The composites so far

Well here are some of the latest composite tests of the piece which Elliott has been working hard on. Lovin it, really does look good. We have both thought though that something doesnt look right, but we cant find what it is!

The image sequences that i gave to Elliott are obviously Alpha channel to stop all that annoying keying out backgrounds and such. Elliott has done a great job of distributing them around the landscape and time remapping the explosions. He has also layered them on top of eachother to give them some more girth and vibrance.

Ambient sound

The sound art was omething of a challenge i think on this project which mostly came to Midi sound editing. I managed to hook up the old midi drum kit again thinking about the principle of large bangs and started playing with the sounds. The sounds i was obviously looking for in the ambience was the sounds of war. Large irratic bangs scattering a landscape because of all the many events happening all at once in this moment in time.

With the sounds i used a full reverb effect which lets you tweak the amount of space and how far away the sound is. Because a lot of the sound is far away i used the maximum distance and it gives a nice muffled feeling to the explosions. I also amplified the bass on them and used equalizations to bring out simple sub woofer sounds for the very slight ambience.

I also started to record acousticly sirens outside of my windows and layed them on top. Something was going down in boscombe tonite so i stuck the mic outside and voila. Lucky for me, unlucky for someone else.

I have made about 16 samples of sounds on average lasting 30 seconds to a minute which means a lot can be done when it comes to editing it into the composition. I’m really proud with what i made tonite. =]

SSSSSSSMOKIN!!!

Ok seeing as i said i would go through the process of creating the smoke on After Effects particular here is the blog showing how it was made.

The smoke had to be prepared as a custom layer to be assigned to the particles (just like the sprites in Maya.) So i brought in a cloud puff texture from photoshop and then placed behind it a white background solid. I then changed the track matte of the texture to Luma inverted matte, which then uses the white solid background as a reference point for the opacity. Then i applyed the colorama effect to the texture and turned its input to ramp grey. The ramp grey can then be changed by putting its threshhold down to about 2% on the black channel thus creating a nice alpha channel layer ready to be put into trapcode particular. But of course you need to add maybe some evolving motion to the texture to help give it a realistic feel. So i applyed the turbulent displace effect and also then added the expression “Time*100″ to the evolution of the displacement map and then turned the size down to about 5 for a much more subtle look.

Here i attached the pre-comped texture to the particles and because of the alpha channel its blends together very nicely. Then by using the particle layer effect and setting it to screen, no jagged edges would be prominent in the piece. Size random and opacity random had to be tweaked for a much more natural look to the particles. But what had to be considered was the expressions.

Now the particles didnt look right until i added an expression to its rotation. The pexression makes the emitter spit out the particles at a random angle and also gives them some evolution rotation. The expression was applyed to rotation and was “random(0,360)”
I’ve noticed that the expressions in after effects are a lot more user friendly than Maya. Then again i can guess there may be less control.

Here i started tweaking the opacity over life and the size over life to create a much more realistic feel to the smoke.

The physics then had to be tweaked for the animation of the particles. I used the turbulent field to make a more swirly affect on the particles and also the wind direction was changed to what i wanted. The way the smoke bends is because of gravity. I turned the gravity to about -3 for the curved affect. Also the physics time factor was turned down to 0.3 so that the smoke would move extremely slowly. Seeing as these streams of smoke are supposed to be seen at a very long distance, the smoke would be moving incredibly slowly to our eyes. The is also to do with scale.

After a lot of tweaking with the velocity and the physics time factor i had managed to to create a nicely balanced realistic smoke stream. I was extremely happy with the result as i felt like my attempts at the smoke in maya was rather fruitless.

I also did the whole content pumping technique that i had done with the fluids and the debris. Basically tweak attributes on copied versions to make unique streams of smoke. This however had to be a lot more precise than the Maya technique, due to the particles being sensitive to the velocity changes of physics if i tweaked them. The render time for about 10 passes was insane. For 1 minute each of 10 alpha channel targa files which is about 10 minutes of content, it took 34 hours to render out. There was also a strange anomaly where the files duplicated themselves over rapidly at one point and created a folder filled with 60 gigs worth of crap. Very strange i couldnt understand it, but hey, at least the final render came out fine.

The Gorillaz

Well seeing as im sitting around in uni waiting to deliver some data for the future cinema project. I thought i’d take it upon myself to start some more work on the performance video project. My housemate suggested a good performance band called “The Gorillaz.”

Very well known for songs such as “Feel good Inc” and “Dirty Harry.” They have a unique way of performing which involves projections of animations in a sort of choreographed real time performance. Projectors are used on canvas’s to create a 3d affect on the whole band as the real band play out backstage. I think its a very interesting concept because its as if they are visually enhancing themselves. Very much like wearing a mask on stage or being outrageous with fashion. I have found the Gorrilaz to be a very interesting band to look at.

