My VFX Blog – Page 8

Advanced & Experimental Nuke Development

Nuke Development

This week we looked more into projections, and 3D techniques in Nuke.

There are three common ways projections can go wrong in Nuke; smearing, doubling and resolution. Here are some examples of these.

We then looked at changing lighting, from something that seems filmed in the day to a night scene. To do this, colour correction is key. With changing the saturation, hue and colour grading you can create a more night lit scene.

We then need to add light sources such as lighting nodes, and change the direction of these. We can also make artificial lighting from the lamp for exaple. To do this we need to add the glow node, and animate the blinking effect using key frames. We can also changethe colour of this artificial light source.

We then looked into creating a 3D space out of geometry drawn on a scene. To do this, we took the model builder node and created a card, we then shaped the corners to the shape of the wall on the building. Then, we went on edit mode, selected the edge and extruded this all around the scene for floors and walls.

When we then looked at this on the 3D screen we saw a 3D card scene of the perspective and shape of our scene.

Work from home

This week I worked more on my garage project. I worked out that I was creating an axis node from scratch, for the cone to track along with the scene and camera I needed to create it from the tracking points on the tracking camera. I re tracked my scene with 500 features instead of 200 and learnt the way to connect the axis and cones through the points on the floor through the pre made script.

This way we know match move is working.

I then rotoscoped the wall surrounding where we would be putting our model, again I am having trouble with the tracking which is something that is my next objective to figure out in the coming week, as well as combating why the clone tool won’t work for me so I can get rid of the markers.

Advanced & Experimental Maya Development

Maya Development – Week 3

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 28th January 2023
No Comments on Maya Development – Week 3

This week we animated the camera movement and rendered out our Rube Goldberg machine.

With my model and bullet animation completed, I looked toward creating a camera and animating this for rendering. In terms of ‘animation’, this is for the movement we will see through the lens in the render. I first created a camera and placed in infront of my machine.

I then looked at the view through the camera on the viewport, this is a way to make sure it is following the ball when we animate the movement. I then, using key frames, animated the movement to follow the ball, and created a loop by copy and pasting key frames from the very start to the very end.

Viewport of lens and location of camera from a far

I then decided to add details such as bubbles coming from a pipe at the top to make more of a factory look. I did this by animating bubbles using key frames rising from the pipe.

I was then ready to render, making sure it was rendering from the camera lens. First attempt at rendering was super slow, but then I tried switching it to render through GPU, this made it 10x quicker.

Final render

Collaborative

Week 2

This week we had another workshop, this time it was on study and time management and how to deal with this.

In this workshop I concluded I was a visual and verbal leaner. This narrowed down my study tecniques that may be more sucessful to me than others. I also learnt about more individual ideas such as body doubling as a form of motivation.

Time management for me has always been reasonably okay, however, a technique discussed called the ‘Pomodoro’ technique seemed very useful and something I will definitely try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uopo2OBnIoU

We also had another meet and greet discussing session.

I went to the main Utopia and Dystopia group first, however I had seen that ‘Gothic and Dark Fantasy’ was added as a topic. I went around searching for people interested but unfortunately this didn’t seem a popular topic,

I went back to Utopia and Dystopia and found a group looking for VFX artists, this group had the intention to make Battersea in London a Dystopia themed area digitally, and was in collaboration with two major studios. I thought this option may be more pressure and more difficult for me, but I came to the conclusion a challenge would be good for me to progress, and this alongside studio work would be great 3D modelling and environment design content for my showreel in the future.

Advanced & Experimental Nuke Development

Nuke development – Week 2

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 23rd January 2023
No Comments on Nuke development – Week 2

This week we looked more on the topic of inserting 3D geometry on to scenes, and 3D scene tecniques in general. First, we practiced this with inputing text and a colour wheel on to a wall in a 3D scene. On the 3D screen viewport we can move these around easier.

We then looked at more clean up tecniques, but this time on a 3D scene. We were shown written instructions and a before and after of what this would look like sucessfully.

We continued to look at tracking a 3D scene, in the 3D viewport you can see specks of the scene tracked out and the points that were sucessfuly tracked.

We can then turn this into a ‘Poisson mesh’, creating geometry of the 3D mapping.

However, if you create a group and bake this, we can see the group of points created and the 3D scene through these points, the shaping of it from a 3D perspective.

