Road Tracking Practice
For the week going into our external collaboration unit, we (the matchmove team) were tasked with tracking a few videos of roads as we wait for the actual driving footage to become available to us. The sample videos we were given included a few that looked pretty easy, featuring a mostly stable camera and lots of debris around the roadside. One does include a bridge which the camera passes under, which will require some splining, and another features dust spinning from dunes around the highway, which may also interfere with a solid track and require some creative point placement. The only one that may present a problem is the video that involves leaves flying past the cameras in the wind. This one will for sure be the most challenging footage to track. As of yet, I’ve worked on the shot above, and found it quite simple. Early on in my attempt, I managed a 0.8 deviation curve before even refining any of my points.
I’m eager to see what our footage will look like for the film when it is available to us. It could be an easy overhead shot like this one, or it may be quite dynamic, with several moving parts, which will be difficult but present me the opportunity to practice as well as exhibit my skills on my showreel.
Easter Break: Matchmove Practice
It escapes my memory as to whether I’ve mentioned this on my blog before, but I’ve decided to focus my specialism in motion tracking. I’ve found that I’m good at it, it’s interesting and fun, and I’m eager to put my best foot forward in the job market as I enter the industry this year. So, while I visited my family in the United States over Easter break, I worked on a project with Dom to refine my matchmove skills and build a solid piece for my showreel.
We chose this shot because it is slightly more challenging, as the camera rotates around the scene, and because it shows a good contrast in depth. As I worked on it, Dom helped me work on some methods to fine-tune my deviation curve, like timeline weight blending and splining. Another big takeaway from this project for me was a better understanding of how to build geo around a tracked scene in Maya. I still need to practice all of the above a few more times, though, in order to really get the process down.
The stage of my process on this practice project so far is placing wireframe cones around the scene to show depth, and my next step will be to add in an animated object- potentially, I’m thinking, a helicopter- in the scene, emerging from the back and landing up at the front, in order to show off the track to the best of my abilities.
Performance Animation Spline Pass
In my blocking pass critique, some of the feedback I got was that my characters needed to be facing each other more, like they’re having a real conversation, and that I need to be more careful about making sure they’re looking directly at one another. I was also told to switch the Sophia rig out for Carla because the Sophia rig is not very advanced, and the hair geo being immobile makes it look rather unprofessional.
So, over the past week, I transferred my Sophia animation out onto Carla using Studio Library in poses, then went in and smoothed out the animation between each. I did my best to turn Carla more towards the male character and keep her facing him to make it look more like they’re interacting, but I’m not sure if it’s enough. I’ll find out during my feedback tonight.
I also went in and updated Carla’s poses a little, as well as changed the jump out from the wall to simply two steps. Despite my best efforts, I am unsure as to whether the balance is believable during this segment, and feedback on that will also be very valuable.
A big part of what challenged me during the spline pass was making sure that the timing is expressive and believable, while being comfortable holding the poses between dialogue, yet still allowing the characters to move enough in their held pose that they still look “alive.” Another struggle I had was with the FK controls on the Carla’s left arm. I’m not sure if that’s going to be a problem down the road.
I still have a long ways to go, and haven’t even done the lip sync yet. That being said, I’m actually proud of the stage this is at so far.
Advanced Unit: Performance Animation Blocking
Audio:
My blocking pass didn’t take very long to get done, but there’s a lot of work that needs to go into it over the next few weeks for the polish.
Some things I’d like to work on are the way that the female character interacts with the space- this obviously includes fixing any collisions of the geo through the planes I’ve set up, but in addition, I’d also like to really get in there and make the weight more believable as she leans against that back wall. I also need to work on the timing of each pose, and allow both characters longer pauses while the other one is talking. In particular, the female character’s movement needs a lot of polishing if it’s going to look natural. Strangely, the robot is much more fluid already.
Something that I do like is the stylistic characterization that I’ve got going for each character. Both of them really exude personality despite the fact that the performance is so short. I will say that using Maya has definitely gotten exponentially easier for me over time, and I didn’t run into any snags or confusion setting up my poses or jumping into the graph editor.
I’m very excited to get started working on this, and I’m already coming up with set ideas. I anticipate it being extremely fun, and I’m super motivated to get to work!
Mehdi Tutorials: Houdini Week Five
I’ve had a very hard time with the Houdini tutorials lately, and so I was proud to even get through the first forty minutes following along. My smoke looks okay, but it’s doing something weird towards the end of the simulation, when a large box of light develops.
I was able to follow along until rendering, but then this happened. I’m going to book a session with Mehdi on Monday and just ask him what’s going on, I suspect there are multiple issues with my file.
UPDATE
I spoke to Mehdi and he informed me that the only issues were either with my graphics card or not hiding the geometry. I rendered again with the geometry hidden and was able to produce this:
The density adjustment slider was really interesting to me, and it’s cool to be able to choose between pure flames and a more smokey fire.
When it came time to render our simulation, I was at first met with the same issue as before:
But happily, I was able to solve the problem on my own this time! I realized that it was because the material shader name had not been updated and I reassigned it as well as making sure all the geo was hidden. As soon as I did, I got this image:
I feel that this week helped me understand rendering better and continued to help me get accustomed to the Houdini workflow. Being able to find my own material shader issue is a big step in the right direction of understanding the way Houdini nodes interact.
Virtual Production: The Latest Tech from VFX Studios and Indie Creators at Vertex 2021
The first session I attended of the Vertex 2021 conference was the Virtual Production talk with Ian Failes, Theo Jones, Paul Franklin, and Hasraf Dulull.
