VFX1 DD1410: Brief 03 Car Colour Correct First Thoughts

The third and final piece of footage for the VFX assessment involves moving an item from one piece of footage and placing it into another, then making it look as if it was always there. The links for the previous two assessment briefs are below:

http://www.darthspockvfx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/vfx1-dd1410-brief-01-altar-sequence-001.html
http://www.darthspockvfx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/vfx1-dd1410-brief-02-fight-and-forest.html

The video below shows both pieces of footage:

All that needs to be done for this piece is move the car from its original footage, to the footage of the gate. The car must be colour corrected  so that it doesn't look out of place in the image.

The same must be done with these two pieces of footage:

As you can see the two videos are the same apart from the fact that the second one is moving.

First Thoughts:
The same principles apply for both videos. For both the footage needs to be stabilised, the car needs to be roto'd and colour corrected. Also on both the windows of the car need to be sorted out. If you look you can see grass through all of the windows; this means that a separate roto must be made for each window, and the grass needs to be replaced with an image of the gate (this will be the trickiest part). The shadow of the car will also have to be roto's and colour corrected. As for the pan video, it will involve me doing exactly the same as with the first video, but on top of that the rotos need to be controlled as the sequences goes on, to make sure the timings fit together on both pieces of footage and roto the puddle with the reflection of the car (this will need colour correcting to match the sky in the second video).

VFX1 - DD1410: Brief 02 Fight and forest sequence, 001 – 1089 First Thoughts

The second piece of footage the Visual Effects assessment involves a fight scene in a forest, naturally this will provide many more challenges than the first piece of footage. If you didn't see the first part of the assessment brief, check out the link below:
http://www.darthspockvfx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/vfx1-dd1410-brief-01-altar-sequence-001.html
 The footage for this part of brief is below:

Just like the last piece of footage, this one is divided into shots:

Shot One (Frames 0001-0183)

Create hold out matte for the container and separate hold outs for the red glass interior of the container and the man's hand.

Shot Two (Frames 0184-0343)
Create hold out matte for the man staring into the sky: the branch and the red glass interior of the container.
Shot Three ( Frames 0344-0406)
Create hold out matte for container and separate hold outs for the red glass interior of the container and man's hand.
Shot Four (Frames 0407-0476)
Create hold out matte for container and separate hold outs for the red glass interior of the container, the man's hand and the foreground elements.
Shot Five (0477-0585)
Review footage, using judgement to determine if any work is needed or viable.

The remaining shots (frames 0586-1089) consist of a fight sequence: for this section, nothing needs to be done in Nuke, the brief states that for these remaining shots, the compositor needs to decide what effects need should would be best and how they needs to be implemented, giving a brief and simple explanation (using pictures where necessary) of the steps taken take for each of the remaining shots. This part of the assessment will be posted on this blog.

First Thoughts:
Shots one to five seem fairly simple, it just involves a lot of roto work. The trickiest bit of that will be the container, because the red glass part is very small and the whole container moves around in the man's hand. No doubt the part which requires the most thought is the remaining shots (frames 0477-0585). Even though  nothing actually needs implementing on them, research into this area is needed to find out what effects are used on shows similar to the one in the footage.. From the look of the fight, there is a lot of moving around by the characters, but nothing else happening, perhaps it is intended for some sort of effect to manifest around each character when they do these signature moves (the clip is from a show called The Spirit Warriors, it can be assumed that the characters have some form of special powers). With this obviously being a children's show, the best way to go about this is to make things bright and colourful to represent their powers (maybe Power Rangers can be used for inspiration, because the style of filming appears to be similar).

VFX1 - DD1410: Brief 01- Altar Sequence, 001-449 First Thoughts

For part of the Visual Effects Assessment, three sequences need to be composited in Nuke . This is the first one:

The brief states that the footage needs to be stabilised when appropriate and viable, so the footage needs to be broken down into sections using multiple trackers. It also states that colour correction must be used to enhance the individual shots. It is important to note that brief is not asking to create any visual effects elements, this part of the assessment is about preparing the footage to move onto the effects stage.

The footage is broken down into shots, each one with its own individual brief. Here is a break down of each shot and what needs to be done:

Shot One (Frames 001-061)
Create hold out matte around the lamp and dragons in the foreground.
Shot Two (Frames 062-104)
Create hold out matte for girl staring into sky.
Shot Three (Frames 105-175)
Review footage, using judgement to determine if any work is needed or viable.
Shot Four Frames (176-214)
Create hold out mattes for the children, lamps and dragons against the Bluescreen and mattes for the children against the lamps and dragons.
Shot Five (Frames 215-237)
Review footage, using judgement to determine of any work is needed or viable.
Shot Six (Frames 238-272)
Create hold out mattes for the children, lamps and dragons against the Bluescreen and mattes for the children against the lamps and dragons.
Shot Seven (Frames 273-323)
Review footage, using judgement to determine if any work is needed or viable.
Shot Eight (Frames 324-354)
Create hold out mattes for the children, lamps and dragons against the Bluescreen and mattes for the children against the lamps and dragons.
Shot Nine (Frames 355-449)
Create hold out matte around the ornate lamp and dragons in the foreground.

