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La Sucia Animation

Making Of / 08 January 2022

Welcome to '' La Sucia - Animation'' A 3D project of a Honduran legend.

A little contextual information to understand the project...

Abstract

La Sucia or its English translation "The Dirty woman" is one of the most famous legends in Honduran mythology. Its history depends on the region, but they share several patterns; a beautiful woman bathing in a body of water like a river or lake, a drunk and / or an unfaithful man who spies on her, and a transformation into a monster where the man dies or is scared. This legend is presumably influenced by Mayan and Mesoamerican mythology, it will be presented in an animated short format using 2D and 3D techniques, with a grayscale palette and without dialogue.

This is intended to attract the attention of people inside and outside the territory who have a nostalgic association with rural stories, who have heard or read the projects of Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras (Stories and Legends of Honduras) by Jorge Montenegro, or who are fans of Latin American mythology.

Here an example of early considerations in the project:


Introduction and Background

Honduras is a country located in the middle of the American continent, with an economy largely dependent on its agriculture, so its contribution to globalization is usually limited to raw materials.

Although the country has suffered from an unbelievably bad international reputation for several years, it was in 2012 that it was classified as "Murder capital of the world" by the United Nations, having the highest homicide rate on the planet, reaching an estimated violent death every 74 minutes, these crimes mostly committed in San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa. 

This had a catastrophic influence on the country's tourism sector, which is why an attempt has been made to create decrees such as Ley de Fomento al Turismo (Tourism Promotion Law) (Trucchi, 2019) and organizations that encourage cultural, ecological, and archaeological tourism. Marca País was created in 2015, an organization that promotes the alliance of the public and private sectors in order to highlight the positive aspects such as ecological reserves, historical sites, indigenous influence and all the raw material that is for export. (Marca Pais Honduras, 2015)

The beginning of this project consists of cultural approaches to the country. In 2018 a strenuous investigation of the various regional or / and indigenous legends was carried out, with which we will highlight the work of Jorge Montenegro who was a writer known for his work in the compilation and dissemination of the Honduran oral tradition, through various books, comics, radio shows and a movie. (Honduras.com, 2020) His radio program called Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras was broadcast since 1964, broadcasting for more than 50 years and many of his episodes are still available on YouTube. (Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras, 2015)

We cannot rule out that these programs have contributed to keeping many of these legends alive in rural areas, but specifically speaking of La Sucia it is a story found within the Honduran family, one of the best compilations of the various oral histories were made by Fernanda Maria Martinez Reyes in her thesis report La Narrativa Oral En Honduras: Nuevas Exploraciones en los Inicios Del Siglo XXI (The Oral Narrative In Honduras: New Explorations in the Beginning of the 21st Century) for the University of Alcala, with a minimum of 10 different versions told by farmers from different parts of the country. (Martínez Reyes, 2016)

The history of La Sucia has been shown for years in all sectors of the population, from radio programs, comics, movies, and school events where students and teachers dramatize the popular song ''La Sucia '' written by Manuel Castillo Giron in his album CATRACHISIMO Cantares de mi Patria. (Manuel Castillo Giron, n.d.)

An example of these events is the one acted by the folk projection group of the Sheridan Bilingual School in La Lima, Cortes. (Jomzag, 2011)

Another decisive factor worth mentioning is that the Honduran animated sector is still relatively new and partially developed commercially but not artistically.

It was not until September 2020 that the Museum for National Identity (MIN) and its educational program EduMIN made 2D animations of some Honduran legends, which has once again attracted the attention of the capital's population and social networks. (MIN, 2020)

With this we want to make clear the importance of the representation of Honduran elements. Although this project is not intended to repair the reputation of a country with an animation, but rather to attract a little more attention to unique elements of its culture in an intercultural environment with the help of the Honduran embassies in Europe and Asia.

Finally, this project seeks to innovate in the Honduran animated sector, following the trend of grayscale animation to reflect "antiquity" to history, without the need for dialogue, so intensive translations beyond the title and credits will not be necessary.

For our story prototype we have taken three main elements, a drunk and unfaithful man, a beautiful woman bathing in the river and the transformation into a monster.

When the story begins with the moon and the title, a drunk man is walking in the forest while looking at a photo of a sexy woman, from his pocket the photo of his family falls.

As he continues his route, he meets a beautiful woman bathing in the river and he decides to spy on her, as he approaches, she transforms into a monster that is about to devour him, the movement of the camera takes us to the moon with the hat and boot flying.

Here we assume that the man has died, but the screen goes dark, and we see the man wake up scared, with the photo of his family in his hand which he looks at with love.

However, he also notices that he has the marks of La Sucia's claws, so we see him running to get away from the forest, and we close with La Sucia’s face in the moon and a macabre smile.

For reasons of better understanding, an animatic published on YouTube with this story was made.

Acknowledgements 

The completion of this project would not have occurred without the supervision and support of Constatinos Sophocleous and Richard Cunningham. Carlos Bautista is also thanked for his advice in the area of sculpting and modeling.  An incredible gratitude to Kingston University, which provided all the necessary programs and materials for the project. Big thanks to the Discord communities of Agora, Ask a Rigger and AnimState; where many users offered feedback and tutorials. Special mention to all animation events provided by London ACM SIGGRAPH, in which it was received special feedback from animators from different industries. 

Finally, it is immensely grateful for all the help and inspiration from family and friends, especially Richard Lovell. 

Aims and Objectives 

Resources 

In more detail these are the Honduran works that the works of Jorge Montenegro are being considered: Tales and Legends of Honduras vol. 1 and 2 (1972 and 2006) 

Tales and Legends of Honduras (radio 1964-2018) Tales and Legends of Honduras (2014 film) The doctoral thesis prepared by Fernanda Maria Martinez Reyes (2016) The Oral Narrative in Honduras: New Explorations in the Beginning of the 21st Century. And a story within the Salinas family, where the great-grandfather of the author of this project, Pedro Salinas Matamoros had an encounter with La Sucia in the surroundings of Jacaleapa, Honduras. It is worth highlighting the use of visual references from various animated films and communities, this project is strongly influenced by the following projects: 

  • The Amazing World of Gumball (2011-2019) 
  • Paperman (2012) 
  • Frankenweenie (2012) 
  • The Peanuts Movie (2015) 
  • Dystopian animated short film (2017) 
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) 
  • Purl (2018) 
  • Bigtop Burger (2020) 
  • The Mitchells vr. The Machines (2021) 

Multiple resources from educational channels were used, which will be specified throughout the report. 

Method and Workplan 

Method 

This project is divided into 3 main phases: Pre-production, Production and Post-production. 

  • Pre-production: conceptualization of story, characters, environment, production times and corrections of the written report. 
  • Production: Modelling, Rigging, Animation, VFX, Lighting, Render / Playblast 
  • Post-production: VFX, Color Correction, Music and Sound Effects, Compositing.

