Flags of our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima - Closed Q/A Session

[Aruna]

Welcome to another ongoing question and answer session about one of Eastwood's films from last year, Flags of our Fathers. In this Q/A session, I'll be going over some of the problems and solutions that I encountered while compositing the shots for this show. This was my first project with Nuke, as you may find out from some of the screen grabs.

Starting off with some of the simpler A over B comps, here are a couple from the sequence were one of the Marines falls overboard. In this sequence I finished about five or six shots. They involved several CG ships in the background with computer generated wake elements. While we could have used photograph plates for the wakes, it was deemed easier to generate our own CG water. These were all fairly straightfoward, but things like atmospherics and color and shadowing were all dialed in in the comp.

http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/2645-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/2645.mov).
http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/2680-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/2680.mov).
http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/4812-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/4812.mov) and the script (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/4812ss.jpg).

[Aruna]

The next big sequence I worked on was the Green beach landing sequence and battle, which was a fairly big sequence dealing with sand bombs, explosions, cannon blasts, ships sinking, flak elements, strafing hits, you name it. All these shots were done without greenscreen, at the request of the production department. This made our job a little difficult, as every shot had to have some amount of rotoscoping done! I could make do with a number of lumakeys and chromakeys to get the edges of the foreground correct. Because many of the shots were erratic, it was occasionally necessary to create more information so that the foreground could effectively be printed through so the edges were nice.

During the sequence we placed many of the explosions, smoke, flak hits, and Mt. Suribachi (the mountain in the background of many plates) into the plate using Nuke's 3D environment. The leads created Mt. Suribachi and environs, while our compositing supervisor set up a quick Gizmo allowing us to pick and choose among a variety of shrapnel and strafing hits to pepper along the ground.

http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/26003-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/26003.mov).
http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/26115-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/26115.mov).
http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/26135-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/26135.mov).
http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/26155-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/26155.mov).

[Aruna]

One of the sequences near the storming of Mt. Suribachi contained almost a 180 degree spin of the camera.

http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/7511-thumb.jpg View the Quicktime (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/movies/flags/7511.mov)and script (http://www.digitalgypsy.com/vfxlog/archives/gallery/075011ss.jpg).

In this shot there were a number of obstacles to overcome. This shot was again, not shot on bluescreen or green, but I actually benefited from not having that. I was able to get decent edge keys against the sky, and used a number of different feather techniques, as well as copious amounts of smoke near the end of the shot to cover up existing smoke that was over the characters. I also added strafing hits, shrapnel, and added some explosions to cover some of the original in the plate. The roto team did an excellent job in providing the necessary masks to complete the shot.

Feel free to ask about any of the techniques I used to overcome the obstacles on the show, and check out my personal site gallery to see more screen shots. I completed almost 20 shots on this show, while on its companion film, Letters from Iwo Jima, I completed close to 45, which were a little simpler, and even more invisible. I'll add the Letters work once the DVD comes out in a week!

[gottony]

Wow. Your nuke scripts are huge. Any chance of some larger breakdowns of your last script so we can see a little closer what you did? Freaking amazing and that was your first nuke project. Awesome. Great job.

[SalaTar]

5 weeks !!!
Damn you need more coffee....;D
whats up with the growing shadow?

[MartinL]

Ah this is so cool!!:D
Im reaally new to compositing. Im still learning the basics. So i barely know what to ask you. ;)

Like gottony said. Could you give us a larger breakdown on one of the shots?

Anyway. Awesome work mate!!! Big thanks for sharing this with us!!:D

[sorin]

first of all I would like to say..... woooooooow.
I'm noob in compositing and I don't know nuke, so if I'm not asking too much can u show some breakdowns? that would help a lot, but I know is not a 5 min. task.
thank you.

[Aruna]

Unfortunately, breakdowns for these shots and close-ups of the scripts are unavailable, as the show has been offlined, and I no longer have access to the files to create breakdowns. The only breakdowns I can give are limited to being written!