In this video which was performed at the MTV awards you can see what i mean. Its like watching a real live experience but its animated in some 3d program like 3DS Max or Maya. What i like is the way the characters are still doing something when their not playing an instrument. They don’t simply walk off stage, they go and do something else like say the lead singer who sits and starts texting when the rapping starts. (Not a big fan of the rapping) but still very cool none the less. Also the drummer appears to fall asleep when he isn’t doing much as well. Its all very fascinating to me. Looking at a visual Fx point of view i would say the animation and structure of the characters is very stylized. There wouldn’t be any point in making something “realistic” because you would might as well watch a live performance. It has a very “Timesplitters” feel to it, such as the overly large hands and the generic skin textures. Also the muscle movement is very stretchy, although Timesplitters is a video game i found the stylisation of it extremely fascinating because a lot of things are about realism these days. Whether it be games, performance or film, they all appear to try and go for realism. Which i do love don’t get me wrong, i just think making something completely insane for this project would be a much better move. I would class the Gorillaz to be completely insane.

Now here is another video of one of their live performances which i found interesting which featured “Madonna.” It involves some great choreographed scenes were she is interacting with the animations and i found it to be very convincing that the characters are actually sitting there playing to us. Even though you know their not real because of their cartoony style.

Second half of the video is really irrelevant so only pay attention to the first half. As you can see, Madonna walks around and behind one of the characters creating a 3d illusion. Small little FX like that can make all the difference to a performance. It appears to of been choreographed and timed at exact points. They obviously green screened and rendered madonna into the background of the projection and then with choreographing timed her to make the same movement behind the projection. Making it seemed like she walked around him when actually the real madonna was behind the black screen unseen. Very cool stuff. So maybe think about choreographing on this project?

Chunky just got funky

Well here is some more compositing content to be added to the final render. Got about 5 different versions of this with unique cracks, pieces and chunks flying in all sorts of directions. Basically the same principle when i churned out the fluid explosions. Tweaking settings then doing another render pass to make a unique explosion of debris. I think one thing i have learnt on the project is that starting off, is the hardest bit. Little tweaks and then churning out renders can be quite easy. The reason why i have chosen a simple plane is that i wanted a lot of the debris to be quite horizontal when they fly out.

I think Elliott was looking for this as well instead of a head on explosion. I do agree it would look a lot better so a simple plane can easily be composited onto the side of a building. I also opacity tweaked the debris to fade out when the floor is hit so we can play with the way it fades. Obviously the collision properties wouldn’t look right without proper compositing choreographing and using the image for reference. It was the initial plan but as time schedule goes, compromise has to be considered. So here it is on a white background rendered through after effects. Obviously is a targa alpha channel pass for easy use. Although takes up a lot of memory.

Ah the wonders of Maya. A cruel mistress that makes you crawl though broken glass to get a result.

Blast Content

Well taking a break from smoke emitters i decided to render out a lot of blast content for Elliott to composite in. The base render fluid chamber was created and then tweaked on slight attributes on different render passess to make a different explosion each time so that we can have loads of them to play with on the final render.

Here is the initial blast of the fluid showing off the texture in the hardware render settings of maya. You can see the incandescense is keyframed to create some colour evolution within the fluid container.

All of the dynamic settings must be set to the centre gradient for the puffy effect of the fluid. It basically makes all the particles emit from the centre of the container instead of being created at random angles or not at all. For some reason the physics of the chamber was different if i added an amitter into it, im yet to figure out why this is yet.

Here i have turned down the gravity from the standard 9.8 to 3.7 to make the evolution of the texture move upwards.

I started to keyframe the shader, the incandescense and the opacity to create the evolution of the colours and the explosion. I also then keyframed the glow aspect on the centre gradient to make the light shine on the first second of the force. All of these attributes are locked onto the centre gradient.

Here is the main little thing im proud of in the fluid. After learning about expressions in the smoke i attempted to create i decided to put into practice what i knew and try it on what is called the “TextureTime” in the fluid chamber. I wrote this expression.

“BlastShape.textureTime=time*0.5″

This expression then keeps the texture flowing instead of being a still image. My mistake before was keyframing the opcaity from 0% to 100% which made a rather rubbish animation of the smoke and fire within the explosion.

And here is the panel where i decided to edit on every render pass. I rendered from many different perspectives after tweaking the amplitude and threshhold to create a unique explosion every time instead of totally recreating a explosion. This is quite an efficient way of rendering out some content. I have learnt on this piece about making a quite simple spherical explosion but i want some more control on direction and such. Yes i have already tried linking physics fields to the fluid chamber but alas no dice. Fluid chamber doesnt support it as it goes. But for the actual project i am very happy with this content.

