Green screen shooting with the 4K PANASONIC DVX200

Filming with the 4K Panasonic DVX200 in the green screen studio at DJCAD.

Malcolm Finnie was absolutely brilliant and so was Kerry Flemming.

I printed off my storyboards, including the timings for each shot. Once the camera was set up, I filmed all shots that included that particular camera angle (therefore the action wasn't shot necessarily in sequence).

I had a copy of my Previs on a pen drive, so could have it playing on a loop on the TV monitor,

This was particularly for lighting changes, where the sun comes out in the time-lapse footage, in case I needed to shield the lights (red heads) with a lighting flag.

In the event, I didn't need to do that, as the lighting effects will be done in post production, but none the less it was good to have it as back up reference. I used one stand alone red head light (as shown in the pics) to give a rim light to Kerry's face.

At one point I asked Malcolm if the tear in shot 19 could be created in post-production. "No." was the answer. So it was up to Kerry to produce a tear.....which she did!!

I'd allocated 2 days for filming, but with a great actress, Malcolm Finnie and lots of preparation we wrapped in 1.5 hours!

Next the shots were downloaded from the camera (bottom right pic) and uploaded into Adobe Prelude. 

Backed up onto two computer server systems at uni, plus my portable hard drive.

All of this will be comped together in Nuke....

Paper copies of the shot lists below were on set, so all of us could refer to them for shot set up, and where the CGI elements would be in comparison to the live action. Plus these lists were crucial to give Kerry a good idea of eye-line and how long to hold a pose for...

Modelling a 3D tree

So on reflection, the idea of having the ice men on top of a snowy hill doesn't work. The hill would also need to melt and I then miss out on the shots of the dripping ice men onto the ground.

So I've decided to place a model tree, into the silver cloud time lapse footage...

And! Have managed to model this tree - sooooo simple, using cylinders, lattice deformers and duplicates of the same branch...all snapped onto the main tree trunk with the 'make object live' command...

Now to UV map it and make sure the resolution is the same for all the branches....

Snowscape textures in Maya

Applying a Blinn material and Stucco 1 texture to create a displacement map. At the default imported scale, the stucco 'noise' is too much.

To scale the map, select the texture node in Hypershader, and find it in your viewport (hard to see, but should be a dark green cube) and then scale the texture node to scale the size of the map. The bigger the pattern the less the disturbance.

Change the stucco attributes in Hypershader, to change the red/blue to black/white

 Applying a snow node in Hypershade. Quick render test, placing the mia physical sun in a similar location to my original footage

Maya rigging complete: hierarchy in Outliner

Rigging completed!
Showing the joint and controller hierarchy in Outliner, foot rolls, finger rotation and all controllers...
Now for the bind...

Maya sculpt tool: sculpting a landscape

Defining shapes, against a referenced image plane....

Using a polygon primitive plane, and component mode, soft selection 'B' button, to create peaks and troughs....

Soft select the plane edges; and scale down on the Y axis, to make sure the edges are flat. (this is good practice, if you need to duplicate the mesh to create additional landscape.

Triangulate mesh. Select Y axis + CTRL to lock onto Y axis, adjust the soft selection brush size [B button] and move (whilst Y axis is locked) to create ridges

Duplicate the mesh and sculpt additional landscape, to suit the camera set up

Creating a landscape in Maya; using a polygon plane and the sculpt tool

I've checked that the footage I shot at Glenshee at the weekend is suitable, both from a script and technical point of view...and it is.

I'm following the tutorial below (Stathis, what a star, sent me the link) and am recreating the snowy hill using a polygon plane and the sculpting tools in Maya....and a still from the footage, imported as an image plane for reference...

                                           

Timelapse footage, OnePlus 3T

I shot some extra timelapse footage at the weekend...to keep things simple, and rather than trying to film snow laden trees, my idea is to use this shot as the background for when my character has a sense of shift and turns to face the light...
I'll recreate the snowy mound in Zbrush and Maya and then light it to match the real thing...
                             

Foot roll attributes in Maya

                      

Setting the attributes for foot roll, toe tap, toe twist, heel twist in Maya

I'm using Sean's great handouts to follow the steps on how to create IK controllers for the legs and feet, plus I've just managed to make the foot roll!

Now I've done some simple tests of the ice men melting, and I've realised that they can't melt too quickly, it may be best to show some melting and then cut away to a close up reaction of the woman; and then cut back to various shots of different parts of the ice figures melting.

I think the rig will come in useful for various poses...

Toe Tap

Toe Twist

Heel Twist

Maya rigging: creating heel locators

Creating heel locators....

Maya Outliner and Rigging

I've begun to try out some deformation tests using the lattice. However, I still want the option of using a rig, particularly on the arms, and to create a good sitting position.

I'm going to use the actual controllers that we created in Sang's class over the past two weeks and, thought this would be a good opportunity to practice rigging.

The image below has taken just over an hour...

