Author: Jess Howard

Week 10

This week we looked at the audio presentation we have to do alongside our essay. I figured the best order for me to do this would be to do the essay first and then cordinate my presentation around my essay.

I worked more on my essay this week also. I researched more into what a literature review entailed and worked on the start of this:

Literature review

When approaching research for this topic, I decided to use a variety of opinions and methods of conclusions. I wanted to find a source in which aligned with my view of appeal within video games follows the path of amount of immersion. Christou (2014) had a scientific approach to this relationship and with reading his study I found that the study had concluded a linear correlation, which supported my statement. Another point of view I wanted to study was a very general one, looking at visual effects in games and I found that environments was something discussed. X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu (2009) also had a positive view on the addition of visual effects in which I could further use as an example of my question proposed. This journal also included many of my keywords I had established would be talked about prior to my research, with ‘atmosphere’ of games being explored in detail. Furthermore, this piece of text gave me ideas as to which details of visual effects I could use as a focal point. Lighting and shading were linked to the keyword ‘atmosphere’, heavily indicating that these elements are linked. Another source I found in my research was directly linked to the environments in games, focusing in on what makes these immersive for players. This source enabled me to view a more detailed perspective on the effects environments have on games, enabling me to see the direction my question would take in terms of environmental design within games. I concluded that environments are portrayed in this source as a layer to games which controls a lot of the gameplay, even stated as promising “a new kind of gameplay challenge” (Chang 2011). My research that followed this consisted of zoning into the examples I wanted to include. I found few sources linked directly to these games and digital environments within, however I figured that with my other sources at play, I would be able to look at the games separately, and find a meeting point for these points of research to meet within my essay. An example of a specific source would be what Niedenthal wrote in 2009, they refer to the environments of ‘Resident Evil’ as ‘gothic’ a lot, a key word that would be explored in my essay. This opened up a discussion for how visual effects contributes to this, and how it improves the players experience having such a memorable environment in a game series. With sources from the directions of where my essay question was built from, I was able to find a middle point where these all contributed to my overall argument and help me form my essay.

Alenda Y. Chang. “Games as Environmental Texts.” Qui Parle, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 56–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0057. Accessed 23 Nov. 2022.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

Niedenthal, S., 2009. Patterns of obscurity: Gothic setting and light in Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play.

X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu, “Visual Effects in Computer Games,” in Computer, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 48-56, July 2009, doi: 10.1109/MC.2009.240.

This is just the start as alongisde my abrsract, this will be a work in progress.

I also looked back on my previous refeences and reviewed if I would be using these in my essay. I have a total of 6 references so far, so I concluded I need to find a few more to use within this essay.

Nuke

Week 10

This week we reviewed our Balloon Projects in class. Before though I added music to my scene just to add to the theme of it.

Balloon Project – Final with sound

The feedback I recieved on this was that it needed to tell more of a story.

We then looked at roles within the VFX industry and what we need to do to impress future employers. One of the main messages we were given was; review your work. This is something that seems so simple yet is looked over so much.

Over the christmas break, I will be writing an essay for my Design for animation module. This contains a lot of research that aligns with Nuke. The lighting and environements I will be talking about use a lot of the same skills we have learnt about in Nuke, so this research will be interesting to compare to what I have learnt so far.

Maya

Week 10

This week we looked at rendering out our final animation. I remembered from our balloon project how to do this, however on the settings I needed a re cap of some of the options we need to select.

Before this, I had realised on the render screen I needed to add some more details that might be visible.

I created a new material when I had selected all the faces that would be the gums on the set of teeth I had made. I made them a gum colour, checking in the render screen to see if the colours looked right with the lighting.

I then created a tounge from a cube shape. I made the cube thinner and extruded faces until it looked like the shape of a tounge. I then scaled and moved it to fit in the mouth. I added it to the bottom jaw joint so it wouldn’t stray when the mouth moved, and would move alongisde this.

When I had completed this, I was then ready to render.

After a while, my render was completed and I opened this up on nuke. I noticed however that the lighting was way too dark.

I decided to add spotlights, and use the three light rule, placing one light in front, and two nehind, all at slight angles.

These improved the lighting, but after another render, the .exr file on Nuke was still too dark. I increased the intensity of the sky dome lighting, and this seemed to do the trick. I also removed the sky dome lighting’s visibility on the render screen so I had a black background instead. I then increased the frame range as some of the lip sync was cut off at the end. As you can see I kept noticing minor improvements throguhtout this render journey, and I must have rendered this scene in total about 10 times before I ended up with my final result.

My final render had come out with an Arnold watermark, but with a quick remult node, this got rid of it. I turned the output to sRGB and I then exported this as a mov file, and used a video editor to add back the sound so we could see the lip sync better.