We then went over how to create a plate, and did a quick planar tracking on this scene. This taught us how to create geometry on a 3D scene and how to transform it within this scene.

We then moved on to camera tracking the 3D scene of our homework and project we will be starting. From this, we can create a ‘Scene +’ which enables us to have nodes where the camera is linked to the camera tracker, and other elements are too. We also undistorted the lens using the checkerboard lines, and connected this to the scene.

Work from home

This week I started to set up my project some more. I added tracking cones to the points on the scene, by transforming them and adjusting their axis points. I have yet to figure how to link these to the tracker and to move with the camera, this is my next obstacle to overcome.

I also added the checkerboard plates to the floors of the scene through the 3D navigation screen. Again, I tried re starting and linking many node but I couldn’t get past the issue of no tracking working for my geometry, this is something I will work on as the project progresses.

Advanced & Experimental Maya Development

Maya Development – Week 2

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 22nd January 2023
No Comments on Maya Development – Week 2

This week we developed our Rube Goldberg machines. I started to continue on from last week and create more elements to my machine.

I decided I wanted to make a ball that went down an obstacle course and then through a ‘bubble machine’ and floated up as a bubble, and make it a satisfying loop.

Firstly I started on the physics design. I wanted to create something simple, but satisfying, that would also work well with my bubble machine design. I kept the original animation made with bullet from last week as the starting point, and added two passive rigid body slides the bubble would fall into. I then made a twist slide the bubble would go through and made it a hollow passive rigid body to make this possible.

I then did the same thing to two more slides that the bubble would pass through, and started making the design for the main element of the bubble machine.

Here I baked my animation so no aprt of the design process would mess the animation up. I then started focusing more on what my design would look like, I decided a pastel pallete, and a cute aesthetic would fit this machine. I added a bubble background image for the machine and added coloured surfaces to each part of my model. These included chrime, plastic and frosted glass. I also added a bubble texture to the ball itself.

I then added a ‘clear water’ texture to the window of my bubble machine so it would create the illusion of a bubble being made.

I also added details like the metal pipe the bubble would come out of.

Work from home

My task for myself this week was to complete the machine ready for the camera rendering next week. I felt I needed to add more detail to this machine as the actual physics were quite simplistic.

I found the perfect hdri background and lighting source on Poly Haven. It is a pastel power plant, which was exactly the aesthetic I wanted.

I wanted to add a sign for the machine and the little bubble machine. I found a bubble font I liked and then made 3D text to input on top of my model and on top of my bubble machine.

I then added a foam border to my machine, making it look neater more complete. I also rounded off the dominoes at the start, and also did this to the slides, making a more bubbly look for all of the machine components. I played around with texturing also, and finalised any errors on my geometry.

I then added an animation of bubbles coming out of a pipe at the top of the whole machine for the whole animation, just for an added effect.

Collaborative

Week 1

This week we were introduced to the Collaboration unit, and were given some topics to choose from.

One that stood out to me most was Utopia and Dystopia, as I have always been interested in dystopian settings and environments. I also was interested in Ephemeral: A fleeting moment, and Cyberpunk, costume nad AI.

After our discussion session and finding some people I would work well with, I decided to put my name down for Utopia and Dystopia.

I decided this would be most beneficial to my showreel as an environment artist.

We then had a workshop on how to succesfully work in a group, what the unit entails ans some examples of previous student work.

This was very benefital and made me understand this unit more. What I found interesting was the dynamics of working in a group, and some theories about this. Our workshop leader introducesd me to a thoery called ‘Forming, storming, norming, performing, informing’ (Tuckman 1965).

Graph model – https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thecoachingtoolscompany.com%2Fget-your-team-performing-beautifully-with-this-powerful-group-development-model%2F&psig=AOvVaw2-1GnKwR2e-t6xofpGRUS6&ust=1674053526974000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMCNgr_tzvwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAR

This informed me on the apprach to group work more, and the objective being of getting to the ‘norming’ stage as soon as possible.

