Now, two months, some odd days, a new computer and a rebuilt effect, I can finally present the final JetSet effect and breakdown. I'm excited (and relieved) to finally have this out the door and are finally able to get to work more intently on the projects I'm in now.
Overall, not precisely the image I had planned from the start, but a solid adaptation and a pretty important learning experience I would say. I haven't had much experience in live action work, outside of some small projects and compositing exercises, and I was excited to create CG that was going to be put into a live environment. I've learned an explosive (no pun intended) amount about compositing techniques, lighting, and even more about dynamics and particle rendering.
Anyway, hope you like it. A higher quality quicktime can be acquired here:
I really really really would have strongly loved to start this post with "I present..." but evidently that is not the case. I'll get to do that soon enough, but for right now here is the final WIP of the effect shot as of the end of Fall Quarter. I'm not going to let this project take up an inch of my Studio II space, so I plan to crank the finishing touches out during the first week of break or so.
The fluids suck, and that is going to be the primary focus of work along with putting together the final breakdown. So on the upside, there isn't much work left to be done. But on the downside, there's work left to be done.
11.08.2007 up to speed
I have a working comp of the final effect. But first, some history.
So last time I posted, I left you with a test render of the fluids-based smoke trail. The step after that was to get a sweet looking explosion to rip the wing off. For this I consulted the Gnomon Fluid Pyrotechnics DVD. I created a simple explosion using the steps from the DVD as a foundation, and then tweaked the attributes to suit my needs, i.e. a tighter more controlled explosion, high speed wind blowing it back, etc. etc. Stuff specific of a jet engine explosion.
Next up on the list: The Shoot.
Yes, I finally got around to doing the shot. My cameraman, Josh Feezer, had trouble locking down a steadicam from the film department but was able to pull off a reasonably stable shot for the effect, not to mention trackable.
The weather and lighting for the shot could seriously have not been better. It was about noon on a beautifully crisp Friday, barely a cloud in the sky, and the sun was in the perfect position.
I had given some thought to who the actor/actress for the short should be; everytime I would talk to someone I know, I'd stop and imagine how they'd look in the scenario. Eventually I decided a friend of mine, Sam Rossignol, would be the best call for the spot. Sam was reluctant to do it at first because "she can't act" but fortunately for her its not hard to act like you're walking down a sidewalk. I also humbly explained to her that she didn't have to do it, but if she said no I was just going to talk her down over it until she agreed.
Ultimately, I'm sure it could have gone to anyone and worked just the same, but Sam was a good choice. What a good sport.
In the above video, it shows the actual plate shot footage and the tracked shot as a playblast from Maya. I used Boujou to do the tracking for the shot, and its a lucky thing I did. I hadn't taken a single class or read a single thing about tracking before this project, despite knowing that the project would definitely entail tracking a full shot. I figure the shot isn't insanely complex, although it doesn't include an element that will remain in the picture for the entire shot (the camera points to the sky and then to the other side of the street) but I also just figured I could just learn what I had to learn to complete the shot. Boujou was perfect for this. After reading up and doing several test tracks on old footage and different takes of the shot, I managed to get a rather successful track out of the fourth take.
So. After getting the track, and getting the elements rendered out, its time for the final stretch, which is the comp. I put the elements together and comped them into the footage using Shake, which was a sort of simple endeavor but still required a bit of work and still will, as I've got a list of fixes and tweaks a mile long that I'm planning to do to both the comp and the render. There's also a minor breakdown to show the separate elements of the shot.
The shot also comes in HD 720, as the entire final project will, but I think I'll wait for the final project before I start throwing HD rez around.
