Render Me This, Batman

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 5

This week I moved on to my first animated show of the cycle, "Yeti In Paradise" directed by Lauren Hammond.  I was really excited for the opportunity to work on some animated shows because, while I don't personally have an interest in animating, I definitely can see myself working as an artist on animated films in the future.  I also might like the opportunity of directing one some day should the opportunity arise, but I'm not sure yet.  It's something I definitely need more experience in, which is why I was excited that Lauren was happy to let me jump on her show as a lighting artist.

I've been working hard over the past couple of days on helping Lauren to set up her render pipeline.  She has also helped me learn more about the general animation workflow working with reference files and repeating files when transferring storage volumes.  These are things I was aware of and understood conceptually, but had never actually had to do.  Getting that practical experience was great.

I also have been working on lighting the third shot in Lauren's film, during which her protagonist, Clark the Yeti, walks into a travel agency to buy some tickets only to be rejected and thrown out of the building.  Poor guy :(  We ran into some aesthetic issues with this shot.  We realized after the first day of working on the shot that the space was too flat to achieve the kind of long-shadowed look Lauren wanted.  So we reworked the shot today to achieve a new look that we were both happy with. I think this collaborative experience has been really valuable for both of us and I think we covered a lot of ground on Monday and Tuesday (in regards to rendering) that will end up saving Lauren a lot of time in the long run.  It makes me feel good to know that my contributions will still be helping out the show even after I leave it.

In other news, this morning I worked on cutting together some breakdown reals to present to FSU President John Thrasher, the College of Motion Picture Arts Dean Frank Patterson, and the associate/acting Dean Reb Braddock.  This was a really cool experience for me.  It was awesome to show my work to to them and to represent our college and class.  Seeing how impressed they were were the work our entire class was a huge morale boost for me, and I hope that my classmates feel the same way.  I was particularly happy to see Dean Patterson.  I don't know him well, only having met him a couple of times, but he remembered me well and showed a huge genuine interest in my work even though he's currently on leave.  That is huge to me and means so much.  It's clear that he cares about his students and his school.

This whole cycle has been getting me really hyped to move on to thesis.  I can't wait to continue for all of us to become better artists and to see what we can create.

Beam Me Up, Christian

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 4

This has been a really exciting week for me in the visual effects cycle: first, I wrapped all of the visual effects on my F3, "At the Feet of the Union" !!  W00T!!!  Second, I got to move on to Christian's science fiction film, "Flying High", as a matte painter, which I couldn't be more excited about!  Christian is giving me the opportunity to create an entire alien planet for the opening sequence of the film, and he is giving me almost complete creative freedom.

I already posted some of the mountain shots from my F3 a few posts ago, so this post I'll just post some of the ones I haven't posted yet as well as my work so far on "Flying High."

This is a really dark shot, but it is supposed to be.  We didn't have the time or resources to set up a whole Confederate camp, so instead I comped one together.  Classmate Collin Lockett modeled some great tents in Maya for me and textured them using onset texture references taken by AC Grace Colley.  Then I lit the tents, rendered them out, and brought them into Nuke to mix together the tents with several different live action plates.

In a similar fashion to the previous shot, we didn't have the time or resource to recreate a Confederate company.  There were seven of us that could dress in costume, including myself.  We shot 36 plates on set and changed clothes and props between each take, and then it was all stitched together in Nuke and then projected onto rudimentary geometry so that the camera could slowly push in.

This shot wasn't intended to be a visual effects shot, but on set it was raining and the fire burned out.  So I keyed out a healthy fire from another take, tracked it into the moving shot, then recreated the flicker by keying out the real flicker from the healthy take and rotoscoping out problem areas like heads and hands.

This is that matte painting I made for Christian's F3, "Flying High".  The scene involves a stoner named Hunter rescuing his friend Thompson from an ominous alien planet.  Christian tasked me with creating that ominous alien planet.  He gave me a list of descriptive words and 5 pieces of concept art from some of his favorite films that reflected the mood and look he wanted.  So after looking everything over and talking over some basic layout with him, I went to town in Photoshop creating this matte painting.  I started by using some texture brushes to block out the colors and shape of everything I wanted, and then I began texturing some of the planar surfaces using high res texture photos taken from the set.  Then, I began gathering a library of images that would fit the painting from the public domain.  From that point on it was just a matter of warping the images to fit into my blocking, recoloring the photos to look like the belong together, adjusting lighting and value to create depth, and adding it atmospherics.  I was even able to fit in the famous Vasquez rocks!  That was my subtle way of tipping my hat to some of the most influential science fiction moments in the 20th century.  I had a lot of fun bringing in some of the intricate detail into this painting.  My favorite parts are the rivers of blue lava.  I really like what those bring to the shot.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to this week!  Next week I start work on the animated film "Yeti in Paradise" then the animated film "Live Tree or Die" before hopping back over to "Flying High" for the the last two weeks of the process.  It should be an exciting time, I am really looking forward to the changes in scenery!  I have found that staring at the same shots for too long can sometimes be discouraging, and it can definitely become monotonous.  I'm really excited to keep moving forward in this cycle and to see what it brings.

