The Final Result (WATCH IN HD)

NUKE!

It was time to head into nuke and experiment with my render passes. This program is great for creativity because what you render out from maya is always completely changable in most cases. Lights, colors etc can all be changed in post. Another thing about this program which I have learnt is the fact that the scene can never be perfected enough. You could spend an eternity adding in details to make it perfect. Its just a matter of time. I admit that this project has been late to hand in because of this. But due to uni holidays I decided that I would rather spend a little bit more time on it.

I am also a terrible programmer by nature, however I found this to be a lot more intuitive to me. I really opened my eyes to how much work is actually done in post to bring about true detail.

Here is my Nuke tree showing the process I went though in order to embed the animation within my video footage.

Animating and Rendering

Ok so ive just been experimenting with a range of different ideas and poses for my animation. SInce it is a spider I really want to capture the essence of the war machine acting and interacting with the environment like an actual spider. The key I believe is to make it interact and become part of the environment. CG that sticks out is easily spotted by the human eye as we have all seen in old low budget films.

I had to take into consideration a lot of aspects in the shot because of its movement. I had to also consider a lot of aspects that would affect the placement of the spider. Because I used N cloth on the model and I had not programmed colliders very well with the fabric I could not mount the spider on the wall as expected as it meant the cloth would get tangled in the geometry. This was really frustrating because I didn't want to loose the cloth because it gave the robot that little bit more realism. It would have been ideal if I had the spider climbing down the wall when it spotted the soldier peeking around the corner.

Another thing to concider was what mood did I want the scene to portray? I really wanted the solider to feel as though he was so insignificant in comparison to the robot/s. The robot showed absolutely no fear in the solider. I wanted to animate the spider as though it was stalking prey. For this I studied the movements of spiders and other stalking animals. After all this I decided to place the spider onto the ground instead of the wall. This would also bring the most camera view of the spider throughout the scene.

However after animating the spider I realized that when the solider comes around the corner to shoot he points his gun upwards of the spider shooting at the windows on the wall. GREAT. So now I had to find a way around this problem. And this was when I discovered the use of referenced files in maya. It enabled to open up my creativity so much more. References basically enable you to import other maya files into another scene. So I came up with the idea to simply duplicate the large spider model and create miniature "drone" versions of the boss spider that are also out patrolling for humans. I made a copy of the original spider, re-textured it and saved it under another file. I then animated the new red spider. Then looking at the geometry on the wall I realised that I could simply duplicate/rename the animation of the red spider and recycle it to save time. Then i simply referenced in the duplicates and started each animation at different intervals to break up the movements of the spiders to make them all look different. This workflow really keeps the creativity in the scene open for edits and changes later down the track. 

Now that all the animation has been completed. I needed to set up lights. This was tricky because the scene itself was not well illuminated. It was somewhat dull and lifeless. So I just used HDR, and a low intensity rect and sphere light to replicate the lighting. I wanted to avoid the 'burnt out sun look.' From here I rendered out all the different passes on different render layers in maya. I rendered the shadows and the the spider separately so I had more control over them in post. These passes including rgb, light selections, reflection, specular, World_XYZ, and velocity.

All of these passes are made to ensure the most control in post and make blending the object far more efficient. These passes are infused inside a multi-channel EXR file which can be split apart in nuke.

Past the Due date of the 2nd brief

OK so I'm past the due date now, but to be honest I don't want to produce something that's mediocre, I want to produce something that is of the highest quality possible. I hate producing work that I am not happy with. I want to make a professional portfolio and rushing large projects into this space of time is never going to produce quality results. I keep finding more and more to add to my scene to make it look better. The fact that I have incorporated dynamics, animation, modelling, texturing, lighting, 3d tracking, and also compositing means I have my work cut out for me but I am confident that the final result will show my effort.

IF this was for a client I would obviously have done a lot less in the scene and gone about doing things differently to meet the time frame however I think this is an exception.

Final Render

Here is the final render of the robot spider and what I will look like inside its environment:

Slow painstaking progress

I have rigged the entire model and it is ready to be animated. I used a feature in maya called referencing which means I can import a different maya scene into another. Any changes that happen to the imported maya file will be changed in the referenced file, this means that I am able to animate without having to worry about redoing any mistakes (which inevitably will happen). Due to time constraints I cannot take any risks because even the most simplistic problems can take hours to solve with my basic knowledge. The rig is fairly standard using IK handles and joints with the exception of a few set driven keys.

Finally A bit of Success...

