Second Draft from James Spadafora on Vimeo.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Final Weeks!
I am moving along nicely with my final. I am finished most is not all of the technical problems with my project. The only thing that is left is to tweak the look on the first two shots then relight the last shot. I also am not totally happy with the titles. They are a bit to noisy. So I will be working to finish this project ahead of schedule! I have been getting crits from people off face book and have been fixing issues with the look.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
All Assets are Done!
I have finished all the assets! I was able to use PF track to get all my footage into Maya. Also I took fast renders of the geometry to see how they would look in the scenes and to plan out the timing of the trailer. This up coming week I will start comping the shots! I may even finish a week early if I stay on track!
Now that I have all the assets done the next step is to render them. I will first do short sequences to check the lighting so that I am not wasting my time. An example where this was not done was the last shot which is much to dark so I wasted a ton of time.
I will not make this mistake again.
Also I began to analyze my shots as to what needed to
get done in nuke. I also began to research how to do what I need to do. One example of some thing I had no idea how to do was the atmosphere. After some poking around some forums I found the nuke master class from 2009. In the second video from Maya to nuke, the presenter shows how to use a depth pass from maya to control a noise node. He also uses the depth information on a Zblur node to make an interactive depth of field, something usually (except for renderman) expensive to render. Another thing I could do is use the Zdepth extractor in PFtrack to use geometry from the video to generate a better depth pass. This video proves the PFtrack is magic:
At the bottom of the page look at the Zdepth extractor
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Crunch Time
I am in full production and no sleep mode. On wendsday I went and shot some footage for shot two and I learned a little something about interlacing footage. It is really hard to track with PFtrack. The reason being is that there are no solid points to track. I attempted to De interlace the footage and that helped a bit however I could not get a good track because of the motion blur it added during a critical camera move. To try to fix it I manually added user points however I was unable to track the footage. I will need to re-shot it this week.
To make up for lost time I pushed on assets. I was able to do a quick render and comp for shot 3. It still needs some work but it is getting there.
I also started work on the spaceship that will be hovering over the city. That and re-shotting the footage will be main focus this week. I hope to have all the CG assets done by Saturday and the footage done by monday night so that I can start rendering and comping my shots.
Shot 3 Test from James Spadafora on Vimeo.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Good to go on green Screen!
I was able to re-shoot my green-screen shot this week and this time I have something usable! I was able to get a good camera track out of PFtrack and a decent matte. I had to play a lot with the lighting to get the track to work becase I wanted to make shour that PF track could see the markers I put up even with a ton of green spill on the C-Stands. One thing that too a while though was roto-ing out a lot of the noise and rigs that I did not want in the shot. It took about 5-6 hours to get a perfect plate. I do not have a ship finished to put her in yet but I am working on it and hope to have something by Friday night.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Learning the hard way......
So this week I tackled the green screen shoot. I learned the hard way that it is supper important to get the best plate you can to get the best comp. Here is the original footage:
I started with primatte first since that is what we used in class. I really like the step by step process of the toggle however when I moved thru the steps I realized that I was having a real issue with here head. There was all kinds of dark noise close to here hair values. Because of this I was battles to keep the dark wisps of hair while trying to eliminate the noise. This comp did not come out at all. The only way I would be able to easily remove the noise was to re-shoot the shot. I gave the rotopaint a try to draw out a garbage matte however I would need to go in with a tablet every frame and draw it out . I decided jest to re shoot first thing next week or friday becase there was another issue with the footage I will get to later. here was the primatte test:
Next I gave the IBK keyer a try which I did not get to far in because I found that it is a strong keyer if you have a clean BG plate. Pulling a key from IBK would be jest as much work at Primatte with a less intuitive interface. Also I had all the same issues I had with Primatte with the noise around the head.
The last Keyer I used was Keylight. I liked this keyer because I was able to pull a usable key quicker then with primatte. the sliders where a lot more useful and intuitive then the sampling method that IBK and Primatte use. This is by far my favored keyer. I still had all the same issues with the noise and hair however I was able to find a good balance using the black point slider.
There where a few good things that happened in the shoot. My lighing turned out exactly how I imagined it in my mind. I may defuse the red rim a bit but over all I was happy. That intermediate lighting class really paid off. I did not get any spill because I worked far from the screen however this caused the issue with the noise because I was getting the dark areas of the screen which made the noise. To fix this I will drop the intensity of the Keno flows pointing at the screen and work closer. Another issue I had was tracking. The points I put on the screen where to few. as soon as the ladder was out of the shot PFtrack did not has the data it needed to solve the camera. I think I will need to put more points ether on the wall or in the scene to get a good track witch will be important for bringing the scene in and do the set replace.
GreenScreenTest from James Spadafora on Vimeo.
I started with primatte first since that is what we used in class. I really like the step by step process of the toggle however when I moved thru the steps I realized that I was having a real issue with here head. There was all kinds of dark noise close to here hair values. Because of this I was battles to keep the dark wisps of hair while trying to eliminate the noise. This comp did not come out at all. The only way I would be able to easily remove the noise was to re-shoot the shot. I gave the rotopaint a try to draw out a garbage matte however I would need to go in with a tablet every frame and draw it out . I decided jest to re shoot first thing next week or friday becase there was another issue with the footage I will get to later. here was the primatte test:
Next I gave the IBK keyer a try which I did not get to far in because I found that it is a strong keyer if you have a clean BG plate. Pulling a key from IBK would be jest as much work at Primatte with a less intuitive interface. Also I had all the same issues I had with Primatte with the noise around the head.
