Author: Jess Howard

Nuke

Week 7

This week we looked more into detail of tracking, stabilizing a shot, and then adding the movement back in.

We were given an iphone, a commercial style scene, to add a screen and animation of scrolling upwards on. We had to stabalise the shot and track the motion first, so we could work on everything else. For this, we tracked four corners of the phone screen, and selected the transforom stablize node from the tracker.

We used a mock iphone screen to match the iphone staring screen. We put it on top of the green screen by mirroring it and transforming it.

We then added the checkerboard ontop by transforming it to fit on top of the screen. We did this by using the mock iphone screen and masking it to match the shape. By adding the dissolve node, we could make the iphone mock starting screen dissolve into the checkerboard to resemble an iphone being unlocked.

Work from home

We got sent another script of this for homework to finish off the animation and image, so I followed throught the steps we went through in class to get up to the part I needed to do. Next, I worked on rotoscoping the fingers so they would be ontop of the screen when ther person scrolled. I added motion blur as the fingers were moving quite a lot, and made sure there was least amount of green showing around the fingers as possible.

I then did the animation for the scrolling upwards of the phone screen for the checkerboard image. I had to do this in the transform node and pick the frames where they start scrolling and stop.

I then added matchmove from the tracker node back in so the phone would move with the camera again. I checked this was all working by selecting the last merge node, it took me many attempts of changing nodes around, changing where the stabalize and matchmove nodes were, before this was all working.

Then I was ready to add my Instagram feed image in. I had to adjust the size to match the length of the checkerboard image in photoshop, then I was able to swap out the checkerboard for this image, adjust it accordingly, and watch all of these steps put together for my final outcome.

Some minor improvements I added at the end included the roto on my fingers, and adjusting the corner pin of the phone screen.

Final comp of iphone

I then worked on improving my Balloon Festival project due soon. I added my balloon model to the mountain scene, and colour corrected the background to be brighter and more colourful. I also added more detail to the mountain roto so it looked more clean when the balloon moved behind it. I then animated my balloon to go behing the rotoscope of the mountain. I struggled because my balloon kept going transparent when I added it, and when it went back to normal, the roto wouldn’t work. It seemed I couldn’t have one without the other. However I found that I needed to add a premult after the transform and roto, and add the mountain scene to be B instead of A

This is a work in progress I will develop over the next week.

Progressed balloon project

Maya

Week 7

This week we worked on joints, teeth and basic animation for our face model.

We started with creating blend shapes in the shape editor, this enabled us to make basic animation shapes by using the grabbing tool for sculpting, and adjusting where we wanted the features to end up at the end of the animation. Then when we selected the slider right to left we see the transition from a natural expression to the changed expression we had made. I did this for smiling, closing eyes, and frowning.

I then did some extra tweaking of my UVs whilst I was waiting for the next part of the lesson. I made the wrinkle lines and eyebrows more smooth on the geometry which made a big improvement.

Next, we worked on adding joints to our face model. For this, we changed to rigging and selected skeleton then create joints. I added 6 joints going from the bottom of the neck, to the centre then towards the chin, this enabled me to have joint manipulation throught the places we needed to move.

I then experimented with rotating the joints and seeing what areas they affected.

This seemed to work, however the eyes were not moving with the head so I needed to fix this. I added the eyes under the selection of the main centre head joint, so it would move along with the head.

Work from home

I still needed to add teeth to my model following through the online recording again. I started by creating a pipe shape, changing its dimensions to the amount of teeth I needed and adjusting the scale and thickness. I then cut it in half.

I then changed it to a smoother surface by pressing 3, and using the lattice tool, changed the verteces to be more rounded and shaped like a mouth.

I then extruded the top faces, and selected off on Keep faces together, so they would seperate. Then, using the move and scale tool I simply adjusted the size and width of them all to appear more realistic.

After this, I needed to seperate the teeth from gums. I created edge loops at the bottom of each tooth to create an indent. After this, I selected the bottom vertex on each tooth and dragged it down to make a more oval shape for the bottom of the teeth, enchancing on the realism we are trying to achieve. I then duplicated the teeth and rotated them so I had a full set of teeth, and placed them inside the mouth bag.

I then added these under the main head joint so that all my components move together.

Final link of all parts of the face model

Design For Animation

Week 6

This week we focused on paraphrasing. We learnt about how to paraphrase, and what is paraphrasing and what is not. If something is paraphrased appropriately, it does not need to be referenced.

We had to paraphrase the quote below in our own words from what we have learnt.

Paraphrased by me:

A documentary inhabits characteristics of realism, as does the images it presents. This can be mesured by proof of events in the images presented, showcasing the connection between the real world and image.

Work from home

I used my time at home to really think more and research on my essay question.

Working titles:

How vital is visual effects in games within the fantasy genre for worldmaking?

How much does worldmaking within games rely on visual effects?

How much does worldmaking within films rely on visual effects?

How much does worldmaking within fantasy tv series rely on visual effects?

The keywords stuck with all these titles is worldmaking and visual effects. Fantasy is also a genre that is present a lot.

