Digital Matte Painting

Skyfall Moodboard

Skyfall Color Palette

Twilight inspiration
Gloomy
A single goat up in the mountains
Great distances
Fog and mist
Overcast

Blade Runner Moodboard

Blade Runner Color Palette

Sci-Fi
Planets in the sky
Purple/Blue color scheme
Someone (person or animal) looking over a city
Skyscraper city
Wideshot of city
Nighttime

Lion King Moodboard

Lion King Color Palette

Simple savannah
Sunset/Golden hour
Warm
Siluette
Yellow grass in the front
Single tree in the distance, thats the focal point

Skyfall

Skyfall Slap Comp

Source Photos

Wide version before crop

Skyfall Final

My original plan was to do the entire photo as wide shot. However, as I was working on the photo I liked the vertical version better. Also, it saved me time since I was in a time crunch. Therefore I made the decision to change into a vertical picture.

Blade Runner

Blade Runner Slap Comp

Blade Runner Source Photos

Blade Runner Final

Originally the plan was to have planets in the sky. However, due to time limitations I did not have the time to blend and adjust them to the scene. I decided to cut them out, and ended up liking the result better without the planets.

Lion King

Lion King Slap Comp

Lion King Source Photos

Lion King Final

It was difficult to blend the different bushes and grounds together, but playing with colors did the trick. I also messed around with eraser to blend them.

Breakdown

Frankenstein

Pre – Production

Notes about Guillermo Del Torro:

Blue Sepia colors
Darker
Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Grain
Goth
Bland colors

Moodboard

Slap Comp Idea 1

The idea is a 5-10 second long clip where the camera is slowly paning. I haven’t decided which direction but I want it to pan from side to side. I’m getting a mixamo character with a simple walking animation that will walk forward slowly, this is Frankenstein. It will be very dark, no lights except some from the sky. You can only see the siluette of the character. The buildings on the street are going to be older, bricks and worn down a little bit. I want to create sort of a gothic vibe. Lightning will flash multiple times which lights up the scene.

Slap Comp Idea 2

The second idea is a castle with lightning in the background. Pan from left to right. The shot is around 5-10 seconds. It will be very dark, darker than this picture. More of a siluette. Very gothic dark themed. The lightning will brighten up the scene in flashes.

Plan for how I’m going to work with the project in terms of time management.

Referenceboard

Creating the lightning and fog

How I created the base geometry for the lightning in Houdini

Adding noise and color, then making the lines into geometry.

This is what the lightning looks like per now. It will most likely change throughout the process.

Creating the lightning wasn’t too hard as I have done lightning in Houdini. It’s basicly just adding noise to a line with more lines connecting to it. The system I set up for the lightning can be used and modified for other projects very easily.

Creating the base cloud for the sky/storm

The base cloud for now

I made a base cloud for the sky, and I will make more clouds to add to this. This is basicly a background for my other clouds which will be more dense and fluffy.

Creating the fog around the lightning.

The lightning fog for now

Created a fog for the lightning to give it more of a halo/glow effect. It adds to the look of the lightning in the end.

Base cloud, fog and lightning together as of now. I will add more clouds and most likely do more adjustments to the lightning.

Matte Painting

Environment Slap Comp

Started creating the environment in Photoshop. The first thing I did was to create a slap comp. I roughly cut out my images and put them together to get an idea of the composition.

Environment after blending the layers and doing minor adjustments

I started blending and cleaning up the edges and also fixing the distortion and perspective of the buildings.

Creating clouds and setting up scene in Houdini

Creating extra fluffy clouds for the sky

The result of the fluffy clouds

I started with creating one cloud. I used a geometry and noised that up, converted it to a volume and noised up that too until I got a cloud I liked. I then used the same system for multiple different shapes to get a nice bundle of clouds. Then moved them around and merged them together.

Added another lightning with the same method as the first one. I adjusted the transform and noise to change it up a little bit.

I added another lightning by copying the lightning geometry node in the object network, and then I made some adjustments. I changes the transform, scaling and timing of the new lightning in order for it not to match the first lightning.

Added the character with animation into the scene

The character from mixamo after added into the scene with animation

I added the character to the scene. The character is retrieved from mixamo with a walking animation added to it. It came with a sword through the stomach and I just removed it with the blast node. Then I retimed it to start walking when the lightning hits.

Added another cloud like the basecloud but as fog for the bottom of the scene

The scene in Houdini with a sketch of the enviroment added to the camera.

Setup in the object network with lights and camera.

Setup in render network. Each layer is seperated into their own render node in order for each layer to render and be adjusted seperatly. The merge node allows for all the nodes to render at the same time but in seperate layers.

Rough render of the entire scene.

Finishing matte painting

Environment after making adjustments to color and exposure.

Environment after adding a sky and fog layers

Compositing

The setup for the matte painting in Nuke. Adding it to cards. Grade node to adjust the density of the fog layers.

The matte painting in 3D view in Nuke

First comp draft after putting all layers from matte painting and houdini scene on cards and creating the scene in Nuke.

