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

19th May 202121st November 2021

Power further tests – weeks 4/5

Continuing on from the previous weeks, I proceed further with testing out the first power, now against a dark background and slower, more controlled movement of the hand. I also added a slight glow on the hand, using roto as a mask for colour correction. Additionally, I played around with the colour of the power, the god rays and the overall grade of the shot.

Furthermore, I tested out the first power being placed between two hands, and whilst with one hand a simple 2D tracker was suitable, this time I did have to use a 3D tracker and to try and find the best position for cards in the 3D space. The final result still appears to be attached more to the base of hand situated furthest away, so maybe by manual adjustments of the card it would be possible to make a more realist effect. I am also considering to adjust the camera in Houdini, such that the render of the power will also have the effect of changing perspective.

Then I started working on the wind based power, but I am not happy with the overall shape of how the particles are flowing around. Since it is now more abound wind, I am considering whether to leave the attribute of temperature out and just have it appear as smoke, rather than having a hot emitter in the centre. In that case, the God Rays node isn’t suitable anymore.

This is the original shape that I wanted to go for, having this sort of vortex/tornado pathway of wind, but it appeared too intense and unnatural. So playing around and creating a different source for the smoke (see below), I decided to use the information for velocity from the vortex and feed it into the source as a force for the smoke to be affected by.

DOP network for the wind power simulation

This is how the Dynamic Operator network looked with the simple force of the velocity and smoke emitter being merge and solved using a pyrosolver. Having played around with it, I considered creating a second smoke object, where instead of being directed up and by the vertex, it would fall down and wrap around the hand. But that may be way harder to do, as it would required hand modelling and animation inside Houdini. Instead, I will try and achieve a different look, as vortices going up, i.e. just as I wanted originally.

13th May 202121st November 2021

Completing the big destruction – week 7

From the last lesson, we proceeded to create the destruction to the other parts of the building, such as walls, bricks, supporting bits, and glass. For a faster way, the use of ‘For’ loops was implemented in the workflow, thus applying similar procedural destruction and noise to a lot of smaller pieces.

Bigger concrete destruction with meteor area selected (Active_zone)

‘For’ loop for the concrete destruction pattern

To make the process more optimized, as the meteor would only interact with specific parts of the building, we used the shape of a circle following a path of the meteor through the building (over about 6 frames) to select the surface that would have the interactions and apply more detailed patterns of destruction only to that area. Then all the various bits would get combined back into the building and proxy geometry would get created for the bullet solver to be able to handle the operations.

All destruction file cache merged and proxy geometry created

After finalizing where the lines of breaking points would be, we then added the constraints to guide how it will break and how strong the force of the glue holding it together will be with the use of “RBD Constraints from Rules” followed by “RBD Constraints Properties”. Then the building was divided into active and non-active sections and combined together with the bullet solver, which read the information for collision geometry of the Meteor Proxy that we made earlier. Hence we finally got a look at how the building will get destroyed once in contact with the meteor.

RBD and Bullet solver for active geometry

As there were two main contact points of destruction, to add realism we separated them out and made explosions at each point of entrance/exit. First, the volume geo was made by using the meteor proxy taken from a single frame, visualized with the “Trail Path” node, and changed into the volume. For every explosion, the trail path was adjusted to see visually how we wanted the particles to move.

Once the trail paths looked good, they were combined with the Collision geometry, and with the use of “Pyro Solver”, we achieved the final look of the explosion for each point of interaction.

Pyro solving with the use of Volume and Collision Geo coming from Meteor proxy and Active group for destruction.

First explosion: pyro solver settings

Second explosion: pyro solver settings

The final addition was the smoke/dust coming from the separated parts of the building, resembling the dust from smaller particles of concrete broken apart. I managed to follow the tutorial and write out the first 15 frames for the required simulation, but my computer would crash after the frame 38 and not write out any caches, so my final video is of the destruction and smoke by themselves.

