More Background Replacement

Here is some more After Effects Background Replacement using public domain footage and a matte painting i found online. In this Study i used Mocha AE to do the motion tracking. Keep in mind this is just underwater cam footage and is in no way prepared using blue or green screen. I figure if i can make unprepared raw footage which i alter look good or believe able, then it should be much easier when it comes to using green screen. I'm using the old color key to get rid of the background, so it's far from perfect or professional (but for learning it's fine). I'm making sure to carefully select footage that has pretty clean backgrounds so that it is easier to key out. I'm also learning how to do a bit of color correction at the same time.

Under Water Castle (2nd BG Replacement study)

Original Footage

Matte Painting found online

It's not perfect. It could probably use some light shimmers on the castle, some floating under water sediment and some bubbles to fully sell the effect. Also some of the fish are a bit transparent and there is some distortion from the color key at the end on the right.

More After Effects

Learning some basics of Motion Tracking and Background Replacement in live footage. I did the Camera Tracking for it and made BG a 3D object. I tried to make one of the point a Null Object and attach the BG that way but i got a fair amount of drift. I think the BG image wasn't far enough in the background, kinda close to the camera and the camera doesn't pan very far. There needs to be some color correction and line clean up which i'm learning. It's all good skills to learn.

(Sorry for the Low Quality, The stock footage was free)

Here is the original footage

                               

This is the Matte Painting I used for the new BG, i just flipped the image.

(For the record I didn't record the footage or paint the Matte Painting)

Officially Learning After Effects

I dabbled in After Effects for the free trial, but i've purchased it now to start learning for real. I learned that its really a valued general skill for Visual Effects artists to have in their arsenal of tools. For basic video editing, motion graphics, creating VFX with live footage, putting together showreels, and potentially getting some freelance gigs as everyone wants match moving and VFX in their low budget films.

Anyways, other than NUKE (which i will also learn) AE is where i'm starting.

This is my catalog to keep track of what i've learned.

Motion Graphics (previously learned)

Learning Basic Live Action VFX

with: Surfaced Studio

Inserting an explosion.

Here's the Micheal Bay version!

More Star Wars Fan Film VFX Tests

More Explosions

These are wall impact explosions from a Tie Fighter Bolt.

 This one is with debris and a bit smaller.

Speeder Dust Trails

...and improved Rifle Blaster Bolts

MORE TO COME!

New Project - Official Star Wars Fan Film Contest!!

I started a new project the last couple of week with some alumni and current students.

It's a short film (under 5 mins).

Here is the introduction by J.J. Abrams himself!

So the group and I are going for it. It's a super short amount of time (2 months) to complete an

animated short. Also there are different categories, Animated, Live Action, Comedy, etc.

We are well on our way I would say about a quarter of the way into production.

I will be handling VFX which is exciting and daunting at the same time. My group will be 

relying on me to do my job in the time allotted (lucky i have the free time these days).

On the list are Blaster bolts, thruster ignitions/burners, dust trails and explosions.

Here are some tests!

Blaster Bolts can be animated by hand and made to look real good in After Effects

using multiple layers. However it's very time consuming. We maybe having many bolts coming from many points, so i thought i'd try to see if i could make it easier on us by creating a blaster bolt from a particle.

Here's what they look like rendered out.

Also there are many explosions from small to large scale in this short. Here are

some tests of what i've done so far.

Here's some rendered frames.







More to come!

L-System continued...

So I continued with the basics of L-systems moving into tree forms. There are literally endless combinations and smarter people than me with more time on their hands have come up with plug-ins or add on programs that do just that. They allow you to create trees and foliage using the L-System with leaves and mesh manipulation and texture options. I may have to end up using one of those or a generically modeled tree. I don't the i have the time, knowledge or patients to generate trees from scratch. But here are some of the examples I was able to create.

 

One can make all of these in to tube formed trees and mess around with more 3D aspects such as rotational vectors and add leaves at the ends of the branches.

While this proved to be kind of a dead end in regarded to my project, (since the focus is on falling leaves) it was valuable to learn and i only spent a day on it.

Time to learn L-Systems (Fractals)

I'm starting my second project finally which was suggested by Lead VFX Artist of Pixar, Gary Bruins who helped me with my internet internship requirement for graduating. Falling leaves is the next project. First though, instead of just creating emitters and replacing the particles with leaves and manipulating them with forces, i wanted to understand how to make the trees i'd have to model. It was either model them myself or find crappy free ones and have to mess around with the geo. In order to understand how to model trees naturally, i needed to understand L-Systems. L-Systems is basically a naturally occurring math/algorithmic construct which occurs in nature. It helps dictate how trees, leaves and snow flakes are formed. Interesting huh? These systems were figured out a while ago by nature loving mathematicians. They have since been applied to many things including art and emulated in programs such as Houdini.

 Here's some simple examples that i'm starting with

using simple equations simply telling the computer what do draw

by going straight, right and left.

Starting to look familiar?

Ever see a snowflake close up? Of course you have.