[doen]

started work on this a few hours ago. Needs a lot more work with color correcting, refining the matte (gonna have to do a lot of roto still... not too happy the footage was keyed). I kinda uglied up the script with the part where I was creating different mattes, so I still have to deal with that. And still to come is the smoke and a lot of adjustments to the matte painting (erm... background )

Love the challenge tho.

[doen]

Here's some more work on it. I think I'm getting pretty nice progress. I've rendered the smoke from Particle Illusion, but am still noodling about the fancy smoke. Besides that smoke I've got quite some more roto action planned for cleaning up the matte and to get rid of the smoothing artifacts from the original keying (between the arms and body).

[doen]

I'm testing the swiveling smoke. I don't like the fact that the warps are slowing the render down and it's not the easiest to preview it. And it's hard to make adjustments. I kinda like it but it still needs more adjustments and more smoke

Would love to here your opinions about the whole thing.

Thanks.

[shonofear]

hey,
good progress and well updated
Im still new to having a good eye for detail but i will comment on
the light on your pots. Looks like a bright light source coming from the
front on creating a spec highlight, but the shadows are aimed from the other way.
I think by judging from the dancer, the light comes from the back right.

ok, hope that help

cheers

[3Dennis]

Great job on the smoke. You created the line of smoke on the girl with Particle Illusion?
How can I attach a smoke to a path and make it go so slow like you did?

[metalrahul]

good smoke and nice blending, keep up the good work man. As mentioned earlier you may give some attention to the lighting of the scene.

[doen]

thanks for the comments, guys.

@metalrahul, shonofear: you're right... the lightning is off... guess I'll need to change some things around... and I guess some nifty paint work will be in order.

@3Dennis: I created a long straight line of smoke in Particle Illusion at a higher frame rate (I think it was about 90fps) so I got a nice slow moving smoke when I played it at 30fps. Then I used the Warper tool in Shake to bend it around the girl. It's quite a simple solution but it really slows down the render since the warps are usually painfully slow.


Thanks again for the comments. I'll work on it some more and then post an update. I've just gotta scrape some more time (the weekend was okay... nothing else to do )

[doen]

I've finally got a chance to work on this challenge some more. I adjusted the smoke animation a bit and added a shadow for the girl. I still have to change the pots with the damn shine on them.

After a while I decided to also make a major change to the thing, and decided to make the girl (just the girl, not the dress) invisible and make her dress white. I dunno why I decided that... I just felt it'd be a fun thing to do. So I worked on pulling the key of the dress coloring it and then filling in the back part of it (what was behind the girl). I think it looks quite well. Gotta fix the matte in a few places (still got a bit of flickering while played back). But it'll be a little weird cause there will be no indication of her hand movement; I'm deciding if I should screen a really transparent image of the girl over the whole thing and distort the background behind her... or maybe just paint on white gloves.

What do you think?

And yea... my tree is a mess, but I don't feel like sorting it out right now

[sorin]

very nice approach. I think a ghosty look will do just fine.

[MartinL]

Aww wery nice mate! Great work. The dress looks awesome!!

[doen]

Thanks guys.

I've decided to put a very transparent layer of the girl over the entire thing, but I think I may have over-done it. Will remedy that the next time I work on it. For now I've fixed the dress, distorted the background behind the invisible parts of the girl, animated (poorly) the smoke and done a first draft of the final color correction. I've rendered it all out of course.

I still haven't dealt with the damn highlights on the pots. It's on my to-do list (but, then again, so are many other things)

[clicknroll]

looks damn good, can't wait to see further updates
keep it up!

[MartinL]

Yeah this looks reaally sweet mate!! Really cool spooky mood

[joseherrera]

Very nice Job!!

I like see more updates

[anachron]

cool stuff! i like it very much.. waiting to see more