Major Project – Portal

For my major project, I will create 30 second dreamlike and fantasy genre short live-action video with my course mate, Izabella. we will film green screen footages in the studio and combine this footage with 2D elements after tracking the camera. I will create a background environment in Maya and Bridge.

Concept Art

We drew simple story board and listed a narrative.

Shot List

SHOT 1 : There is a girl standing in living room and a magic portal suddenly appears in distance. When the portal opens, the background changes to wireframe. The girl approaches to the portal.
SHOT 2 : She looks inside of the portal bravely.
SHOT 3 : The camera shows inside of the portal with camera closing up. Into the portal there is another dimension, dreamy world, with nature and animals.
SHOT 4 : The girl decides to get through the portal with curiosity. When she enters into the portal, the background turns back to normal.

PROJECT PROCESS

Green Screen Scene

This video is our first PREVIS. We filmed a green screen shot in the studio and combined together within 4 shots.

Living Room Background in Maya

I created the environment of the living room in Maya for the background of scene with using Bridge. A camera data in 3D Equalizer (Izabella) is applied into the scene after that I rendered out.

2D Elements from ActionVFX

To make Magic Portal for the scene, I brought some footages from website which is called “ActionVFX”

SHOT01

Tacking Camera

For the ‘Shot 1’, since the camera has a movement, Izabella had tracked the camera in 3DE and brought all cam data into Nuke.

Marker Removal & Keying

On the clean plate (marks removal) shot, I did keying out green screen, using IBK Colour, to add the background that created in Maya.

Adding a Portal Element

I added Portal effect on the scene. 2D Portal footage used with card node by connecting to 3D camera tracked projection.
After I put Portal effect, I applied the matte painting shot (Izabella created) into the portal, and used Heatwave gizmo around Portal footage to make it look distorted while the portal opened.

Creating Transition Effect

To make background transition effect from textured to wireframe background, I used noise and distort nodes. I referred to this video link

SHOT02

In this shot, a girl looked into the portal after she found that portal opened.

Keying & Adding Portal

Same as previous shot process, I used IBK Colour to keying out green colour on the background. And I added portal effect on the foreground.

SHOT03

In this shot, other dimension is showing close and close as a girl’s point of view.

Matte Painting

Izabella created this shot, Digital Matte Painting, using Photoshop and Nuke 3D camera projection.
In DMP, A deer is sitting on the street, and turns its head and looks at her.
matte painting shot is applied into portal and put it on the wireframe background.

SHOT04

In this shot, a girl steps into the portal and when she gets through the gate, the wireframe background suddenly backs to normal, and then she’s gone.