That said, the majority of these shots were clean plate shots, as there was no bluescreen or greenscreen present, and there were no interactive effects shot at the same time as the actors (no shrapnel, flak, strafing hits, etc). The fx team created a library of elements that we could use and pull from, ranging from large sandbomb hits up to 30 meters high, to small shrapnel hits of a couple feet. The compositors combined all these elements, while color-correcting them to fit the plate, using Nuke's 3D environment. We were able to bring in scene cameras, and align our explosions and hits to the terrain below.

[DJMartin]

The fx team created a library of elements that we could use and pull from, ranging from large sandbomb hits up to 30 meters high, to small shrapnel hits of a couple feet.These videos are so cool, do you know how they created those sandbomb hits? I mean what program, 3d or 2d video?
Thanks, and very well done:)

[Aruna]

The fx team used Houdini, as well as proprietary DD tools (VoxelB, mentioned in several Siggraph papers and Cinefex, which is now Storm). The majority of the fx (water, shrapnel hits, flak, smoke, etc) were computer generated elements. Occasionally they would render a specific element for a shot, but otherwise the compositors would pull the element they wanted from a library of 3D rendered elements. There were a number of photographically shot explosions as well, which the compers could use in addition to the computer generated explosions.

[MartinL]

Unfortunately, breakdowns for these shots and close-ups of the scripts are unavailable, as the show has been offlined, and I no longer have access to the files to create breakdowns. The only breakdowns I can give are limited to being written!

That said, the majority of these shots were clean plate shots, as there was no bluescreen or greenscreen present, and there were no interactive effects shot at the same time as the actors (no shrapnel, flak, strafing hits, etc). The fx team created a library of elements that we could use and pull from, ranging from large sandbomb hits up to 30 meters high, to small shrapnel hits of a couple feet. The compositors combined all these elements, while color-correcting them to fit the plate, using Nuke's 3D environment. We were able to bring in scene cameras, and align our explosions and hits to the terrain below.

So you tracked the scenes with a 3D tracker and then imported the data in to Nuke before you started to composit the scenes?

And the big sandbomb in the background in 26155.mov looks awesome.
Could you describe how you composited that one in to the live plate? I mean, how did you figure out how the shadow that the dust casts on the ground should look like (shape.. and how the shape gets deformed on the ground)

Thanks!!!!:D :D

[clicknroll]

what were you using as main comp app before nuke?
what was your previous experience with nuke before this project? (rating 1 to 10)
how satisfied were you after completing this project, proffesionally speaking? (1to10)

as c&c: the shots look as having absolutely no vfx :D

great job!

[Ajax]

Hey Aruna,

Long time fan of your work. My question is geared towards the begining of these shots, and how you go about starting the project. Lets say for the Marine that falls overboard, how is this shot presented to you? Do you start with the shot first, then think about what elements will be needed to complete the shot? I've always been curious to know how a compositor preps his or her shots. Do you ask for elements or are they provided to you? Another instance is the roto work that was done for this film and iwo jima lets say you know you need sections that werent shot on greenscreen to be roto'd, how does the communication method work within each department? Im trying to basically understand how you start your compositing process, cheers for the great breakdowns!

Cheers,

[Aruna]

So you tracked the scenes with a 3D tracker and then imported the data in to Nuke before you started to composit the scenes?

The 3D tracking was done by the matchmove department. We are able to bring in track data (both camera and object track data) into Nuke, which we can use to line up explosions and other events like the sandbombs and smoke.



And the big sandbomb in the background in 26155.mov looks awesome.
Could you describe how you composited that one in to the live plate? I mean, how did you figure out how the shadow that the dust casts on the ground should look like (shape.. and how the shape gets deformed on the ground)

Thanks!!!!:D :D

This sandbomb was a combination of a live action plate element and a 3D element. I pulled the live action element from another shot in the sequence, where a sandbomb was actually triggered on set. Using that explosion from the ground and the 3D sandbomb which just sort of appears, I was able to blend the two elements together to give one seamless explosion in motion. The shadow which occurs is a combination of the live action sandbomb shadow as well as some quick rotoscoping to enlarge the shadow as the sandbomb goes higher.