Pre-production 

For the conceptualization of characters, simple designs were made inspired by farmers who are the ones who usually tell these stories; for La Sucia in her normal form, the term "beautiful woman" was taken into consideration according to the cultural context, where she is usually a woman with long dark hair, with a large bust and backside. In her monster form, reference was made to the description within the song of La Sucia by Manuel Castillo Giron: 

''Suddenly the beautiful girl transformed, her eyes bulged, her teeth fell out, her nails grew and such a laugh! She was screaming! '' 

And considering famous elements like her bust falling and sticking out of her clothes. 

Once the manuscript was ready, we began to work with the storyboard and animatic.

Design and conceptualization of the characters was based on three main ideas, for the drunken farmer he was inspired by the typical peasant clothing of the towns, work boots, hat and an appearance of macho, which stereotypes that the men must wear a mustache and chest hair. 

For the guapa (beautiful) version of La Sucia, it is usually represented with a supermodel beauty with wasp waist, instead a more common appearance in Honduran women was chosen, long hair, thick body, shorter and slightly darker skinned. In addition to the use of the torn white dress that is present in almost all versions. 

Finally in the design of the monster, we played with the idea of the growth of the parts of the body, an elongated skull face refers a bit to the versions in which it transforms into a horse skull, its breasts uncovered and considerably larger than the farmer. 

For the remaining elements such as trees and shrubs, it was based on simple geometric figures with some reference to Nobuyoshi Sakashita's tree study work (Sakashita, 2014), which as an important detail used plans to add small leaves that protrude from the main base of the tree. 


Production 

Modelling 

For our next stage, various modeling methods were investigated for the characters and the environment; Among the options available was to sculpt the characters in Zbrush or model them in Maya. The biggest problem was the use of the various software and the weight of the learning line that would have to be done to carry out the final objective. 

So, in the end it was decided to model the characters in Maya, using the support of various supervisors. It should be noted that this was the first time that a character of this style was made, so many references were sought in construction processes. 

One of the most used resources in this phase was the series of videos created by Polytoon, where it shows step by step the construction of characters but highlighting the creation of loops in the topology (Polytoon, 2019). Something that will be needed later for rigging and animation. 

It was a process with a lot of trial and error, where the character that suffered the most modifications was La Sucia Guapa; She required the use of Maya sculpting tools and a complete retopology to be sure the face loops worked. 

The second part of the body that needed more work was the breasts since a natural appearance was sought. The dress was made starting with retopology on the body and then editing the details such as the broken parts. 

Once the body was fixed, different versions for the hair were made, it was desired to maintain a cartoon appearance but also be able to animate in parts, in the end the tutorial created by GGP_Animation was followed where it creates the hair fragments using the Curve tool Warp Deformer. (GGP_Animation, 2019) 

The Farmer was created with a similar process, directly connecting the parts of the body to the clothing; The hat was left as a separate element since it would be animated separately in some scenes. 

The monster was created from the model of La Sucia Guapa, applying deformers and then making a retopology to guarantee a better animation. 

Finally, as mentioned above, elements such as trees and bushes were created from simple geometric figures. 

UV mapping and Texturing 

At the end of the character models, work was done on the creation of the UVs, for the workflow we worked with UV Tiling Mode, following the advice of our supervisors and tutorials from channels such as AntCGi and FlippedNormals. It should be noted that some elements such as legs and arms were superimposed to reduce space and apply symmetry in the texture. (antCGi, 2021) (FlippedNormals, 2018) 

In the texturing process the Procreate program was used, where the UVmaps were colored in 2D, this was before the update at the end of 2021 when the application added a tool for 3D elements. 

Another crucial step in our texture was the use of the Aitoon Shader in combination with the Ai Standard Shader, taking advice provided in artist.B’s video where he combines both shaders to create the effect. (artist.B, 2021) 

Rigging 

To create the rigs of our characters, the Advanced Skeleton plugin from Animation Studios was used under the license for use for an educational project (Animation Studios, n.d.). The plugin's learning curve includes the Animator Artist Life channel's video series (Animator Artist Life, 2020) and Joshua Jones, where the basics for rigging a bipedal character is presented. (Jones, 2018) 

However, some elements required a separate study, combining the basic Maya tools with the plugin. For example, for the rig of the breasts of La Sucia Guapa and its monster version, the tutorial '' Rigging Dynamic Breasts '' (Steve, 2012) was followed. The hair of both characters was rigged like limbs sticking out of the head and the dress was a combination of what was learned from Jeremy P's material and Advanced Skeleton tools. (P, 2015) 

Skinning was an arduous job that required a lot of patience, although the plugin has some tools that facilitate the process, the workflow presented by Gio Coutinho which really helped to finish the job. (Autodesk, 2016) 

Although the Rigging process officially ended in mid-July, once the animation process began, problems were found in specific scenes, so variations of Rig were also created for a single character, in the case of the Drunk Farmer a version with photographs in both hands, where the visualization was deactivated when necessary. 

And a version in which the hat could be assigned to the hand, head or animated independently. The latter with the method presented by Sir Wade Neistadt using Parenting Constraints. (Neistadt, 2018) 

Water 

An important mention is made in the process of water animation since it required many changes, firstly it was planned to use a flat texture with 3 layers of planes, animating the mask connected in geometry. However, the result obtained did not satisfy the desired quality level, it also created an error in which the main texture "flashed" in the rendering. 

However, after much searching and advice on various platforms, I found this incredible tutorial by Uhr in which a texture is animated using mathematical formulas. (Uhr, 2018) This method combined with Dikko's video, key drivers and a Sine deformer was what gave the result that is seen in the final render. (Dikko, 2018) Here's a comparison Before and After:

Animation 3D 

In the initial stages of the animation process, he concentrated on blocking poses and configuring backgrounds; it was at this time that he studied and experimented with camera animation and its lens variation with dramatic motifs.

Speaking of specific animations, the first and last scenes have many elements in common, particularly the presence of an animated cycle (drunk walking and running) so following the advice in our feedback sessions, we worked with the flow of fig. 20. 

In most cases the feedback was about the Drunk and Run cycle, so many versions were made until one was chosen and polished. 

For our animation we also used a series of plugins that facilitated the creation of in-betweens, tweenMachine and Overlapper. (Barret & Widener, 2020) (Kolpakov, 2018) 

The latter was used for the animation of the Monster's hair, using as a reference the scene of the goddess of the Sea in Ponyo. (Miyazaki, 2008) Another factor was the continuity of the scenes with each other, especially with camera changes. For this reason, some scenes were removed or modified. Many changes were made to the scenes, but these were the ones that most influenced the story: Scene 2, the time of this scene was shortened and the continuity of the walk of the previous scene was connected. Scene 3, before you only had one photo in your hand, it changed to two. 

Scene 4, in the first place it was planned that the photo of his family would fall without him noticing, however the message that he left his family was not clear, so it was changed to throw the photo. Scene 7, this shot was lengthened, and the farmer hiding was added.  Fig 21. Change of scene, where the farmer shoots the photograph on purpose.

