Tim Schweizer's Development Blog
Just another myblog.arts site

Category: Advanced & Experimental

Categories
Nuke

Week 19: Nuke Development

As previously mentioned in my Maya development post due to delays in the project we were meant to be assigned this week this class would instead be used to catch up on projects and have access to Gonzalo for questions for the full four hours of the class. It would be an understatement to say how much of a relief this session was for the class and I. Nuke is a very complicated software that I struggle to find tutorials about online so having this time to address our questions to Gonzalo and get them answered was a fantastic opportunity.

With the additional time I also made the choice to restart my garage project from scratch as with the knowledge and techniques I had now I knew I could do it better and that it would be much easier to just restart it from scratch than to go through it and fix the issues present.

Sectioned off Nuke Scrip. Each now column being a new workflow.

To approach it differently this time I decided to break everything down into tasks and iterate forward from each task. I made a clean plate and exported it, I then roto’d the clean plate which allowed me to avoid the issues I had last time with the clean plate being separate from the roto and I had. With that all done I was able then to take over some of my work from my previous file and render out this new version.

I also worked on the assigned creative piece to add more to this scene of a Devil Man.

After tracking his horns and adding fire to its tips, which I may try to use a displacement map or something like it to make the flames flicker more, I wanted to try using STMaps. While I had experimented on using it with last week’s marker clean up it didn’t really work. This time however it seemed to function a lot better seamlessly ‘tracking’ a crack and soot texture I applied to the Devil Man’s face, alongside having rotobrushed out his eye and making it ‘glow’ using the dodge tool.

This time using the smartvector and STMap was incredibly easy and had no issues at all. I think its due to the fact that lighting in the scene doesn’t change very much at all.

Categories
Maya

Week 19: Maya Development

While originally this week was meant to begin a new project for us it would have to be delayed due to issues coming up in the project that our instructors and course leader would need to address first before being able to go ahead with it. As a result this day was instead to be used for people to catch up on any project and get help from the instructor. Essentially a free time. I spend this class time working on Nuke and Collaborative project work that will be reflected in my blog updates on there.

Categories
Nuke

Week 18: Nuke Development

In class we went over, frankly, a lot of information in regards to Motion Vector and utilizing different nodes in Nuke to perform more complicated cleaning and roto work and automating it. Alongside that we were learning a lot about using Motion Vector to create STMaps and use that to feed in information to create more complex and automatic rotos to create and attach VFX. That being said while I understood using tracking elements for roto clean up when it came to the more complicated nodes and using STMaps I am frankly a bit lost. I will need to review the lecture in order to get a better understanding as it is a lot of information about complicated subject matter on Nuke.

A technical homework piece was to clean up the trackers on an actor’s face. Which is here down below

Clean up

While I originally thought it would be quite easy there turned out to be some surprising difficulty as with the motion sometimes areas that I had cloned would end up patching the background in on the face of the actor. As I was so used to using rotopaint as a still I didn’t think that I needed to be wary of what part of the face I take from as she tilts her head around meaning what used to be skin becomes background foliage.

Categories
Maya

Week 18: Maya Development

This week was reserved in class for final touches and access to the render farm to render out our final pieces. As I, and the people I showed my project to, were satisfied with my work all I did in relation to this course was loop my animation in Premiere Pro and upload it to make the transition smoother.

However I did not waste my time in class as I instead opted to work on my Cat model in class while I had access to help from my instructor.

Categories
Nuke

Week 17: Nuke Development

Green Screen work
Alpha

Using techniques I learned in class with multiple keyers, alongside make a hard matte, soft matte and transferring the alphas from these to a despilled version of the green screen. Though I still need to review how to make proper soft mattes as it is clear that I lost some info in the hair of the woman. The lighting as well doesn’t match up as the strong orange light in her hair doesn’t mach with the scene.

For our ongoing project I decided to try implementing a 3D object that I had previously made in the course into the scene to try my hand in 3D object implementation. One of the biggest struggles with it was adding a shadow to the scene as I had originally tried a few different ways that resulted in issues with the merging. Namely it would ‘double’ up the floor making a square piece of it, that was a card that the shadow was projected onto , to be significantly darker than the rest of the scene.

Though after examining another script that was sent to us by our instructor I was quickly able to fix that issue. I also brought in a 3Dtracker from a previous version of the file to use that to generate the cards I would project the surfaces onto which did fix some of my issues when it came to objects moving around in the scene when they should be totally still.