[Aruna]

My main comp app before Nuke was Shake. This was my first production show with Nuke, and I had an accelerated learning curve at the beginning, which was quite tough. I did do some fooling around before I came to DD on Nuke, but it wasn't production work, just figuring out the tools and the way to work around it.

I'm fairly satisfied with the work (there are some things I see in the quicktimes that I wish I could have addressed), and there are more things I felt I could improve after the shots are finalled! I'm much more comfortable with Nuke now, a year and change later.


what were you using as main comp app before nuke?
what was your previous experience with nuke before this project? (rating 1 to 10)
how satisfied were you after completing this project, proffesionally speaking? (1to10)

as c&c: the shots look as having absolutely no vfx :D

great job!

[Aruna]

Hey Ajax,

Depending on the company, the production process may vary. I've always felt communication is the most important. From note taking, to talking directly to artists and hearing feedback directly from the client. There can be many "Games of Telephone", and if the information gets parsed through too many people, it may become unintelligible.

For the sequence of the Marine falling overboard, it was pretty much locked. The director knew what he wanted, and we were tasked with creating the imagery.. In this case, the background CG ships and planes. This is a simple request, but of course, adding all the
elements can become time consuming. It's up to the leads and supervisors to find out what we need for each sequence. For this one, we knew we needed CG ships and planes. What comes with that? Well, CG water and wakes for integration purposes. We'll need a matte painted sky, since the time of day is different for each shot, and we'll need possible roto as well, depending on the placement of the CG elements. For this sequence it was pretty straightfoward, and all our 3D elements were arranged ahead of time. It was just a matter of getting them in and adjusting them to fit into the existing plate.

The other sequences, namely the beach landing and other firefights, were more abstract. We knew we needed to add Mt. Suribachi in the background, so the leads created a environment in Nuke to allow a 3D camera to be placed accurately within the scene. We also knew we needed CG guys running and dying in the background, so the lighting and animation department worked on those, with appropriate lighting and shadows for the ground. Most of the shrapnel hits were governed by what the actors were doing, as well as some squib hits in the sand on set to illustrate where the big bombs would go. Occasionally, there might be an X on the ground in a live action plate that had to be replaced with a huge explosion.

Throughout all of these shots in the sequence, we had a rough description of things to do, and we were tasked with adding all those in (from shrapnel hits to strafing fire to muzzle flashes). There was some liberty in the timing and location of these elements, and our supervisor was very good in deciding what Clint wanted as well as giving simple and concise notes to that end.

The roto call comes from the compositor or lead comp. If varies from shot to shot, and what changes a supervisor might want. If you don't have roto for a guy, and the supervisor likes the look of an explosion going off behind him, you send the plate off to roto to work on. Some shots are known to require roto, so they're given to the department as soon as possible.

To sum up, the way I approach a shot is
1) rough it out, find out whats essential, and add those.
2) clean up edges and mattes, adjust color corrects, make fg and background match together.
3) present to supervisor or lead as WIP, ask for revisions, additions.
4) make changes to shot, which could involve adding new or additional CG elements or adding your own embellishments to make it better (sometimes time is against you here)
5) go back to to 2.

There are also continual enhancements during this process, so I'll adjust an edge or matte while adding another CG element. It takes my mind off of doing just one process. I'll also work in sections. For the last shot I showed above, I did the first 90 degrees of the pan first, and got that working, then approached the second half, and added all the other bits.


Hey Aruna,

Long time fan of your work. My question is geared towards the begining of these shots, and how you go about starting the project. Lets say for the Marine that falls overboard, how is this shot presented to you? Do you start with the shot first, then think about what elements will be needed to complete the shot? I've always been curious to know how a compositor preps his or her shots. Do you ask for elements or are they provided to you? Another instance is the roto work that was done for this film and iwo jima lets say you know you need sections that werent shot on greenscreen to be roto'd, how does the communication method work within each department? Im trying to basically understand how you start your compositing process, cheers for the great breakdowns!

Cheers,

[gottony]

Nice, thanks for the inside look. What's your next project? Vacation?