I wanted to add a specific series on the last question, BBC’s ‘Merlin’, as that has fantastic worldmaking, but with research on google scholar, I found that there was little works I could reference from about it.

Some other games/films I could research for this include:

Final Fantasy

The Legend of Zelda

World of Warcraft

Life is Strange

Harry Potter

I then thought about having a back up question just in case these were seen to be weak suggestions when I have my one to one tutorial. I thought about my other interests and came to the conclusion other questions could be:

How has environmental animation progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has environmental VFX progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has monster design for animation progressed within survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’?

How has VFX preogressed in survival horror games to create more immersion?

How has VFX preogressed in survival horror games to create improved worldmaking?

Nuke

Week 6

This week we looked at colour correcting on Nuke. We were given a script which we went through teaching us the steps to colour correcting a frame or scene. First, we looked at the Unpremult and Grade nodes. The Unpremult node takes the pixels that have ‘jagged’ sides and fills them in, adding this during a colour correct can add more of a blur or quality to something in the scene and ensures that this jagged edging is sorted. We were given a face that we used the Grade and Unpremult nodes to enhance, and place on a scene.

Intoroduction to Grade and Unpremult nodes

We then looked at white balacing. I had studied this on my Film BA on a physical camera, and on editing software during post production, so it was interesting to see how this takes shape in visual effects and compositing. We selected the white colour on the properties withing the Grade node, and placed it on the frame to apply it to the places where green was present in the white light.

We then looked at how to merge colours onto seperate frames using the Blur node, we blurred out completely the frame of a forest, and merged that within a frame of buildings to create the same array of colour onto that frame.

Work from home

I used what I had learnt from this lesson to complete the homework. We had to colour correct a plane to look more natural in the setting it was composited into. I scaled it to proportion using the Transform node. I then used the sequence we were taught, using the Grade, Premult and Unpremult, Colour Correct, Merge, Toe and Blackmatch nodes. The latter two are to correct the shadowing. I brought the green colour within the plane through and also played with exposure to ensure it looked more suited to the background.

I then focused on preparing and improving my roto on the mountain for our balloon project. I realised I needed to render more of the side of the mountain to ensure balloons passing behind it would be fully able to be seen going behind the mountain. I expanded the roto ensuring the tracker still worked alongside this.

Maya

Week 6

This week we worked on texturing our face model using UV on Maya. Before this, I needed to improve on the shape of the nose and the nostrils. When I was working on this and asked for guidance, we came across the problem in which I couldn’t sculpt using the sculpting tool, This was because there was an error in the geometry of my face. I needed to re-mirror the face, but we soon came to see the mirroring wasn’t sucessful due to there being triangles and shapes that didn’t line up in my model. I re-did the geometry on the edge of the back of my face model to ensure the mirroring would be sucessful, and sorted any errors in shaping out. This took some time, but allowed me to mirror the model correctly, sculpt the nose and extrude the nostrils. I also added eyelids and a mouth bag. I also smoothed the head and shaped the back of it more.

I then added the eyes under the eyelids by creating a sphere and shaping it, and duplicated this to the other side, lining them up.

We then went on to texturing the face. We downloaded a skin texture and an eye texture and using UV we lined these up. We unfolded the UV grid of our model and used the grabbing tool to line up the appropriate parts of the texture to our model. I also repeated this for the eyes and lined these up with my spheres on the model.

I then wanted the ears to also be present on the model as it looked odd having just a hole, so I filled in the ear spaces and made the UV line up with where the ears would be. The model also looked very dark in the render screen so I added physical light and enhanced the brightness of the skin.

I played around with the UV some more to make the lips more accurate in shape and the wrinkes more lined up. I reshaped the eyebrow placements and adjusted te UV on the back of the head to line up more accurately.

Design For Animation

Week 5

This week, we explored animated documentry and politics in animation.

One of the animation documentaries that stood out to me was A is for Autism (1992).

This was a really creative way to express autism and the animation created a revenue for visual learners to imagine what it must be like for the autistic people narrating the video.

I would say this still counts as a documentary because it is informative, non fictional and made for learning. These characteristics to me apply to documentaries regardless if the visual aspect of the video is animated or not, and if anything, the animation, for me, helped me understand the message better. and didn’t take away from the realism.

Taxonomy of animated documentary says an animated documentary “is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator”. This applies to this documentary because autism and it’s characteristics are present in the real world, and these are real experiences, not made up.

Christina Formenti and Bill Nichols argue animated documetaries should be based on the autenticity of the images presented, and that there is a lack of objectivity to these, therefore it should be classed as a ‘docu-fiction’. I don’t think this argument alters my opinion due to the fact the animations on screen don’t take away from the informative aspect documentaries should have, and this is what makes a documentary a documentary to me.

Nuke

Week 5

This week we reviewed ourr homework of the rotoscope of the man running. Having seen the others and recieving feedback, I realised how much more work and detail I really had to add to my roto. I planned to work on this when I got home.

Next, we looked at rotoscoping the bridge, we would have to finish this at home however we needed to learn how to use the tracker first. I began drawing round the bridge to make a template on how to use the tracker on the bridge. We then selected the tracker and went through the ways in which we could get the roto to move with the bridge’s movements on the camera. This will be a really beneficial tool to use. I linked my tracker to my roto and tested to see if it worked and it did after Gonzalo had come to check.