Again issues exist with my current roto but I still lack the time to dedicate to fixing it.

Categories
Maya

Week 17: Maya Development

I spent this week polishing and finalizing the ‘Satisfying’ animation. Having shown it to a lot of different people they were adamant that the machine was a donut machine and many suggested I turn the non-specific ring into a donut as many would find that addition more satisfying.

Image from: https://sugargeekshow.com/recipe/classic-baked-donut-recipe-with-colorful-glaze/

Taking that very common piece of feedback into account I modeled a donut based on the original torus and it was here I found an opportunity to use MASH. As mash has a ‘placer’ node that takes an object that has been converted to a MASH set up and allows it to be placed on any surface. Using that function I created a small cylinder that would be used as a sprinkle and using the placer node added it to the surface of the donut.

Donut model

I also made use of the modelling tools in Maya to add slight imperfections to the donut and it’s icing to make it slightly more realistic. Afterwards I parented it to the two original rings so I wouldn’t need to re-animate anything.

The hardest thing for this week was setting up the mash placer node to function correctly as several times I tried the sprinkles would be placed sticking upright into the surface of the donut which would look bizarre. I also did try importing the exr into after effects to add some smoke and light in post to give the idea of ‘something’ happening to the donut after its gone down the tube however I could never get it to look good. Either the smoke disappearing looked unnatural or the glowing from the hole seemed bizarre. I decided to instead abandon the idea and focus on fine tuning what I already had.

Please loop it

Categories
Careers Research

VFX Careers: Look Development Artist

From ScreenSkills.Com

The Look Development Artist, shortened to Look Devs, has an interesting role that comprises knowledge from the fields of lighting, texture and creature design. Unsurprisingly this role also works alongside these artists. After a concept artist creates a design for a creature it is a Look Dev’s role to take that work and think about how it would exist in 3D space. What are the texture of its skin? What does it look like when light bounces off it? Do different parts of the body reflect light differently? Like in the case of fur vs claw as those are composed of different materials they would then reflect differently. How about weather conditions? What does it look like when its wet, when its windy. All these considerations are the Look Dev’s field. I have retrieved this information from the initial introduction from ScreenSkills.

As the role is not an entry level position the skills and knowledge needed are much higher. They will work with a wide array of programs and require substantial knowledge on all of them. Just from ScreenSkills these programs include Arnold, Blender, Maya, Metal Ray, Photoshop, RenderMan, Substance Painter, V-Ray and Zbrush. Of course these are all listing external generic tools that are available in the market. Companies may have their own internal tools that these artists would need knowledge of. One such example is from Walt Disney Animation Studios, according to their website, Tonic. An in-house developed tool specialized in the generation of hair.

from https://disneyanimation.com/process/look-development/?

Though one responsibility that is highlighted on conceptartempire.com is that a Look Dev will work to maintain that the product, weather a game or movie, maintains a consistent appearance. As such they need an intimate understanding of the visual language that the product is utilizing as to keep all items as consistent with one another as possible and allow the vision of the clients to come forth.

They are also responsible for developing a material authoring pipeline, IE choosing what software needs to be used for what as various programs will have their strengths and weaknesses and it’s the Look Devs vast industry experience that will help in establishing this pipeline.

This is a kind of role I may find myself in the future depending on what I ultimately decide to pursue in my VFX career. It represents a culmination of years of work, study and experimentation requiring vast amounts of knowledge of not only a variety of programs but spheres of knowledge.

Categories
Nuke

Week 16: Nuke Development

This week we focused on green screen techniques. The multiple nodes that Nuke provides for removing green screen and how they differ. With that in mind we also went over several green screen techniques to fix common issues like spill. Alongside that we learned how to average out a green screen to make it easier for the nodes to remove it cleanly. That being said I will have to go back and review these lecture notes as it was a lot of information and some techniques weren’t properly digested. I would say this is my largest and most consistent issue when it comes to learning Nuke. Given our short time in class there’s very little time to ask questions about specific issues we face in Nuke. These issues are of course personal and from a variety of potential problems that need time to be tackled and may not help most other people in class.

