On Wednesday of this week, we’ll be presenting to Axis in Glasgow, so for the sake of completion, here’s the final film, Concerning Dragons:
Cymatics Production
So, the time has now come around to focus soley (apart from the odd presentation) on the production of my project. I have begun going through my video clips and organising what works and doesn’t, filtering out the unusable shots before deciding which ones are best. I will look at the storyboards again, and match up the shots with that timing-wise, before logging which ones need to be 3D tracked and so on. Early days yet, but much to be done!
I have also gone through the HD cymatics video of the reference footage, and taken stills of the best individual frames for modelling. Here are a few examples:
There are so many, I’ll have to limit myself somewhat to bear in mind the amount of time I have to model them. There are, however, recurring themes or glyphs throughout the piece, as the melody and harmonies are based on the same melody throughout.
Aside from the glyphs, I have also begun on one of the few scenes where no cymaglyphs are seen. At the beginning of the film, there will be some musical notation where the notes pop out from the page 2D into 3D. Here is a low resolution test:
Project Shot List
I have created an initial linear shot list that matches the storyboards, with a couple of changes, but the idea is that I can see what needs to be done in terms of tracking and effects etc.
Shot | 3D Track | Camera Work Completed | Post Production | Completed |
1. Writing notation | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
2. Overhead piano | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
3. Walk in with bosch | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
4. Place down bosch | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
5. Left right pan roof higher | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
6. Zoom out diagrams | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
7. 3D pop out music | No? tbc | n/a | CC, effects | |
8. Left right jib pan better | Yes | Yes | 3D Sine wave, Cymatics, CC, effects | |
9. Jo beach no hat headphones | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
10. Long shot back church static | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
11. Beach aahs | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
12. Overhead piano | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
13. Beach aahs | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
14. 2 handed piano | No | Yes | CC, effects | |
15. Behind bosch | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
16. Zoom out from stage | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
17. Bosch box? tbc | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
18. Tilt from stage to roof | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
19. Blair roof? tbc | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
20. Static sound hole | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
21. Inside car | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
22. Drive past | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
23. Fire ground static tbc | No | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
Quick cuts of fire and church? tbc | Yes | |||
24. Fire pan left to right | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
25. Fire people 2 | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
26. Fire people ensemble | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
27. Fire sparks 5 | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
28. Queens farmhouse | Yes | Yes | Cymatics, CC, effects | |
Total 3D Tracked Shots | 18 |
Tracking and Building Proxy Collision Objects
The first shot I tackled was the car driving past the camera. The idea in this shot is that the sound bubble will be coming out of the window and distorting in the wind as it drives past, so I assumed I needed a tracking shot of the car, something close to the open window. A 3D tracking shot wouldn’t work here, as the car is moving, so that would compromise the track. I could try masking out the car, but first I thought I’d try a regular 2D track. There wasn’t much to focus on within the shot, so I ended up manually keying most of it (147 frames). I will return to that shot later.
I then 3D tracked a shot within the church to see what the process of tracking and setting up collision proxy models for the particles would be. Following the same procedure from before for tracking, I opened the fbx file and tried to judge from the Nuke file, where thepoints in space would roughly be. However, I had forgotten about the camera where I can assign images from the environment tab – use image sequence – so thje basic boxy shape I had crated for the church, I added a transparent material to it to see the images behind from the render and then rotated and adjusted the church shape to match the render, as seen below (the first one shows the image sequence details, then the church shape modelled to match the images):
The next stage then (or one of them at least), is to bring in the particles and make sure that the collisions look as though they belong within that space.
Nuke Tracking File
For the sake of completion again, here is an image of the Nuke file which includes the merge geo and write geo nodes to export the camera data out to Maya:
For some of the image sequences, there are the odd frames missing or broken for some reason, so I shall need to re-import them. In addition, I am batch renaming any files that do not begin at frame 0, as this will make things easier once in Maya.
I am also masking out the fire for tracking purposes, by:
- adding in a roto paint node
- using the bezier tool to roughly draw around it
- move it every few frames as necessary to create keys (select the transform tab)
- then selecting ‘mask alpha’ within the mask selection on the camera tracker
Going Live Presentation
A mention has to go towards the prsentation this week, and how well it was received. The number of views on the video now stands over 20000, and after getting a congratulatory email from the Tolkien Society, it seem that the film is taking on a little life of its own. So, well done to everyone, and I don’t think we could have done a much better job.
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/news/2014/article/djcad-students-animate-dragons
We also visited Digimania in Glasgow, who work on games, but at the moment are producing a 52 week childrens animation. They may be hiring animators later in the year…
Finally this week, I had a meeting with Phil Vaughan concerning the focus of the last semester, which essentially starts now. So, I have already begun, as noted above, on tracking and setting up proxy collision objects, the next thing to do is map out a plan for the next 12 weeks or so so that I can keep a close eye on what I have to do.