There are some exercises that are not included in this showreel. However, you can find all the assignments for this semester in the link below.
https://c19011002.myblog.arts.ac.uk/category/term-2/
Category Archives: Term 2
week-10
Final result
I learned a lot of new knowledge through this cooperative project. And it also gave me a more comprehensive understanding of film and television post-production. It gave me the opportunity to review the knowledge of other software I learned before such as Maya, Nuke and Houdini. Besides i become more confident to use Houdini.
Cooperative projects allow me to learn different knowledge from different people. Not only about technical things, but also let me learn how to cooperate and communicate with other people in the project. I think in a project, it is very important to have a good leader. Everyone in the group actively expresses their opinions. Everyone has something they want to do. But there must be someone to unify these opinions. Otherwise, a lot of time will be wasted in the early stage due to differences in opinions. Yann is a very good team leader. In the process of project production, he help to integrate resources and actively organize online discussions. I am also learning from each of them. The biggest problem about myself is that I am not good at communicating with team members. Just focus on my works and solve problem by my self. But in the later stage, I found that communicating with other people in a timely manner can help me solve the problem faster.
In fact, after finishing the project, I think there are still areas that need to be improved. For example, the communication with the team members is not timely especially for me. Everyone is not familiar with each other for the first time, and the overall process of the project is not very clear. In the early stage, A lot of time was spent in the production process, which resulted in a hasty composition in later stage. Of course, I will pay more attention to these problems and solve them in the next cooperation project.
Overall, everyone still likes the final result. When the result appears, it still makes me feel very fulfilled. What’s more important is what we learned in the process of making this pre-vis.
Week-9
Last week, the members of our animation team completed the layout based on the storyboard. My main job is to make special effects for some shots based on the layout.
firstly I downloaded the layout_6 file from OneDrive which is the part where I should make special effects. Most of our files are shared with team members through Onedrive. You can download the files you need from the above, or you can update your progress in real-time here.
When I got the shots, I found the camera that needs special effects, and then selected the objects and imported it into Houdini as the Fbx file format. In this way, after we finish the special effects, we can directly import them into Maya without having to make other adjustments to its position and animation. Then all that needs to be done is to import the effect back to Maya as an FBX file. On the basis of the previous week, I adjusted the effect. Make the pieces of the mask bigger. It is more in line with the effect after the mask material is broken and adjust the time when the mask broke. Let the mask shatter after falling, instead of cracking on the face.
Explosion test
Then there is the test of the explosion effect. In the process, I tried several different methods to make it more real. Here is the final result of the test. The first effect looks more like an explosion in the water. The second type of explosion is a bit like a large-scale explosion caused by a missile or a more powerful weapon. The third is our final choice, the explosion effect caused in the fight.
In the process, I found a video that helped us analyze the Pyro node. The impact of different options on the explosion effect.
Week 10
This week I finished my 3D composition assignment. Here is the final result. I encountered a lot of difficulties during the final rendering. Some problems have been solved but some problems still exist. In the next semester or when I finish all the assignments of this semester, I will come back to this project again and solve these issues.
Second version I made adjustments to some places.
The first difficulty is that I cannot remove the traces caused by the shadow matte. In the image on the left, you can see two obvious black squares. This is caused by ambient light. I tried many ways to make the screen show only the shadow of the object and not the shadow of the plane. I increased the shadow plane so that its edges do not appear in the picture. This is much better. But this will make the picture darker. I decided to solve this problem in Nuke.
In Nuke, I roto a part of the wall to repair the picture. But in this step, I still did not solve the problem of darkening of the picture. So I used a more clumsy approach to render the darkened background footage again in Maya.
In conclusion, this project gave me a more systematic understanding of special effects production. It may be one of the film production processes. But it let me know how most 3D or special effects shots show the final effect. And how to combine the 3D objects and 2D images together. Of course, I still need a lot of practice and study to control the overall picture. For example, include the adjustment of lights, the binding of bones, and the adjustment of object materials. Maybe in the next semester, I will start another new compositing project. It is used to help me master these contents and learn some other skills.