Lighting 

First of all, Skydomes were being used for the general lighting of the scenes, but this quickly became a problem in rendering times. 

So it is switched to using direct lights and some area lights. But the biggest factor around lighting was the allocation of lights by element. We can see in a simplified way the configuration with which the lights were separated, assigning a light to the background, two lights to the elements (one main and one to soften shadows) and between two and three lights to the character. 

The amount of lights depends a lot on the scene and the elements, also some lights were used only to illuminate without generating shadows. 

In almost all the scenes a dim light was placed directed to the ground and affecting the assets and the character, this to create a shadow on the ground. 

Rendering 

Rendering was subjected to multiple tests and advice obtained from the video Removing Noise From Your Arnold Renders was followed, in which they present numerous ways of understanding where the noise is being produced. (R, 2020) 

Once the noise was minimized in the scenes, our next step was to separate the layers; This is because in some scenes the background was required to be out of focus. Although it is understood that this effect can be carried out with Maya's cameras, the decision was made to use green screens, as in the video of Amanda Morrison. (PlantParade, 2020) 


The advantage of using this procedure is to minimize the rendering time in the elements that we will blur and add more details to the characters. The downside is that twice as many layers are rendered per scene. 

Counting all the layers, 4,073 frames were rendered in the final material with an estimated time of 33 hours. 

The time is estimated since the heaviest layers took between 40-60 seconds, and the lightest ones between 10-30 seconds. In this calculation we are not taking into account previous tests where it was rendered in low quality and if any scene required it to be rendered again due to errors. 

Post-production 

Compositing 

For animations and effects in 2D, it had been considered to use the After Effects program, changed to Adobe Animate, in which animations of direction lines, water splash and effects in the steps were added. 

Visual effects include green screen editing, making sure the cut of the characters is good. Although one factor was the implementation of an old camera effect, obtained from Hadwin Channel for editing in Adobe Premiere. (Hadwin Channel, 2020) 

For the base of the logo, Restless Youth Small Caps font was used, adding a small element of water as it is a spirit that appears near rivers. 

Music 

The musician Fernando Gimeno provided background music and support in editing the sound effects. (Gimeno, 2021) 

Here is the complete list of all the sound effects used in the last version: 

  • Whoosh (CLEREMTV, 2020) 
  • Forest Footsteps (Nagaty Studio, 2020) 
  • Forest Edge (KDekay Sleep Sounds, 2019) 
  • Soothing River (Relax Sleep ASMR, 2017)

Obtained from the YouTube free audio library, which allows its use: 

  • Jog on Gravel 
  • Walk on Dirt 
  • Walking in Shallow Water 
  • Pants Whooshing 
  • Light Splashing of Water 
  • Punch Swoosh Series 
  • Rake Swing Whoosh Close (Youtube, n.d.)  

Discussions 

Most of the audience would be the Honduran public, especially now that organizations such as the Museum for National Identity (MIN) have opened a new exhibition specifically on the stories and legends of Honduras. (Museo de la Identidad Nacional, 2021) For viewing the short, contact has been made with various organizations that have confirmed that once the short is finished, they will be able to support the project in terms of visibility. Among these organizations is the Honduran embassy in the United Kingdom. 

Conclusions 

Although the final objective of the project was achieved, there are many aspects that could be improved and that will continue to be worked on in the future. It could be improved and added more types of plants for the backgrounds, a better texture with the use of normal maps. 

  • In terms of animation, fix meshes transfer errors, add leaves falling from trees, polish cycles. 
  • The rigs could improve in expressions, use of collisions. 
  • Add more visual effects in general, especially in the water.
  • Implement more sound effects, specifically screams for the characters. 

It was learned how difficult it is to carry out a project of this magnitude and the need for a team of professionals to complete something longer (for example, an animated series). While many new work techniques were learned from the number of references visited, it was the advice and weekly meetings with supervisors that really shaped the final result. 

Finally, it was found that it is completely necessary to design a timetable before starting a project of this style, while remaining flexible in modifying it. 

Final version for presentation:


Reference List 

Animation Studios. (n.d.). Animation Studios. Retrieved from https://www.animationstudios.com.au: https://www.animationstudios.com.au/advanced-skeleton 

Animator Artist Life. (2020, June 24). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0W7cT2DUDY&list=PLIV47uRi3f2VyGDn4P8fzZqhi5Q7TYILt 

antCGi. (2021, January 12). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICwIgkKojBw 

artist.B. (2021, February 26). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXVJUeXnTDQ&t=291s 

Autodesk. (2016, November 15). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNy0ngmfb2A 

Barret, J. S., & Widener, A. (2020, January 24). Github. Retrieved from https://github.com/boredstiff/tweenMachine 

British Board of Film Classification. (2019). bbfc. Retrieved from https://www.bbfc.co.uk/: https://www.bbfc.co.uk/rating/15 

CLEREMTV. (2020, July 11). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsSXJXk-whc 

Cuentos y Leyendas de Honduras. (2015, May 25). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/c/CuentosyLeyendasdeHonduras/about 

Dikko. (2018, April 18). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx23PPxEQmM&t=128s 

FlippedNormals. (2018, August 2). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj0uXid9oGo&t=566s 

GGP_Animation. (2019, February 24). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1E3VtkkjCM&list=PLsf2PiL26rAl_UhCzKbK005KDluxxyCWD&index=4 

Gimeno, F. (2021). fgimeno. Retrieved from https://fgimeno.com/ 

Hadwin Channel. (2020, December 10). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOKuRFUPXfo 

Honduras.com. (2020, 11 19). Honduras. Retrieved from https://www.honduras.com/: https://www.honduras.com/aprende/cultura/personajes/biografia-del-escritor-jorge-montenegro/ 

Jomzag. (2011, October 02). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIFT0lcDinU 

Jones, J. (2018, January 22). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRsfy1-0jqE 

KDekay Sleep Sounds. (2019, June 3). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FJIH0Yi2Mk 

Kolpakov, D. (2018). Gumroad. Retrieved from https://dkolpakov.gumroad.com/l/Overlapper 

Manuel Castillo Giron. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://manuelcastillogiron.com/: http://manuelcastillogiron.com/biografia-manuelcastillogiron/ 

Marca Pais Honduras. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.marcahonduras.hn/: https://www.marcahonduras.hn/about-us/ 

Martínez Reyes, F. M. (2016). Biblioteca Digital Universidad de Alcala. Retrieved from https://ebuah.uah.es: https://ebuah.uah.es/dspace/handle/10017/41887 

MIN. (2020). MIN. Retrieved from https://min.hn/: https://min.hn/edumin/ 

Miyazaki, H. (Director). (2008). Ponyo [Motion Picture]. 

