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WORKING
Well, I am actually here on my first day at UFO Films getting settled. Basically I am just checking out the project I will be working on. Cool stuff.
Of course there is the whole issue of getting a system setup to work on. One cool thing is I actually have one of the brand new WACOM Intuos 3 tablet. It's a small one, but I can see why this is so talked about. It has buttons which can cover for the hotkeys which normally take attention from the work to the keyboard. I read once how this guy was using a Playstation controller to cover for this use, and that is cool, but having a few buttons right on the tablet can be a very cool thing.
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I Have Seen
Yesterday I actually went down to Unified Film Organization, where I will soon be working, to check the place out and meet the people. Surprisingly, or maybe not so, there were a few guys I already knew or at least knew of working there. The Lightwave world is pretty tight after all.
It was an easy drive, which is important to me, and it seems a nice atmosphere with good people. I will enjoy it there very much, but that's not what I really wanted to talk about.
Layers aren't just something which is used in post production on a somewhat complex shot like I mention below. Layers can prove instrumental in helping to develop a single image, as I will now explain.
Shortly after Understanding Chaos came out on DVD, I wanted to get into my next project. I started work on a show called A.M.P., which stood for Airship Millennium Project. Some may remember the trailer on this site years ago. I wanted to improve my visuals over Chaos so I decided to so something of a big matte painting style image for the trailer. I wasn't sure how to do it exactly, but I knew it would involve layers and could not be done 100% 3D. What you see above is the very simplistic 3D image I began with. In that image the sky was included in the base 3D render. I would never do that today.
The city was meant to be destroyed, but the first thing that had to be done was to eliminate the obviously 3D look over everything and create depth to the background. This was done in more layers and steps than I am showing here, but the result should give the idea how far it can go. Even completely 2D building structures were added in based on the original 3D image.
Adding depth and weathering to the background made the foreground stand out like a sore thumb. So now it had to be put through the process of weathering and removing anything that made it feel too 3D. This took a number of steps, but the result was more than worth it. This was probably the happiest I had been with any single image I had done. It a few days to accomplish, but was very satisfying.
A.M.P. never went into production. I did some boards, but could never get it started in a way that I liked. So, not wanting to waste time, I went on to do Shadowskin. Some tips learned on that next!
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Things Are Not Always As They Seem
OK, I want to talk about layers for a bit. I remember in the good old days of animating in Lightwave 3D, it was customary to have everything happen in camera. This means that what you saw on the screen in the final shot, all existed in a single Lightwave project and was rendered as is. I knew that the big movies were doing shots in multiple layers, but I never saw the benefit of working that way for myself.
About that time, I saw the movie Contact on DVD and it contained some of the best extra features I have ever seen. (Here I will try to avoid a long rant about how DVD extras back then were so much better than the pop entertainment foolishness they put out today.) On that DVD I saw exactly how and why to use layers for the benefit of the work. I saw a better way.
Around that same time I started getting into a program called Adobe After Effects. While working on a game at Westwood Studios, I did my first project which was rendered in layers. I still didn't quite see the benefit.
About the time of my second project, just weeks later, I came across a new software called Aura, which would later become my current tool of choice, Mirage. As I learned this software, with its realtime feedback, the true benefits to working layers became clear to me. I saw that not only did I not have to render everything in the scene for every frame, things like backgrounds could be rendered only once, but that things like shadows and reflections could be rendered separately and adjusted, blurred, colored, changed over time, you name it! I realized limitless possibilities. On Understanding Chaos, I employed these tools like this:
In this scene I had Han walking up to a screen which displayed information about the unknown soldiers attacking the base, and I wanted to see his reflection in the screen. Thinking in layers, I rendered a single frame of the background, which I then painted over to get the proper look. The empty screen, however, is actually just a hole. There is nothing there, so I can later put anything I choose behind it.
The screen itself was created in another project file, using a "type on" script for the text to write in. It also had a 3D element of a spinning soldier. That animation was simply placed on a polygon in Lightwave and rendered in the area where the screen should appear. Today this could simply be properly placed in the right position and at the right angle all in Mirage.
I saw no need to render an actual reflection. What I did was simply place a copy of the hallway with Han walking in it behind the hole where the screen was. The original image of the background with a hole for the screen could be used as a "matte" to cut out all the parts that you wouldn't see.
Finally, in a project by himself, I rendered Han walking up the screen. This was only a few frames as he appears only at the end. If I did this in camera, I would have to calculate all those reflections in 3D for each frame of Han approaching. Just too much time wasted.
Finally, when all the elements go together I have complete control over how bright the screen is, how much of the reflection we see, and I can have Han appear at whatever moment looks best on screen, even if it's not perfectly accurate. I could also blur, lighten, darken or in any manner process the reflection or screen however I see fit. I am not stuck with any particular look. If I did it in camera, and decided the reflection should be brighter, I would have to rerender the whole thing!
So that is only the beginning on my work with layers and 2D elements in what I do. There are some things I do differently today because Mirage is far more powerful and I have a graphics tablet to draw with. I will get more into that in future posts.
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THE SEARCH IS OVER!
It is official. My long and grueling hunt for gainful employment has come to an end. I am now joining the staff of UFO Films where I will be putting my Lightwave 3D and compositing skills to VFX work. Things could not have turned out more perfect.
What makes this a great gig is that UFO is very organized in their productions and, as a result, they don't need to put their artists through 80 - 100 hour weeks to cover for bad management like some places I may have worked at in the past. It's a normal work schedule. This means plenty of time outside of work to do with as I please, and you know what that means!
Now I can feel comfortable in planning a long term project, free of the worry of whether or not I'll be moving to who knows where or what I will do to complete it. Basically I can do exactly what was done to make Chaos a reality!
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Keep On Movin'
Things are moving along and I am told that I may be very close to the realm of employment! I am praying that is the case.
In the meantime, some new years updates are taking place. Newtek recently release Lightwave 8.2 which I just finished properly installing and registering. I also never got around properly setting and registering up my copy of modo, so I will be doing that next.
Once everything is back to the latest and greatest, I will post a little something on layers, which I mentioned last week. Aside from that I am mulling over mind animation and gathering thoughts on the best way to use the time which can be put into a long term project. I am not yet sure what it will be, but images are forming.
More on that later...
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HAPPY NEW YEAR!
It's well into the new year and I haven't posted anything so I guess I should update. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. I think it's time make things really happen for 2005!
My job hunt continues. I haven't found anything yet, though I had one seemingly positive interview. Who knows. I did a little side job which helps out a bunch, but I see new job postings up for this week and I will certainly attack them.
In the meantime, I don't want to sit idle either, so I will get back to posting some tips and techniques here and I will start doing some mind animation. I am not saying just yet where that mind will be focused as I don't want to jump the gun, but if I create anything today I'll probably throw it up. If nothing else, I want to talk about layers as I make the transition from talking about some of my old techniques to talking about some of the new. Look for it here soon!
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