[drswoboda]

Hello Aruna,

Those two films contained some of the best VFX to ever hit the screen. Really great job by all involved. I was going to ask you to point out in some of the beach scenes what was live practical and what was CG, but then you went on to say there was little if any practical FX on set! That is just astounding to hear. And then you mentioned that most of the explosions and bombs are also CG! That took me by surprise. I would have thought there was much more on set practical work in those shots. And the explosions being CG, wow. I really need to get the new DVD set when it comes out and watch them both again.

What about all the falling dirt and sand I seem to remember in tons of the beach shots? All CG elements, or is any of it practical? I did see some dirt on several of the soldiers uniforms in your quicktime that looked like practical stuff, but maybe not.

Again, really fine work all around. Flags has what I think are the most realistic beach landing scenes I can envision. My grandfather is long passed now, so I can't ask him what it was really like (D-Day +1, rifleman in 5 man mortar team), but I think you folks nailed it without losing any men in the process. Now my dad was a nose gunner in a B-24 that crashed (http://www.b24bestweb.com/connie-v1-2.htm) so he would have liked what you guys did with the aircraft in Flags. That shot of the Corsair flying down the line of ships was nothing short of spectacular!

Again, really fantastic work.
-David

[Ajax]

Very straight foward Aruna, thank you! I'll use 1-5 as a good source of reference.

[Motski]

wow guys. Really nice reading here! And thanks Aruna for sharing this with us, really give some sence about the compositors work!

Hope to see more of this when Pirates are out :)

-motski

[MartinL]

Aruna:
All these scenes you have posted here. I guess neither of them was shot on the same time of the day.
So how did you approach that obstacle? Was there any need of replacing the skyes and / or color correct and grade the scenes?

Thank you!!:)

[ihatebrianwilliams]

Hello Aruna,
Do you think these shots would have been possible to do in shake? Sounds like there was a lot of 3d camera work. Seeing how shakes multiplane is terrible would there just have been a totally different approach to completing these shots?
Congratulations on the staff position.

[Aruna]

Nice, thanks for the inside look. What's your next project? Vacation?

I've got some personal projects I want to attend to while on vacation for the next few weeks (unrelated to VFX) and then I'll be back in the fray mid June! Who knows what the next show is. I'll find out when I get back into the office. :)

[Aruna]

Hey David,

Depending on the shot, sometimes it was on set, and sometimes it was a greenscreen element put over the foreground plate. For a couple of my shots, specifically the one that whip pans over, and is very short, the strafing hits were in plate, and yes, they were a bit of a pain to isolate in order to not have motionblurred fringing around them when put back over the dark hills in the background (which was a 3D environment made by a lead in Nuke).

If there was a sandbomb going off close to camera, it was most likely computer generated, with live action debris or dirt falling. Of course, it does depend on the shot, so if you specify a shot, I can call it out, or try to remember how the plate originally looked!



What about all the falling dirt and sand I seem to remember in tons of the beach shots? All CG elements, or is any of it practical? I did see some dirt on several of the soldiers uniforms in your quicktime that looked like practical stuff, but maybe not.

-David

[Aruna]

Depending on the sequences, many were shot during the same time frame.. Oxide, who's around here somewhere, will tell you what it was like on set in Iceland for the beach sequences. The sequence of the Marine falling overboard was filmed off the Southern California coast, and in the background of many of the plates, Catalina island was visible. So in addition to creating new skies to resemble the south Pacific, we also had to remove the island from behind the actors. The skies in the beach landing scenes and related battle scenes were straightforward, as they had no clouds that we had to remove, and thus blended well with the rest of the sequence.

We matched to a colorcorrected match plate for all our sequences, which were then significantly brought down in saturation for the final film. What you see in the theatre and on DVD is very desaturated, and all the color that we applied to match was removed.



Aruna:
All these scenes you have posted here. I guess neither of them was shot on the same time of the day.
So how did you approach that obstacle? Was there any need of replacing the skyes and / or color correct and grade the scenes?