Final Render with sound

Over christmas, I will be writing an essay for my Design for animation module. This contains a lot of research that aligns with Maya. The objects and animation I will be talking about use the same skills we have learnt about in Maya, so this research will be interesting to compare to what I have learnt so far.

Design For Animation

Week 9

This week I ran through my introduction with my tutor, and got some feedback on how I could improve on this first part of my essay.

Below are the improvements implemented within my introduction.

Immersion in games is debated to be what makes them so successful. The nature of video games is the promise to take the player to ‘another world’ through gameplay, and therefore the upmost effort in digital worldmaking has only increased as the demand for this aspect within games has grown too. In 2014, an author named Georgios Christou, did a study to back this statement, with the results being “It is found that immersion and appeal are linearly correlated” (Christou, 2014), with the higher the immersion through game type and experience, the higher the appeal rate. This is no surprise, given that video games offer an escape from daily life, transporting players through visual and audio means into a world of fantasy, horror, and anything in-between. To do this though, and to create this immersion and appeal positive correlation, we can investigate the vitality of certain aspects within a game. Environments are the basis of worldmaking within a game, mapping out the areas and the world in which a player is within during their experience. These environments are unique and create a certain atmosphere we can feel through separate games, through lighting, buildings, terrain, and weather. Visual effects offer a more realistic and real visual experience to films, games and tv series, and this impacts worldmaking in many ways, especially within the environments around characters.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

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I also then started on developing my abstract for my essay this week.

Abstract

In this essay I will be discussing how vital visual effects are in creating realistic and therefore immersive environments within survival horror games. I will be looking at this through the lens of visual effect’s relationship with realism and immersion, and how much this adds to a gaming experience. I have concluded that…

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I soon realised that the abstract would be best to write at the end, to ensure that the conclusion lined up with that in my essay. This is a draft abstract and will shape more as I continue to write my essay.

Nuke

Week 9

This week we looked at clean up on Nuke, where you can remove things from a scene using roto paint features such as clone. Roto paint offeres more features than the normal roto node, such as clone, blur, and paint. First, we looked at adding focal points to an image. We added the defocus node on to an image of helmets, and we moved the focal point around the image as the focus changed when we did this.

We then played with the roto paint node, with the paint option, allowing you to paint anywhere on the scene. On the same node, we can select the blur option, which in it’s name, lets you blur areas of the scene.

We then looked at cleaning up a scene using some of these features. We were given a scene of a school hallway with posters and drawings on the lockers, and papers on the moving because of the breeze. We were shown various clean up methods such as the fire escape sign being taken out of the shot, the poster being taken out, and also text being added by perspective and trackers on the raidiator. The clone tool was used to remove the things in shot so I wanted to try this out.

We were asked to remove an element from the scene so I chose a drawing on the side of the locker, and used what I had learnt about the clone tool to blend in the removal of this drawing with the rest of the locker. I placed a framehold node then tracked the shot.

Work from home

We were asked to add something to the floor to this scene for homework. My immediate thought was something that had to do with school, kids and playing, and also a floor: the floor is lava! I thought this would be fitting and a fun element to add. To do this I rotoscoped the entire floor, planar tracked it, added stabalize to the roto and also corner pin absolute. I also remebered to add perspective using the grid lines to this planar roto. I then added my image in to Nuke and merged this to the original scene.

I then rendered this out.

Final homework

Our next task was to finish our Balloon Festival Project. I had nearly completed this already but I wanted to add some more elements to it. I figured if I had the dragon breathing fire on the balloon I should have the balloon catching fire. I added the same fire png file and transformed this to follow the balloon using keys and also scaled it to size. I then added the dissolve node so it appeared at the correct time. I then wanted my balloon to be shown more in the project so I added another one of the balloon model coming in at the end above the roto of the mountain, in closer perspective. I transformed this and then used keys so that it moved to where I wanted it to move. I then added a low opacity filter to the background by funsing a dystopian sky png image that was transparent. I added an opacity node that someone had created online after researching, and it gives the scene a slight orange and red tint to it.

I then rendered this to upload on here as my final scene.

Balloon Festival Project

Maya

Week 9

This week we focused on lip synching our face model and animating the face fully alongside audio. For the audio, we chose the final scene of Bladerunner (1982), as this was a monolouge, focusing on one character, and included detailed expressions we could work with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoAzpa1x7jU

We took this youtube clip and screen recorded it through OBS Studio. We then exported this to Adobe After Effects so that we could transform this to audio that would work in Maya. We rendered it out as a j-peg image sequence and a wav. file for the audio. Then on Maya it was easy to right click on the animation bar, innsert audio, and then inser the wav file created from this.