New Houdini render with some adjustments

Added a shadow for the character

Node graph for the character shadow

Added light reflection on the ground

Node graph for adding the ground reflection

Faded the back buildings to the background

Node graph of how I faded the back buildings

Added lights that affected the environment to replicate the light from the lightning.

Added 3D lights with keying on the intensity to match the lightning strikes

The setup for the houdini renders. Added glow to the lightning

The entire nodegraph in nuke for the project

The finished comp

Final output with color grade and vignette

Final Video

Breakdown

Wall – E

Individual Ideas

Moodboard

Ideas for the project to create in Houdini

Ideas for what I would like to do in Nuke

Group Idea

In a group with Olivia

We are creating a wide shot with a large scale environment. Its going to be sunny and warm lighting, and very dry and dusty environment.

My tasks

Create building destructions in Houdini
Create atmospheric dust/sand and particles in Houdini
Comp together in Nuke

Olivia’s tasks

Model buildings and environment in Maya
Texture building and environment in Substance Painter
Setup camera and lighting for render in Maya

Our main reference image, the look and composition we would like.

Wall-E Color Palette

Creating dust particles

Node tree for the dust particles

Node tree for creating the dust shapes

The dust shapes merged together

Node tree for creating the point cloud

Pointcloud

Adding animation to the points in the pointcloud before copy to points

Using copy to points to copy the dust shapes onto the points in the pointcloud

The dust specs

Creating flying sand for the ground

Creating a source for the sand

Scatter points on grid

Delete all points with a color value of 0 (black).

Adding a POP sim to create simplified version of the movement

Node graph for creating the source geo

The pyro source

Node graph for the pyro source

The simulated sand

Setting up the pyro simulation

POP network for sand specs

Finished sand specs

Node graph for sand specs

Sand specs and flying sand combined together

Nodegraph for the sand

Building Destruction

Creating the initial fracture

The node graph for the main fracture

Smaller fracture and debris

Node graph for creating the debris

The collision geometry

Node graph for the collision geometry

Node graph for setting up the RBD simulation

The entire node graph at the present time

First draft of the building destruction. I want to control the breakage more and will work on that.

Geometry with animation to guide the active attribute.

The green visualizes the active attribute.

Nodegraph for final portion of the destruction.

VDB of building

Nodegraph for setting up destruction as VDB for collision

Final Destruction

Destruction Smoke/Dust

Nodegraph for first portion of smoke sim.

The yellow dots visualize the debris source

Initliazing the smoke sim

The result of creating the volumes from the attributes.

Finished smoke sim

Setting up the smoke simulation.

The complete nodegraph for the smoke simulation

A flipbook of the smoke simulation.

The node graph in the object network.

Compositing

Set up for the sky.

The sky

Set up for the ground.

Ground

Set up for the background buildings.

Set up for the middleground buildings.

BG and MG buildings.

Set up for the destruction simulation.

The destruction simulation.

Setting up the buildings in the foreground. Doing adjustments to the stone to integrate them more.

FG before adjustments to the stones.

FG after adjustmets to the stone.

Set up for the flying sand. Using the FG as a stencil for the sand.

After adding in the sand layer.

After adjusting the sand with FG buildings as stencil.

Set up for the dust specs.

After adding the dust specs.

Set up for creating vignette.

Set up for the grade.

The finished look after grade and vignette.

First Comp Draft

I had to render out the building one more time because the smoke was not acting how it was supposed to. I realized that I had by accident chosen the wrong version in the file cache to render out. The issue with this version is that the smoke isn’t dissipating at the end quickly enough, and it hangs in the air after the building goes down. In addition, I had to render the ground sand again because it was completely frozen. The issue here was that I hadn’t selected the entire frame range in my retime node, so it froze early on.

Final

Breakdown

The breakdown is only showing my work in this group project.

You’ll find the other portion of this project at Olivia’s site: Live Brief | oliviacurrie (uwl.ac.uk)

Christmas Advert

Brainstorming Ideas

Potential Companies

VY (Trains)
Posten (Mail)
Tine (Cheese & Milk)
Gilde (Meat)
Grandiosa (Frozen Pizza)

Ideas

Advertisement for a train company in Norway.

Main Shot:

A train driving forward at the bottom of the shot, and camera zooms out slowly with more and more nature coming into view. The view is filled with mountains, northern lights, snow and stunning visuals.

Additional shot:

Beginning shot of someone sitting in a train looking out the window. You see the northern lights reflect on their face as they sit there. The it cuts to the second shot, which is the main shot.

Inspiration/Moodboard:

Tine

Advertisement for Brown Cheese

The shot:

A brown cheese on a table. Window in the background with northern lights. Pans downwards from window to cheese. The window is a little bit open and a sparkle trail flies in through the window towards the cheese. Focus shifts from window to the cheese. Sparkles around the cheese to reveal text. Goes from “Brown Cheese” to “Merry Christmas”. Other Christmas related elements on the table, but not as main focus.