Thank you!!:)

[Aruna]

Hello Aruna,
Do you think these shots would have been possible to do in shake? Sounds like there was a lot of 3d camera work. Seeing how shakes multiplane is terrible would there just have been a totally different approach to completing these shots?
Hi Brian,

Yep, they would have definitely been possible in Shake. While there is a lot of camera work, this was crucial because of the pipeline that was set up. It does make it easier to a certain extent. Build a 3D environment in Nuke, save out, let the compers import it for the background and bring in their shot camera. For something like this in Shake, I would fore go a 3D environment, and settle for a large matte painting, which would could be tracked appropriately (with smoke plumes placed around), and placing the sandbombs in space using a move3D, with positional data of the terrain from matchmove.




Congratulations on the staff position.
Thank you. :)

[Aruna]

Hope to see more of this when Pirates are out :)

-motski
You're in for a treat for sure then!

[MartinL]

Aruna: Thanks for all the quick and great answers!!:D

So you know, im really new to compositing. And im not sure that I understand what you mean when you say that the lead compers build a 3D enviroment for you in Nuke. Could you describe a little bit closer what you mean with that?:)
Thanks





...Build a 3D environment in Nuke, save out, let the compers import it for the background and bring in their shot camera....

[Aruna]

And im not sure that I understand what you mean when you say that the lead compers build a 3D enviroment for you in Nuke. Could you describe a little bit closer what you mean with that?:)
Thanks

Nuke's 3D compositing system is very robust. It allows you to bring in any number of images, align them in 3D space, and view them through a 3D camera. It also allows you to bring in 3D geometry, with UV coordinate mapping, so you can theoretically texture objects. Very cool stuff. When the leads create a 3D environment, they use this system. Most of the time, especially for the Green beach sequence, the entire background was constructed of single frame images that formed a circle around the action, with the shot camera located roughly in the center. This allowed the shot camera to move freely in which ever direction, and the background images would follow as if in the same space. They would also occasionally place smoke elements and plumes on this background circle or sphere (for skies, usually, but sometimes we can get away with a really big image). The majority of the composites were achieved in this way.

[gottony]

Since you get a premade 3d set essentially, do you also get the type of color correction in that to or do you just match the plates and send it out? I know they cc the whole film but I was wondering if there was any sort of color scheme you needed to follow. Also, how long have you been in the biz? I noticed your reels have some very impressive movies. The companies don't care you use them as long as the movies out already?

[metalrahul]

Hey Aruna,

Thanks for this interesting and informative thread, I would like to know more about the 3D environment in Nuke. Is this system use FBX format or is it work on something else? Can you please list advantages and disadvantages of this system. I believe this would be very interesting in future and may even increase compositors role in production pipeline since its no more just 2D now. ;). I would also like to hear your thoughts on the same!

Cheers,
Rahul

[Aruna]

Since you get a premade 3d set essentially, do you also get the type of color correction in that to or do you just match the plates and send it out? I know they cc the whole film but I was wondering if there was any sort of color scheme you needed to follow. Also, how long have you been in the biz? I noticed your reels have some very impressive movies. The companies don't care you use them as long as the movies out already?

The color correction is up to the comper. Usually there is a match clip, and also there is already a color grade for the foreground plate that we must deliver. It's up to us to match everything to the color grade, which is usually an approved look by the supervisor and lead.

I've been doing this for 9 years, and as long as the movies are out (in theatres or DVD), I can put them on my reel. Usually I just wait until the DVD, since that's the easiest way to get the footage.

[Aruna]

Hey Aruna,

Thanks for this interesting and informative thread, I would like to know more about the 3D environment in Nuke. Is this system use FBX format or is it work on something else? Can you please list advantages and disadvantages of this system. I believe this would be very interesting in future and may even increase compositors role in production pipeline since its no more just 2D now. ;). I would also like to hear your thoughts on the same!

Cheers,
Rahul

Hey Rahul.. The 3D comping environment in Nuke doesn't use any FBX format (I'm unsure as to whether it can import FBX filetypes). It's proprietary to Nuke, and cannot be exported to other software, that I know of. The biggest advantages are the speed and ease of placing image elements in 3D space accurately to portray where they end up in 2d space! It's an integral part of compositing at Digital Domain, and I feel that it will further be vital for a compositor to know the techniques of a 3D compositing environment.