The last Keyer I used was Keylight. I liked this keyer because I was able to pull a usable key quicker then with primatte. the sliders where a lot more useful and intuitive then the sampling method that IBK and Primatte use. This is by far my favored keyer. I still had all the same issues with the noise and hair however I was able to find a good balance using the black point slider.
There where a few good things that happened in the shoot. My lighing turned out exactly how I imagined it in my mind. I may defuse the red rim a bit but over all I was happy. That intermediate lighting class really paid off. I did not get any spill because I worked far from the screen however this caused the issue with the noise because I was getting the dark areas of the screen which made the noise. To fix this I will drop the intensity of the Keno flows pointing at the screen and work closer. Another issue I had was tracking. The points I put on the screen where to few. as soon as the ladder was out of the shot PFtrack did not has the data it needed to solve the camera. I think I will need to put more points ether on the wall or in the scene to get a good track witch will be important for bringing the scene in and do the set replace.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Week 5 Update
I do not have to much this week. I was originally planning to shoot my footage for the final this week however the weather has not been helping. I plan to shoot next week. I did the color correction tutorials with the grade node and have gotten matching the white and blacks down. Also I watched the videos about color management and the LUTs.
I also started working on some quick concepts for the futuristic fighter jet that flies over the heroes in shot two. I tried to make a cross between an F-22 and a viper. This is just a concept and no where near complete. I plan to start adding detail and a good texture this week.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Week 4 Update
I have made a lot of progress on the pre-production of my final assignment. I have completed the story boards and have experimented with 3d Camera tracking using Pf track.
The story boards will be for a trailer for a fictional alien abduction movie called
"Invasion". I took inspiration from the camera work in Clover field (not the best movie) and movies like Independence Day and District 9. The cinematography will be done like a handy cam and the trailer will be as high action as possible. There will be quick cuts between shots to keep up the action with text in between to mix it up. I plan to shot the shots by next week Homework permitting so that I can start cleaning the plates ASAP.
The first shot in my trailer will be of a large spaceship hovering above the city. It will be sucking people up with its anti Gravity beam. To acheve this shot I will need to track the Camera, use Maya to create the ship and particles, then comp it into a clean plate and use a matte to convey the people and ship behind buildings. Also I will need to use heavy color correction and depth maps to get the atmosphere where the ship is. Also small effects like small fires and smoke added to the buildings in the distance can be added to add to the distraction.
The Second shot will be of fighter jets flying above and Ally where our protagonist is standing.
To do this shot it will need a lot of the same work to the first shot. The camera will need to be tracked and a matte for the buildings made. Elements like distance ploms of smoke over the building will also be added. The challenge with this shot will be the fast moving camera and the high action movement of the protagonist combined with the 3d assets.
The last shot will be of the antagonist inside the ship. She will be looking around saying "Where the hell are we?" This shot will need set extension so a green screen is in order. Since the entire thing is handy cam trackers will need to be placed on the green screen to hold the set in place. as the protagonist moved into it.
A Lot of my shots are going to need a ton of tracking. To get ready for it I tracked a clip and comped in some fighters from my CGI final done so long ago. I used PF track to get a camera solve into Maya. I then used the camera and movie clip to plan out the movement of the fighters. Once I did that I rendered out the fighters and fire on separate passes and brought the images into Nuke. Then I created a matte to obscure the fighters behind trees and rocks then matched the White and blacks with the grade node. I then eye matched the saturation, added grain, and then glint for fun to the flames. The hardest part was matching the bad quality of the video. I had to use some blurs and grain to make it look more degraded like the footage. You can see the end result below.
The story boards will be for a trailer for a fictional alien abduction movie called
"Invasion". I took inspiration from the camera work in Clover field (not the best movie) and movies like Independence Day and District 9. The cinematography will be done like a handy cam and the trailer will be as high action as possible. There will be quick cuts between shots to keep up the action with text in between to mix it up. I plan to shot the shots by next week Homework permitting so that I can start cleaning the plates ASAP.
The first shot in my trailer will be of a large spaceship hovering above the city. It will be sucking people up with its anti Gravity beam. To acheve this shot I will need to track the Camera, use Maya to create the ship and particles, then comp it into a clean plate and use a matte to convey the people and ship behind buildings. Also I will need to use heavy color correction and depth maps to get the atmosphere where the ship is. Also small effects like small fires and smoke added to the buildings in the distance can be added to add to the distraction.
The Second shot will be of fighter jets flying above and Ally where our protagonist is standing.
To do this shot it will need a lot of the same work to the first shot. The camera will need to be tracked and a matte for the buildings made. Elements like distance ploms of smoke over the building will also be added. The challenge with this shot will be the fast moving camera and the high action movement of the protagonist combined with the 3d assets.
The last shot will be of the antagonist inside the ship. She will be looking around saying "Where the hell are we?" This shot will need set extension so a green screen is in order. Since the entire thing is handy cam trackers will need to be placed on the green screen to hold the set in place. as the protagonist moved into it.
A Lot of my shots are going to need a ton of tracking. To get ready for it I tracked a clip and comped in some fighters from my CGI final done so long ago. I used PF track to get a camera solve into Maya. I then used the camera and movie clip to plan out the movement of the fighters. Once I did that I rendered out the fighters and fire on separate passes and brought the images into Nuke. Then I created a matte to obscure the fighters behind trees and rocks then matched the White and blacks with the grade node. I then eye matched the saturation, added grain, and then glint for fun to the flames. The hardest part was matching the bad quality of the video. I had to use some blurs and grain to make it look more degraded like the footage. You can see the end result below.
Viper in Forest from James Spadafora on Vimeo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)