestamping the tallest building was abit redundant. Haha! |
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| Tweaked the Brightnes and contrast so it wouldnt be so dull. |
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| Added a curves tool to the sky plate to enhance the clouds |
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| I added a corner pin to the sky plate and gave it a slow animation from left to right so it would appear the clouds were moving so it would seem like it is a video instead of a still picture. |
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| I added a lens flare to the Top right corner to give it a nice lighting. |
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| I then animated the brightness of the flare to give it a lens flare flicker feel because the shot is high up in the sky, That shows the flare in the lens, and the flicker to show that its a moving image. |
It still looks very CG and fake. Well this is only a draft, so i must do something else to make it look perfectly photo realistic.
Day 8
Today i tired to complete shot 020 which has the signboard and the CG building.
I did the perspective of the whole scene, discussed with my teammates on the right perspective of the sign board and the building to give the most realism as well as drama, and this is what we got.
I added the image based lighting i did a few days back
I tweaked a few attributes to give it more realism. I added a directional light to give more shadows to the buildings.
Since the texture of the building isnt done yet, i didnt focus much on the building and focused on the signboard.
I rendered the diffuse and specular passes of the signboard. Nothing came out when i rendered the shadow passes, so i didnt composite the shadow pass.
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| Diffuse |
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| Specular |
I composited everything in photoshop because the second shot is a still video. so rendering in a still picture and putting it in a video would be fine.
This is what i got for the sign board.
I will continue on the building once the textures are done.
I need to master after effects. i dont have a macbook so the usage of shake is very limited to me :(
Day 7
Since day 5 is our shooting day and the footages appear dark, we used day 6 to reshoot and day 7 which is today to get everything in order in order to composite everything nicely.
Firstly since our requrements to hand everything in is supposed to be in 720 by 576 in resolution. Our footages is in HD 720p so i have to crop all our selected footages and save it in as our desired resolution and timing. I rendered it in a tiff sequence so that we are match moving and editing, the shot will be nicely matched.
I did up the shot pipeline for all the CG shots so that everything will be into schedule and if something he behind deadline, we would rush them so we can go back into schedule.
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| Shot 100 pipeline |
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| shot 090 pipeline |
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| shot 080 pipeline |
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| shot 010 pipeline |
Then i did up the Hdr shots and converted then into a spherical or angular map
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| I converted the 6 images into a vertical cross cube format. |
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| I converted into and angular map using HDRshop |
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| This is the spherical map |
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| I created an IBL and placed the spherical map here |
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| angular map |
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| Spherical |
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| Angular |
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| I then match moved shot 080 (demolition shot) |
Day 4
Today we tried to get the effects on the live previs to test if the effects would work on the footages.
I matchmoved two key shots with cg. Which is the establishing shot as well as our "money" shot; the demolition shot.
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| Matchmove of the establishing test shot |
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| Matchmove of the Demolition test |
I then created simple geometrys to the exported matchmoved files to test if the matchmove is smooth.
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| Establishing shot |
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| Demolition shot |
The matchmove is smooth despite shooting the footages using a DSLR camera the solve is perfect and it looks smooth. The only thing i didnt know how to do was getting the coordinates right, so im going to ask Mr Shridhar next week.
I passed the maya files to edmund so he can get the building in the right size and placement.
waiting for everyone to get the effects done on the test footages so i can stitch it up to make a live previs with effects.
Continued.
I matchmoved the second shot to that has a cg sign and the cg building in it and placed the geometrys nicely i matchmoved it because it is shot by handheld. but the actual footage will be a still shot so no matchmoving will be needed.
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| test shot of shot 020 with the cg building placed. |
the image looks like its entirely cg so when we take our shots tommorow, we must have a few live buildings seen at the top left of the frame. to add more realism.
Our padang trip to take our test shots is fruitful. We even decided to create a live previz out of it.
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| Discussing from out storyboard |
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| "Reenacting our demolishing trigger shot" |
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| Edmund accidentally used one of our storyboards to clean mud off his slippers. HAHA |
After our tests shots were done i chosen to choose the shots and stitch them up together for our live previz.
I chosen the final live previz shots with the unanimous decision of my teammates and cut them up into proper timings and stitched them up together. The team and i also thought of the final sign off phrase to give impact to our message to
safety@work.
I couldnt get the video to upload so :(
Day 2
After our idea was chosen, we decided on doing the previsualization of the shots. We based everything on the storyboard my teammate Yushi drew up.
I did the first and the fourth shot out of 11 shots in maya previz
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| First shot. i used edmund's picture as a reference. |
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| Fourth shot : Construction workers walking across the frame. One of the workers didnt wear hearing protection. |
We planned out what to shoot and where to shoot as well as timings to meet and when to end for tommorow trip to the padang to take our test shots.
We showed Mr Thomas our draft maya previz and he liked it. So yay!
Day 1
I created the asset structure for the team as well as the production schedule and the production pipeline for the team.
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| This is what is inside our Global folder |
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| This is what is inside the assets folder |
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| This is the Production Schedule |
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| As well as the Production Pipeline |
I am going to make sure my team follows the schedule, pipeline as well as the naming conventions in the asset structure so things will not go haywire throughout this process.