[magno]

Hey Aruna, nice to read another great movie Q/A....
One question: what software was used by the roto team?

[Pnagle]

Hey Aruna,

When you brought in geometery everthing had textures from the 3d right? So did they bake the lighting and the textures out into new files before releasing it to Nuke?

I figure there was HEAVY edge work done and lots of edge color suppresion and re-colour correcting to get lights to go to darks where the mountain in the back crossed soilders that were once against a washed out sky or even grass. What techniques did you use to get the accurate color information into the edges of the soilders in the plate?

I heard that DD was using motion vectors from the plates to drive the motion blur for the roto shapes, do all the plates at DD get motion vector renders when the plates go through IO or can you do it in Nuke?

Oh Ben Pierre says hello also.;)

Cheers,
Patrick Nagle

[gottony]

Hey Pnagle, what are motion vectors? Is that like optical flow?

Aruna, do miss Shake? See yourself going back to it or are you just a Nuke guy? What are some of your likes and dislikes about the software? Did they give you some basic training on Nuke or did they just drop shots on your lap and say "Have fun?" Where your co-compositors helpful with your learning it?

[Aruna]

When you brought in geometery everthing had textures from the 3d right? So did they bake the lighting and the textures out into new files before releasing it to Nuke?
Hey Patrick... No, when we bring in geometry they do not have textures applied. If we bring in a texture map and the geometry has UV coordinate mapping, then the textures will get applied correctly, otherwise it doesn't line up. All the CG was rendered through our regular rendering pipeline. We only brought in geometry to line up image planes.



I figure there was HEAVY edge work done and lots of edge color suppression and re-colour correcting to get lights to go to darks where the mountain in the back crossed soilders that were once against a washed out sky or even grass. What techniques did you use to get the accurate color information into the edges of the soilders in the plate?
There were a number of different techniques that I used. Some of the more general methods include expanding the color information outwards from the mask (in essence, taking pixel color information from the inside of the foreground, and duplicating it continuously outwards, known in some packages as dilate/erode), so when we print the foreground back over the background, we retain the color. Other times I completely replaced the foreground with a single frame of grained color. There are a number of custom tools that the technical artists within DD have written which also help immensely! I'm not sure if they're in the latest 4.6 release, I'll have to check.


I heard that DD was using motion vectors from the plates to drive the motion blur for the roto shapes, do all the plates at DD get motion vector renders when the plates go through IO or can you do it in Nuke?

That is correct. Nuke can create motion vectors to make motion blur on the fly. We can use a 3D camera (the most used method on the show) or we can use a 2D transform. Nuke will create on the fly motion vector information for every frame, we don't need to prerender motion vectors. Oops, actually, I didn't answer your question. There are a number of ways to create motion blur with roto in Nuke. The one that we used the most on the show was, like you said, creating motion vector files which would then go through Nuke's optiflow system to give us accurate motion blurred roto. We don't generate motion vector renders for every shot, sometimes it's just not necessary. It's a step that happens during the roto and comp process, and can change on the fly, depending on what the comper wants.



One question: what software was used by the roto team?
Nuke, of course. :)



Aruna, do miss Shake? See yourself going back to it or are you just a Nuke guy? What are some of your likes and dislikes about the software? Did they give you some basic training on Nuke or did they just drop shots on your lap and say "Have fun?" Where your co-compositors helpful with your learning it?
I don't miss Shake one bit. :) Nuke is definitely a compositing power. Unfortunately, I didn't have the most indepth training, but my coworkers were great in giving me answers to simple questions, and D2Software was in the same building, so bug fixes and help was around the corner! That's changed a bit in the last couple of months, of course. I knew a lot about comping already, and just needed to know where the buttons were in Nuke to get the look that I wanted. The other big deal was the way that Nuke handles channels, which takes a little while to get used to. I did get very basic training on Nuke. Another big deal was that the software is constantly evolving, so it's quite tough to get training out that covers all versions of Nuke! Now that the Foundry is at the helm, I'm hoping that there'll be many more tutorials and lessons. But once you get your head wrapped around it, it's very nice. I can't see myself going back to Shake. That's good too, since Shake is dead. We'll see what Apple's next highend comp package might be, but I'm behind Nuke 100%.

