Week 1 – Digital Matte Painting

For our first week we looked at matte painting. Which is the art of making backgrounds for entertainment using different techniques. Historically matte painting have been painted by artists traditionally. Some famous examples come from the Star Wars franchise. However nowadays most projects make digital matte paintings most commonly using a technique where multiple images are composited together to make a cohesive shot.

What makes a good matte painting?

When analysing matte painting there as a few commonalities which stand out:

• Framing and composition of the image to establish a focal point
• Contrast fades towards the background of the image to establish focal point further forward
• Colour theory to make certain aspects stand out. For example, red contrasting with green
• Often the background of images fades to blue
• Depth of field

After this studying we were then set a task to create 3 matte paintings one on each of the themes which were:

• Skyfall inspired highlands
• Bladerunner/futuristic urban scene
• Savannah

Work in class

This is the work I started in class. Here I was learning the tools and thinking through ideas. We worked in Photoshop which is the standard for this discipline.

Bladerunner

Work from home

Skyfall Highlands inspired

A breakdown showing one step per image

The finished comp before colour correction

The final comp

This image highlights the images used, with the red boxes highlighting which elements came from which photograph

Breakdown

Here is a video breakdown of the progress of this matte painting

 

A breakdown showing one step per image

Images used

Before colour correction

 

The final comp

 

Breakdown

Here is a video breakdown of the progress of this matte painting

Savannah

A breakdown showing one step per image

Images used

Before colour correction

Final Comp

Breakdown

Overall thoughts

Having a short deadline for this task meant I had to learn the software quickly so there was a lot of experimenting and trying things out. I got comfortable with adjustment layers and became good at refining key words when searching for images. I found the topics discussed during the lesson really helped when making the pieces as there were aspects of a matt painting that I knew to aim for (especially desaturation). Overall I’m happy with the result although I know with more time they could be improved

Week 2

This we have launched the Frankenstein brief where are tasked with making a shot that could exist within a Frankenstein movie directed by Guillermo del Toro.

My idea is to make an environment with a staircase and potentially a silhouette of the character at the top or the bottom.

References

Dracula 1931

I really like this scene as a reference point as it captures the atmospheric lighting I am looking for and potential framing

These are shots from Crimson Peak (2015) which is another one of Guillermo del Toro’s films. I like the lighting of the first shot with the deep greens. I also quite like the wear on the staircase in the second shot

Using animals or assets for scale

Something I would like to make a note of is using animals and objects for scale.

At the moment my shot will focus on the staircase with some small movement most likely caused by a bat or shadow. Light coming through the windows, atmospheric lighting

Practical work

Making the staircase

To start with I researched making the staircase to try and find the best way to go about it.

Initially my thinking was to use Houdini to make a procedural staircase as I wanted to be able to modify the number of stairs/width throughout the project in case I changed my mind. However I quickly dropped that plan when I realised how many gaps in my knowledge there were with that software. Acknowledging the time scale I have I didn’t think this was worth it.

I then moved into Blender as I had researched a way to do it there.

Here are a few of screenshots of that process.

Ultimately I decided to move in to Maya as it where I am most comfortable with the overall pipeline and I knew I could get help from lecturers if I needed it.

Once settled in Maya I was able to make a staircase I was happy with.

I then moved on to making windows, I knew I wanted them to be a specific style to go with the theme/aesthetic of the piece, so I found a drawing of one that I used as a reference and modelled that and the extruded it out.

Here you can see I made multiple versions and one I left as an outline frame to Boolean out of the side wall.

I then took the whole project over to substance painter. These textures could be refined, I just wanted to add some general texture to the piece now to see how it looks.

Here is the result so far, I am pleased with the overall feeling it gives and I think it’s a good start. The only lighting in the scene right now is one area light coming through the windows as I wanted to see how it looks, but I will refine this and add more light in the future.

Week 3

Presentation of progress

Feedback on the presentation has directed my focus on what needs to be improved which is adding more elements to the scene. An idea was put forward to add in a doorway in the empty space screen left and potentially have a shadow of a figure being cast through. Therefore my next task is to work on making the doorway

In class I did a little bit of work on the door

Working on the door

I first modelled the base door making sure to place the pivot correctly so the door could be opened

I then worked on the frame

Here is the base model finished, I made this by mirroring both objects. I combined the archway into one mesh so that it could be handled correctly

In order to add the door I had to redo the staircase texturing so it looks worse than it did original right now but I will correct that later, for now I just wanted to get the door in place and have a render of that effect

Week 4 Presentation

This is the presentation I made to showcase the work I have done to the project in the last week

In class work on making the door bigger and extending the stairwell

At home work this week

The first thing I did at home was to disrupt the regularity and straight lines of the stair case.

