The Rest of The Film Continues...

I have been working on the living room scene to the film, and testing out ideas.

Here is how improving the shots and grading it is going so far:

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

The Final Outcome: "Conjure: Visual Effects Excerpt"

Yeah, it is, it is about time I posted this up. So, this is what this entire blog has built towards (let's hope that it's not an anti-climax):

CONJURE: Visual Effects Excerpt from Fraser Murdoch on Vimeo.

Thanks for reading and watching.

Now, it's all about completing that final, full version of the picture.

Images For Show

Poster Concept #01

Final Stills

Some Nuke Scripts/Node Trees

Here are a selection of screen grabs of Node Trees from Nuke:

These examples show the compositing processes undertaken on these particular shots.

Grading Before The Grading

So, the process is nearing the end and assessments are only a yard ahead of us.

I have rendered the final shots out from Nuke, tweaking little parts still, and graded the full piece of 29 shots, flicking in between to make sure they synchronise.

Here is a breakdown of one shot:

This shows the grading process. First of of all cooling the image down by shifting the hue (HueShift, of all names) and screening this in. This washes the image as well a bit, so contrast is risen and gain is decreased. Then more measures using ColorCorrect and ColorLookup are taken in order to cool the image off to a blue - subtracting the red, and adding the blue.

A glow is also applied in some shots. This helps for the dreaminess of the scene, but also to soften some of the clipping in some of the alleyway shots. It also generally makes the image look a lot more attractive.

This can either be achieved with a Glow node, or by doing it manually. I have opted for the latter for more control to add more effects to the glow. One would isolate the areas to glow (highlights) by grading the black and white points. Because of the warm image, it needs desaturated using the ColorCorrect saturation slider. Then a simple blur across it (subtly), and merging this with a 'screen' function. A may also use the highlights from the grade to add a Glint effect which stretches the highlights - most often for keyed shots as this integrates the character much like a LightWrap but with a different shape (it is good to mix it with a light wrap at very low mixture levels in my opinion.)

Occasionally I would rotoscope areas which I desire to stay warm and merge this on top (mixed to a low level). This theoretically creates more depth or less, or least a little bit of variation in terms of colour.

Silhouetting

Examples of silhouetting in photography

For one particular shot there is a very bright background. I have toyed with balancing this shot to make it believably shot from a camera.

This is the initial comp

Due to the bright source of light behind the character, it would be likely when the camera's ISO was set up that everything else would become dark.

This is the current balanced comp

This is why I have darkened the character Tyler and toyed with contrast and gamma to make areas darker.

This is an example of it not done quite as well

However, it is very easy to over-do it and lose the attention to the character which is very important from a storytelling point of view, obviously...

Other notes on comp:

Light seen through skin

- I have use the light wrap effect and graded it to an orange and roto'd it around the areas of skin which is directly in front of the light source. This enhances the effect of light travelling through the skin. I found this an important detail to synchronise the chroma keyed foreground and CG background.

Autodesk Smoke

- I plan to add some lens flare to this shot. I have looked into Autodesk Smoke's ability to composite and edit lens flares in 3D/2.5D but I do not have enough computing power to make this viable at this moment, so I will opt for images sourced from the internet.

Lens flare (this can be set to 'Screen' in comp)

Motion Vector | Motion Blur

I have utilised mental ray's pass mv2DToxik to create a motion blur in the shots.

The motion is mostly through camera movement.

The other option for this was to use After Effects CC Force Motion Blur effect as demonstrated by my classmate. However, I want to keep this all within Nuke, so it was important to get the pass to work.

The vector frame

It is a 32-bit (float) vector sequence which you use in Nuke to determine how much the image should blur in each frame by using the colours it provides. Shuffling out the image and setting it to 'forward' and then copying this into the comp in order to provide for the vectorBlur node allows this to work. In this node I set the method to 'forward' to sync this up and the shuffled UV channels to 'motion'.

The vector blur applied

Pulling Keys

I have used IB Keyer for this. It provides a lot more for the hair. I used the luminance match from the background as well as the chroma.......

The shirt area is roto'd and has and EdgeBlur which is brightened to give a soft and light outline....

Overall, pretty happy with this key.

The image will be properly colour corrected using other shots in the film as reference.

I am rendering most of the shots through the farm at the moment, and compositing some other final shots.

Another Ladder

This is another test comp for the Factory scene:

POV of Tyler looking for the exit..

The plan is to get as many of the test comps underway as soon as possible, and capture the feeling for the scene, then to do final renders with some more passes (eg. motion vector). Then the composites should be tweaked and finalised.

As I add more atmosphere to the alleyway shots in order to keep with the feeling of the scene, it is then important to make sure these are as consistent as possible in look. Afterwards, likely requiring dirtying up these CG shots to make them appear as being shot..

Comp-fu:

After getting the bulk of the compositing done, I found that the ladder just didn't stand out enough. This was primarily because of the colour correction washing it out to a blue tone like the rest of the image. In order to fix this I used the depth pass and graded it in order for it to give me a solid white isolation of the ladder. However, the foreground was also white, so I roto'd this area out. Once this re-painting was complete, I used a Keyer node the make the luminance into an alpha and used the Copy (alpha) node to isolate the ladder area of the composite to that point in to re-grade to a redder tone (even with a yellow glare and glow on the highlights - again by using the grade node which is very opaque) and Merge on top again. This brought the ladder to a better colour in the comp, and therefore stand out some more.

Vertigo

Here is a shot clearly inspired by the famous push-pull shot from Alfred Hitchcock's 'Vertigo':

Tyler is nervous and alone, and looks down the ladder of the factory as the only exit. We then see him walking down this ladder into an alleyway...

Keying and CG Character Comp Test

Keying

I have begun keying the character in some shots.

I began with Keylight and isolated separate areas, such as hair and body, and then merged them back together.

It was getting a little messy, and so I began again with IBK. Despite not having shot the blank green screen I was able to create a very smooth and consistent background using the IBK Colour node.

After tinkering with this process, I found it much more comfortable to work with. I tweaked the darks and lights for some time. Then using background luminance and chroma it gives the colours of the rendered background (or Constant in the meantime).

I also had to switch on 'autolevels' to pinch the whites in more and the 'luminance match' which needed the 'screen range' pulled down.

There were artefacts in the key, so it appeared that the red weight was too low, so this was pulled up to a value higher than 1.

For a better outline, I have premultiplied the key, then unpremultiplied it to get rid of the black outline, eroded the line, then blurred the edge (with a brightening effect.)

Lighting

When I rendered out the roughly keyed footage, I took it into Maya to match up the lighting. It was all very dark, so I created an area light with a warm colour to match the footage as much as possible.

Here is a test render:

After the test composite, this is what I have:

I have used light wrap, a glow and a glint (rotated 90 degrees) which really helps to tie the character into the scene using the lighting here. Of course along with a series of colour corrections and composited elements.

I have chosen to move the camera slightly to the right as the character leans forward.

More Tests

More in synch colour correction

Error at wall fixed by rubble geo (texture and lighting did not do enough)

Very rough comp, but risen 'values' for glowing effect

More feeling of fog and depth needed

Tested motion blur:

Using motion vector pass

Long Shot Test #2

Only master beauty, ambient occlusion and basic zDepth passes were rendered for this.

Power of the comp.