This shot is quite tricky for me. This shot mainly shows that Diana draws a stroke on the wall, and then the portal slowly spreads out to form a circle. like the image shows.

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I tried several different effects in After Effects. But the result is not very good. The portal looks like a flat surface. It is not very suitable for the scene.

Here is the first version for test.

Obviously, this result is not ideal. And the style of this portal is different from other portals. After a group discussion, we decided to use the effect of smoke instead of light. So I created the portal in the same way as in the previous shot. However, adjustments have been made to the animation. Make the portal appear as a line at the beginning, and then slowly expand into a circular portal.

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Here is the final version,

I rendering the portal separately into two parts, the main object and shadow.

Portal

Shadow layer

I encountered several problems in rendering. The first is the voxel size of the portal. I found that when I adjust the voxel size to a smaller value, it will bring better and clearer results, but at the same time, the simulation cache and rendering time will be longer.

The second problem is that when I perform multi-pass rendering, there will be a problem as shown in the figure. In the rendering process, there is no white edge in this circle, but it will suddenly appear when the rendering is completed. It still exists when I composite it in Nuke. In the end, I found that the problem is the alpha channel.

Combination

Here is the process of combination.

I clean up the material first, remove the signs and pipes on the wall. Then extract the projection through the shuffle node and merge it with the portal and the original material.

Then add another scene video to the screen. This expresses the meaning of Gherardo being transferred from another scene.

Then add the portal and shadow.

The last step is to Roto out Gherardo and use another roto node as a mask to make Gherardo through out of the portal. In fact, this is more difficult. Because this camera is in the front. Many problems cannot be concealed by covering up. And due to our early considerations, Gherardo’s actions are not very match with the portal animation. Through discussions with adlo, his suggestion to me is to adjust Roto to make the shot looks real.

I started the first portal test after we finished shooting.

According to our concept, I did a test of two versions of the portal. After group discussion. Everyone will prefer the second version. So next I will develop the production plan of the portal in the second version.

For the second version, I decided to use the Turbulence plug-in in C4D to help me complete the production of the portal. In the transmitter, a divergent smoke ring can be obtained by adjusting the turbulence, temperature and density. In order to make it closer to the effect of the portal, rather than just a single-layer ring, I added another ring behind the first ring to make it attractive to the smoke of the first ring.

According to the tested version, we found that the portal did not interact with the surrounding environment and the arch. The portal looks like it is pasted on the screen. It is not very harmonious with the scene. Therefore, ambient light and projection are very important to us. So I imported our footage in the taste. And an arch was created based on the shape. This allows a good interaction between the portal and the arch.

After last week’s field survey. We voted to select several filming locations. On-site shooting started this week.

Here are the photos Diana and Gherardo brought back last week.

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After that, we quickly decided that the shooting time was Wednesday and Friday.

Here is a work photo

Diana and Gherardo reorganized the footage and upload it. In the meeting on Friday, everyone received the shots they wanted to make. Here is the time planning table.

Here is the shot information

Detalis of each location.

This week we have selected a few attractions in London. Then divide the work to conduct surveys. In the end, our results will be uploaded here separately.

After the discussion in our group, Madeleine began to write the script. I and Alex do storyboards based on the script.

In the first week, Diana collected everyone‘s ideas in our group. In the end, two ideas were adopted. The first one comes from Diana. The main theme is that several characters use portals to travel to various places in London. We want to use 3d characters such as mice and bees to guide the protagonist in different directions.

This is the inspiration.

The second idea comes from Gherardo. It is mainly the multi-layer relationship of an object in the picture.

This video may be able to express the meaning better. https://www.instagram.com/p/CN2Z6kriPVI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link