So after trying for days on end to track my scene in both MatchMover and Nuke, I decided to try a progrma called Boujou to track my scene and finally receive some promising results. I think my persistence finally payed off. From here I started to model out some of the background geometry. The reason behind this instead of using a flat plane was because when the spider crawls down the wall I want the shadows to look dynamic and suit the surrounding environment. It would not look natural to simply slap flat shadows on a wall that was not flat.

I also start to model the spider itself, which is now ready for rigging and animating into the 3d environment I created. The geometry is rather simple because there was no closeup in the shot. Not only that but the camera is very shaky which means the audience wont be able to focus much on the CG object.

Project On the Side

After doing some research I decided to work a bit on my own away from the group and create my own project. I wanted to adopt a system similar to how Google operates. They dedicate 20% of their workers time to let them work on their own projects that loosely relate to the company to keep the creative spice alive.

In this brief I set out to create a character head sculpture that showed true emotion and personality.

I chose this because I feel as though this is the hardest aspect to create with any 3d model and CG. I also love zombies so I thought I would combine this fact into my 3d model so that I had drive to complete it to the highest quality possible. I actually loved doing this project because I felt personal connection with it. This reinforces that enjoyment is an important prerequisite to creativity.

Another reason I chose a zombie is because they are constantly portrayed as emotionless brutes who are hellbent on eating brains. This zombie however has a sense of sadness and longing in its eyes. This is a trait not often seen in zombies and why I was drawn to this particular sculpture. The original plan was to composite this model looking at itself in the mirror and seeing itself for the first time and remembering the life it once had as a human (however I ran out of time). Incorporating these feelings into the project really gave me a direction and I am happy with the result.

I now have come to a deeper understanding in the steps needed to generate creative 3d artwork. Before I looked at it from a very outside perspective, however now I try and connect with what I am designing.

Match Moving Is doing my head in...

Finding it really hard to match move the scenes that I want to use. Especially since they are in war movies. There are so many post production additions such as smoke that make it near impossible to create a 3d scene and match move.. I've tried 2 different programs and nothing seems to go as I plan. Not only that but I need an extremely good copy of most films to be able to match move accurately. Everything I find seems to be too blurry and unusable. I will try and find something with a higher quality to use instead. Fingers crossed.

Essence Of Creativity

SO what exactly is the essence of creativity and how do we acquire such a thing? At the gaming company Valve they have adopted a new technique to promote creativity. They did this by completely changing up their business model to encourage people to pick and choose which projects they want to work in. This is done because it promotes creativity? Why? Because it enables people to work on what they are actually interested in rather than slaving away on a project that does not stimulate them in any way. As Steve Jobs once said, "They only way to do great work is to love what you do." I completely agree with this because working on  a project that you have no desire to complete is mentally straining. In reading about this I came to the conclusion that I can incorporate this idea into our current briefs. Although there is a set guideline that we must follow I can promote my creativity by adding in aspects that interest me. This could turn a boring compositing project into something that I am genuinely interested in.

This brings about the issue of employers possibly drowning out creativity by reducing the amount of freedom given to workers. This is why I love the design of the brief that we have been given. It has structure and yet at the same time it allows for a lot of freedom to explore. Looking at this fact makes me ponder if creativity is not just in our hands but also in the hands of the brief being presented.

I also think that we need to collaborate ideas in a group more often rather than brainstorming ourselves. After all creativity is not about efficiency but instead heavily relies on serendipity. Happy mistakes sometimes make the most brilliant ideas. Perhaps combining our creativity instead of working as individuals would help us generate more innovative ideas. This brings me to the point that all of us are for some reason making robots for the compositing project. We did not decide this as a group, but rather as individuals. It seems almost embedded in our brains to interpret "non-organic" as a robotic creature. Perhaps this is a sign that we are all using the same thought processes to create our composite. I think we need to change the way we approach ideas in general and reprogram ourselves to think not about what has been done, rather what hasn't been done. We need to interrupt our subconscious mind and break our usual patterns of thinking.

"Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have" Steve Jobs.

Meeting with Karen

Had our first real meeting with Karin and I am very glad we did so. I felt earlier as though the concept was secondary to actually building a portfolio. This is because we were focusing more on the technical side of things rather than looking at the actual concept we proposed. Instead of focusing just on workflows we need to focus more on what we are actually producing from the briefs. A very important thing to think about is the creative freedom we have within our briefs or rather the illusion of creative freedom we have. Although we could have chosen anything that wasn't organic to change a movie scene we all seem to be creating robots of some kind. This was a decision that came about individually without influence. I think the reason for this was because we all have a predisposed notion that for something to be inorganic it must be a robot. This thought process really limits our creativity and overall diversity. With the new brief we are fighting for our creativity and really forced into a corner as to what we can and cant produce. Once again this relates back to the concept of creative freedom. We have to balance out the scales to accommodate what the client wants vs what we want to create.