Like I said, theres still a huge list of things I plan to fix. These things include:
- Compositing tweaks: There's a shift in exposure and focus at the beginning of the shot I plan to compensate for, and I could do a much better job on color correcting the elements into the shot. There are also some masking tweaks with the trees and the horizon to do. - Effect tweaks: The smoke and fire look terrible! I think realistically the smoke would not be as plumey and thick for that long, and probably start dissipating a bit sooner. I'm gonna play some opacity changes, and try to bring out the fire and hotspots in the engine burn more. The explosion is nice, but it still looks a bit bizarre as it doesn't really look like its moving at high speed like it should. Not to mention on the list of stupid idiot mistakes, the one of the pieces of debris geometry I was instancing onto particles is gleefully hanging out in space by the broken stub of the wing as the plane goes down. Doh. - Filming things: The whole plane doesn't look like its moving THAT fast either, really. This might be something I'm just gonna have to deal with, as a reshoot is pretty out of the question at this point, but I think I can fix things by working with the animation. Also, I have to shoot the rest of the short!
That about wraps it up at this point, its getting reeeeeally close, and with one week left in the quarter, the full thing will come to closure here in a few days. I'm excited. Lets do this.
10.18.2007 smoke screen
Lets talk about what I went through to get the smoke to this point.
My original plan for creating a fluid smoke trail failed pretty miserably. What I thought would result in a nice looking plumey trail wound up looking like a jet engine farting out charcoal briquettes. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't really get it to look like much more than that.
So after reading through a highly helpful thread at CGTalk.com, I realized I may be able to pull this off after all by shading particles with fluids rather than relying entirely on fluids. The result was a nicer look, but now instead of charcoal it looked more like cotton balls. I created another emitter along side that one to spit out particles equipped with the particlecloud shader. By themselves, they don't look too amazing but mixed in with the fluid particles they helped to sort of blend the whole thing together and remove some of the disconnectedness of the fluid particles.
So now I've got a working concept of the smoke. My next move was making another particle system that simulated a blazing fire blowing off the front of the engine. I'm not thrilled with where its at right now, currently its just a few incandescent particles with a glow attached, but with a bit more work it should come along alright.
10.02.2007 animania
This past weekend I've been working on the actual plane animation. Consulting with a couple of professors on how I should track the scene has come to the idea that I should just do it by hand, so that being said there's no reason I shouldn't be working on the plane crash itself ten days ago.
The plane wing was originally tied to rigid body dynamics, but getting the wing to parent properly to the rest of the craft was problematic, so I decided that since the wing break would only be on the screen for literally 24 frames, hand animating it would probably work. The debris particles, while still kind of hard to see because of the shader attached, are created by a simple polygon instanced onto a particle system with some random rotation in there. I think it could use another emitter there to spew some smaller debris as well, so that's in the next update.
The fluids test is pretty gross. Fluids will be getting the most love considering its going to be responsible for the majority of the pyrotechnics, like the explosion and the smoke cloud trail. Right now it just looks like some sort of dust plume, and theres also some messed up glitches with the shading. The shadows passing through the cloud is neat, but its not quite what I need, and it doesn't look very nice with the motion blur on.
So, that's pretty alright for now. I think I'll go take a look at some fluids stuff and get back to the smoke trail. Maybe some extensive fluid tests for the next update.
9.19.2007 flight plan
Preparing things for the shoot, I put together an animatic for the big crash shot. Its missing a few important details, such as the engine explosion and the wing tearing off, but it does give a pretty accurate idea of the flight path of the plane. You can check out the Quicktime here. Or just watch the Youtube version right here below this.
There's also a few compositing issues that I'll have to come up with a solution for when the time comes. Such issues include: wind blowing trees as the plane passes overhead, dust from the wind blowing, dust coming from the impact of the wing and the plane, the shadow of the plane as it passes overhead and how it casts on the ground below (that's gonna be a fun one.) I'll continue to list things here as they come to me, mostly because it'll just serve as a reminder later down the line.
9.17.2007 plane model additions
Did some work on the 747 today, finally modeling and texturing in the engines. The model itself is passable enough, although I may do some texturing tweaks and improvements in the time between now and the plate shoot. Check it out over on the right.
Speaking of which, I hope to get the shoot off the ground by next weekend, so after thats taken care of, I'll be sure to put up a big update.