Inspiration:

The last shot in this advert:

The movement of the ‘Sparkles’ in this commercial:

Pre – Production

The Idea: Train commercial for VY

Moodboard

Color Palette

Concept Art

Storyboard

The train model

The model was found on sketchfab by artist Timblewee.

Production

First draft of matte painted environment

The final image is not going to be black and white, but I find it easier in the beginning of the process to make adjustments and blend when there are no colors in the photo. The black line moving across is going to be the train tracks.

Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) early look devs

These are some early look developments of the northern lights that I am creating in Houdini. This is just to get an idea color wise and shape.

I started working on the northern lights. However, I’m not the biggest fan of the look at the moment. It’s not smooth enough. It feels very streaky and blocky as of now.

Further developing the matte painting

Fixed the poles and the wires

Blended edges

Color Correction

Some final adjustments

Look developments of the shot while working

Early developments just trying to put together the scene in Houdini

Some different developments of the northern lights.

This was the one I originally went with, however something happened with my file and I wasn’t able to go back to that excact look. I therefor decided to further work with it and ended up with a quite different look.

Originally I wanted loads of northern lights in various colors but ended up with a little less.

This is closer to the end result.

Creating the northern lights in Houdini

I started with creating the curves that would be the source for creating the northern lights. The resample node scattered points on the curve, and the carve node I used to animated the line growing and decreasing.

Another resample node to scatter points on the curve we made. Then using vector operators (VOPs) to create smaller and larger noises moving along the curve. Then the noise color sets up noise for the height of the streaks later on. Using a wrangle node we create channels to control the height, and another to adjust the orientation of the lines. Then using copy to points we scatter lines onto the points on the curve.

The UV texture creates a slight fade to the top of the streaks and the wrangle creates a channel ramp to controll the width of the polywire so it’s thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top.

Then we convert this into a volume and blur it so the lines aren’t as harsh. We use the VOP to control the density.

Used the same setup with slight adjustments to the blur and height to add more streaks, another layer.

This is the setup for the northern lights. The initial streaks, added streaks and a very blured out low denisty version to act as fog.

To setup the train I split the train into two seperate parts, the front and the back, and then used transform to animate the trains movement.

This was the final setup in the object level with the multiple layers of northern lights and the render setup with cameras and lights.

Compositing

Setup for the houdini renders in Nuke

Using roto and grade I created a fade on the bottom of the northern lights to integrate them better to the environment.

To create a shadow I used the train and used transform and mirror to flip it so it mirrors the train. The grade made it dark and dissolve adjusted the opacity, then a little bit of blur and putting it on a card.

The setup for the matte painting

Using roto I blended the sky and the top of the mountains more.

I used roto and grade to fix a small patch in the mountains.

Using roto I separated the back mountains to darken them slightly more to enhance the depth feeling.

The node graph of the back mountains and the adjustments made to them.

Using roto I was able to grade the city seperatly to keep the light from the city warm while the rest has a slight more blue tint.

Used edgeblur and erode to blend the edges on the front snow more with the scene.

The scene in 2D view

The scene in 3D view

The whole setup for the compositing

First Draft

I got feedback to try integrate the train more to the scene, by creating a shadow for example. Another was that the grading and blur was to heavy on the scene. Also there was to much paralax so the cards needed adjustment and slow the camera movement down.

Final Version

Breakdown

Challenge

Pre – Production

The idea is to get a 3D character with a dancing animation from mixamo. Then using Houdini to add a blue magic trail coming from the hands and feet while dancing.

Color Palette

Moodboard

Concept Art

Storyboard

After a lesson, my teachers gave me an idea on the background and setup for my project. I decided to follow this advice and use the video below as my referance to the scene. I therefor decided to not go with the city background as originally planned.

Production

Houdini Simulation

The setup for the character

Importing the character and animation.

Cleaning up the attributes and grouping the hands and seperating them from the body.

Seperating each hand and using polyfill to fill the gap on the back of the hands.

Scatter points on the surface on the hand and computing the velocity.

Optimizing the stepping so it runs smoothly. Creating a trail and adding points between the frames.

Using a wrangle to set a density attribute and noised up the position. Then noised up the density values as well. Lastly rasterizing the attribute into a volume.

Rasterizing the velocity attribute.

Creating a costume velocity by using a color grade and parameters from the noised up hand.

Noising up the hand slightly.

Scattering points inside a bounding box.

Creating a custom velocity field by using attribute transfer to transfer the velocity into the bounding region and also setting a velocity within that field.

The initial nodegraph for the velocity field.

Using the density, velocity and custom velocity field to create a smoke simulation. This will be the source for the particle simulations later on.

The initial nodegraph for the smoke simulation.

LAYER 1

The source for the particles to birth from.

The particle simulation with a color ramp added to it.

The node graph for layer 1

LAYER 2

The source for birthing particles in layer 2. Nearly same method as layer 1, however additional geometry was added through creating a trail between frames and adding points between.