Frame Scene

Going into this one I thought it would be a simple case of having a plane in front of the frame with a compositing tag but quickly realised that this wasn’t going to be the only aspect i would need to change.

The first attempt I didn’t the plain in that the character runs from behind just because I was trying to align the animation to the window sill so he didn’t come off of it. I realised that because of the angle he ends up running over the sofa meaning I was going to need to put a cube there to ensure that he runs behind the sofa instead of over it.

I found putting in the plain for the frame was a much easier task than the two previous scenes as I now felt much more comfortable in what i was doing. This meant that the character emerged nicely from behind the photo frame giving the illusion that he was hiding behind all along. I ended up using a cube with hypernurbs and a compositing tag to represent the sofa allowing him to run behind rather than on. Right near the end he still slightly steps on the sofa which is something that I can either alter in photoshop or it will be hidden in Final Cut Pro by using clever cuts.
I tried to add a reflection to the window sill because we can obviously see it is a highly reflective surface, however I couldn’t seem to be able to get the reflection to work even at 100%. I think it has something to do with the lighting of the scene but I’m not going to change it now because i think that the shadow of the character is more important than the reflection. The shadow on it’s own is going to do more towards deceiving the viewer into believing the character should be part of the scene than reflection on its own.

May 28th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Lace Scene

As I am doing/did with the other scene I am going to add the progressive images to one post to make it easier to view the changes.

After having done the sofa part I was feeling much more confident in my compositing skills and felt i would be able to finish this scene quicker than the other. This first attempt I had almost got the shadows right straight away but found that the cube above wasn’t at the right angle resulting in a distinct line halfway back in the shadows. I need to go back and alter the positioning of the cube. Also the lace is incredibly thin meaning that it looks like its gliding above the flooring because the shadow is barely perceptible.

After having gone back in and altering the cube position I’ve now realised I altered it too far the opposite direction resulting in the lace being in shadow for longer than it should. I also forgot to increase the size in the Y axis.

I finally managed to get the shadow in the correct position and the lace emerges nicely from the shadows. When i render out the scene i need to remember to move the lace to the left a bit as it intersects with the wire slightly. Also I think i need to make the lace even thicker as the shadow still doesn’t show up enough giving the lace a gliding effect.

May 20th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Sofa scene

This first part that Karl had modelled up was the toes of the trainer which was emerging from underneath the sofa. To make it easier to view the changes I’m just going to keep adding stills to this post so the progression is easier to see.

This first image has so many problems with it it’s unbelievable. Most obvious of all the character is in the shadows of the sofa yet he is perfectly lit up. I have placed a cube to represent the sofa but because the light isn’t in the right place it means that he is lit up like a lamp post at the moment. Also the floor looks much too dark to be a true match to the original footage but I have a feeling this has more to do with the amount of reflection on the plane beneath. It is much too reflective and the reflection needs to be decreased considerably. I need to imagine how the lighting was in the room where we filmed to get a true judge.

This second image is much closer to what I want it to look like I have actually managed to get him in shadow which is a big jump forward compared to the first attempt. Where as before i had a light quite close this time I moved it way above and positioned it to where i imagined the center of the room was when we filmed. Again I still feel like the floor is slightly too reflective even though its done to 5%. This time though the composting plane is visible and has created a very distinct line within the shadow. I need to make sure I align the compositing plane with the shadow exactly so there is no overlap.

This time he is almost perfect the only major thing this time around is instead of overlapping the compositing plane with the shadow it doesn’t quite meet the shadow resulting in a very thin line intersecting the shadow of the characters as he runs out from underneath. Also I think that even at 2% the reflection is still slightly too much hopefully 1% will be the perfect setting.

I think I have finally managed to get it as perfect as I am possibly going to get it. I managed to finally get the plane aligned with the shadow meaning there are no interruptions to the characters shadow or any distinct lines through the existing shadows. Also I think that having the reflection at 1% is the best it looks seeing as laminate flooring only has a slight reflection to it.

May 15th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

PF Hoe

We had originally hoped to do our SFX shot as one continuous shot with the sped up footage between shoe parts appearing and then a very slow pan while the pieces emerged from their hiding place. We went off and shot our footage in HD wanting to get the highest quality look for it. However after capturing our footage we started looking into PF Hoe and were about to start to experiment we realised that PF Hoe didn’t support HD footage only DV. Because of our error it has now been decided for us that our footage will have to be split into scenes and we will have to composite onto still frames instead. It’s now too late in the day really to go back and get additional footage so we are going to grab stills from the original footage.

May 2nd, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Scenes for Compositing

Even though there are 4 parts to the trainer I’m only going to be working on the compositing for 3 of those parts because the fourth has a camera movement to it which means it’s going to be easier for Karl to work on this one himself with his animation.

All 3 are going to be a challenge to achieve as unlike the shadow catcher tutorial these all need multiple elements to the scene composited out. The lace and sofa scene are both going to need elements above the animation to create the illusion of the characters emerging from darkness. With the frame scene I am going to have to create another plane to represent the frame the character is emerging from behind.

May 1st, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Shadow Catcher

In preparation for Karl finishing with the 3D elements Andy showed me this incredibly useful tutorial online for Shadow Catchers. I have a feeling that it will come in very useful when I start to composite.

May 1st, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

SHOOT

We went and shot our footage today at Dan’s cousins flat wooo. We managed to get all the footage we needed quite quickly and we got lots of additional footage to just in case anything wasn’t suitable. We are aiming to possibly show this to the Bamboo-A people we added a bit of extra footage onto the beginning to create more of a story. This will be cut out of our final submission because it would make the shot too long.

April 18th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Shoe split alteration

Now that the deadline seems to be looming ever closer we have decided that we are no longer going to split the trainer into 6 as it is only going to prove too difficult. We have decided that it would be far simpler to just have the trainer split into four. The SOLE, FRONT SECTION, HEEL and LACES. That way we can get the best possible movement out of each of the pieces.

April 15th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Location

We have finally decided on a location for our shoot, Dan’s cousin was nice enough to agree to let us use his flat which seemed like the perfect setting for the shot. Seeing as we want to possibly show this to the Bamboo-A people we wanted to make sure we got a location that reflected the target market. We imagined a bachelor pad sort of setting as we felt this reflected the potential customer base best. This place seemed like the perfect example with plenty of interesting nooks and crannies for the shoe parts to appear from. The plan is to go and film the scenes in the second week of the easter holidays so we give ourselves the whole of the second half of the semester to get on with the modeling and compositing.

April 2nd, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Roles

We decided the best way to share the workload would be to have each person stick to specific tasks. Rather than having us all model and all composite and risk having the shot look different throughout. It was decided that because of previous projects and his damn decent skills Karl would do the modelling and animating, Dan would be doing the editing because of his previous experience on his ND course and I would be doing the compositing. I don’t really have a huge wealth of experience with compositing but for the D&AD competition I had a go and it wasn’t as hard as i expected it to be.

March 27th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments