January 2021 – Diana Chinalieva – MA Visual Effects 20/21

31st January 202131st January 2021

Wood cabin – week 1

In the first week of lectures on Houdini, we were talked through correct way of creating a project, a scene, the types of nodes (e.g. surface, dynamic, compositing, render), how to save a file and how to structure the node graph correctly to store the information successfully. In the end of the lesson we were shown a way to model a wood cabin, reference of which was taken from google search.

I started off by creating a box node, from which I shaped a wooden long plank. Then with the use of the copy node, I easily created 9 other copies, appearing to be stacked on each other. A frame shape of the window was added later, out of which with the use of Boolean I cut out the window. Repeating the same process for other windows and the main door, I realised that a shorter way would have been to apply the nodes for transforming for window made from the same box. Similarly, I could have used the same box and copy nodes for the back wall as for the front. After making the side walls of the cabin, I used a Boolean node to create the cut from the wooden planks to follow the tilted roof from the reference photo. One of nice additions could have been a use of PolyBevel node, to round the edges of the wood.

31st January 202121st November 2021

Beauty and markers – week 2

It may be asked by an artist to do some touch-up on the actor’s face, such as removal of blemishes, wrinkles, de-aging, or something else. This week we focused on beauty work as well as some markers removal.

Beauty

I cleared out some redness from the nose, cheeks and forehead as well as the areas under eyes, to make her appear more rested and youthful. But it feels that due to movement of the face, the area that I cleaned up underneath the right eye appears to have darker tones in the first few seconds. I tried adding keys to the grade node, but it was affecting all the areas that were adjusted using rotopaint.

Marker

It is a common practice to remove markers from a face, body, object and this week we’ve been practicing removing the markers from an original shot footage. There were two ways we could go about it: the traditional where we create a rotopaint, roto, track it and merge with the original footage and a faster way where we use the VectorDistort node. The advantage of the latter is that it can be more accurate in storing the tracking information especially for a shot of a face/body.

In this exercise I practiced both ways and it can be seen in the node graph from below. A few challenges that I faced was the change in light and some physical difference in planar information for few dots.

As you can see on the right side, for the 2nd dot, I used a Grade node, settings of which I keyframed and adjusted to suit the changing lighting conditions. A similar problem was found the marker on right side of the mouth, where due to the folded part of the skin half of it had different light. To tackle this problem, I used a second grade node to which I applied a mask of a roto. This way I changed the grading of lighter and darker portions of the skin.

31st January 202131st January 2021

Hierarchy – week 3

This week we focused on understanding the importance and use of hierarchy to the object. As a practice we followed a simple exercise of modelling the solar system planets orbiting each other. The sun was in the center of the universe, whilst Neptune was orbiting it, having 3 moons moving around itself.

We imported some colour maps from the online resource (Solar Textures | Solar System Scope) and added simple lighting to the scene, as the sun is serving as the main lighting point.

It was my 2nd attempt at animating the camera movement. It was interesting that the aim of the camera could be constrained to one of the planets, which we did in the end, whilst adjusting the offset at some frames to make it look somewhat less dizzy to the viewer.

This was a perfect example to see how the hierarchy could affect the movement and help out in setting the object to be moving around or according to a different one.

A further work could be done on this model, where different AOVs would be exported and using the ID pass we could add different effects to various planets further in Nuke. For example adding radiating light around the sun or subtle explosions on its surface.

26th January 202131st January 2021

Rigging – week 2

Starting off a simple pump setup in Maya, we went through the process of modelling the cog, pump, pushrod, cylinder, etc.

After completing the simple model for this system, we progressed into learning about rigging, constraints and with the use of which constraints (point, parent) we could animate and restrict the movement of various parts of the pumping system. This was the final version of our rigging exercise.

18th January 202121st November 2021

Final assessment

For the final assessment we had to apply all the nodes and instruments we’ve learnt so far in the term. These included rotoscoping, colour grading, tracking, planar tracking and 2D clean-up. Having chosen this shot I took in a museum a while back, I planned out of what I wanted to clean up, what to replace and what to add.

Firstly, I denoised, then stabilized the shot. This stage was required to make sure that the tracking would be done easier and better. Then I cleaned away the picture on the left and a golden decoration on the middle wall.

Having found difficulty to grade the bits and create keys for animation of the grade node, I found that the order was important, i.e. placing the Grade node after FrameHold, before Premult.

Then I focused on replacing the art. Here the main area of problems created was the planar tracking as the pictures corners were moving randomly at few frames.

Node graph for planar tracking and insertion of the assets.

Close up on the node graph for middle painting replacement

After completing the tracking and colour grading the paintings accordingly to the original shot, I found some footage of moving people that I wanted to implement inside my video. This is where I focused on the rotoscoping part of the assessment. Deciding to place the woman in the place where you would be able to see her in full size, I had to think about her shadow and how that would be formed given the lighting in the shot, arriving to the final stage by trial and error. Working on the roto of the main on the right-side was specifically tough for his hair, as there were a lot of baby hairs or space between hair at the top of the head. Overall, I like how he is facing the crowd and it makes it feel as if he is talking to the woman in front of him.

Close up on the node graph for woman roto

18th January 202121st November 2021

Demon mask (final) ~ Assessment

For the assessment we had to make a simple camera pan around the mask that we’ve been working on. This is my final result.

Taken over about a day and half of rendering, this is a 120 frame shot showing around the mask. Using an AI Sky dome, I used the choice that I liked the most which was taken from the website below.

https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?c=urban&h=concrete_tunnel_02

Coming across various technical difficulties, one of which involved updating my version of Maya, I realised only after the final render was completed, that I wasn’t too happy with the physical property of the mask, it being too rubbery and hence not as reflective. The colour of the main mask part seems to be too light, burnt out even.

16th January 202131st January 2021

Research – week 1

This is the research I conducted for the machinery for one of which I will be creating a 3D model in Maya. I looked at the various oil pumps, steam engines and generators.

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steam-engine-060369a9722d4e8a8ddf22d4553d232f

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/twin-steam-engine-146d9e79c8d94a74852f29d05235db33

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steam-engine-41eb85c28c594767bd6a21833a886070

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steam-engine-39d09212f57e482a87302f348102d2d2

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/beam-engine-889a748f9a284598ae56febcffbc4dd0

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/steam-engine-202f0f55120248d99d66144435d4f833

The final two pictures of the steam engines are the ones that I like the most. Although the last one may be having a lot of little details and it is not originally animated, I could use it as a challenge trying to see which parts should be moving using the other references.