Onwards...

Lattice Deformers and Image Planes

"Keep it simple. Cheat like mad"

So today I'm going to create four different ice men. Starting with the same T pose geometry, each one will be deformed using a 'Lattice Deformer' (green grid below), the vertices of which I will select in component mode and keyframe. I'm using the photoshop image that I created for my animatic, as an image plane for reference.

Here goes!

Facial Rigging in Maya

Facial rigging:

Create new eye joint, from existing head joint. Create 'locator' inside of eye ball geometry and 'contstrain point' Maintain Offset 'OFF'.

Parent constraint the eye joint to the eye geometry.

Do not 'parent' in the outliner, as the hierachy will become complicated and messy. In the outliner, keep all geometry together and all joints together.

Create an eye controller (mask shape with circular eye holes) using Nurbs cuves, in component mode and scaled/stretched to created shape.

Modify centre pivot and snap to centre of eyeball: then move in the Z axis away from the geometry. Clear history and freeze transformations, once the controller is in the final place.

Create tongue joints, 1,2,3, and 4. Parent constraint.

Parent constraint to the root

Create head controller using nurbs curves. Start with a polygon primitive pyramid. Turn off wire frame mode and select CV curve tool, 1 point linear. Snap curve to each point on pyramid; it's fine to duplicate lines. Once complete, rename nurbs curve in outliner and then delete pyramid. Centre pivot and snap to head_bn joint.

Delete history and freeze transformations.

Contstrain orient and maintain offset 'ON'

Repeat for jaw controller, root, spine, chest, neck and global controller.

Parent controllers in outliner, choosing the 'child' first, then CTRL and select the parent. Press 'P'

To bind:

In outliner, show only joints (*bn)

Select all joints, then select geometry.

Skin bind.

Skin weights next!

What's the story that links Hoover, Bros and Vikings VFX?!!

Random connection of the week:  

There was a Hoover randomly stood in our hallway the other night. It reminded me of a story that Deborah Melsom told to me, when we were both in the art department on Pie in the Sky III.
Deborah lived in a block of flats, and 'Bros' (80's trio - as pictured above...lol) also lived there too. Deborah said she had to fight her way through screaming fans to get to her car each morning. She told me of the morning that she was taking her Hoover to the repair shop, and during the chaos of getting through screaming teenage girls, promptly forgot to put the Hoover in her car, and left it stood on the pavement. When she called the security guard on the gate, to check if her Hoover was there, and he confirmed that, yes it was, indeed, still there,  she asked him if he'd mistaken it for a Bros fan...hahaha.
So remembering her story, I looked her up on IMDb; and in this process found Julian Parry; who was the Art Director on Pie in the Sky III. He's now in VFX and was responsible for theVfx content Vikings – including vfx bid breakdowns, ‘on-set’ supervision – Vfx direction & addition 2nd unit director.
I got in touch and we are now connected again!
And all because of a Hoover.

(love how the Hoover image, is a silver and red 'V' shape, as per the Vikings image too)

Masters Project THAW: Camera shots and timings

I've put together a visual shot list, in preparation for the live action shoot in the green screen studio at DJCAD on Feb 23rd...
These timings are likely to change, however, with this list, I'll have a good idea of how long to shoot each particular shot.
This has also flagged up that I'm going to need an extra plate after shot 9, which will involve bright sunlight and snowy trees.
I think some timelapse photography up at Glenshee would be a good idea fairly soon!

Rigging in Maya; 'connection editor', 'expression editor' and 'Set Driven Key'

Using the connection editor in Maya to connect finger controllers (blue flags) to the joints.

Click on the relevant controller, in this case the Left Pinky Contoller and load it into the left column of the connection editor.

Select the joint you wish to move (showing as 'green' selection) in the model, and within a blue highlight line in the connection editor.

Select which rotation axis you wish it to connect to, on the right hand panel (in this case the Rotation X).

 Using the 'Set Driven Key' commands in Maya, to select drivers (in this case the foot control) and the driven (foot locators to make the feet bank)

 Creating simple 'expressions' (simple mathematic MEL script) for the forearm joint. An additional forearm joint was inserted into the arm.
Without this additional joint, if the wrist is rotated 90 degrees, then the geometry and associated textures can become very deformed...particularly textures such as clothing or tatoos.
By creating an expression, the forearm can also rotation, say by 45 degrees, keeping the geometry and textures between the elbow and wrist in tact.
Image below shows the Expression Editor floating panel with the objects (left panel) and rotation axis (right panel) and the 'new' expression (script) highlighted in blue.

 Flag shaped finger controllers, drawn with nurbs curves (snapped to the grid in the front view panel) and then respositioned. The centre pivot of each flag was moved to the bottom of the flag 'pole' and then snapped to the finger knuckle joint.

 Testing the controllers and the rotation of the finger joints

Showing the contollers mirrored.
Blue for left and red for right.