bug - my short with lots of effects

[spooker]

hello all,

it's been a long time since i've posted, maybe the first, but i've been reading the forums for a while now. i thought this topic would be welcome in here.

i did this short for a thesis. its pretty short, mainly because it took so long to do the effects and I had other classes to deal with. i kept an extensive online production diary because my professors didnt know the process and thats what i was being graded on. heres a link to the site with the final piece linked to at the top.

http://11thdimension.com/bug/bug.html

also, here's my production site with one other project I'm doing for fun.

http://11thdimension.com/

_grant

[oneinfiniteloop]

Reall cool site, I'll have to check out the video when I get home, but I like the info on the whole process.

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

Wow! That was really crazy. Great visual effects work and cinematography. Keep up the crazily creative work of yours!

[oneinfiniteloop]

Cool vid, is the music Aphex Twin? Reminded me of Chris Cunningham, which I can tell you're probably a fan. Good job, keep up the good work, get a good grade?

EDIT: Watched it again all the way through the credits and saw the Aphex Twin credit, didn't see it the first time.

[spooker]

thanks guys for the nice comments. i'm proud to say I got an A.

[casey warren]

hey, excellent work. I was looking at your site, you have some good explinations of the process of how to to composite 3d images, nice stuff. If you gave some tutorials that would be awesome. I have a couple questions, what compositing program do you use, 3d app program?, and what liquid dynamics programs do you use???

[oneinfiniteloop]

From the screenshots I saw at his site, it looked like he used Realflow for fluid dynamics, which is a great program, but takes time to get good results, and it's very scientific in it's accuracy/control.

[spooker]

right you are. I used Realflow for the liquid and brought it into Cinema 4D to render. Realflow can take a really long time to run the simulation, but once you play with it enough you can get good results pretty quickly. Cinema 4D was my main 3D app, where I did all the modeling, texturing, animating, and rendering. for compositing, I used After Effects. Shake was used to create a large background plate from multiple images. The compositing could have been done in either, I just like After Effects more.

[oneinfiniteloop]

What kind of settings did you use for your render? Final gather, global illum, HDRi, 3 point lighting, etc? I'm curious to learn more about C4D and it's renderers, I'm currently using Maya/Mental Ray, and it's top quality, but I might switch to C4D depending on what happens at Autodesk.

[spooker]

I used HDRI's I made of the environment for all lighting and reflections. Because most of the surfaces were reflective, global illumination wasn't always needed. to create shadows on proxy objects, I would usually use spot lights with raytraced shadows for the speed and manipulate them through compositing to get the right effect. Each rendered frame from C4d was rendered at full HD to .psd files, so keeping the render times down was a priority.

I too have used Mental Ray in Maya, and it's good for rendering fluids really fast. However, I'm not the biggest fan of Maya because its not as artist friendly as C4D. Cinema has an amazing and fast renderer, and its easy to work with.

I too worry about the Autodesk merger, as they have poor support for Macs. One nice thing about C4D is that it doesn't care what hardware it runs on, so porting and updating is fast (like the switch to intel chips on the mac).

[oneinfiniteloop]

I've always heard those "artist-friendly" rumors about C4D, I guess it's about time to download a demo and check it out...Maya takes a minute to wrap your head around it, but I don't find it that counterintuitive.

[casey warren]

Nice, I am thinking about getting C4D soon. I have used Maya a bit, but I am really interested in C4D. I also want to get Realflow, I havent used it at all but I heard its really good, How long does it take to learn and get good results??

[casey warren]

I am also about to purchase Shake, since its so cheap i figured I should just get it and learn. I have used After Effects quite a bit, how does Shake compare?? what are some of the main advantages/disadvantages, etc....

[oneinfiniteloop]

I am also about to purchase Shake, since its so cheap i figured I should just get it and learn. I have used After Effects quite a bit, how does Shake compare?? what are some of the main advantages/disadvantages, etc....

Compositing software is compositing software. I think the biggest difference coming over from AE is the interface and the fact that you have to add 'nodes' to do anything. I started in AE, but I spent a lot of time learning the underlying principles of compositing so Shake didn't take too long. One thing that always got me was that I have to add a node just to move something. I kept grabbing the footage trying to scale it, etc, but nothing happened, lol!

[Mark Harris]

I didn't see it on the site, so asking now. In the bathroom scene where the oil comes BACK out of the toilet, the light is very "misty." But in the original footage, it looks lit pretty much with a bathroom light.

What did you do to it in post?

[spooker]

If you have experience with 3D, C4D is an easy app to learn. No telling how long it'll take to produce something, it really depends on the person. I learned a lot of what I know from watching Gnomon Maya training and applying it to C4D. They're all really the same, but like before, C4D is more artist fiendly. once you know the principles behind everything, they all become easier. I find I learn just by playing around with it and using video training for the more technical / specific problems I encounter.

like oneinfiniteloop said, compositing software is compositing software. shake is really really good at certain things, and pretty bad at others. it does roto superbly and is good for keying or making large background plates in place of actual footage. I tend to use it for one specific thing per shot, render that and use the newly created element in After Effects. now that shake is so cheap, its a hard app to pass up, even if you use it for only one feature. the roto alone is worth it.

desperatecomfort, all the dense atmospheric effects were created by duplicating layers in AE, turning the blending mode to screen or multiply depending on the mood of the shot and blurring it out. that works for local light bloom effects. for the really dense atmosphere, I created solids and used masks with the edges blurred as high as they would go. I would then animate the mask shape to accomidate the shot's movement.

[oneinfiniteloop]

desperatecomfort, all the dense atmospheric effects were created by duplicating layers in AE, turning the blending mode to screen or multiply depending on the mood of the shot and blurring it out. that works for local light bloom effects. for the really dense atmosphere, I created solids and used masks with the edges blurred as high as they would go. I would then animate the mask shape to accomidate the shot's movement.

Good to hear someone using these methods rather than merely buying a plug to do it for you :thumbsup:

It really shows in the production, and congrats on your A.

[Mark Harris]

Good to hear someone using these methods rather than merely buying a plug to do it for you :thumbsup:

It really shows in the production, and congrats on your A.

Yeah, I've done some of the same in the past, but your stuff here was far above what I'd acheived. Going to keep playing with that stuff. Thanks.

M

[sean90291]

I thought it was visually stunning. Really creepy and cool. Did you mention what school/program you were doing this thesis project for?

[spooker]

Did you mention what school/program you were doing this thesis project for?

the school was University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP). My program was Digital Design, which within the college is considered a lot like traditional graphic design, only with motion or interactivity.

heres the school's page:

http://daap.uc.edu/

[casey warren]

I didnt know that Shake had good roto capabilities already within the program. I thought that you had to get Silhouette Roto + Paint. I've downloaded demo versions of Silhouette and really liked it, hopefully the native roto abilities in Shake are similar.

Could you elaborate more on how you created the atmospheric effects. I've tryed before and they have never came out as realistic looking as yours are in the piece, they were great.

[spooker]

I didnt know that Shake had good roto capabilities already within the program. I thought that you had to get Silhouette Roto + Paint. I've downloaded demo versions of Silhouette and really liked it, hopefully the native roto abilities in Shake are similar.

Could you elaborate more on how you created the atmospheric effects. I've tryed before and they have never came out as realistic looking as yours are in the piece, they were great.

the great thing about Shake's roto is the variable edge weighting. it feels very organic and percise.

as for the atmospherics, to create local light blooming on highlights within the image I would duplicate the layer, desaturate it, turn it to a screen blending mode, blur it, then adjust the layer's opacity for the desired result. depending on the shot i might colorize it.

for the really dense stuff, you first have to figure out where the light source would be and use that reference for when you create a mask for the solid layer. for the oil floating out of the toilet, I wanted it to be above, so i created the solid layer (one much larger than the comp area to give the mask room to blur) in whatever color you want, in this case, white. draw out the mask where you want it to be the most dense and turn up the feathering on the mask to whatever softness you want. you can create multiple layers with multiple masks for each, but I like doing only one or two for the sake of control and simplicity. adjust the opacity and color of the each one to suit your liking. usually above that I would apply an adjustment layer with color balance and levels applied so the fake atmosphere would follow the same color rules as the plate. I also added a lot of grain. this was a stylistic choice I made early on, but I found it helped out with a couple things. the grain made the atmospherics more textured, and it also hid some of the artifacts from the color corrected plate, being that the plate was an HDV source.

one last thing to note, always work in 16bit or higher mode to avoid banding. the banding gets really bad when you're in 8bit working with big gradients like this.

I hope this answers your question.

[drummerboy678]

nice job man... i love this kind of stuff. cant wait to be making some of my own.
everything looks great.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

pretty frickin' cool

lots of provocative imagery

only crit = metal liquid flying around out of the toilet and then around the bathroom not as noisy and dingey as the rest of the shot.

great work.

jack

[casey warren]

Awesome, thanks for the great info. Your film is very well done. I am going to go get working in After Effects right now and try out some of the techniques that you use.

Also, I am curious what program or workflow you use to do your Color Correcting. I have used After Effects alot because I can mask layers and CC specific colors. However, it kinda gets annoying going from AE back to FCP over and over again to CC.

[spooker]

[QUOTE=Also, I am curious what program or workflow you use to do your Color Correcting. I have used After Effects alot because I can mask layers and CC specific colors. However, it kinda gets annoying going from AE back to FCP over and over again to CC.[/QUOTE]

I used AE for CC on every shot. If you have Motion, you could do the same thing with better integration and a faster workflow. My recomendation would be to do pre-comps in Photoshop or have yor edit finalized before CC. Because my shots were effects heavy, I did the CC while still in AE and rendered out my shots longer than I needed for editing in Final Cut.

[casey warren]

I was looking around you site...pretty awesome stuff..I was wondering how you did the CC effects like the blue/white haze and lens horizontal lens flares in some of the images...like this one...

Also, did you shoot this footage with a DVX?


http://11thdimension.com/seraphim/Pre%20Comps%2001_files/15_comped-1.jpg[/IMG]

[spooker]

that too was done in After Effects. the haze was done in the method previously described. the light streaking is the directional blur effect.

everything for "bug" and "seraphim" was shot on a Sony FX1. that specific example was down-rezed to 720p from 1080p.

[casey warren]

awesome, the light streaks good awesome. Ive seen that effect in a lot of TV shows, Alias uses that effects alot, however I think they might have a special lens attachment or something because it tends to happen when the corners of the frame pass over a light source.

The fluid flame effects on your site looks really realistic. I love how when the hand clenches, and then opens again the flame responds very realistically with a poof up in the air.....looks darn good...did you also use Realflow and Cinema 4D for those effects or some other program??

Ive used an FX1 before, the footage from that camera looks really awesome, I dont see how so many other people can slam that camera, I mean, I know its HDV, but the grain pattern and color reproduction it produces look really nice. The still frames you have look exceptional.

[spooker]

the fluid effects are done with Maya fluids. I think you can do the same in C4D using StormTracer with Realflow, but from what I hear, Stormtracer is impossible to use. as a note, most people think fluids and liquid are the same in post. Realflow does liquid (like water). Maya does fluids (referring to the kind of calculations it does) which is like smoke, flames, clouds, etc ...

I did a lot of thinking before I got my camera. It was the FX1 or the DVX and at the time, the HVX wasn't even cloes to being released, and the price was too high. I know a lot of people are purists about codecs and color space, and to an extent I think its deserved. But for my purposes, I needed as much resolution as I could get for as cheap as possible. When it comes down to it, it matters little what codec is used as long as you create a compelling piece with good composition. I needed resulotion to do effects so thats why I made my decision the way I did. I don't regret getting an FX1 in the least.

I do agree with the 24p part of the argument, but thats an easy problem to fix with many solutions. The motion of 24p is by far artistically superior to any other frame rate.

also, thanks again for the nice comments!

[casey warren]

thanks for the info

if you have time, you should put together some tutorials on the kind of stuff you are doing. I know a lot of other people are doing effects work with hi-end programs, and for the most part the stuff looks great, but in most cases the tutorials lack in showing how to achieve realistic looking results. The stuff you've made looks really real and it would be awesome if you made some tutorials to show how you did it. like matchmoving the plates and creating the digital hand to place the fire in, etc....

[Ogrus]

Why dont your posts go up?

[spooker]

Why dont your posts go up?

go up? I don't spend a lot of time on forums, so my lingo is a bit off.

also, sorry I can't help you out with tutorials. I'm just not good at explaining how things work. I learned by just playing around and watching a video tutorial here and there.

3D Fluff is good for basic C4D use.
http://3dfluff.com/

The Gnomon Workshop covers a lot of Maya and Shake stuff.
http://thegnomonworkshop.com/

CGTalk is a good community.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/

3D Attack has a good monthly PDF magazine with tons of tutorials and tricks:
http://www.3dattack.net/

some of these cost money, but I'm sure you can find them on the P2P networks. I'm lucky enough to have work pay for them. Beyond the tutorials, just play around. thats the best advice I can give. Remember there's no set way to do anything. If it looks right it is right (thats my personal golden rule).

[casey warren]

THanks for the links, awesome sites. I'll have to spend some good time on those.