I then imported the stairs into blender so that I could make the bannister rail

Here it is imported into Maya, I haven’t textured it at this point but it is in place and working well with the scene

Next I wanted to try making a candelabra.

Due to time constraints for the project I didn’t want to spend too long on the modelling of this therefore I’m sure I could make it better/fine tune it if I had more time

Adding a pillar was something I remembered to do right at the end of this day. The pillar, bannister and candelabras remain untextured however they are a proof of concept

Modelling and texturing the candles

I decided to make the flame material in Maya as I knew I could make an emissive material with a colour ramp. This ended up working really well and I am pleased with this asset

Creating a camera movement for the shot

 

I camera move to be subtle yet focus on the character shadow so I made a kind of swooping shot that begins to centre on the character throughout

Adding the character

I got the character from Mixamo by Adobe. Imported the character and a walk animation to Maya and resized it to fit the archway I had made for the door

I also modified the light again as I found that a spotlight gave the best shadow.

Additionally I made the character static and chose one pose that they would hold the entire time this is because I wanted a creepy silhouette that I could choose

Adding in a bat animation

Though my original plan was to find a bat animation online potentially using AI, I found it hard to find one that I thought would be suitable. Most were swarms of bats which I didn’t think fit particularly well with th scene, therefore I decided to make my own by tracing a reference and bringing those graphics into After Effects to make an animation

The bat animation isolated

The bat composited on the door opening sequence

The bat composited on the door always open sequence

Overall although combining a new technique and more artistry I felt like this made the look of the piece feel cheap and made it look more like student work. I do like the effect but I don’t think it integrated seamlessly enough. I will see what feedback I get though as I can always add it back into the composition later

This is a still from the first render

This is the result of the first render. I’m pleased with how this turned out however on reflection I would like to change the spot light colour to a slight red, in keeping with the light from the windows as I feel this would make the shot more cohesive. However I do think that the white might end up being for the best because it does contrast well and draw the eye.

Experimenting with the red lighting on the character and a door opening animation

I decided to make some new renders to look at each variation I am contemplating for the final shot

These are

• Door open – white lighting
• Door open – red lighting
• Door animated – white lighting
• Door animated – red lighting

Here is a compilation of the results

Changing the length of the door opening animation

On reflection I decided to change tweak the door animation to make it take longer, I felt this would add more suspense to the scene

This was the result of that experiment. I realised I didn’t like the result as much and also that I had somehow tweaked the camera

Final shot for week 4

After many iterations I decided the one I like the most most is the one with the door constantly open and the light being white (to contrast) the red light from the windows.

Here is that result

Showreel of how the shot was made

Changing camera angle and pace

Following the last round of feedback, this week I worked on changing the camera set up to make a more atmospheric shot. I experimented with the aspect ratio and depth of field.

Here is a video showing three different experiments

Final shot with new camera

For my final shot with the new camera I decided to go with the no depth of field linear option as I didn’t like the fact that with the depth of field the top of the characters shadow was blurred

Frankenstein showreel

 

Starting WALL-E brief (group project)

Our next project was to make a decaying environment

Going off of each individuals interests we divided the scene into specific elements that each person would work on

Aaron – Houdini simulation of building collapsing

Arthur – Asset modelling and comp

Me – Asset modelling/texturing

Rushil – Houdini Simulation of truck exploding

Rushyang – Unreal engine environment

Subha – Matte painting

This is a block out of the shot, the building collapse will be Aaron’s sim and the floating block is Rushil’s truck fire sim

I am responsible for modelling and texturing the foreground buildings that will be put in to the unreal environment

This is an initial mockup I made of a building based on the concept art

After building the initial model in Maya I discovered that I’d modelled it in a way that made it very difficult to texture so I started modelling it in blender in the hope to get a better result

Week 7 progress

Here is a screenshot of my building from the presentation we gave this week. The last picture is the FBX inserted into the unreal environment

Week 8 progress

This week I worked on adding details to the building and texturing it

Here is a turntable animation of the model textured in Maya

Week 9

Here is the progress of our composite this week

My building was used as both foreground buildings

Final WALL-E  Brief showreel

Week 10

Christmas advert ideas powerpoint

The advert idea that was chosen for me was idea number 2, the Christmas cookies. I was asked to also add in some Houdini or Nuke work that made the cookies look like they were being iced in the advertisement.