Museo de la Identidad Nacional. (2021). MIN. Retrieved from https://min.hn/category/edumin/cuentos-y-leyendas/ 

Nagaty Studio. (2020, November 21). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnBGqT-F9Is 

Neistadt, S. (2018, June 14). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8JXO39aAqY&t=940s 

P, J. (2015, April 29). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzrETjZ7S1c 

PlantParade. (2020, April 8). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwo65InThJU 

Polytoon. (2019, July 25). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn2w1OumKvA&list=PL9d7CkAxgcqXDW9n6Wd-T2d6g7-yZ-86l 

Pressly, L. (2012). BBC. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-17940440 

Proceso Digital. (2018, Febreary 14). Proceso Digital. Retrieved from https://proceso.hn/: https://proceso.hn/peliculas-exhibidas-en-honduras-pasan-por-rigurosa-clasificacion/ 

R, M. (2020, November 4). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FwYcmojqK4 

Relax Sleep ASMR. (2017, September 3). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nE_XAauwu1I 

Sakashita, N. (2014). Vimeo. Retrieved from https://vimeo.com/78905152 

Steve. (2012, April 17). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNZw57nC7Cs 

Trucchi, G. (2019, 11 19). Alba Sud. Retrieved from http://www.albasud.org: http://www.albasud.org/noticia/1161/la-ley-de-fomento-al-turismo-en-honduras-un-fracaso 

Uhr. (2018, June 20). Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-XUP_4WAE&t=14s 

Youtube. (n.d.). Youtube. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary

Report

My little JUMP in animation PART 4

Making Of / 03 May 2021
Part 1 , part 2 , part 3

PROJECT WEEK 4: Final Polish

Finally this week was dedicated to cleaning all the breakdowns of all the animations, the feedback list covered two pages since I was noting in which frame I had to repair what aspect.

Considering that Douglas's animation covers more than 1000 frames, we had to start cleaning up by yesterday!

In general, the feedback was focused on:

  • Hip movement.
  • Eliminate leg slippage, especially in dramatic pose changes.
  • Eliminate unnecessary rotations and translations.
  • Increase the appeal of the hands (especially in the attack combo and walk cycle)
  • Review balances.
  • Offset of elements such as ears, clothes, hands, so that each animation sequence does not end at the same time.
  • Drag and overlapping
  • Review the list of animation principles over and over again.

Final details for all my animations! implementing tutor's advice.

Walk Cycle

  • Focus on ears, clothes and hair for overlapping and drag.
  • When in the last scene he falls, he first "bend" to the front and then fall and "reverse" the line of action.
  • Add some extra element to the background. (I added some bottles, they jump when He fells)

Attack Combo

  • Check that there are no more overextensions.
  • Limit some animations of the tail, they are a litttle distracting.
  • SMEARS!

Performance

  • Review transitions.
  • Change pose "no no no no" to one that favors the transition.
  • Add more secondary movement to the tail.

Almost there! Playblast improve

Once all the necessary transitions have been repaired, it is time to generate my playbast, first of all modify some textures and backgrounds, using the ramp option following some tips from Amy Tron.

After one of the most important points: Lighting! Now if I'm honest with you, lighting has never been a strong point (in terms of photography, I prefer to ask my good friend Julito for advice) but in this case I found this incredible, magical and highly recommended video on Maya Learning Channel.

A more visual version of how the distribution of lights was in my scenarios, keep in mind that in all my main light is SpotLight.

Last Problems

As the saying goes '' Si el pato no se hace en la entrada, se hace en la salida '' that means if a problem does not appear in the beggining, it appears at the end. In this case, when I already placed the textures that I wanted and playblast, the textures would "blur" and it was something that could not be fixed with Crlt + Z, but until the file was re-opened.

First of all I started researching some forums, finding someone with a similar problem and experimenting with some of the solutions, without actually working.

From what I also asked my tutors during support hours, the solution was going to (in viewport menu) Renderer> Hardware Renderer 2.0 Options> Scroll down to Maximum texture resolution Clamping> Change it to custom> 2048> Reload All Textures , and If that did not work, try 1024.

It worked!

And finally, the last of the last problems in Maya, every time I exported my video in .avi, the document was '' corrupted '', but this is considerably easier to solve, simply in the playblast option it was to change to export as a sequence of images, and '' paste '' everything in Nuke / Premiere.

Please, enjoy my ''final'' versions

I plan to keep cleaning these animations and create a breakdown video of how it progressed, with music, but for now this is the delivery video for the class.


References, Credits and Assets

Alexander Williams. (2021, March 25). Speed Lipsync [Video]. YouTube.

Andree @maestronoov. (2018). Empanada [3D model].

Barrett, J. S., Widener, A., Herbez, J. A., & Lango, K. (2014). TweenMachine (3.0.0) [Maya plugin].

Coldesina, F., @topfrank2013. (2017). Classic Chair [3D model]. 

FAIL PARADISE. (2017, September 17). Funniest Drunk Walk Compilation [Video]. YouTube.

Freepik. (2015, December 28). Ornamental chinese monkey new year background 831240.

Freepik & fwstudio. (2016, November 7). Texture of wooden boards 971817.

Freepik & macrovector_official. (2019, May 21). Parquet cartoon doodle style seamless pattern 4547294. Freepik. 

Freepik & Patchariyavector. (2016, May 13). Oriental elements collection 868067. Freepik.

Hooks, E. (2017). Acting for Animators (4th ed.). Routledge.

Maya Learning Channel. (2018, October 26). Creating great lighting for Playblasts [Video]. 

NimbahTech. (2013, March 10). Ultimate drunk man beaten by hill [Video]. YouTube

Schaal, B. (2018). Douglas (v1.3.1) [3D model].

Toshpointow. (2011, December 8). Drunk Walking With Style! [Video]. YouTube. 

Truong Cg Artist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Zhu Baijie [3D model]. 

TruongCgArtist, Nguyen, T., & Nguyen, L. (2014). Wukong [3D model]. 

Williams, R. (2009). The Animator’s Survival Kit, Expanded Edition. Faber & Faber.

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Warthog in urban forest PART 3

Making Of / 12 April 2021
You can read part 1  and part 2

Camera Aperture... maths!

In this part we have to take into account the information that our camera contains in the projection section.

  1. First we import our 3D environment into Maya.
  2. When undistord our video, it might change size (mine didn't) but let's pretend it did, so we'll put THAT size in the Render Settings image size.
  3. With our camera selected, we go to the Shape section -> Enviroment -> imageplane [Create].
  4. If you are using a video, convert it to an image sequence and select Use Image Sequence.
  5. (put the lock on the camera so as not to move it by mistake)
  6. Now let's do this calculations:

From the video (old dimensions)

Orig. Width:1920

Orig. Height: 1080

After Undistortion (new dimensions)

New wight: 1945

New Height: 1105

Formula: Overscan % = new dimensions / old dimensions

My Overscan %

Wight:1.013

Height:1.023

Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions

Nuke camera:

Formula: New aperture dimensions = Overscan% x Nuke Camera Aperture dimentions

New Aperture width: 36.27

New Aperture Height: 20.60


Add the new apertures in your camera (MAYA)  -> (Camera's name)Shape -> Film Back and here we will change Camera Aperture (mm) numbers.

