VFX penguin project Report

So I know it's been a few weeks since the deadline but here is a report of how the Visual Effects Module went...

First, here is the final footage Sarah Rettie and myself submitted for the deadline - We basically pulled all of this together in 2 days, there are obvious mistakes in it (eg, the floating penguin when he bounces along the pavement) but for a first attempt ever at VFX - we were pretty happy with what we achieved:

Sarah worked on modelling, uv-mapping and texturing the 3D penguin before adding a very simple rig for animating:

We then went back to the original filming site to take some photos for Image-Based-Lighting (IBL). Which didn't start off too well, we had waited a while until the weather and lighting was similar to the original filmed footage, and when we got there a postman had left his bright red trolley thing padlocked to a lamp post right next to the site - which cast all this red light onto our scene! And to further add to this complication, men in fluorescent yellow vests were working on the bus stop electric board right next to us! Which would mean they would be clearly visible in the IBL photos we were taking! So after leaving it for about 2 hours we headed back and all was clear so we were good to go:

We balanced the chrome ball on the wall in the spot where we wanted our 3D penguin to be. As the weather conditions were slightly windy, some of our photos came out a bit blurry, due to the chrome ball moving slightly in the wind. The next stage was to combine the photos together to get a 360 photo and then erase the camera and us from it. This was achieved by using Photoshop followed by Nuke:

Taking the 3D penguin into our scene for the first time after matchmoving the footage, penguin looking rather dark here:

Build part of the wall and added an ambient occulsion layer for the shadows cast by the 3D penguin onto the wall:

Here is a breakdown of the shots - each shot took around 2 hours to render out. To put the rendered layers together we composited in Nuke:

I feel I learnt a lot about the stages of vfx in a very short time. It was also a good exercise and practise on rendering out a scene and compositing it all together.

Updates on projects!

It's been a bit quiet on my own blog recentlty but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy! I found that i was posting the exact same things on this blog as i was on the 'Jurassic Jess' blog and repeating myself. So all the project work I am doing for Jurassic Jess can be found here: http://jurassic-jess.blogspot.com/

So do check it out! I have just finished texturing all the props that i modelled and will be rigging or doing blendshapes for our Jess character. We aim to start animating next week, which i'm really looking forward to! And have waited a while for! We have fallen behind schedule but we still have enough time to get everything finished, and it WILL be finished!

We were given out the brief for the Visual Effects Module on Thursday 27th October. And the brief is to composite a 3D object into live action footage. It must be between 15 to 30 seconds long and there must be a minimum of 2 shots with 15 seconds of visual effects. We are working in pairs, so I have teamed up with Sarah Rettie. We got some ideas down on paper straight after the briefing and both came up with lots of different ideas. I then thought of the penguin statues on the wall just outside the Overgate centre and thought it would be really fun if one of the penguins came alive!



Here are some rough sketches of the "Penguin" idea:

So we wasted no time and went straight over to the overgate with Sarah's camcorder to do some test filming of the location and penguin statues in the afternoon:

1. Walking towards penguins

2. Walking around penguins

3. Shot of back of penguins, nearest penguin comes alive, stretches wings

4. Sarah's boots representing penguin as it waddles off, and camera follows

Here's the rough storyboard that I sketched out last Thursday (3rd November) to help explain our idea to our tutor, who liked the idea very much and gave us some good advice for when it comes to filming the final footage that'll we'll be using: