My personal assignment was a collaborative scene with a 3d animation classmate. I was mainly responsible for creating the terrain and all the textures and effects, and she was responsible for modeling and animation.
I made materials: different glowing gradient, water plant material, stroke material and different glowing, light material, etc. There are also particles: bubbles, pollutants, small fish, etc. Also dealt with some shots and rendering issues.
FOR RENDERING
This week we talk about MotionVector,I think it’s a bit like a normal clean up, but the difference is that in this clean up we’re not dealing with a steady shot and a steady object that doesn’t move, but more of a marker point on the body that changes in light and shape。
Before we started working on the clean up we learned about a node called regrain, because when we made the clean up we may have thought we had done a good job on the final output, but in fact we could see in the other exaggerated colour gamut that we had overlooked some of the pixels. This node helps us to make our keyed clean up more realistic to the original shot.
We then started to use different ways of doing complex clean up. we could have tracked our roto manually, but this method is obviously not very clever and would only be considered if all other methods failed.
We then introduced the multiplication and division of merge and blur together to create the effect. Because the blur acts as an averaging of the surrounding colours, it makes the effect more realistic and natural.
But all of this works on the premise that we need to manually adjust the roto, or use a single track. so one logically simpler way to understand this is to use tracking points and panning, which ensures that the roto comes out in the same position as the face. I think this method achieves good results with constant lighting and the structure is very easy to understand.
Similarly we can give each point a trace and then rotopaint it separately.
There is also the reverse thinking, using blur and edge blur to reverse fill the mask after making the trace can also work well.
Next we talked about a very important part called the uv map, which I think is closer to the dynamic stmap, which gives information about movement. So we can use this node to clean up the face and add textures. It is also possible to get motion blur. However, it is important to note that it has certain requirements for the shot and does not fit all shots perfectly.
This week’s assignment is to work on Pretty Sister’s green screen, with a focus on hair placement
I started by looking at the whole shot as per the previous process. there was nothing green in the foreground and the only thing that needed attention was the treatment of the hair. So I relaxed the range in the edge key to get more detail.
Observe the hair detail and alpha
Colour readjustment: because I thought it was strange to have warm highlights on a green background, I added colorcorrect and saturation to correct the colour deviation in the hair part after matching the colour with grade
After the process I compared the results given by the teacher and found that although the hair was natural, some of the detail was missing compared to the teacher’s video. So I repeated the comparison, at first comparing the difference between the key and the final effect and adjusting some of the values. Then I found that the alpha mask shape matched the final effect.
This left two possibilities.
I then adjusted the keylight processing and grade in the agreeing frame in comparison to the toning, and found that the alpha shape was exactly right, it was the content that was not filling the masked section completely. So I reworked the blackpoint and whitepoint values of the keyligh to achieve a result that was not too different from the original video except for the colours.
RotoArtist
Roto Artist is a position that tests a background in graphic design, painting, animation and related art, and requires proficiency in Nuke, Silhouette and other related software. In layman’s terms, the workflow of a Roto Artist is to solve tricky processes for pre-production to avoid the need for rework by the film crew or 3D production staff, which can greatly reduce production costs in the film and television industry and allow for more scope for pre-production. Working as a roto artist is a great way to develop my communication skills, as well as my ability to grasp detail, colour, light and movement. Working as an integral part of the film, effects and post-visual process will be a great way to develop my work ethic and teamwork, and my undergraduate experience in digital media will allow me to become more proficient in the use of relevant tools.
At the same time, I think the work is very basic, but there are many details to consider and it requires a serious attitude and a lot of patience. The attitude and patience that I have gained from this training will also help me to learn and develop in other positions in the future.
In the workflow, the main focus is on drawing Roto masks and cleaning up the material. In the film industry, there is a high level of precision and detail required, and I have learnt the skills and expertise to do this core job very well. Rotoartist is also a similar workflow to CG effects, so I can develop my skills in character effects and scene effects.
3D layout artist
A 3D layout artist is a key role in the workflow of 3D film, animation and even game CG. Whether it is a game or an animation, you need to be well versed in the language and details of the post-production process, and it is a profession that places a premium on experience. The duties of a 3D sub-screener are usually based on the director’s intentions, and according to the director’s intentions, he or she can independently design and draw a sub-screen storyboard that meets the needs of animation/cg as a basis for guiding the next mid-production step, which will test the basic skills of perspective and lens sense, and can exercise my team’s ability to organise the lens language, and express the plot through the accurate grasp of the lens, which can give full play to and express my excellent creativity and A good recipe for a good sense of image. A good 3D animation sub-screener will also be involved in scriptwriting meetings, providing suggestions and sketches for story development, adjusting the script in response to the director’s comments, sub-screening and some pre-voice work, which will test my art skills and expertise and will quickly hone my sense of camera work.
At the same time, I find this career very appealing because it is so closely related to the presentation of the story. Presenting a two-dimensional story in three dimensions is also another level of creation. And this sense of world creation is what makes me so passionate about it.
Compositor (VFX)
A VFX Compositor is a broad job category and some would be called a Visual Effects Artist. Depending on the industry and the size of the company, the responsibilities of a VFX artist can range from entire shots to various small elements in a large set. As part of a broad visual team, a visual effects artist may work with a team of two or three people (or even single-handedly) or hundreds of people to create hard-to-film, expensive or impossible-to-film digital images, and visual effects are almost ubiquitous in film and television, even in real-world based shows. The position is highly collaborative, with most of the work day spent creating, and the rest of the day generally spent in meetings, communicating with the team and creative, and receiving feedback. The work day may start with meetings which will test my ability to work as a team and collaborate. It is my responsibility to maintain clear, concise and organised project documentation and workflow to improve efficiency between phases.
Every day is a new challenge in the role of Visual Effects Artist, the scope of work varies and the next assignment may come from an area where I have no experience, so I will grow as a Visual Effects Artist to become a wide ranging person, which is part of the fun of the job, never getting bored and always having something new to explore. It’s a great way to learn problem solving and attention to detail, to hone my strong artistic skills and to enrich my technical expertise in software including but not limited to Nuke, Zbrush, Maya etc.
I am also very proficient in using game engines such as unity and ue and can create certain effects. I think this will be an advantage for me in my future work. This will allow me to learn and produce not only film and television effects, but also game effects.
Reference
https://www.screenskills.com/jobs/one-of-us-prep-roto-artist/
https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/visual-effects-vfx/compositing/roto-artist/
https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Career/roto-artist-career_KO0,11.htm
https://www.cgspectrum.com/career-pathways/roto-artist
This lesson focuses on how to better handle edges in green screen compositing to retain more detail, and we talk about a few different ways to do this. We also talked about how to preserve the green in the foreground when using keylight (using roto).
We also talked about some of the content of keymix and the content of groups.
There was a lot of content in this class so I didn’t take many pictures, I had to pay attention to the content
The teacher was sick this week, so I made my own table top and added lighting.
I found that I misunderstood what the teacher was saying, those images were for the CG machine to better incorporate more stuff into the composite rather than the need to make a new UAU.
FIRST ONE（infact is last week one)
Write the position of the wall and the position of the candle by write geo, then read and give the material in maya
When I exported I found that each layer of aov had each become a file! I eventually found the setting to merge the aov in one file in the export settings. Because I can’t imagine I’d have to manually composite a dozen files in nuke haha
I put the final touches on the roto I made
The second one
At first I created only simple masks and toning, without distinguishing between the edges and the core. And because of the keylight the green part of the foreground was removed! And part of it was lost. So the initial result was particularly bad. I asked my teacher, who told me to refer to other examples to create separate masks for the edges and the centre, so I modified the second version. And used roto to snap out the removed green in the foreground.
First Edition：
Revised version
（Look at my cute little green ball! UWU）
This week’s main content is about green screen compositing
We started by learning about a new colour format, HSV, which is different from RGB, and how to use hsv to process image information.
We learned about the nodes of the key and how they operate. And tried a few different methods for toning and key.
Afterwards we tried the complete process for practice.
Lumminance channels：
I think it is essentially a partitioning of the image into blocks by different colour channels.
The main nodes used are keyer and colourspace.
We can use them for simple masking and colour manipulation
For green screen:
This lesson is a brief introduction to the nodes that have been used. They are IBK, chromKeyer, keylight, Primatte, Ultimatte.
They have their own characteristics and in general I think that keylight is the most widely used node.
There were a lot of new theories and points of knowledge in this class, which at the time I thought they were simply colour mixing. But now after re-reading the class documents I have a better understanding of these nodes
I switched up my production content this week because I thought the first one was too easy and wanted to make something more interesting with mash.
Making this cube mash is divided into three main steps.
First make the smallest square
Then create a variation of the plane made up of the smaller squares
Finally the final cube is created
irst make the smallest square：
Then create a variation of the plane made up of the smaller squares：
Use mash to duplicate a square group of squares and add offset to create a change in height difference and angle difference. And adjust the keyframe so that it splits into two variations.
Form the faces into a new square
Final result