Expressions, the downfall with a realisation

Well looking into the expressions that maya is capable of i found that many wonderful things “COULD” of been done but to no avail. Maya has been a rather wild beast in which i have found myself struggling to tame and i have been on the end of my tether on trying to achieve a realistic smoke pattern on the end of the debris explosions. As you know i have been planning on turning the debris into emitters to leave a dust trail using sprites.

I managed to use such expressions like

“if (frame%5 == 0)
{
SmokeParticleShape1.velocity = (XYZ TWEAK HERE, unfortunately wordpress doesnt allow some of the expression symbols such as the arrows to show the middle attributes .
}”

This was placed on runtime before dynamics to make the sprites randomly seed in different directions. The unfortunate thing about this expression was that it would randomly seed by frame rather than a smooth evolution. Which meant it looked absolutely pants, i even added the expression to the creation attributes but to no avail. I tried replacing “Rand” with “seed” and “linearmove” without any luck. The sprite twist expression was the only one which worked in the end but in the end it still didnt look right on the render.

Another expression i used was also involving the particle velocity. The expression was:

“SmokeParticleShape1.velocity = <>;

This was to make the emitter shoot the particles at rabdom velocity in all directions, unfortunately it simply made them go haywire and not even obey other expressions. And error kept occuring involving “argumenets” which means that expressions were conflicting and then simply rendering eachother irrelevent or confused.

I also tried obviously attaching fields to the sprites to see if i can achieve any control there. For some reason it only likes to apply to the gravity field rather than the air field or any other field for that matter. Tha gravity managed to give it some carrying wind in ways but it didnt move like wind would and looked extremely fake. I even tried using volume shapes to affect the particles which appeared to of worked in this instance but still not with other fields. Nothing appeared to of had any effect on the sprites. I couldnt really understand it. Am i missing something here or are sprites simply not supported for the use of certain physics fields? None the less i tried and eventually i have made the decision to move on trapcode particular for the smoke. I have a lot more confidence using that program in after effects instead of stumbling around in the dark. Although i would say i am not walking away from this without a much larger understanding of maya particle emitters. I will find myself so much more confident with maya dynamics in the future. Although i have heard things about a plugin called realflow. I might look into getting that for future projects.

Back to the blog

Well it seems i have neglected the blog for quite a while due to the large rendering times over the weekend. I have managed to render out smoke streams for atmospheric ambience and tracer fire. Today i will be creating some buildings for Elliott to composite into the piece, he is also currently in the process of compositing the smoke streams and tracer fire into the final composition. I will be outlining the process of how to create the smoke streams and also figuring out a way of making some subtle debris streams for the debris explosions. I have also been planning to render out more debris explosions for content and also start creating some warfare sounds this week. So this blog post is basically an update on whats going on. The crit has also been delayed till next monday so we have more of a chance to really tie up some loose ends on the project. GO TEAM!!!

Shiny shizzle

Like any battle field there is always aerial fire. Always the little twinkling sparkles of red hot bullets piercing the skyline whether they be small arms fire or an artillery shell. Taking a break from doing the smoke debris i decided to take a look at re-creating this nice little feature for the ambience of the final product.

I started by using a fluid chamber without an emitter. This is something that people wouldnt normally do but i thought i would give it a shot. Most people would try attaching a surface emitterto a shape like a sphere and making them glow. Well instead i decided to take advantage of the fluid chambers scale abilities.

Here you can see me scaling them chamber to be an extremely thin rectangle to represent the “bullet” shape. The fluids would also be set as a centre gradient on all factors because i wont a static amount of particles shaped by the actual fluid container edges.

Here i am playing with the colours in the centre gradient so that the particles are visible. The settings are also set to static as well.

Ive here managed to set a glow for the particles to give it some illumination.

The i started playing with the incandescense to give it some colour depth instead of just a glowing yellow. So this is rather simple but will be effective. Ive already animated one bullet and it works fine, i just need to figure out how to pivot multiple bullets to one instead of trying to figure out the exact maths of its rate of travel. I’m not that great at maths you see.

Hello Mr Foley

Well as some test smoke is rendering i want to think about some Foley art. The project for the ultimate immersion is going to need sound, that will mean that the sound effects of the background are going to have to be top notch. What has to be considered? Well considering there is a social uprising with small arms fire and maybe some heavy arms fire at points it would be quite subtle yet muffled. Here are a few examples of what i will be looking for to create.

This video has some great ambient sounds. Although the guy is saying we can use this for free i’d like to try my hand at designing the sounds if i have the time after the CGI. So looking at the sounds, the explosions can be used from a midi drum kit and then have a smoothed echo effect layer with some sound displacement filtered on top to give it that edge. The gun fire can be simple taps on a desk. Using different materials many different sounds can be achieved. And also using pitch changer and other filters i can make a quite versatile library of sounds ready to give some nice ambience and immersion to the piece. Damn i love my Foley