Back to Business

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 3

Technically week four, I'm back after a week off for a rocking Spring Break in LA.

For week 3, let's talk about Nuke.

I have been spending almost 8 hours a day in Nuke for three straight weeks now.  My total time spent in Nuke comes out to about 27 or 28 hours a week, which means that since this cycle has started I've spent close to 84 hours or so in the program.  Couple that with the 10 hours or so a week I was spending in the program over the 8 weeks before VFX started for classwork/homework and the experience I brought in from our intro course last semester and it starts to add up to a lot of hours in the program in a relatively short amount of time.  I have really learned a lot about the software and am immensely happy with my progress in it.

This past week I have spent the majority of my time working on crowd replication and 3D camera projection.  These are big steps for me.  The crowd replication shots pushed my knowledge of keying and forced me to start looking for creative solutions.  Here are three things I started doing to my keys that made them stronger keys that looked like they belong:

1.  Edge Correction

One problem I was facing was green tinted edges around the edges of my comp.  Getting rid of them by eroding in sometimes wouldn't cut it.  It took me a while to sort out how to pull this off, but I eventually figured out that I could make a separate pipe off the keylight node, erode in the key to get rid of the edge in the alpha, then invert that alpha so that only the edge was present.  Once I had isolated that edge, I could use it as a mask on a color correct node and get rid of the green by grading it out.

2.  Core Mattes

One problem I was running into was the key pulling data out of the green channel across the entire plate, not just the screen.  This wasn't always an issue; it only became an issue on some of the noisier footage that was shot slightly underexposed.  To solve this problem I had to matte an alpha channel into the plate by using a shuffle node, then feed that shuffle down a separate pipe and merge it back into the main pipe after the key was pulled.  Then I just had to make a rough garbage matte in a roto node, animate it quickly to follow the action, and apply it as a mask to the new merge node.  I don't think this is the best or most accurate way to make a core matte considering it requires me to animate some roto mattes.  However, in this particular shot all of the subjects in my plates were standing almost completely still so this method was extremely fast and the results were great, and I do believe the best methods are the ones that provide the best results the fastest on a shot by shot basis.

3.  Keymixing

The ability to quickly and easily key mix in Nuke is one thing that makes Nuke a superior keying solution to After Effects.  In After Effects, it is possible to "keymix," but it requires either duplicating your plate as many times as your keymix will require and then masking and keying each plate separately or precomposing your composition after each key.  Both equally obnoxious and frustrating.  In Nuke, it's as simple as pulling another key and then plugging both keys into the keymix node and applying a fast garbage matte roto mask.  It's very fast and is just as easy to mix in the twelfth key as it is the second, as opposed to After Effects which gets harder and harder with each mixed key.  Keymixing was a fast and efficient way for me to isolate color variations across the green screen and take care of them.

In addition to these three keying techniques I used to help sell my crowd replication shot, I also added  in a 3D camera move in an effort to help glue the shot together and draw focus to the center of the frame.  In order to pull this off I had to utilize the technique of 3D projection mapping.  In After Effects I have created 3D moves by separating assets onto planes and pushing them back in z space dozens of times, but I had never attempted projection mapping before.  In AE, projection mapping is an overly convoluted and difficult process that I rarely had a need to even attempt, and when it could have come in handy I just chose to look for an alternative solution.  In hindsight, I really should have put the time into learning how to projection map in AE, but in Nuke it was an amazingly logical and fairly straightforward process.  I roughly modeled the scene out in 3D space using planes that I oriented to match the space (ground plane, house, people, etc) and then projected my comp onto the 3D scene using the Project3D node in Nuke.  The more accurate your 3d geometry, the more correctly the projection fits and the more accurate your camera move becomes.  But this scene was so simple just using rough planar geometry was enough to get by.  Again, the fastest way to achieve the result is the best.