I started working on the cookie modelling and also the scene layout

Additionally I did an experiment in Houdini to see how complicated it would be to make the icing simulation

I decided to limit myself to 4 designs at it is only a two week project.

Here you can see initially I was going to put blanket icing on the house and the tree however I changed my mind about this as I thought the house would be an easier design to run the sim on the the candy cane.

I didn’t spend too long on the textures, I think more could be done here to make these look realistic however I need to make sure I have enough time to complete the Houdini and seeing up the advert in Maya.

Here are a couple of images from when I was setting my scene up in Maya. I have modelled a baking tray and a plate for some finished cookies however I have not textured these yet.

For now my plan is to do a simple pan with the camera. Have the fresh out of the over un-iced cookies on the left, in the middle have the ones being magically iced by the sim in Houdini, and on the right a place of all of the varieties of cookie stacked on top of each other.

My main concern at the moment is how I will export the iced cookie is geometry to be rendered and manipulated in Maya. But I shall figure out this issue soon.

Experimenting with Houdini

To figure out the icing simulation I did some research and found out I could draw a curve in Houdini add geometry to it and then use a path deform node to display that geometry across a number of frames. This sim will have to tweak a little but the concept is there

Week 11 Presentation

The idea – left to right slow camera pan showing progression of the cookies from freshly baked to being iced to completed on plate

Building the cookies

Test sim in Houdini

Node graph for the test sim

Applying that workflow to the gingerbread man

Importing geometry and animation into Maya.

This will allow me to texture and render everything in the scene accurately as it can all come from one camera/piece of software

 

Week 11 Feedback

This week I was given feedback about the state of my project. One of the most impactful notes for me was the idea of splitting the shot into 3 parts and bringing the camera a lot closer in for each.

The list of shots –

1. the baking tray of fresh cookies
2. the icing sim
3. a full plate of finished cookies

I started working on the first shot by experimenting with how to texture the gingerbread and baking tray. As well as this I designed the camera and animation for this shot

I’m pleased with the result of this shot, however I am worried about the specular highlights on the gingerbread texture as I don’t think that’s all that natural for that texture. Unfortunately after looking through the texture file I’m unsure of how to resolve this and given the short time frame I might not be able to rectify it in time.

Making the icing scene

Setting up camera and icing timing

For my first trial I wanted the icing to apply at different times to make the scene more dynamic but in the end I thought there was too much going on so I made another render where the icing applies at the same time and I think I prefer that outcome even though it is technically simpler

Working on the plate scene

To create the plate scene I set up the camera and the framing, made sure I had all the right  objects and then went about placing them in a way that I thought looked reasonably organic.

Editing the scenes together

The initial edit

Adding in some basic transitions

Further steps

My next steps for this project would be adding in more compositing work to improve the overall feel of the advert. This could be bring each scene into Nuke and changing the focus of the shots. Maybe a light snow addition to the plate scene

Week 12 Presentation

Christmas_Ad_Week12

Idea for Final major project

Over the Christmas break we were tasked with coming up with an idea for our final major project that we will make in semester 2.

For my idea I decided to focus on the concept of the portal magic from films such as Doctor Strange. I thought this make a good basis for my project as it allows me to create two very different environments and link them together.

Initially I want the environment to be very cartoony basically in a cartoon world. I want the primary assets to be a car which fits the environment being driving down a street in that style. At the end of the street/drive a portal opens and reveals the “real” world, to which my interpretation is the world we live in so a much more realistic environment.

I’m currently deciding how I want to make the realistic world whether that will be filmed footage of reality or a realistic environement made in a software like Unreal Engine.

For the cartoon environment I know I will model, texture and render this in Maya. Currently I have experimented with making a portal in After Effects that can be composited in.

Environment 1 – Cartoon style

I took a lot of references from the Despicable Me film franchise as I really like the aesthetic and I think they will be just the right amount of challenge for me to texture and model given that they are only half the scene.

Portal

Environment 2 – realistic