I then worked on understanding the nodes better so when I went home I’d know the exact steps to apply on the other side of the bridge when I was home.

Work from home

The first thing I did at home was work on improving the roto of the running man. I knew from other work that my standards and attention to detail needed to be better on this. I added more points, adjusted the rotos on each body part, and went through every frame perfecting the points.

Improved roto

I then worked on completeing the bridge roto, and tracking both sides to move with the frame.

Full roto of bridge and man

Then, our other peice of homework was to roto the edge of the mountain for our balloon project scene. We had to roto the details on the edge og the mountain so balloons can pass behind it. I rotoscoped all the edge details, created a matte overlay, added a tracker to the roto so it moved with the camera and played this through. I had to edit some to most of the points as the tracker went on as it wasn’t 100% accurate, and didn’t scale up in size, but the tracker helped a lot with movement.

Roto of edge of mountain

Maya

Week 5

This week we worked on face modelling. We downloaded a free face model and learnt how to use quad draw to draw geometry around his face, and mould it into our own face model. I started by using quad draw to draw the geometry around the eye to create the eye shape, and practice using the tool.

For a while, I couldn’t adjust the shapes and change the geometry. After I asked for guidence on this, I simply had the soft brush on and had to turn it off by pressing B. This was a very simple mistake but if I run into this problem again, now I know how to solve this.

I started building up the geometry on the full face.

I kept running into areas where I couldnt complete the geometry without making triangles, and I needed them all to be 4 sided. However, with a lot of trial and error, and fiddling around with the shapes, and creating more or less edge loops, I completed the geometry on half of the head model. I used the relax tool to smooth out all the geometry which proved to make much of a difference and a benefit.

Next, we had to line up the edge and the verteces at the halfway mark so it was level. For this we switched to top view, and selected the end verteces and scaled them inwards to create a level halfway point. Then, we mirrored the half on which we applied quad draw to, switched the the smoother view (3), and I was suprised to see that the nose was almost completely hollow, and it just didn’t look detailed enough.

Work from home

I figured at home this might be becuase my geometry wasn’t detailed enough, as I deleted edge loops to ensure no triangles were included. Also, I hadn’t covered the nose in detail round the nostrils, and I needed to make the eye almost completely covered to create the eyelids. I worked on all of these improvements, then followed the same steps of leveling the halfway verteces and mirroring, and the result was much better, with the details I wished to be included present now.

Design For Animation

Week 4

This week, we focused on abstraction and experimental films. Early works included the use of ink and prints, in place of modern day visual effects we see presently, to create art forms in film, adverts, and to catch peoples eye. This creative form was interesting to see, as we looked at how people still managed to have creativity on film without the technology. We were asked to find an abstraction film and discuss how it is abstraction, what we liked about it, and what is similar to the types we saw in class.

I did some research and found an early non-narrative experimental film made by Len Lye in 1935. It is called ‘A Colour Box’, and I believe it to be from a conceptual perspective.

What I love about this film is how it is a visual representation of the sound it is playing, it mixes sound art and practical effects such as ink, paint and postal objects. It was funded on the condition Lye would place a postal advertisement at the end. It is bursting with colour and vibrancy throughout, and toys with the idea of colour and art abstraction. The theme of a post office, and arts was apparent throughout, making the use of paints and post etc. have a direct link to the message of the postal advertisment with the actual mediums used within it.

This film origanally divided Britain, some people loved this film and some people hated it, and most likely didn’t get it. However, it ended up winning festival awards and was restored by the British Film Institute.

This film reminded me of the ones we looked at in class due to the early effects made by ink, colour and paints, and how this is really effective in abstract art.

Nuke

Week 4

This week, we learnt have the basics of how to rotoscope on Nuke. We were given a video of a running man, and taught the nodes, different points and techniques on how to rotoscope his body frame by frame. We created a sequence of nodes by just pressing ‘O’, which brought up the Rotoscope nodes in Nuke.

In the session we played around with the rotoscope tools such as Bezier, and practised drawing around the man’s body parts frame by frame. We started with the head, being the most easiest part as this moves the leaast.

We then looked at tools such as motion blur and matte overlaying what we have rotoscoped. When I was more comfortable with the tools, I worked on putting the Bezier around the arms. I also learnt how to change the viewer to show the rootoscope in alpha mode, so you can see the shape you have created better.

Work from Home

As homework we had to rotoscope the whole 100 frames of the man’s whole body running in the scene. I split the parts into head, left arm, right arm, chest and legs to make the transitions easier to change frame by frame. The part I found challenging was keeping the matte overlay of red on the roto nodes. For some reason this kept removing itself. However I figured out I had to select the overall viewer to be in matte overlay intead of rgb, and this was resolved.

When I comppleted this I struggled with the rendering a bit, but soon realised that the codec was in the wrong encoding selection. I then uploaded this mov file to the homework folder. This blog can’t read the format of this video whenever I upload it, so please press Download on the right to watch my rotoscope below:

Jess-Howard-man_running_v001-2 Download