I have learned a lot about Nuke over the past few weeks by being forced to think through all of these issues and come up with creative solutions.  I am really excited to see where I go from here with Nuke, and if I continue to learn and progress at this current rate I truly believe that by the time thesis visual effects roll around I will be at the level of total photo real compositing.  I just have to work on my 3D rendering first :)

Time to Go Mobile - Putting the Pedal to Floor to Deliver Market Fresh VFX in 8 Minutes

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 2

We're now over a week into visual effects production on our third student films at FSU and progress is really cranking.  I've only been working on my own film so far, and that has created an interesting feeling and approach to the work I have been doing.  I wrote last week about the schedule that I am trying hard to stick steadfast to, and now that I've experienced a full rotation of that schedule one side effect I hadn't really intended is that it almost industrializes the experience of creating art.  As opposed to writing or directing, with visual effects I really can just come in to school, put in an eight hour shift, and go home.  Writing, directing, and other steps towards the front end of the pipeline seem to occur more organically to me.  Ideas form slowly, taking shape over time with excitement and coming together to culminate in the amazing experience that is the creative process.  This is where working as the primary artist on my own show in this workplace of an environment starts to create the interesting feeling I mentioned above: because this film is MY idea and MY passion, I want to scrutinize every pixel of every frame and spend an eternity on each shot making it absolute perfection, even if that level of perfection is beyond my current skill set.  It is very hard for me to move on to a new shot whenever I "finish" one, because to be honest I'm not satisfied with any of my shots.

Let's flip the tables to when I'm not working on my own show anymore.  Presumably, I will be working towards another artists vision, obviously putting my creative fingerprints on their work but still reaching towards something that inherently isn't mine.  Suddenly, I might not be a huge fan of a part of my work (for aesthetic reasons) but it fits the directors vision and he or she loves it.  When this state is achieved, I feel like it will be much easier to move confidently from shot to shot knowing that I have completed my task and satisfied the director.  I believe that reaching a level of personal satisfaction will be easier if I am meeting the expectations that others place on me, because I won't have the burden of creating my own "perfect aesthetic."

This isn't to say I won't put forth 100% effort into other peoples' shows - on the contrary I plan on giving every show I work on everything I have to give.  I just theorize that it will be easier to be emotionally satisfied with my work when I'm working towards reaching someone else's design, because I always find flaws in my own work.  Ultimately I'll just have to wait and see if this reins true.  So far in my "career" as an artist I have only worked as a visual effects artist on two films that weren't my own, and I was only on each film for one week.  But it seemed true during those two weeks, so we'll just have to see if it stays true for the five weeks I work on other shows during this VFX cycle.

I keep telling myself that never being satisfied with my own work is probably a good thing, pushing me to work harder and get better, but ultimately it becomes a discouraging emotion and that's what I'm pushing through right now - finding the strength to stay on schedule by leaving one shot behind and moving on to the next.  Speed and structure are important, and without this kind of schedule it might become really easy for shots to get pushed back and pushed back and for things to missed and for deadlines to never be met until eventually the film never gets finished.  

Additionally, Ive found that this week has been a little difficult in the lab for personal reasons.  Artists will quarrel with other artists and sometimes feelings get hurt on both ends of the spectrum.  I believe it's crucially important for me to take those kinds of experience personally, examine them, grow from, become a better artist from them, and work through them, continuing to create quality work in a professional environment.  I can't let disputes bring me down, I have to harness what they can give me and find ways to improve from what they bring.

To sum up, I've come out of this week feeling a little discouraged with my own work, but I'm trying to use that experience to propel me to make better work than ever.  I'm also working at a pace that is completely new to me.  In fact, it is this speed that inspired the title for this weeks post.  It came from a fantastic YouTube video I discovered a couple of years ago after The Dark Knight Rises came out.  You can watch it here if you have the chance.  I encourage it, I found it quite enjoyable.

I'll finish the post by showing some of the shots (at various levels of completion and also highly compressed) I have been working on thus far.  I shot in Florida, but am striving to make the show feel like Tennessee.  Hope you enjoy!

Thomas and General MacArthur overlook the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee at Sunset.

The same shot from a slightly different angle.

Close up on Thomas at Sunset, the Smoky Mountains a haze in the distance.

Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire - Welcome to the Production Pit

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 1

First off, I'd like to say that this weeks title was completely stolen from my friend Collin, who titled his blog post the same thing.  But then again, the title is originally from Chapter 6 of JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, so I'm just stealing what Collin stole first.  It's my way of a not-so-silent protest.

This week we started visual effects on out F3s, our third student films at FSU.  For the zero people out there that actually keep up with my blog and are wondering about what happened to the F2, maybe someday I did briefly gloss over it it posts here and here.  I probably won't ever go into a detailed BTS of it like I did with the F1, but going behind the scenes of the F1 was more of a reflective exercise for me in my spare time and I've kind of changed how I do that now.  Now I keep a small journal and sometimes I'll go outside and noodle some thoughts in it or something.  Our workload at school has also changed dramatically: new city, new professors, new curriculum - essentially a new life.  I think it's important to change how you do things as your world around you is changing.  I had an English teacher in eighth grade who made sure he made at least one big change in his life every couple of years.  For example, one day he decided to start brushing his teeth left handed and he's been doing it ever since.  Likewise, a couple years later he decided to start tying his shoes backwards.  Never went back.  I've never tried doing something like that on the minor scale that he did, but I think that the concept would apply in the macro to our lives as a whole.  But what the heck do I know, right?