The panelists began by giving an overview of what virtual production actually is, in case any audience members were going into it fresh. Virtual production is a system of tools that allow us to combine live action footage with CGI in real time, although, as Paul pointed out, this can encompass a vast number of different areas, and so it’s hard to specifically point to one output and say “this is virtual production”- it can be used for so many different things.
What most people are excited about right now, according to the panelists, is LED Wall, which can run a CGI environment on a live action set, effectively replacing the need for green screen. This can save a lot of time and money when shooting, and from a director’s standpoint it’s useful to be able to change lighting or any number of different props or scenes without having to entirely rework the physical set. However, the panelists also discussed the fact that it’s important for clients to manage their expectations, because although virtual production can allow a very fast turnaround and almost anything can be changed at any time, there is the requirement of testing time and trial and error.
The panelists finished off by telling us that there is a big need in the industry for Unreal Engine experienced artists, and with the resources available for free online on blogs, YouTube, or Unreal’s own website, it’s easy for absolutely anyone to get started on it from their own bedroom. This is one unexpected advantage to COVID- easy virtual access.
Performance Animation: Acting Feedback
I was told that the character I was playing on the left was okay, but I could even restrict the motion a little more and remember to think pose-to-pose. I should make sure to brush the hair back first and then say the line, keeping in mind pose staging. I may extend the audio a bit in the beginning to do this.
As for the character on the right, I got a few critiques; I was told that he should take shorter strides into the frame and turn around with less of a jolt. The arms don’t need to wave so much. When he says “The University of the United States”, perhaps that can just be a brandished pointer finger, not one large sweeping movement. He can also stay in place more between poses. A good idea, too, is that he maybe looks at the camera when coming up with his lies, breaks the fourth wall a little bit, rather than making eye contact with her. This also contributes to the sense that he is lying.
One more thing is to make sure that the characters don’t physically pass in front of one another, as it confuses the silhouette.
3DE Independant Work Challenge
After learning about our external collaboration unit coming up in the summer, I got in touch with Dom to talk about practicing my skills in 3DE in order to prepare to possibly take a tracking role in the project. I’ve been told that 3DE is one of the best ways to get started working in the industry, and I like it a lot, so I think it would be a very smart move to try to angle my showreel around it.
When we first started learning 3DE, I had a really tough time even finishing the tutorials, as the software was all so new and the process requires the memorization of a lot of very small but very important steps. However, as is often the case, struggling to get over that hump ended up helping me in the long run because I remember the solution to each problem I had so solidly. I find tracking shots to be actually pretty fun now, and find that I understand the significance of most of the steps.
I talked to Dom about starting a few different shots on my own to challenge myself. I feel that working independently forces me to learn more because I have to solve my own problems, so I will be working on a couple different shots over the coming weeks and meeting with Dom each week to check in and critique.
This is the shot that Dom recommended I work with as an easy starter, just to see if I can remember how to get through the process by myself:
I felt pretty proud of myself when I was able to get everything set up without a reminder: converting the video to an EXR sequence, importing it in the camera tab, exporting buffer compression files. I created a Maya project and set up the project window, saved the file path, and found an obj file for free online, which I textured.
I found the tracking relatively easy, as we had planned.
Still, I was nervous that having to choose all of my own points would be difficult, but when I first pressed “calc all from scratch”, I was relieved to find that the line was very straight.
And, even better, my deviation was only 0.8!
Unfortunately, though, I suspect that this may not be what the parameter adjustment should ideally look like. From what I can recall, it should look more like a cube. My theory is that I did not include enough of the sides of the buildings on the street, and only the street and the horizon line were detected. But when I pulled it into lineup view, it looked perfect, so I continued.
I did have to rewatch the superhero training video to remember the order of calculating the lens distortion in the parameter adjustment window, though. I wasn’t able to remember that on my own. I remembered how to do everything and why, though, just not what happens when. I’ve written it down to study.
I put in the 3D model and was at first confused that I was unable to move it, but realized quickly that I needed to turn off “contains survey data.”
I projected my points onto the 3D model and had no issues.
So I exported the mel script- it crashed a couple times and I was forced to export without 3D models- and ran Warp4. This was the first time that Warp4 has not crashed on me on the first try. I saved the dewarped footage and brought it all into Maya.
Then came some purely aesthetic work. I tried to match my skydome’s exposure to the fading light of the shot and I rotated R2-D2 so that he tilts as he swerves, in order to make it look less like he’s floating along and more like he’s powering his own journey.
This R2-D2 was not rigged and the geo was in numerous small pieces, so I didn’t have the option to move the body and ambulatory limbs separately.
Overall I’d say I did a fairly decent job. I’m not sure if there was anything I forgot that I just happened to get lucky with not ruining my shot. I do suspect that I’m lacking some information on the sides of the shot. However, considering I did this without help and only had to look up one step, I feel pretty good about it.
KK Tutorials: Lighting Week 1
I made it all the way through the first lighting tutorial and only ran into a couple of issues. When I first started, I was confused because my file opened to look like this:
-as opposed to the full scene that KK had on his screen. No matter how many times I re-pathed the images I kept getting this result.
I reached out to the class and found that Crystal was having the same issue. After some troubleshooting, she informed me that the answer was simple: pressing 1 on a node displays it in the viewport, and KK’s scene happened to be on a different node than ours when we loaded ours in. I was able to follow along with him after that.
The only other issue I ran into was when we were rendering the shot in Maya. For some reason when I pulled up the geo, I see this fully constructed scene rather than the HDRI in the background. I repeated this step a few times and achieved the same results. I hesitate to tamper with it as I’m not sure whether there’s an actual issue in the file structure or if this is simply what the final outcome should look like.