Assets and textures fix

As I mentioned before, I will be using the Warthog by TruongCGartist, but here are some other elements that I plan to use:

With these elements, I found that some of them did not have normal textures or were normal in black and white, so I followed this tutorial by Matt Rittman, creating the normal maps in photoshop, I really liked the result :)

Once all the textures were connected in aiStandartSurface, I presented my progress to the instructor, he helped me a lot with several extra arrangements of textures.

First of all we add subsurfance to the plants, since in real life plants absorb light and look greener. It's like when we put our hand in front of the sun and we see it red.

Then we add fractal textures to the rocks.

We changed all the textures that were not Base Color or Occlusion to RAW, for a better rendering.

Check that in the speculars, Alpha is being detected in the lighting. (Alpha is luminance)

With all this, obtaining a better result but at the same time increasing the rendering time.

PROJECT WEEK 3: Render layers, better be ready

Render Layers and AOV's

This week I was motivated to have all the objects ready to render, with the amount of objects I have it was no surprise that I got many rendering layers, let's take a look at my layers and my AOV's.

Some stuff I was CHECKING CONSTANTLY:

  • Every object need a alone-layer, without shadows. (Cast shadows off)
  • Then a shadows layers, object with Override in Primary Visibility (off)
  • If your planes are producing shadows than does not affect your main object, turn them off. (Cast shadows off)
  • If you have a plane in front of the object, cast shadows and receive shadows OFF but primary visibility ON.
  • Are masks working correctly? Check in main layers and shadow (specially on alpha preview)
  • IF your AOV's is not affecting the layer, Override and enabled, for example my sss does not affect any of my rocks.

Rendering...takes forever

During this week Jamie suggested, emphasized, underlined! the importance of starting to render this week (April 14, the project is delivered in 22) the video must have at least 12 seconds of special effects.

Let's do numbers

12 seconds = 24 frames per second = 288 frames.

14 render layers = 4,032 frames

Each rendering frame takes at least a minute to render, sometimes a little longer.

My "wildpig_main" layer that contained all the AOV's you saw before, took 10 hours to render.

All other layers containing color but not Motion Vector, at least 7 hours.

All other layers containing color, but not Motion Vector and SSS (subsurface) for at least 6 hours.

and the layers of shadows that do not contain any AOV's about 5 hours.

Doing the math, it took me AT LEAST 85 HOURS to render EVERYTHING I had in Maya.

I couldn't leave room for mistakes, so before embarking on this adventure of not turning off my computer for days (coincidentally restarting it once a day so it wouldn't die) I rendered ALL MY OBJECTS in just one frame per object. In this way, while the rest of the more than 4,000 frames that were being rendered, I could start to order my nodes in Nuke, leaving them more or less like this:


Trial and error! Rendering my footage


I thought that when I would have my layers rendered it would just be to connect them to my document in Nuke and BE HAPPY!

But no, the errors appear: Copy1: Missing inputChannel, (Something something_#.exr not a Something something_#.exr)


Why is this happening? Could it be that as a human I have been wrong in some part of the process?

Many times we blame ourselves, because the program must be working, but in this case they were corrupted rendering files that for one reason or another did not render well.

It might have been because of my computer's capacity, memory space, or Maya crashed while rendering.

Either way the solution was to find ALL the frames that were rendered wrong.

For this, with a write node, I was exporting sequence of images by CG element, if some number was not exported it is because it was corrupted, I was doing this while writing down which object and frame were corrupted.

In PlantOnRock_shadows there 27 frames that were corrupted, just to give an example.

BUT I FIXED THEM ALL!!!!
The other problem I had was that my document was TOO heavy to render on my computer, so my option was to render one frame at a time (Spoiler: Didn't work, Nuke would close and something like this would appear in my Task Manager, 100% CPU and numbers between 7000-9000 in my Memory Nuke)

After repeatedly restarting my poor computer, I began to transfer my files to the virtual computer of the university but that was going to take HOURS, so also to have a BACKUP, I started rendering in parts:

  • Undistorted Footage + PlanarTracker + Lens Distortion
  • CG (Rock Back, Plant Back
  • CG (Rock Front)
  • CG (Plant Round, Plant on Rock)
  • CG (Tree)
  • CG (WildPig)
  • CC + Filter

Reviewing I realize that the rock in the back is not positioned "perfectly" and they have a strange movement that will definitely be noticed, I COULD solve it with a tracker and transform.

But time is running out and I have other projects, so this is when we say goodbye to my Back rock and Back plant, they looked good but move badly :(

Last Fixing/ Little Details

Once finished with the rendering of the CGI elements, it is vitally important to review elements from the beginning again, first we have my PlanarTracker, where I have my bee design.

It looked good, but '' too perfect '' to be painted...

So I wanted to leave it more '' adapted '' to the door, for this I have used some tips from VFX Vibe where he uses radials as masks, it caught my attention and I wanted to use them to fix Colour Corrections , in this particular case I used a Ramp instead of radial (GrievePerspective shows a quick example of how it works with a Constant)

I thought ''Hey, it looks like what I do in Photoshop / Procreate'' and in that I remembered that in one of the sessions with Jamie he had used a node Merge to affect the colors, like layers in photoshop.

Experimenting a bit, I decided that the effect of multiplying the color of the door with the illustration of the bee is very close to what I wanted; adding a radial to leave the center of the bee a little more saturated.


Next problem: My color correction will oversaturate the sky a bit too much, see that green line between the sky and the house's roof? besides that burning of pixels in the branches of the tree ... I needed to repair this!

First, in my CC connect radials so that they will not affect the sky, once with the normal sky I applied a special correction and a Blur (the branches are far away, we do not need to see them detailed)


Finally Jamie gave my project a final feedback, especially with the latest color correction.

I can safely say that this is the final structure of my project.

Final Video + Breakdown


Special Feedback during the process

Here I will mention super important points in which I had problems and / or they delayed me in the completion of my project.

  • First of all the complexity of the lens distortion, thanks to the support sessions I was able to achieve it, but I practically had to perform 4 camera trackers until it really worked and was the right size.
  • Lose the fear of editing the textures of an object, none of my plants had a normal map so I had to find how to create them, adding an SSS channel also helped to bring them to life.
  • Constantly check that AOV’s are selected in each render layer, my shadows do not need to have specular or diffuse, Override them makes the difference between a render of 10-7 hours to only 5 hours.
  • PUT. NAMES. TO. EVERYTHING...I had 7 objects in my scene, constantly editing my textures in Hypershader and then putting everything together in Nuke.
  • BACKUPS! I have 4 backups, and other Nuke files where I worked Lens Distortion, Camera Tracker and testing nodes for effects, better safe than sorry.
  • Finally, learn when to give up, I tried to create a mask with the lockers of the door in the middle of the graffiti, I learnt how but to actually have a good result I needed to create key frames in the perspectives frames, not enough time for a little effect, so I changed my roto mask for a Roto Paint and it looks good!

