Tuesday, 24 March 2009
Thursday, 19 March 2009
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
Cover Art
I've been working on the cover art over the last couple of weeks and here is a poster that really sells the project....
The final render is coming soon.....
UPDATE
Here’s just a quick update of where I am with this project. The visual effects sequence is nearly complete now I’m just touching parts up….I have also made a VFX breakdown video which I’ll be posting very soon.
On the 1st of April the Lambton Worm is going to be in the Northern Echo so hopefully you guys will catch that.
My reprot is finished now which will give a few weeks head start on my other modules.
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Monday, 23 February 2009
Planning for this week
This week I am working on a visual effects shot that shows a animated sequence of a road being affected by the weight of the Lambton Worm. I will be using both 2D and 3D elements to compete this shot.
First of all I am going to take one of my stills and line it up in XSI. I’m going to use this picture as a texture projection. I’m then planning on freezing that texture projection so that I can animate the objects.
After Rendering I’ll then take the sequence and the photograph into After Effects where I will be adding the final colour grade and camera movements.
The benefit of this shot is that it will help my entire sequence flow a lot better.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Lambton worm edit beta 3.2
I decided to add a news report to the sequence.. The reason behind this is that it adds to the story. I'm planning on taking my voice out of it and replacing it with the voice of my friend Mark. Who has a very broad american voice.
Also to note most of the shots with Davy in are just about complete.
Sunday, 1 February 2009
Lambton worm edit beta 3.1
After review my edit earlier today I found that some of the sound effects didn’t really fit anymore. So after some careful thinking I have decided to take them out. I’ve also been working on the last shot of this edit which is the hand which I’ve been rotoing all weekend while working at Stressholme. It looks a lot better than the earlier version but I’m still not totally happy with it.
Hole in ground shot breakdown
First Crack shot
My intention of the next series of shots was to show the audience the devastation the Lambton worm was creating with-in Darlington town centre. When I first designed this project I was going to create a series of shots that showed the ground cracking. I created some early test shots. However I found that the animation did not look right.
I then tried to create a simulation using a 3rd party plug-in for Maya called blast-code. Basically with this program you create the surface (nurbs suface) , you then create a bomb and play with the settings so that the ground cracks. What I found is that the ground cracks pretty well. However the only problem I found is that the geometry seems to collide with its self. This moves me on to the next problem I came across. I wanted to create a camera projection of the road which was pretty easy. However I also wanted to create a texture for the inside of the road. The problem with this is that Blast-code could not handle sub-surface texturing.
Knowing that Blast-code wasn’t producing what I wanted I decided to take a different approach. I decided to show the devastation the worm had all ready created. This meant that all I had to do was create a hole in the ground.
I decided to use 3D studio max for this problem. The reason I decided to use this piece of software because I found I can produce photorealistic renders with less effort then say XSI.
The first thing I did was that I imported the picture of the shot that I was going to create. I then lined the grid up with the picture so that it matched the ground and the perspective. I then created a ground plane and applied a shadow matte shader to it. This is a special texture that makes the plane transparent; however it also has the ability to receive casted shadows.
I then created another plane for the hole. I simply created a displacement map so that it appeared that the hole had depth and detail.
After looking through my research I found it necessary to create some debris. To create every piece by hand would have taken hours. So I devised a plan and created the digital debris in particle flow which comes with 3D studio max. With particle flow you create a small groups of objects (in my case rocks). You then create a plane to tell the debris where it should be placed. After setting the amount and the randomness you get a field of rocks all shapes and sizes.
Keying
This was a nice and easy shot to complete. The live action content of this shot took place at a studio at my university.
It was then a simple task of keying the character out. For this I used DV-Matte pro which is a 3rd party plug-in for After effects.
One of the nicer qualities of DV-Matte pro is that is keys in a number of stages. For of all you create a basic matte. You then create a detailed matte. The detailed matte allows you to keep the finer elements of your character such as his finer hair follicles.
I then added my backplate which was shot in Darlington town centre.
After adding grain, colour matching and adding fog the shot was compete. As final touch I added a fake camera move. This was achieve by keyframming the position of the comp in both the X and Y axis
Quick update
Hello guys it’s been some time since I’ve updated this blog. But just to let you know that things are going pretty well. I’ve just completed another edit this one has some new shots which will hopefully add to the story telling. Hopefully this will all make sense when the final sequence has been created.
I have about five shots to film and about another three to polish.
My aims now are to get this sequence finished so that I can concentrate on my breakdowns for my showreel.
Here’s edit number three.