For the F3 visual effects cycle, the faculty are giving us eight weeks.  I got scheduled as an artist on four films, including my own.  So this comes out to roughly two weeks per film, but that's not how I got scheduled.  I'm spending three weeks each on two live actions films as a matte painter and compositor and one week each on two animated films as a lighting artist.  I couldn't be more excited.

For the entirety of film school so far everything I have done has been on a Mac, but for this cycle we were moved to a lab colloquially called "The Production Pit" - all PC's.  The adjustment has taken a little time to get used to - mainly I keep hitting alt instead of control because that's where the command key is on a Mac - but the machines are much faster and more powerful and I haven't run into any issues.  We also have dual 35" monitors and HUGE tablets.  Sometimes I have to pinch myself.

We've only been in the VFX process now for two days but already I have been incredibly productive and am super excited about my results.  This year I am tackling all my composite shots in Nuke instead of After Effects, and while I will always love After Effects - and still firmly believe it is a better program for 2D motion content creation - Nuke is an absolute dream.  I am able to achieve better results faster, and that's something that just doesn't happen every day.  So far I have completed one matte painting asset and almost completed one shot composition, and I believe that they are on the photo-real level which makes me unbelievably satisfied.  I have been working towards the goal of photo-real set extension for years now and this shot might be the first time I have ever accomplished that.  Years of practice from middle school up is really starting to pay off... at least I think it is.

One reason I believe I have been able to complete a matte painting asset and photo-real composite in just two days is because of an incredibly efficient time management workflow really stressed on me by my professors Jason and Ken.  They have pushed taking a 5-10 minute break every couple of hours, not working over time, timing yourself while you work, and meticulously logging all of my hours.  Additionally, my professor Jonathan helped all of our shows set up incredibly detailed shot breakdowns using a management solution called Shotgun.  This workflow has kept me laser focused in the lab.  I built a playlist in the glorious Spotify of some of my favorite music and some new music, made an account at www.toggl.com to start timing myself while I work, put my headphones on and have been powering through tons of work at a high speed and still had time to relax and play basketball in the afternoons.  This new schedule really excites me because if this pace continues, not only will I be getting more work done but I will also have more time to myself to get back in physical and spiritual shape.  In the F2 VFX cycle, I worked close to 16 hours a day for two weeks straight, and by the end I looked horrible, felt horrible, ate horribly, and each day dragged on and I got less and less work done.  If I really can get much more work done in this much more reasonable F3 schedule, I will have discovered possibly the greatest thing in the history of mankind...

I'm really looking forward to continuing through the visual effects cycle and becoming a better artist, while having more time to myself to develop thesis and other short film ideas.  I've also freed up a lot more time to play basketball, which is great especially considering I'm out of shape right now and my intramural team needs me more than ever as we move into the playoffs.  Tonight we played our first playoff game and won by 1 point with 2 seconds left.  It was awesome.  Hopefully and can keep winning and extend our season by another five weeks - that championship t-shirt really would look great hanging up in my closet.

ZBrush Studies and Character Art!

Being a character artist or concept artist isn't really something I aspire to be professionally, but this semester I am taking the character art class and starting to play around in ZBrush and boy is it fun!  This is definitely something I see myself picking up on as a hobby, and I think it's a valuable skill set to have also even if it's not the career field I plan on going into; you never know when your skill sets might come in handy, right?

Additionally, the class has served as an interesting lens into writing.  Studying the look and feel and design - the art - of a character forces you to really dig into their backstories and their personality.  It is great practice for becoming a better filmmaker as a whole.

After five weeks of practicing with ZBrush, and lots of HORRIBLE models, I've finally made something I think is worth posting, even if it's not the greatest.  This is my second attempt of sculpting the female torso, and I think it came out pretty well.

Coyote and Thunder

I know I just posted a few days ago, and I really don't like double posting like this, but I just finished a project at school that I am super excited about!  This summer we took a stop motion class and for our final project had to make a short stop motion film.  So here is my final project for stop motion class, "Coyote and Thunder", based on the Native American Klamath myth "Coyote Steals Fire."  I worked with my classmate Susan Curry on this one, and she was the primary animator and did a great job!  I was the photographer and also built most of the set and did the sound editing and color work.  Hope you guys enjoy it!