If I have more time, I'll try to fix my rock in the background, add more flowers and some butterflies flying around! I did have some models for this but too little time.

Conclusions

This was a hard project with a lot of fixing, it shows how powerful is Maya and Nuke and how hard is to make all of this alone.

This project explored different areas that a student can specialize in; lighting, creation of scenes, storyboards, 3D maps, cameras, division of elements for rendering, AOV's, among many more.

The objective of this project is not only to demonstrate I know how to use these programs (Nuke and Maya) but also to understand how to reach a level of professional quality, the ability to organize and leave it ready for delivery.

It has been a great adventure, now I can say that I know how to create a BASIC VFX sequence, since the possibilities are endless.

Please feel welcome to write to me here or Instagram about this project, I am an open book.

Feel welcome to also check my animation blog.

Chao!

Report

Nuke! Never Gonna Give You Up PART 2

Making Of / 07 March 2021

You can read part 1 here.

Previously in week 6 and 7

In the first part we are left with the implementation of AO and AOV's in layer rendering. To better understand these concepts I was watching a couple of tutorials of people exporting with different settings, this video was one of my favorites. 

Week 8: Rendering again, but with more effects

This week I had a couple of problems with Maya's image plane, it didn't appear in the background of the RenderView, as is usually the case, the solution was to delete the camera with the image and create a connected one.

With tons of things to do, we keep practicing with layer rendering, this time differentiating between Diffuse, Specular and Coat properties.

SUPER important to remember: since we are doing it with layer rendering, when we export we have to do it in render--> render sequence and have "All Render-Enabled Layers" enabled.

Since we are pro, and we configure our location of the project well, this will appear in "images" in two different files since we have two layers.

NUKE turn, we create our first tree for our .exr, the properties exist in our file but to separate them we will use node shuffle, where in "Input Layer" We will choose the property to edit, in this case diffuse, specular and coat. We change the name to make it easier to identify :)

BEAUTIFUL! to connect them we use Merge, but BEWARE! We do not want merge OVER, we want merge PLUS, since we need them to add to each other, not to pile up.

Let's not forget that we have to do the unpremult and premult sandwich and once this is done you can enjoy editing the colors with grades, color correction, etc.

Our little tree will look something like this:

Now, what about we add one more light, this time naming them, so we can differentiate between the attributes of both lights. For this we go to our light--> Arnold Area Light Attributes --> Visibility --> AOV Light Group, then we name them (for example Area and the skydome as HDR)

Once this is done, we return to our AOV rendering configuration and add customs, with the property followed by the name of the light, for example diffuse_Area, taking special care that the capital letters are in the same way as the name placed in the light.

Two lights, two configurations for each attribute, we export with the capable ones and this time we have to place a shuffle per attribute, a total of 6 shuffles, we follow the same previous procedure and we would have something like this:

Final result:

Personal feedback:

  • I have to be very careful with the temperature of the light in the skydome, I feel that it was too blue compared to the background, even though it was the same location the HDR was taken at a different time of day.
  • Grades are magical.
  • I have to see more tutorials about color correction at the end, as well as when I draw I place overlay and multiply to "tie" the background with the character, I have to imagine that there are similar tricks for Nuke.
  • I MUST PRACTICE MORE.

Week 9: Jamie, Thank you for your service!

This week I was trying to get all my 3D assets tested, I’m going to be honest, there’s still a lot of stuff that confuses me in Nuke.

Hopefully we got a special guest, Jamie Bhalla who is already swimming like a pro in this ocean called Nuke! He showed us his Portfolio and a lot of recommendations  for references and inspiration... in a short version here are my notes:

One of Jamie’s advice that really stuck with me was “Look for the assets and build the idea around that.“ In the beginning I made a list of ideas and then for frustated since I couldn’t find assets “good enough “ or I couldn’t afford them.

Then He touched the social media topic, I always think if I want to know about something I must follow hashtags related to that (I follow #bee #science #honduras in ALL my accounts haha) These are some hashtags and accounts for VFX!

  • Jilrock1
  • Voidzto
  • vfxmaria
  • Rek0de
  • Brickspacer
  • vernbestintheworld
  • #vfx
  • #vfxworld
  • #visualeffects
  • #compositing
  • #nukecompositing
  • #howiseedatworld

If you swim in this ocean, How can you catch the fish? (Horrible analogy, but you get the point)

Advices for finding jobs:

  • Look at companies websites
  • Show your breakdown
  • Taaaaake your time
  • UPDATE your showreel
  • Make a moodboard of the companies work
  • Cover letter aim for the company (and add words from their statement)
  • Different showreels for different companies! But made one for your website.

Thank you for all your advices Jamie, lifesaver!

Week 10: Lens Distortion, Why do you hate me? (Also last class week!)

So... WEEKS ago I had this problem with my Lens Distortion node, just didn’t work at all, I made my lines and when I press solve... everything gets funky. Both my professor and Jamie helped me with this issue but not even then we could find out WHY this is happening.

If someone is experimenting something similar, let me tell you... try to use less lines!
yeah yeah I know, but this looks until now the only way to fix the issue.

Anyway, since is the last week, I took the opportunity to ask some questions I really want to understand from Nuke, for my own sanity.

”But Johana, this is so obvious” WELL NOT FOR ME >:[

Lens Distortion...why?

When we work with Lens Distortion and STMap, we understand that our len is causing some fish eye effect (even minimum, when we compare we notice) It’s like folding a piece of paper. My mistake was: I thought Lens Distortion was to fix the video and make it straight (but without distortion again in the end) now I understand that if we did that we could out in danger the quality of our video. 

We undistort because we need a straight environment to work better with our 3D assets, and then distorted again so everything fits with the original video.

Here a interesting example of how it works, using a BlackOutside node

Colour Correction and Grading 

Everytime we speak about CC and Grade, one button label as photoshop turns on in my head, I often work with Multiply for shadows and overlay for lights (or add and screen) Nuke has some similar options but the most use are these two, Jamie said in a few words “I use Primary Colour correction for Fixing the video, then a Secondary one to create the mood”.

This is also mentioned in this video recommended by my professor, here they talk about Color Correction node for fixing colours and then Grade node for create the mood, so like in photoshop people work with different workflows but same principles.