We had homework to test out our green screening techniques. Pictured below is my final alpha for the green screen which to me is pretty clean. There do appear to be some issues with it though it doesn’t appear to be reflected in the final comp so perhaps they aren’t an issue? One thing I was wary of is that the green box on the machine behind the mad scientist was having its green removed. To fix that I just roto’d the box and tracked it very simply and after the scene was green screened just placed it on top so as to maintain the color of the box. One big issue with this is that the de-spill hasn’t worked as intended and you can still see some green on it especially when his arm swings and you can see green around the balls.

Scene alpha

In my garage this week I was aiming to add texture to the wall of the scene to make it more grimy and rundown.

Grime 1
Grime 2

While for the most part its successful I have a continued issue where my roto shifts and moves around so it looks strange and as a result elements in the scene like my poster and spray paint don’t remain fixed in place. While I try to fix it through importing the tracking marks from previous files and making my own again it results in even worse tracking than when I simply placed the elements myself into the scene. I also lack the time to redo the rotoscope with proper techniques and to experiment to fully grasp nuke’s 3D scene roto.

Categories
Maya

Week 16: Maya Development

While last week was focused on the development of the basics of the animation this week I spent focusing on another important element of satisfying scene composition and that was color and texture. My original vision had me wanting to strive for very bright, neon-like colors as I felt that the outlandish color scheme would provide a more abstract air to the piece. Unfortunately despite my best efforts the piece never looked how I wished and would more often prompt people to avert their eyes than engage.

Original colors

Though the exact color choices were poor they were at least grounded in theory as I used ColorHexa.com to find complimentary colors. At the suggestion of others I went for more muted colors and came to this.

Adapted

As you can see I did still stick with the original color ideas of pink and green though shifted them to be more muted and I think it was a significant improvement.

Another big thing to tackle with the piece was lighting. One thing I noted while watching the videos is that the lighting for the other pieces was that they were flat in their lighting. Few shadows and what shadows are cast are pale and indefinite. With that in mind I created this lighting set up to imitate it.

Light Set up

3 spotlights light up the main scene with a wide dispersal cone to get everything as evenly lit as possible. Then I used soft area lights over the scene and the background to balance out shadows and create that uniform lighting over the entire scene which can be seen in the shots above.

Categories
Careers Research

VFX Careers: Texture Artist

As I have delved further and further into the world of modelling one skill that I have continuously wanted to improve upon was texturing. To be able to not only create a model but bring it to life with colors, textures and imperfections that make models feel real. As such I have taken up interest in the Texture Artist entry level position.

Before delving into the specific role of the texture artist it should be first addressed that, as supported by ScreenSkills and my own friends in the VFX industry, that in smaller companies there is often no distinction between a Texture Artist and Modelling Artist. Due to their smaller sizes people often must work multiple roles and as such these roles are often combined into one. However for the sake of this article I will research it as much as a distinct job.

A Texture Artist’s primary role is to, either through creating it themselves or through stock assets, texture models provided to them by the Modelling Artist. This is assuming that these roles are distinct. The Texture Artist’s goal is making whatever object they are texturing is to be as realistic as possible in some cases, according to ScreenSkills, and in others to be stylized to function within the piece they are working on.

Primarily texture artists will work in Graphics Software such as Photoshop and Dreamweaver for creating textures from scratch. Often, they will have piles of stock images of objects with the textures they want to use as reference for any textures they create. They also make use of 3D modelling software such as Zbrush, Blender and Maya. They will use these software to edit the models provided to them to texture them, either via bump mapping, textures or directly onto the model like adding individuals scales on an alligator physically into the model.

Example of a textured model, scales are built into the model. From:https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/nile-crocodile-swimming-8bdc3a1551fb4d9d9a58e56b9385bd22

Texture Artists need to be skilled in the fundamentals of art and photography to understand color, texture and lighting and how all these elements are affected by the lighting of a scene and the camera employed by the film.

Sally Wilson, the lead Texture Artist on STAR WARS: The Last Jedi, supports this as in the following video:

she peaks about how to properly texture any asset they are assigned. They must have a good understanding of the materials themselves, as a something metal will function with light far differently than flesh. The material itself will also have different kinds of imperfections than others, again referring to flesh this may be things like dimples where as metal will have scratches. All of these things will change how light interacts with the subject.

I want to learn how to texture and in pursuit of what, very likely, would end up as a generalist position it would important for me to learn and understand the skill sets required to texture properly. This research has helped me understand where I can begin to develop my skills as a Texture Artist and pursue it in my own work here at the university.