After the meeting with Karin (the client) I realized that I had strayed very far off track from the brief. I was simply trying to embed any CG into any film without really thinking about the reason why. I quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to rethink my approach as I needed to actually change the meaning of the scene rather than just throw something in for the sake of it.

I think that this is an important skill to learn because a lot of the time in films where CG is implemented the director will instruct the compositors to build the scene with a particular mood and atmosphere that suits the needs of the film. Even small implementations can drastically change the viewers opinion of the scene and alter their interpretations.

I am thinking about going back to my original idea of using a war movie and embedding technology ahead of its time to change the atmosphere of the scene. Combining advanced technology with and old war film would bring about an interesting feel similar to a game called Resistance on the Playstation 3. Where aliens have invaded earth and are taking over the human race. Instead of aliens however, I wish to bring about a new scenario where the Nazis actually succeeded in developing war machines that overpowered the American army.

A factor I am also concerned about at this stage is that the briefs set for us do not require much interaction between the client and the producer. I think if the briefs had more of a real world purpose to then this would force us to actually interact and develop with the client rather than just doing our own thing. I believe this takes a lot away from our conceptual framework

Still have yet to decide my scene..

I am very confident that I can composite a scene together, the only issue is choosing the scene of my choice. Deciding what to choose is very difficult due to time constraints. I have a choice to choose an existing model and embed it within a CG scene OR create my own. Karin stated that the object had to be non organic and I really am fixated on a robot of some kind because I want to push myself towards animating as well. I am currently searching perhaps for a CG cartoon of some kind. By doing this it would allow me to reduce the detail and the time it would take to texture and detail my model. I want to use this for my portfolio so I refuse to make something which isn't produced to its highest quality. And with only a week to spare this will be a challenge and a half...

Compositing Research

Compositing is basically the process of embedding CG with real life footage. It is the manipulation of mathematical formulas such as color etc. There are many things to consider in compositing such as the camera that you use. The settings and specs of the camera can drastically change the result of the composite. For example, most cameras use CMOS chips which distort the pixels of the shot. This is due to the fact that the camera 'reads' the image from the top to the bottom bringing about a sense of 'lag.'

Another important thing to note is that because CRT monitors were in use a long time ago. This made iamges darker than what they should appear. So all images are embedded with a +2.2 gamma difference and hence SRGB color was created.

When compositing using programs such as nuke we want to work in a linear light space but export our final result in SRGB light space. Another thing to consider before exporting is the camera distortion. All cameras create a distorted view of the environment and this is not very useful when processing pixel information because the computer requires a 'perfect world' work with. By undistorting the image we remove the effect the lens has on the image and we can proceed with embedding CG into our footage. At the end of compositing we can then re-distort the footage to bring about the desired result.

When bringing in CG to nuke we render out multiple passes such as ambient occlusion, reflection, lights, shadows, diffuse etc etc. These are all the layers that are to be manipulated into tricking the human eye into thinking that the foreign object belongs in the environment being shown. In order to place and animate the CG we motion track the footage. This is a very tedious and time consuming process because you must selectively choose areas that you wish to track. You can mask out areas that are undesirable such as shadows and moving objects. This is done so that you can calculate the 3d environment as accurately as possible. When the scene is calculated into 3d, you import it into your 3d application of choice where you can begin setting up your CG and rendering.

Once again the process is all about tricking the mind into believing the shot that is presented to them.

BRIEF 2

Brief
Change the meaning of a well known Movie scene by adding one or more 3D non-organic
elements to the environment. It is up to each individual team member to decide on the
movie, the camera shot and its duration. This brief calls for a high quality integration of a
3D CG object into a pre-recorded live action plate.
Recommended areas of research
- Research of feature films/ TV ads that have intensive CG implementation and/or belated
additions of visual effects.
- What makes a high quality integration of CG and live action footage?
- What are the implications of combining CG and live action shots?
Deliverables
Highest achievable resolution (minimum SD Pal)
Appropriate sound (avoid multiple compressed codecs)
Online vimeo link submission (5000 kb/s video - 256 kb/s audio)
Deadline
23rd of April 2013 - 1:00 pm