PROJECT WEEK 1: Let's get this done

Starting my project, I combined the list of elements I need and the creative process that Jamie showed us in his presentation, leaving this checklist:

  1. Colour Correction (firts and second)
  2. Lens Distortion
  3. MatchMove / Tracking Stabilize
  4. Planar Tracking
  5. Cloud Generator
  6. 3D enviroment NUKE / export camera
  7. Assets in Maya
  8. Application of PBR materials
  9. Render Layers & AOV's
  10. Render Settings
  11. Rendeeeer
  12. Merge & Shuffle nodes
  13. Colour correction fix
  14. Other nodes and final touches

Some of these points depend on what you want to do in the scene (for example, if I want to put a graffiti with planar tracking) so if your idea does not involve things like that, you do not need to do all the steps.

Due to the pandemic (2020-2021) we could not make our recordings, so the leader of the module provided pre-made videos with the necessary information for our project, after much thinking, I chose this video from a garage, with this configuration :

Focal length: 50mm

Film back preset: 5D Mark iii Video

I have named my idea ''Warthog in urban forest'' using the Truong CG Artist model (check the model there) as the main asset and animated by Le Phi Hung.

The idea is for the wild boar to walk around the scene, which will include other models of plants and rocks to make it more '' wild ''.

Colour Correction (Firts part)

First of all I started to fix the colors, after several tutorials and advice from Jamie, I have come to the conclusion that the Color Correction nodes are better for the artistic part, since you can modify by channel (for example, you only activate the red channel) but this is a personal choice.

Here is a comparison. (original is the gray one)

Lens Distortion

Since with the video they gave us some grids, I used them to create my video undistord, I made it PERFECT, and it did not work creating the same errors that I have previously presented, I created a new node and I made it less perfect, this time it did work.

Don't make it perfect >:(

Tracking - Stabilize

This was one of the points that took me later, in the first place I did not understand why my video did not stabilize after putting 5 trackers, but my error was that I had not checked all these boxes before exporting the baked.

Well, it was at this point that I started wondering which is better, having it BAKED or CONNECTED to my trackers, fortunately Jamie is giving sessions to answer questions of this type.

He said it really shouldn't matter, since connected gives you the ability to edit it later, but also taught me ANOTHER way to stabilize.

Jamie's method: when you have the trackers ready, you go to Transform and there in the one that says transform you change it to remove jitter.

Another wonderful advice he gave was: since your document becomes heavy, export your undistorted lens with the tracking and work the rest in another document, with this I did at least 7 tests of how my stabilizer was working, in the end export one with only 3 tracker, since the difference was minimal if it was those 3 or 5.

Undistorted without trackers

Undistorted with trackers (only 3)

With this I can start creating my 3D map in Nuke and work on the planar tracking part.

PROJECT WEEK 2: Creating a 3d world

Planar Tracking + Roto mask + Roto Paint

Before continuing with the 3D world, we are going to add a small graffiti on the doors, the planar works perfectly but I want to create some masks to remove the graffiti from the locks, I tried to follow this tutorial by Olly Tyler but it is not working, possibly something I did different.

Update: The solution was to add the Roto as a mark in the merge node, the mask work for ONE frame, but then is not tracking, in this case we spoke about two solutions, add a tracker and then put that between merge and roto, or create a planartracker and use rotos there, tried both and the best result is with tracker + Roto, but then the mask is not perfect...

ONE SOLUTION is to create key frames modifying roto's perspective, but it takes so much time and this effect is not a priority of the project, so for now I have only painted the padlocks with ROTOPAINT, so that they are not seen.

If in the end I have some extra time, I could try again, the important thing is that I learned how to do it :)

Camera Tracker

Creating my camera tracker was quite an odyssey, what I was most interested in was creating the environment of the wall, since I want my boar to come out from behind, and have the ground stabilized, but when I create the camera I generate it. .under the GROUND?

''Ugh, okay fine '' I tried to find different tutorials, but the generation was the same, so my virtual map is in decline, it can be better appreciated once I have put the cards...

I suppose it can work, I could modify the camera and try to stabilize everything, but I feel like that may cause problems for me in the future. :(

Update: It does cause some problems later on, SO I'm using the undistorted without stabilize footage, and It's working better that the previous one.

Anywaaaay... let's create a HDRI

In class they taught us how to create HDRI images for our skydome in Maya, for this we use Photoshop, here is a video from Ed Gregory that explains the process, the only thing that I think He does not mention, is we need to save as OpenEXR.

One big recommendation given by my teacher, check your colour info before exporting it, It should be higher than one in the most illuminated area (preferably not less than 7) IN THIS WAY the illumnation would look amazing in your assets.

I will continue with my camera tracker math calculations in PART 3
  

Report

Learning until I’ve mastered Nuke

Making Of / 24 January 2021

The career I have chosen depends on a constant adaptation to new trends, so I should never stop learning.

With this in mind, I am starting a series of blogs narrating my progress in my Computer Animation MA.

You can check my progress with Media Specialist Practice here.

Narrating my progress for Perfecting the Look. 

Week 1: Introduction and Ideas

During this first week I have had to consider where to write my blog entries, usually to have a greater reach I would choose Blogger, being a Google platform and therefore they win special treatment in search engines.

However, considering that I can earn with this blog, beyond fulfilling an academic assignment; It is introducing my work in a new English-speaking market, with people who are on a similar learning path to my own and that if I am lucky, we will share knowledge and inspire each other.

Finally I concluded that ArtStation, being a platform positioned in this field of work and highly recommended by many of my colleagues, is without a doubt my best option.


IDEAS

In short, the project assigned in Perfecting the Look is to create:

  1. A video of at least 12 seconds with camera effects, light, Nuke nodes and composition.
  2. A video with my work progress in Maya and Nuke.
  3. Project must be delivered before April 22.

My main goal is to make a project that I not only enjoy, but take pride in showing as part of my portfolio, this is the result of this week's brainstorming.

  • A ladybug walking on a leaf in the park.
  • Something related to the cadejo (famous legend of a demonic dog in Honduras)
  • Something gloomy / monster coming up the stairs.
  • A spider sticking out of an ear.
  • Alien ship flying around a tree.
  • A puppy made of clouds jumping in the sky.
  • Monster sitting on a roof or on an electric wire.
  • A flower growing in a park that has a face.
  • Interview or newscast about monsters living in a house, with a scene of a little monster walking on the corners.

This week I have also started with the recommended tutorials from class (especially the ones on LinkedIn learning, Nuke essential training). For now I will dare to say that the program reminds me of photoshop but intended for video editing, since I’m just starting to use this program, I may be wrong.


Week 2: Nuke, much more interesting than I expected.

During this week I continued with the tutorials that LinkedIn educational has about Nuke, which I thought was another version of Adobe Premiere. Now I consider it to be superior.

Curious, I looked on Behance for projects in which Nuke has been used, a lot of CGI and 3D is what appeared but I also looked for famous works that were made with this program and among those that I recognized I can name Alice in Wonderland from Dreamworks and Pirates!

But the point that really blew my mind was the 3D functions, from working with elements made in programs like Maya and easily converting 2D backgrounds to 3D with masks. As you can see in this video. 

