Updates
Finally, I worked on the addition of few animations made in After Effects, a soundtrack, and sound effects to get more of a feel being submerged into a real video game character choice menu. It was hard to choose, but I decided to go with simpler but more cartoony effects, instead of realistic-looking ones. Personally, After Effects is not the software I am too confident with, so in a few days’ time, it seemed like a logical and reasonable choice to go with such animations. I used the following tutorials: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8mHmW6GgHM) for the smoke bit, and (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-dfXzn90sc) for electricity bit.
Final Outcome
Shots breakdown
Self Reflection
In the beginning it was tough to narrow down the options and figuring out what was it exactly that I wanted to do. Yet it was a great starting point, when I knew that I wanted to go down the path to do with effect creation in Houdini and compositing the shot in Nuke. After some research and dropping down a couple of ideas, I settled with the one of creating a sequence of two characters fighting each other. However, after weighing out the work I had to complete for my collaboration project, as well as the Indie Horror film, I changed the concept to be based around choosing a character, where each would demonstrate in some way their power.
One of the great ideas was to shoot my own footage and test out the particle renders to check the tracking, how it would look against backgrounds with various colours, whether the particle simulation would required hand animation inside Houdini or not. Finalizing the look of the first power didn’t take long, surprisingly, although now that I look at it, it feels like it misses more manipulation and integration with the hand. After having the first power done, I moved onto the second, which turned out to be the harder target for me. Having been inspired by footage from Malificent (2014), I wanted the energy to create vortex shapes that would follow the path of the fingers, as the actress would change their position and play around with the power. Yet again, I had to step back and restrict myself to a power that would be more possible to achieve in the constantly reducing amount of time. So instead I focused on combining both the wind render, which gave it a more chaotic look alongside with directed particles swirling in the upward direction.
The next step after research and tests was to note down the shot list, prepare a rough edit for reference to me as a videographer, and for the actresses to take inspiration from and set the filming date. Being pushed back a couple of times, it was a nice coincidence that the shooting days were planned after we had an introduction to the green screen room and taught by Aldo of all the necessary points we have to think of in advance. Those included making sure that the background was well and evenly lit, how to use the lightmeter, adjusting the lights as it was in the background sequence. Since mine was an imaginary place, I had more freedom of how to light my characters, so that took away hard bits. However, with some of the props I didn’t realise that they had green or turquoise undertones to them, so when removing the green screen that affected the colour of the objects and one of the shots was impossible to use.
As soon as I had the shots, I immediately narrowed it down by editing first to see which would suit the best for the final product and to reduce the number of shots that required green screen removal. From 16 original shots, there were now 8 to compose and adjust, for which I tried creating the one-for-all Nuke script in order to remove the green screen. It managed to cut down the amount of time spent on working in Nuke, whilst requiring only small adjustments, like rough roto from which the shot was premultiplied to put against the new background or roto for the hair, to get a more detailed alpha channel. A mistake that I’ve made during filming, was directing not enough light on the characters, meaning that the textures of the dark clothes weren’t captured, and later when I applied the LightWrap effect, it appeared quite flat in the shot. I’ve also experimented with adjusting the power look inside Houdini and how it would affect the hand holding it.
Finally, compiling all the edited shots together it was now easier to see mistakes and get feedback from the tutors. Nick suggested adding reflection to the floor, to base the characters better in the environment as well as implementation of some effects to when the characters have weapons, but no particle simulation. This was very helpful advice, so during the last week and a half I focused on creating the according adjustments and inserting sound effects for the edit.
Overall, I enjoyed this process a lot! It was hard, intense, yet interesting to further learn Houdini and discover new ways of creating magic effects within the software. Some decisions required cutting down original grand ideas and analysing what would be more possible to do in given amount of time, yet would still push me. Had I said no to the Indie Horror project and have been strict when dividing the work more evenly for the collaboration project, I would have had enough time to experiment more and maybe achieve a better looking results from Houdini. This term helped me a lot to learn about my strengths and weaknesses and pushed me to ask for help and feedback more, which is something I am not very used to.