[GDMP]

Nuke, of course. :)

Hey.....We use Combustion....
We also work hard.....did crunch time for compers....
Dont forget about us.......

Roto/Paint Artist@DD

[Aruna]

Of course! I always thank my roto guys and girls. You have a thankless job, especially on Flags. IIRC, it was the biggest show DD has had for the roto team, more than 25 rotoscopers worked their butts off for that show.

I've always received Nuke scripts and mattes from you guys though. Maybe for the Commercials dept you guys use C? Probably works better with the Flame fellas.


Hey.....We use Combustion....
We also work hard.....did crunch time for compers....
Dont forget about us.......

Roto/Paint Artist@DD

[GDMP]

I've always received Nuke scripts and mattes from you guys though. Maybe for the Commercials dept you guys use C? Probably works better with the Flame fellas.

Roto/Paint team uses Combustion.
Not only for the Commercials but for Pirates of the Caribbean etc...
Sorry for off topic postiong.

[magno]

Dont think its off-topic, was exactly i wanted to know, thanks.

[SalaTar]

gotta love roto

[MartinL]

gotta love roto

Maybe hes one of those Super Soldiers?!:wow:

[redlum]

Hey Aruna

Firstly - big fan of your blog. Thanks for the inspiration.

I was wondering if you had any experiences with a combined matchmove and roto technique I heard was pioneered on the film? I read that shots were matchmoved regardless as soon as they came into you at DD so that basic, placeholder masks could be tracked in place to speed up the masses of roto that needed to be done. Could you possibly tell me a bit about this sytem (specifically, how the gap is bridged between the placeholders and splines) and whether you see this as something that will be used more often?

Cheers

[girlcompositor]

Hey.....We use Combustion....
We also work hard.....did crunch time for compers....
Dont forget about us.......

Roto/Paint Artist@DD

We didn't use combustion for roto. Only for painting out things, but more and more painting is being done in Nuke since Flags. Most marker removals on Pirates and other paint work (rig removals, face clean-up, etc) were done in Nuke for that show comparatively to how things were done on Flags.



Hey Aruna

Firstly - big fan of your blog. Thanks for the inspiration.

I was wondering if you had any experiences with a combined matchmove and roto technique I heard was pioneered on the film? I read that shots were matchmoved regardless as soon as they came into you at DD so that basic, placeholder masks could be tracked in place to speed up the masses of roto that needed to be done. Could you possibly tell me a bit about this sytem (specifically, how the gap is bridged between the placeholders and splines) and whether you see this as something that will be used more often?

Cheers

I can take the roto question. I did a lot of that for these two films. I'm not sure it was pioneered for the film, it was more like this was a show that used more roto than a lot of other films had previously. Almost every scene you see, everything is rotoed, soldiers, trucks, helmet straps, guns, including the battle scenes where there were a good number of soldiers. There's a famous roto shot in the department where two of the characters are carrying a body in a sling over a burn and as they top the burn they are on the beach and the battle is going on. This scene used a ton of roto shapes and everything had to be rotoed basically. One of the artists did a screen capture of the entire scene where you can see all the shapes popping on and off of the screen. You get a good idea how massive each shot was.

We use nuke for roto, and we do articulated roto shapes to do the work. I really like Nuke for roto work, it's very easy to use, and made my job a lot faster.

As for the matchmoving, roto didn't really get to use a lot of that. The cameras were almost never done in time for roto, and were mainly used for the compers and 3d elements placed into shots. I don't know a lot about if it was used to help speed up the roto for temp shots, perhaps Aruna can tell you more about that. I do know that roto did temp rotos, which are quick rotos for the shots so they could get an idea of what was going on, they also had temp compers who would do some of that. The roto would come back and we'd pretty much have to start the roto over again. It's easier to start over than it is to tweak stuff sometimes.

Sorry I couldn't tell you more about the other technique. It wasn't done in roto. It might of been done by the temp compers.