Week-8
Scene design
This week, Yann and I edited the building model separately. And found some related materials.
character design
Below is the conceptual design and model of the character. Next week, the animation team will start the production of bone rigging and movements.
week-9 Rendering test
I did a preliminary rendering test this week. Cut out part of the excess shadow part. The Roto part is not very good. After learning layered rendering later, this problem will not occur.
Nuke-week9 Green screen
Such an error occurred during the cutout process. It looks like the edges are at odds with the background. By turning off part of the node check, I came to the conclusion because I used a single-frame photo for the test first, and then replaced the photo as a video after the test. But I only replaced part of the footage. This is why the following problem occurs。
Sometimes the background is still there because of forgetting to change the attributes of the merge node.
Week-3
Based on the work of the past few weeks, we each started to follow up on our own parts.
Scene Design
Yann and I set out to design a single building. We took the Overwatch building as a reference and superimposed some repetitive structures on the surface of the building.
VFX
And this week I also received a request for special effects production. Shattering, explosion and smoke effects and so on. Jay and I also tried to do some tests during the week. Regarding the effect of the broken mask. I have made many attempts. For the first time, I used the methods I learned in class. Use the Dopnet node to edit the object. There was a problem when entering the node to link the object. No matter how I try, the object cannot appear in the node. Passing detection may be due to errors in the coordinate axis.
So I looked for another way. The result is obtained by solving the two nodes. Compared with the previous method, the steps are not so complicated. But some information is also missing. For example, the edges of the fragments are too flat. But this method is sufficient for our current previs.
Here is the result
Character Design
The character design is basically completed this week.The animation team will perform bone rigging and animation on them next week.
Storyboard
We also found some reference videos from Previs. Maybe the final effect will not be as complete as they are. But we will try our best to get closer to this effect.
week-7
After last week, everyone started their own work.
My main work this week is the layout and design of the scene. In the beginning, I directly found some existing models and combined them.
First version Second version
Discussion
But after discussion. We think that some models are too refined and complicated. It is possible to snatch the show. And everyone is more inclined to the architectural style of the game. So we decided to use simple squares to put out the street structure with different heights. Then do a separate architectural design. This simple model is also more convenient for the animation team to design the storyboard.
In addition, I found some reference pictures that are more relevant to our project. Our next street design may be more biased towards this reference map. The buildings on both sides are higher. Make the road a little narrower without too much protruding structure. Make the whole scene look more like a secluded alley. The streets in the first version above look scattered.
Next is the character design
In the future, the era of high-tech and low-life, the emergence of smart machines will bring new contradictions to society. The renewal of the government’s judicial system can hardly match the development of technology. The solidification of social class further leads to chaos, and excessive chaos brings new order. The intrigue among the upper-class society has also been brought to the table, and professional killers seem to have become an indispensable role for every upper-class power. And the bounty hunter system acquiesced by the government has given the people at the bottom a new way out, allowing society to maintain a stable but cold state to a certain extent. The masked girl is a bounty hunter, eccentric and agile. She grew up in a slum and was influenced by hip-hop culture. Dress more freely, there will be many cultural elements on her clothes, and she uses a short knife. When performing tasks, the attire is more capable, and she wears a mask to hide her face and does not speak.
Reference picture
The cyborg man is a professional killer with a strong body and a cold face. He is usually responsible for handling some people or robots that they hate for the upper class people. Frequent killings made him brutal, and while this job brought him money, it also took his arm, but fortunately he could use a high-techmetal arm instead. The metal arm has stronger strength and defense.
Reference picture
Nuke-week8
Our main content this week is green screen extraction. In the beginning, I tried to use a single picture as the material for the test. Then proceed to channel inspection. When all the steps are working, I will replace the pictures with video footage.
Regarding this footage. When I chose it, I didn’t notice that the background of this material was too flat and the color saturation was too high. When I processed it in Nuke, I found that its edges were too flat. It looked like footage that had already been processed. But I still finished it. Because I think this material is very suitable for some cool game scenes.
After that, I used two different methods to process this picture.
In contrast, the result obtained by the second method has softer edges. It may also be the result of different parameters.