First Thoughts:
The footage is quite shaky, most of it will need stabilised, there isn't anything in the scene that looks like stabilising will ruin the shot. The best objects in the footage to use as reference when stabilising are the the corners of the lamp and the square black cloth in the Bluescreen shots which is there as reference for the actors. Those objects won't be moving and they stand out well. The main concern is what to do with the rotos I have creates for one shot, for example shot one, and then it switches to a Bluescreen shot like shot four for example. What do I do with the rotas that are already in place? Is there a way to hide them for a specific amount of frames?

Rotoing Video Of A Plane Landing And Problems With Nuke And Blogger Video

Tonight the challenge at hand is rotoing a plane, using the footage given during lectures. The main difficulties with this piece is that the plane is moving, getting closer to the camera as it goes on.

To begin with, read in the sequence into Nuke and begin rotoing the plane. In the piture below, the roto has been split into separate beziers, one for the left wing, right wing, main body and the tail.

Then each landing wheel an engine got its own bezier.

After this Nuke crashed again, so a patch was applied that was provided by The Foundry to fix problems with Nuke on opening.

So the process was started again.

Since the plane is constantly moving in the footage, and with the footage being really shaky, the roto needs to constantly be adjusted to keep up with the footage.

Every time a roto point is changed, a blue marker appears on the timeline, these points can be added in or deleted at any time, and are a good way to keep track of what has been done.

Naturally Nuke crashed again, the patch didn't work, so after some research, it turns out that the problem is that Nuke isn't supported by Mountain Lion on Macbook Pro. So what needs to be done, is either wait for The Foundry to bring out an updated version of Nuke, or purchase a version of Windows, and partition the hard drive and install Windows on the partition. This will mean that both Windows and OS can be run off the same device and Nuke will work perfectly on the Windows partition.

Screen Capturing:
The Apple Mac Store provides some very useful capture apps that will be needed later on to record and show more complicated processes that can be achieved through Nuke.

The app I chose, which was literally just called, Screen Capture Tool, cost about £3 and allows a person to either take a video or just a picture, and they can choose to set it to capture full screen, or to draw a custom capture area.

On the Windows side of things, a good capture software to use is ScreenHunter6 for capturing images (the best site to get this software from is IGN). For recording video, a good piece of free software is Screencast-O-Matic. The free version works exactly the same of the payed version, the only difference is that the free version has the website in the corner of the recorded footage.

Rotoing Rorschach Continued

Todays post is a second attempt at rotoing Rorchach. As seen in the previous post (seen in the link below), Nuke crashed before any real work could be done to the picture.
http://www.darthspockvfx.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/first-vfx-blog-post-rotoing-rorschach.html

Like yesterday, the first step is reading in the image, and rotoing around it.

I then a grade node is added, so that some minor colour correction can be added.

For example, if the blackpoint was adjusted, then that would make the dark areas in the image darker.

Unfortunately Nuke decided to crash again at this point, so the process had to be started again.

Using the grade node, the colour of the area around the roto can be changed, not as well as if a colour correction node were being used.

Then Nuke crashed again, so it's clear that simply reinstalling Nuke isn't the solution, so there may be a problem with the copy of Nuke that is being used.

References:
-Splash Page Art, (n.d.). Splash Pager Comic Art Announces A Blind Auction For Lee Bermejo's Before Watchmen Rorschach Cover Art! Retrieved 5th October 2012, from http://splashpageart.com/bermejororschachauction.asp

First VFX Blog Post: Rotoing Rorschach

This is the first blog post of this new VFX blog. A good way to begin when starting with software like Nuke, is to randomly pick an image, and just start messing around with the tools. In this post, it shows practice with the roto node.

Here's the picture:

The picture was uploaded into Nuke and a roto node was read in:

Then Rorschach himself is roto'd:

Now Rorschach has been successfully removed from the picture, from this point Rorschach could moved to a new image, or something else can be put in his place. Nuke provides all sorts of options.

Sadly, at this point Nuke crashed and the file was corrupted, there is a chance that Nuke hasn't been properly installed, so the next step is uninstall Nuke, reinstall it, and start again.

It is easy to see that the rotoing in this picture isn't fantastic, so when the problems with Nuke have been fixed and the project started again, the new roto of Rorschach will be much smoother, using less roto points.
References:
-Splash Page Art, (n.d.). Splash Page Comic Art Announces A Blind Auction For Lee Bermejo's Before Watchmen Rorschach Cover Art! Retrieved 4th October 2012, from http://splashpageart.com/bermejororschachauction.asp