Week 33: Test Shot Final

The Completed Test shot for the Mastronauts project:

Still image.

Node Tree.

Shuffling elements from EXR.

Merging the elements on top of the footage.

Writing out the the composition.





Final Test.

Week 32: Semester 2 Presentation

The presentation, I believe, went much better this time round. I felt much more confident throughout and I felt that helped me in my delivery.

Basically I did a sum up of my progress throughout the semester.

I mentioned primarily the Going Live and the Mastronauts project.

For Going Live I focussed primarily on Texturing and Rendering.




Concept art I'd created for 'Concerning Dragons'.

Texturing/Concept tests for 'Concerning Dragons'.

Lighting tests using IBLs for 'Concerning Dragons'.

Rendering for 'Concerning Dragons'.



Throughout the Mastronauts Project, I will be honing in on the Lighting, rendering and compositing processes and I felt my roles in Going Live have really helped me to prepare for this. In the presentation I also described how Going Live has assisted me throughout this test:

Comping the character into the scene

Node Tree in Nuke

IBL for lighting the test

Week 31: Compositing the renders

I did eventually manage to find out the issue I was having with the shadow layers. Although the Final Gather was off, the IBL set up was still affecting the alpha, which I needed to get the shadows. After running through the possible factors causing the issues in my head, it became clear this was the culprit, and after a little connection breaking, the problem was resolved.

So I moved into Nuke to try compositing the shots together...I've been trying to get my head around the 'shuffle' and 'shuffle copy' nodes and trying to understand the most effective process to take when rendering for the compositing stage.

Clearly, I am still trying to get the hang of the node system and understanding exactly how each node affects the next. Although this rendering/comp stage is certainly a challenge, I am actually enjoying it. I just need to get the hang of Nuke, and then I can get the test finished. We need to start progress on actual production soon, but this has definitely put me in good stead for actual production and I am feeling a great deal more confident about the tasks I will be undertaking next semester.

Week 31: Mastronauts- Rendering the Test

I've been having a few issues with the Shadow layers primarily. The past few days have been trial and error, but I think I am starting to understand what the issue is. I have a feeling it has something to do with the IBL set up because the issue lies within the render cam only, to which, I have the IBL plugged in.

Nevertheless, this is the rendering progress so far:

Creating the Render Layers

Some of the Render Layers:

Ground AO

Character AO

ID Matte

Master Layer

Obviously not all of the layers are done yet, but I am feeling much more confident about it now. I'm certainly finding that my participation in the rendering of the Going Live project has made this process a lot easier for me to understand.

Week 30: Mastronauts - Adding The Character To The Scene

The lighting test as before, but swapping the stand-in elements for the character. This is just a free downloadable model/rig (Morpheus Rig) as our character is not fully modelled/rigged yet.

Master Layer- Character and Light.

The shadows are not on here as they need to be on a separate layer because the Use Background shaders don't work with the Final Gather on, but it's already starting to look like it's coming together! :)

Week 30: Mastronauts - Lighting tests continued

Today I carried on the lighting tests from Friday, and I've just been focusing on getting the ground shadow in.

With this it was just a case of setting up a plane to recreate the shadow of the building on the ground in the photos.

I began to look at the shadows on the wall, which was turning out to be rather tricky.
Trying to get all the shadows to line up based on the one piece of geometry blocking out the light was requiring a lot of tweaking, and ensuring that the shadows of the posts were also staying in line from frame to frame was proving difficult. The issue is figuring out whether the solution would be to move the position of the affected geometry, or if it is perhaps the position of the lights that is causing the issues.

For the test though, I may revert back to just focusing on the light and shadows on the posts and the ground plane. I may take out the plane representing the wall as, after discussing with my teammates, it is felt that the wall shadow is an unnecessary effort in this example.

I also will begin looking at the rendering processes; focussing on the shaders & materials and render layers and passes.

Week 29: Mastronauts - Lighting tests

So I've recently been looking at lighting a little test shot that Tom, Kieran and I are doing.

So far I've set up the IBL and am looking at recreating the lighting as best as I can.

Shot with the indirect light only.

Trying to match up with the actual images I set up a directional light for the sun.

I changed the shaders from a lambert to a mia material x, as these shaders are known to react more realistically to light.

Of course, the material attributes will still need to be changed, take the ground plane for example. It is too reflective.

I am still not 100% sure about it yet but my main focus is matching the shadows etc to that of the image. I will need to do some more tweaking to this shot next week but for now, I think it's coming on nicely.

Week 29: Mastronauts - meeting

Tom, Kieran and I had another meeting today.

We discussed the individual tasks we are currently undertaking and how we were getting on.

 The aim is that next week we will try and get our preparation done to begin filming asap.
We went up to the library today to work out if the location will be suitable enough for the shot we need and if us filming there would be acceptable. It was explained to us that it may be fine but we will need to check with another member of the library staff first.

I also brought up the projection situation and Kieran explained that he wanted to take on the tasks involved in that one shot. He is going to look into photogrammetry to complete the task of creating the photo-realistic CG room. This worked out well for both him and myself, as I am much more interested in the rendering and compositing stages of the shots revolving around the character in the live action environments. This development should now give me the time to do this.

So primarily I will be looking at lighting, rendering and compositing and I am very happy with that!

Tom and Kieran have currently set up the tracking and animation of the test we began a little while back. So starting today, I am going to look into getting the lighting set up.

Week 29: Going Live - Visit to Axis

Yesterday, we finally got to meet up with the guys from axis and show them the film we made.

I'm not going to lie, I was super nervous about the whole thing. Over-all though,  the day was very enjoyable. The guys at Axis were lovely.

With all the sharing of the film we've had some pretty good feedback. The views so far have reached over 20,000 and Axis, The Tolkien Society and a few other places (DJCAD as shown above) have shared the video and made some lovely comments. Overall it's pretty exciting.

We also got to run down to Digimania yesterday, which was great. The guys there could not have been more welcoming and I really enjoyed seeing how they work. So, Wednesday turned out to be a pretty good day.


Oh, I haven't even posted the film yet.
So I hear Vimeo does not play too well with Blogger.

Nevermind, here's the link:

Our Going Live film: Concerning Dragons