Diagram model – https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Felearning.youthline.co.nz%2Fmod%2Fbook%2Fview.php%3Fid%3D621%26chapterid%3D160&psig=AOvVaw2-1GnKwR2e-t6xofpGRUS6&ust=1674053526974000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CA8QjRxqFwoTCMCNgr_tzvwCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAZ

Advanced & Experimental Nuke Development

Nuke development – Week 1

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 17th January 2023
No Comments on Nuke development – Week 1

For the first lesson of this module, we went stright into looking at advanced tools for VFX within Nuke, with looking at Nuke in a 3D perspective. So far I had only been using nuke in 2D so this was a new development for me,

First, we looked at lens distortion. We used a checkerboard image as this was the most simple way to process what this node could do, as it was only working with striaght lines.

Here we can see it has detected the straight lines when we click detect, but they slightly are distorted at the sides by curving.

When we click ‘solve’, it strightens these lines to create a flat surface of the lens, as we can see the change of the lines in green.

We then looked at the 3D function node ‘Scaleline render’ in nuke by pressing tab on the viewing screen, on a scene with the moon.

In this function, we can add a camera, and select this on the viewport to see through the camera’s lens.

this means we can render out a 3D scene of models through these, and adjust where they are on the axis.

We can add models through the ReadGeo node, and therefore render these out through any angle, and even animate the camera’s movement around these.

In the 3D screen we can also add lighting, adjust it’s placements and colours in which it inputs onto the 3D scene we create.

We then looked at camera tracking within an actual scene, and how this camera tracking can be used as a 3D feature within nuke. We were given a scene of a street, and camera tracked a specific part of the scene, We could then increase the amount of features, or points, in the scene that the camera was tracking. We increased the amount of features to 1000, so many points of this scene were tracked as it moved.

When pressing track nd solve we see the completion of the tracking of these points in motion when we go through the scene.

We can create solid shapes to appear on our scene, we used a checkerboard plate as an example. We could rotate it’s position by swiching to the 3D screen, and moving it within the scene.

When you press tab and swich to the 2D scene, you can see these appear within the scene of the street.

Advanced & Experimental Maya Development

Maya development – Week 1

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 17th January 2023
No Comments on Maya development – Week 1

To start this module off, we started looking at more advanced VFX work on maya, the first being a tool called ‘Bullet’.

Before exploring this tool however, we practiced the animation skills we would need for later. We created a stairs and a sphere to represent a ball that would be seen to be falling down the stairs.

We then made the animation on the animation graph editor as this way we can edit the exact bounces it would make by adjusting the X and Y marks it would change as it went down. We did this by breaking the tangents on new set keys so we could adjust the angles of whihc it would be falling at and make them all similar.

I had to edit my graph and make the curves more exaggerated so that the ball would bounce more.

We then added another ball next to it, and applied the same methid but this time adding a more flat fall.

We added a background lighting and made a playback blast to document how this ended up looking,

Finished practice animation

The Bullet tool helps you create movement and direct animations of shapes colliding with other shapes. The two main functions of this tool is ‘active’ and ‘passive’ rigid bodies. Passive being something that makes the shape almost like a wall, a surface that doesn’t move, active being one that falls and collides with other active bodies, or against passive bodies.

We first tried just creating a cube, rising it above ground, making it an active rigid body and then playing the animation.

The cube fell and bounced off the ground. We then created a slightly more complex practice model of a ball colliding with dominoes, subsequently knocking them over. For this we had to make sure the sphere was an active rigid body, it’s collider shape was set to sphere, and that the slope the ball fell down, the plate for the ground and the dominoes were all passive rigid bodies.

Finished practice bullet of dominoes

I also added an active body of another sphere to delevop this animation of a cause and effect chain.

Work From Home

We were told in the forthcoming weeks we had to develop design ideas for a simailar but more complex Rube Goldberg machine project we were going to create with bullet. I researched some design ideas and physics ideas for what I could create.

I decided I really liked the idea of playing with gravity and a loop system to create a satifying factory like machine. When I thought about playing with gravity and reversing it, I then thought of a floating ball, perhaps a bubble I could incorperate wihin this.

When looking at design ideas for a Rube Goldberg machine to do with bubbles, I was inspired by a pastel colour pallette, with the idea of a ‘bubble maker’ incorperated which created the solid bubble to float somehere in the animation. I decided this would be what I would develop within this project.

Design For Animation

Audio Visual Presentation

Post author By Jess Howard
Post date 11th January 2023
No Comments on Audio Visual Presentation

Reels