Smoke overall look

Overall, these two weeks of lessons were quite intense requiring a lot of computer power and memory, which was an obstacle in my case. I really enjoyed breaking down the process and messing around with details of instruments to get my own view of the destruction. However, looking back at the result it feels like the pieces at the second collision (a lower bit of the building) have too much force applied and are flying out too far out, which wouldn’t be the case in real-world as the meteor would have slightly less force at the 2nd point of exit.

12th May 202112th May 2021

Shooting and vfx plan – week 4

Now that we had all the basic requirements for the filming process, scouted locations, had a storyboard and shot list, we got down to capturing the footage and breaking down each shot into what we wanted to do. To share the files we used OneDrive, so that everyone has access to uncompressed footage.

There are 3 main jobs in our plan: compositing (clean-up, rotoscoping, adding 2D elements like graffiti), portal modelling with the use of particle simulation (in Houdini or Maya) and CG world modelling in Maya for the final location.

Red – clean-up (+roto of the man), blue – portal addition

Red – clean-up (+roto of people), blue – addition of graffiti

Simple addition of portal and maybe particle simulation effects of dust/smoke on the floor

Addition of portal, roto of man, roto of hat which flies of his head

CG world creation, roto of woman, roto of the arches, portal (as in location 4) creation

We then created the VFX schedule and assigned various shots to each member of the team, based on their personal preferences and strengths. Personally, I will be focusing on creating the portal for the graffiti tunnel, with the dust and smoke coming from the floor, as well as tracking shot 9, to export that information and to prove it to Alex for the CG world creation. I will also focus on cleaning up the harder bit (lamp) in shot 6 as well as rotoscoping myself in shot 9.

After compiling the whole footage, I made a quick edit of the project so we all would have the correct cuts and some visual guide to see what we want to have in the end.

5th May 20215th May 2021

Location scouting, script, storyboard, etc. – week 3

During this week we focused on developing the concept in a structured storyline with the script, which was then broken down into a shot list and the storyboard was created. We also scouted for locations, creating a bigger list which we then filtered down to 5 main places to be used.

Madeleine was in charge of the script, which she wrote very quickly and professionally. Going over the first version and choosing our locations, we noted down which bits would need to get changed, but overall, the script remained pretty much very similar.

After the script was updated we noted down a shot list, where we decided to have roughly 9 shots in total. We also thought about the production elements such as props, costumes, potential VFX for each shot, and the sounds that we would need to get. Evanna and Alex then created a storyboard for all the locations, thus providing us with some visual clues as to how we will set up the camera and create the composition.

Storyboard by Evanna for locations 1,3,4 and 5

During the week, Gherardo and I went to the locations to get rough shots of the places, and to note down any backup or extra location that we might need to shoot. Here the locations we will be shooting at:

Location 5 – Lincoln’s Inn Chapel near Chancery Lane

We then decided on which days that will be our shooting schedule keeping in mind of the weather forecast and which would suit which environment. The shooting is divided into two parts: one on the rainy day for all the places which are covered and the second on a sunnier/cloudy day where the spaces are open. I also made a rough VFX schedule plan to outline the further work that we will need to do until the deadline, which we will update once we obtain all the footage.

4th May 20214th May 2021

More research and first power check – week 3

Following on from the last week, I continued researching how I want the second power and character to look like as well as general idea for the background, which I would either create or use an asset from online resource.

For the second character, I started off with Captain Marvel. However, I really liked the idea of a forest sorceress, having some power based around elements, specifically wind or fire-shaped power.

For the background at first I went into game concept art for background with fantasy or sci-fi lands, but I also envied the idea of simple black background with some neon lighting.

I also proceeded working further on the first power, trying to achieve the shape that I would have like the best and I got down to the following:

I am not too happy with the colors just yet and how well it is seen against the skin or lighter colors, so there is still some work that is needed to be done. But overall, I am way happier about the shape and particle formation, and path.