Wav. file on maya

We then worked on firstly getting the lip synching correct to the words that were being said. I did this by using a combination of adjusting the jaw joint using rotation, using the blend shapes we had made prior, and creating new blend shapes for specific shapes a mouth would make of specific letters. For example, when we say ‘P’, our lips go inwards, and when we say ‘O’, we create a round shape with our mouth. I used myself as reference for a lot of these words and letters, and also refered to images of mouth shapes such as the one below.

Mouth shapes – https://blog.mlreview.com/multi-modal-methods-part-one-49361832bc7e

When I had created appropriate blend shapes, I then made keys of the jaw movements, which set the basic outline for then the mouth opens and closes during the speech. At each word said I partially opened the mouth, or opened the mouth a lot, depending on which shape I would need to make with the mouth next.

When the basic opening and closing was done, I started to add the appropriate blend shapes I had created for the mouth according to the letters used at the right time. I keyed the blend shapes to appear when they needed to, and adjusted how much they would show at certain points.

Keys of mouth movements

Work from home

At home, I worked on creating overall expressions on the face, to accompany the lip sync. To do this, I used the main head joint to tilt the head and dip the head at certain points. I keyed these head movements to align with the words he was saying, and what looked natural during speech. I again used blend shapes I had created prior such as the frown and the closing eyes, and I created new ones to create the other minor expressions, such as blinking, frowning a little and smirking where these would fit. I had to add correction blend shapes to adjust some geometry that didn’t fit some of the blend shapes, and I kept this contant.

I made sure this animation looked good in the arnold render screen. On the render screen it looks much more realistic and different to the model on the viewport, everything blends in with each other better, and the shadow on the mouth and teeth looks much more real.

I then recorded my animation of this to put here for progress.

Face animation

Design For Animation

Week 8

This week we looked at structure for our essay, and writing introductions and conclusions. I have a more clear understanding of what the structure of my essay will be like now, as it is different from essays I have written in the past.

Work from home

With this new information I decided to get started on my essay introduction.

Introduction

Immersion in games is debated to be what makes them so successful. The nature of video games is the promise to take the player to another world through gameplay, and therefore the upmost effort in worldmaking has only increased as the demand for this aspect within games has grown too. Christou did a study in 2014 to back this statement, with the results being “It is found that immersion and appeal are linearly correlated” (Christou, 2014), with the higher the immersion through game type and experience, the higher the appeal rate. This is no surprise, given that video games offer an escape from daily life, transporting players through visual and audio means into a world of fantasy, horror and anything in-between. To do this though, and to create this immersion and appeal positive correlation, we can look into the vitality of certain aspects of a game. Environments are the basis of worldmaking within a game, mapping out the areas and the world in which a player is within during their experience. These environments are unique and create a certain atmosphere we can feel through separate games, through lighting, buildings, terrain and weather. Visual effects offers a more realistic and real visual experience to films, games and tv series, and this impacts worldmaking in many ways, especially within environments around characters.

Christou, G., 2014. The interplay between immersion and appeal in video games. Computers in human behaviour, 32, pp.92-100.

This is a work in progress and not my final introduction for the essay.

Nuke

Week 8

This week, we looked at planar and perspective tracking. This is a form of tracking which follows the perspective and movement of the camera so it stays in the same place in the area.

First we looked at some theory behind tracking and the nodes we will be using in this lesson. We looked at motion blur and the correct paths vs. the incorrect paths which would enable it to work.

We then looked at the same idea, but with grade and transform nodes.

We then looked at the shuffle node. This enabled us to connect different channels from inputs to outputs. We tried changing the input of the alpha channel to depth, so on the alpha channel it would enable us to see the depth within the alpha screen. We used this on an image of helmets.

We then looked at planar tracking on a poster scene. First I created a planar tracking node, selected the 4 points at the side of the poster and tracked it. However, we realised with the pole being in front, the poster wouldn’t track efficiently. We rotoscoped around the pole very roughly, and tracked this back and forth, enabling this to be separated from the tracking of the poster. We then tracked this back and forth, but this wasn’t done properly yet. We had to then select display grid lines and correct plane. This enabled us to adjust the perspective of the poster, so the tracking followed this.

I then added the source image of another poster at the reference point to the scene. We had to corner pin the poster to the 4 sides of the original poster and connect it to all of our planar roto and trackers.

I then followed a node path in which added the roto of the pole back on top of the poster. It did this by re-rotoscoping the pole in more detail this time. For me however the pole appeared black and it hadn’t shown the true image of the pole below. I figured I will need to solve this when I complete my homework.