[gottony]

girlCompositor, what are articulate roto shapes? Is that just Nuke thing?

[girlcompositor]

No. Articulated roto shapes is when you use more than one roto spline to complete an entire object. For example instead of using on shape with lots of points for an entire person you might do one shape for his head, another for his upper body, two more for the arms, two more for the legs, etc. Altogether these shapes make up a good looking matte. These is good because it uses less points, and lets you focus on one part at a time. You can also split up the work if you have to. One person does the arm, another does the leg, etc. This isn't done a lot, but was done on a big shot I had on Pirates a lot. The comper needed the work, so we had to split it up to get it done faster.

There is a good tutorial on it, when I find the link I will post it.

[redlum]

Thanks for the response, girlcompositor.

I think I read about it in the Flags issue of Cinefex but I cant find it at the moment. I think its partly to do with what Aruna talked about earlier with regards to the 3d camera driving the motion blur for the roto shapes. Does that help much or were you intervening a lot?

[gottony]

Thanks a lot girlcompositor. I already do that but I didn't know it had an actual name. It does help a lot to split stuff up into smaller pieces. You worked on Pirates? How was that?

[girlcompositor]

Thanks for the response, girlcompositor.

I think I read about it in the Flags issue of Cinefex but I cant find it at the moment. I think its partly to do with what Aruna talked about earlier with regards to the 3d camera driving the motion blur for the roto shapes. Does that help much or were you intervening a lot?

Ah yes, The optiflow node. This was especially handy. When we were done rotoing we run run a setup with this node and a premultiplied image of our mattes. This would do all the motion blur for us, so we never had to roto the motionblur. The comper could then take this rendered nodes and tweak to settings to get more motionblur or less depending on what they needed. At some places you have to roto the motionblur as well as the object, so the optiflow node really helps out and is a good timesaver.


Thanks a lot girlcompositor. I already do that but I didn't know it had an actual name. It does help a lot to split stuff up into smaller pieces. You worked on Pirates? How was that?

I found the link so here it is: roto tutorial (http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2006/01/rotoscoping-part-1.html)

Working on Pirates was a lot of fun. I won't get into it too much since this thread is about Flags and I don't want to go that much off topic, but I really enjoyed working on it. We had a great team, and some big shots. It was especially worthwhile when I got to see my shots come together in the film. :)

[Pnagle]

Is Mike Sweeny still the 2d coordinator at DD?

[girlcompositor]

Is Mike Sweeny still the 2d coordinator at DD?

He's the 2d manager at DD, is that the same thing? I guess it kind of is. lol

[Pnagle]

Yah same thing pretty much, hmmm good deal.

[Chim]

Hey, Aruna.
Realy nice job on 'Flags'.
How many hours(days) did you spent compositing shots 4812.mov and 7511.mov
How DD aproach jobs planing? Did your supervisor already know that task is going to be completed in X hours or is he asking you about how many hours do you need to make this shot done?
Did you knew that in final film will be so desaturated? I meant on the color matching stage did you worked with neutral grade colors or did you have something nearly final prints?

[Aruna]

Thanks Chim...
It's been a year, but I recall 4812 taking about a 3 to 4 days to complete, in comp land. This stems from the back and forth with the director and supervisor, and every time a new 3D element was rendered, it would be put into the shot. If I received all the elements at once, it would take about a half day or full day, depending on supervisor feedback.

7511 took about two weeks of solid comping. This was mostly 2D, but I did have to wait for some massive guys to be rendered, and some smoke passes. The majority of it was cleaning up the edges and blending the foreground with the background sky, smoke, and mountains, as well as adding in strafing hits on the ground and tracers flying through the air.

The bidding happens before we receive shots, and the supervisors and producers do a good job of delegating how much a shot will cost and how long it will take. They take a number of factors into account, as well as the artists that will do the shot. I try to get stuff done sooner, of course, because then the company makes more money.

We knew that the sequences we were working on would be desaturated, but we did not work on the plates as such. The original plates were blue sky, fatique green clothes, and brown dirt, with patches of straw colored grass.

[Chim]

Thank you for so in-depth answers.