Between Maya and Nuke, I am a bit ashamed to say that in this past week, I practiced a lot more in Maya, the little that I practiced in Nuke was knowledge that I usually use in Photoshop for montages.

Finally, after a lot of thinking and checking free models online for the different ideas that I have for my project, I had choose to do the ladybug idea, ideally with a ladybug rendered walking in a piece of grass in the part.


Week 3: Getting done tons of exercises!

I believe this week I had started with my right foot in Nuke, complementary with what I have been learning so far with Nuke Essentials (LinkedIn Learning).


Color Correction!

A big, BIG! Step of learning how to do CGI, this time we had 2 documents per exercise, those could be the same image with different colour or two documents that are similar but have to give the illusion that we’re recorded with the same camera, or at least with the same colour temperature.

Beginning with this example, where we needed to match those two images into the colour range of “reference”.




At first it looks easy, but with more complex images (and differences in colours) more complex the exercise, like with this one.




Notice that I even had to play with the different colour channels RGB, but also I couldn’t get (for now) the perfect match. I’ll have to check some other tutorials about this, since I could not fit the large amount of red in my sky and too little blue in my clouds.

This was my final result.


In the next example, we had a building in two different angles and colour temperatures. At first look I believe I did a good job with the colours, but I noticed afterwards that my palms and yellow flowers are slightly darker.




Then, a video exercise, two different shots with very different temperatures.



Following the instructions in the class, I noticed that during the choice of whitepoint the professor didn’t choose a white colour, but more like a soft yellow, since with white the scene would look brighter than the reference, a very good thing to remember when assigning colour temperature.


However there’s one thing I wanted to do but until now I can’t, in the second shot I want to fix the lights in the background. I feel that in the first shot they’re whiter than in the second. I’ll update with a “before and after” when I experiment with some tutorials.


2D Matchmoving

Alright, after who knows how many cups of tea (and occasional hot chocolate), some of my results after following internal tutorials from the class.

First, learning how to Stabilize a shaking video, something I kinda know how to do it in premiere but not very good at it.

Creating around 4 tracks, I found this exercise with waaaay more steps than premiere, but with better results, at least for now I'm very happy with my final version.

In the following exercises It was necessary to use tracking for different reasons, we have a plane tracker for the wall so we can add 2D elements in a enviroment with perspective and movement. A VERY important point of view to take into consideration was the difference in the final effect that is obtained if you work with a sequence of images or a video, for this exercise and to obtain the best result you have to work with a sequence.

Later, in this exercise using some tracking, we add the always reliable (and incredibly loved by those who arrange photos in photoshop lol) CLONE TOOL !, very, very important to play a little with the cloning opacity, if not see a bit between cut, to eliminate the letters at least 4 trackings were used. 

In these cases, you usually work from front to back, since the point where you see all the element you want to delete is not at the beginning. Also take into account the light a little reflected from the ceiling in the metal part of the sign.

Finally in this exercise, it was a combination of planortracking on the cell phone, with a rotomask and to cut out the arm with the cell phone and place it on a new background.

And add a little color correction to it.

incredible exercise to continue evaluating the distribution of the nodes, which is what affects what and how to join them (merge).

I have added my final node tree, just please ignore the node write, since I only put it to export the video :)
  

Week 4 and 5: 3D Camera

3D Matchmoving

During this week we definitively entered 3D terrain, in class we did a quick exercise in converting a 2D image to a 3D environment using perspective and 3d elements such as cubes to '' replace '' geometric elements within the composition.

Happily, I got my sphere to move within this space :)


3Dmatchmoving exercise

In the following exercise we not only use what we learned in class in the creation and export of 3D elements in NUKE (cameras, shapes, etc.) but also the implementation of 3D elements in Maya and get to the point of seeing them in the video.

However, this is an exercise that does not end here. This workshop is continued in the Lighting and Multipass Rendering Workshop section.

So we will see how we move forward with this exercise in the future.

Anyway, after fixing the distortion of the lens, we add a 3D camera node to create various tracking points, but also with a tracking and rot node we create a mask to eliminate the points created in the window and in the background when the person passes.

This is when I had a little jam, my 3D camera was not detecting the ROTO1 mask, so I have added my magic checklist for when something that should work doesn't work.

  1. Check that all the configuration is exact to the tutorial.
  2. Check in forums if anyone has had the same error.
  3. Visit another tutorial, see if you get the same result.
  4. Open a new document and carry out the same procedure but with other assets.
  5. And finally (and solution haha) delete ROTO1 and Camera3D and simply perform the procedure again.

The last one I call '' This settings are cursed, it is better to burn it and rebuild it ''

Once this pothole is overcome, we prepare the document to be exported to Maya, for this we need to create a write Geo node; If you look at my node tree, 3D elements created in Nuke (cards) were added, these offer a better visualization of where we will place the elements in Maya.


This is why when we export, we take care that the geometries are selected and the camera.

Once in Maya, in a nutshell these were my next steps.

  • We check that the sequence of images is correctly placed as the background of your camera (the one exported from Nuke).
  • Put the padlock on Nuke's camera, believe me you don't want to move it by accident.
  • Skydome! we place the 360 image that we have from the initial recording, we rotate the Skydome to match Nuke's camera.
  • We select both cards (floor and window) and place the aiShadowMatte material on them, in this way it will not be displayed in the rendering but they can also be used as masks.
  • In this way, we also create elements that we need to be masks, such as light poles, with these masks we can place elements in the background.
  • For the window we can add a Pong or PongE texture to create a slight reflection. However, since we don't want the card to be looked at, in the aiShadowMatte texture go to the Specular section and activate the indirect specular. From this point it is playing a little with the configuration, I found this page that explains it PERFECTLY with examples. 
    • Keep in mind that reflections can also be created in Nuke.

The result after adding our textured 3D elements and masks with AiShadowMatte, is more or less like this:

Seen from Arnold RenderView:


Week 6 and 7: Rendering and Internal Tutorials

During these weeks we were exploring within the class the use of rendering with some types of lights, firstly creating an environment in which you would place 3D elements (background image in 2D, aligned with a plane in perspective and a skydome with HDR of the original image.

Something like this:

We continued with the creation of different materials, however I decided that I wanted to play a little more with the materials, so I was reviewing the Maya Support tutorials that the course offers, creating chrome, glass, brushed metal, marble, Iridescent material and something that was supposed to be Car Paint, but I got too much fun with the combination of textures.

Returning to the main rendering practice, placing more materials (and you can see the other materials in the sphere reflection lol) we started playing with Render Layers.

With Render Layers, you can create groupings of elements and / or specific effects for rendering. For example, if in my scene I only wanted to render the shadow of the cylinder, it would look like this:

Alpha Channel:

Extra tip: Noise problems have a lot to do with lights settings, more samples in the lights means least noise but also more time rendering.Here I mark exactly which is the layer that is working and this is how the shadow would be rendered.


Continued in ''Nuke! Never Gonna Give You Up PART 2''

  

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