Work from home

I realised the work we had done in class needed some improvement before I worked on the new poster for the homework. I realigned the corner pins and adjusted the roto. I tracked it with these improvements. I re did the steps we learned in class for the next poster planar tracking. I made all of these nodes and trackers alongside a checkerboard for now, so I could just replace this with a poster of my choice later. I scaled and transformed the checkerboard into the left poster frame, and made sure the corner pins were exact. When I made sure this poster frame was tracked properly and moved alongside the tracker with perspective, I added a poster of my favorite film, ‘Drive’ in place of the checkerboard. I added the same grade and colour correction so it fit within the theme of the poster next to it and blended into the scene.

With some help and guidance, I found that the pole was appearing black because the path wasn’t making it’s way back to the background footage. We connected these together and the pole appeared back in the shot, rotoscoped on top of the first poster.

When I made sure this all played through smoothly, I rendered my scene.

Final scene

Then I moved to progressing my Balloon Festival Project work. At this point I only had my balloon moving within my colour corrected scene, behind my roto of the mountain. I wanted to add something more to it, and the aim was to have fun with this project so I began thinking of ideas. First I wanted to try out putting png files into nuke and transforming them into the frame. I started out simple and added a rocker launcher sniper in the right corner of the scene which would just be still the whole scene. I then wanted to add a funny animation. I decided to get a png of a dragon, put it in my scene scaled down to size, and transformed it’s movement with keys to appear to be chasing the balloon through the sky. I then downloaded a png of fire and added a dissolve node to make the fire appear and disappear into the exact frames I wanted the dragon to be breathing fire towards the balloon.

I then made sure everything was okay and ran smoothly and rendered this out so I could keep track of my progress of this project.

Progressed festival scene

Maya

Week 8

This week we worked on more complex animation and facial expressions.

First, I realised that before I continued there was somewthing wrong with my mouth bag, it wouldn’t open properly. With some guidance I realised that my mouth bag was inside out and turned inside out. I turned it in on itself so it would work properly on the animation steps.

I then figured this would help the smile animation on the blend shape editor to look better, before this looked a bit off and could be improved.

I then moved onto the animation of the head leaning back and the mouth opening. I used the centre joint to lean the head back by using the rotation tool. Then we used the paint skin weight tool which allows you to drag the geometry and paint it downwards.

I selected a key on the animation bar, then the jaw joint to drag downwards to create the mouth opening. I then held shift which enabled the smooth tool to smooth out the surface so it would blend in.

Animation

This still needs some improving on the uv alignment which I will make sure to do.

Design For Animation

Week 7

This week we teamed up in groups to discuss our progress on topics we have chosen. It was interesting to hear what some people have chosen and how different our topics were.

This week I have also been looking more into research to develop my topic. I have chosen to go ahead with environmental visual effects in games as this interests me the most and has most academic writing I can reference from.

I went on google scholar again and found some more writings that helped me develop my topic:

X. Yang, M. Yip and X. Xu, “Visual Effects in Computer Games,” in Computer, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 48-56, July 2009, doi: 10.1109/MC.2009.240.

This source talkes about visual effects in games in general, and environmental effects was one of three talked about within games.

“Environmental effects refer to atmospheric phenomena in the environment, such as clouds, fog, smoke, fire, water, rain, and explosions. These are added into the basic scene to create a particular atmosphere or situation.”

With this, keywords such as ‘atmosphere’ could be something I talk about in my essay.

However, it also included techniques of VFX within games such as lighting and shading to create this atmosphere which makes me more confident in the amount I can talk about in this field.

Alenda Y. Chang. “Games as Environmental Texts.” Qui Parle, vol. 19, no. 2, 2011, pp. 56–84. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.5250/quiparle.19.2.0057. Accessed 23 Nov. 2022.

This source also has an overall evalusation of how environments in games are made using visual effects. This is another source I will use in my essay.

Next I looked at sources apparent to the game I wanted to talk about in my essay; Resident Evil.

Weise, M., 2009. The rules of horror: Procedural adaptation in clock tower, resident evil, and dead rising. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play, pp.238-266.

Niedenthal, S., 2009. Patterns of obscurity: Gothic setting and light in Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 2. Horror video games: Essays on the fusion of fear and play, pp.168-180.

Bilchi, N., 2021. Directorial Style for Interactive Storytelling and the Fallacy of Ownership: The Case of Resident Evil 7. Cinergie–Il Cinema e le altre Arti, (19), pp.83-92.

These sources focus on my topic in terms of evidence I can use for a specific game.

On youtube I found informative videos that will also help me develop my topic such as this:

From 5:55 – 7:00 we can see environmental graphics

After this research and advise from my lecturer this week I have found my best title would be “How vital is visual effects in survival horror games such as ‘Resident Evil’ for creating it’s atmospheric environments?”