Category: Advanced & Experimental

This week we focused on CGI compositing, specifically the titular machine this project has been named after. The machine was already set up in its EXR to match the movements of the scene it was placed in perfectly so matching it was not our concern. Instead our concern was compositing via grading, color matching and lighting. The lesson went over using the multiple passes, tips and techniques on color grading and a focus on understanding that where you take your grades from is important. A single shot has multiple lighting conditions.

As an example in our project the front room is brighter than the back. So if you graded the machine based on the front room then the machine would look out of place as it doesn’t match the lighting conditions of its actual setting in the scene.

To encorporate my work into the scene provided with us I exported my own clean plate and in addition to my clean plate I exported my rotowork as its own layer. By layering these I was able to make it that the machine appeared behind the wall.

That being said it taught me something quite valuable that I was missing. Breaking up my work into small chunks. I had issues previously in my roto because of the fact that as I struggled to do it all in one scene and so the roto would take the uncleaned plate and that would mean to achieve the final look I had to shift elements around in 3D space when I shouldn’t have needed to. Instead I should focus on completing scenes step by step. I should have, after cleaning the plate, exported a version to then serve as the roto plate. In future I will do my best to keep things simple and layered.

In addition to what had already been done for the scene we were tasked to add to it. As I thought it would be useful to know what the machine does to create a story around it to influence the scene I had asked about it. There was no such purpose to it so rather than come up with one I decided to create a scene around keeping it vague. So far I have added a bloodstained graffiti begging no one to turn it off and created a poster in the scene. I still need to add more but I am thinking on what further additions I can make.

This week we focused on advanced components of EXR via their multiple passes that allow us extensive lighting controls in Nuke. Alongside that how using different methods we can grade those different layers safely without affecting other portions of the grade or compromising the alpha. For homework we had to use the different passes to grade a car into a scene and make it look realistic. This was my result.

This was not too difficult as it was only a still though I think there’s certain way it can improve. Namely I’m not sure if the lighting is correct on the top of the car. I think that maybe, depending on distance, the lamp on the bus stop directly behind that car should light up the roof of the car a little but I’m not too certain.

The hardest thing for me to do this week was re-arrange my scene from last week as essentially the way I had done it, thinking it would be simpler with the merge, resulted in a scene that would only be fixed if I implemented 3D geography and matched it to the bricks and such because the cards, being 2D, did not have enough geometry for it to function. Having to re-do, re-arrange and re-think how I did the scene was difficult as its painful to have completed something and then have to essentially restart.

Graded

As can be scene there are still some issues with the roto, namely as it gets closer the quality of the image becomes blurry because of where I took the projection. It can also clearly seen to be flat as well so this would require me to, at a later point in time, go back and make adjustments to the roto. This however need only come later as there are more pressing things that require my attention.

This week for Nuke Development in class we went over more advanced Projection techniques to use in our 3D match move and had to apply them to our ongoing garage project. Getting my head wrapped around using 3D space in Nuke alongside the nodes and set ups to use these projection techniques was not easy, but after about an hour I was able to figure out, for the most part, how this set up functions and how to emulate it using all of the 3D nodes available.

Starting with marker cleanup I had certainly improved in my organization of my timeline and using backdrops to keep track of what each set of nodes accomplishes making corrections a lot easier. While figuring it out the first time was difficult once I had understood it the rest was simple

Rotoscoping while arguably a much simpler looking set up was the most time consuming, especially when it came to the finer edges of things like the lamp. Using the 3D merge node I was able to combine them to create what should function as a seamless transition between the three versions of this roto which help to fill out gaps that occur in the roto as the wall gets closer. However as can be seen there are some visual issues with this that I need to address

The visual issues are far clearer here in the rendered out video and is something that I need to address. The patches as well don’t come up as rotoscoped visually with the grade but that is because they are a separate card from the roto which if layered on top would show the markers again. However this is a purely visual issue and functionally works as a fully roto’d and functional piece.