VFX05 - Bischofftep

[Bischofftep]

Edit: Here is the link to the final project post!

Hello, all:

Like several others in this challenge, this will be my first entry at VFXTalk.com. I've recently become a Combustion user on the Mac OS X platform, and am quite eager to start experimenting and this is the perfect way to do so.

/me waves "Hi" to SdFX. Good to see you guys!

Anyway, I think the best way to see how something is put together is to do a WIP like many others are, and writing down what I did helps me remember it for later. So, here goes!

First, this is the original image that I chose to work with. I picked it because it jumped out at me as being full of emotion and meaning, and also fit nicely with some techniques I have been experimenting with.



Next message is what I did with the thing!

[Bischofftep]

Me again.

Okay, first things first. In order to provide some perspective to the scene, I had to do a little 3D work. Matching a camera to this scene proved extremely difficult... and I think I know why. It would appear that this scene was either a CG scene itself... or more likely a matte painting. In this case, the painter/artist made a great looking scene... that doesn't actually follow some of the laws of physics that a camera would be subject to. This made for some tricky compensation!

Here is a shot from my 3D app of choice, Blender, showing the reconstructed geometry.



There wasn't a need to be extremely accurate with this reconstruction with regards to the edges of the buildings: this was handled in Photoshop. Each building was isolated from the rest, and a mask created in Photoshop. This "isolated" version, along with the mask, was camera-mapped onto the geometry for that particular building. More on this later.

[Bischofftep]

Next!

Having created masks & rotoscoped data for the hidden portions of various buildings, the sky was next. This proved to be challenging as most sky shots are: there is so much tonal gradation in any sky shot that one must pay careful attention to be sure that no artifacts are visible when retouching them out.

I use the "cloning" brush exclusively for this. Yes, Photoshop now has tools which claim to do this sort of work "for" you, such as the band-aid and patch tools, but I have yet to see them really do better than a skilled artist with the cloning brush. I've seen SdFX's roto work on another image in this contest, and I'd bet they didn't touch the "patch" tool.

Here is the result of the work:



The reason this layer has to be by itself is that I have some other work to do with it in Combustion. This is, after all, a VFX challenge. The 3D was necessary to provide the parallax motion for my next step, but the point here is going to be to make something of the whole image and create a theme from it. What I chose will be discussed shortly.

[Bischofftep]

Okay, so what was the point of all that Geometry & Rotoscoping?

Essentially, I intend to bring the image to life in several ways.

First, thematically. The image immediately put me in mind of a poem by Percy Shelley that was written about a civilization that thought itself immune to time's wasting hand. This is that poem:

OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Okay, it isn't sand but water, but the meaning was clear.

Second, I want to provide a sense of the change from a vibrant society carefully created... that later turns to this scene of decay.

Lastly, the sense that you could wander down the main "street" of the image and see nothing but destruction and decay wherever you went. To accomplish this last bit I needed to provide the illusion of a camera "push in." This is the reason for the Roto & 3D work: to provide the parallax effect which will cue the eye into believing the picture has depth.

Here is the result in QuickTime MPEG format. (This may require Quicktime 6 to view.)

Click Here to view the 284kb QuickTime Movie

The sky plate will be handled in Combustion.

The water.... now THAT is a separate challenge. (Makes me wonder why nobody else picked this particular image... )

[arvid]

Hi there I also picked that image right away, I've been too busy the last couple of weeks to get started tho.. but I'm on the exact same track as you are, cameramapping the image on 3D to create the parallax effect etc I know what you mean about that image being hard to line up! But you seem to have pulled it off nicely. I hope our submissions doesn't get too similar tho..
Looking good so far

[VectorMan]

Hey there Bischofftep!
Wow you've done some cool stuff already. I wasn't sure that we were really encouraged to imply such heavy usage of 3d. I'm not saying you shouldn't, in fact i'd like to learn more about where they are drawing the line.

The reason i chose not to use this image, was for the same reason you chose to. I'm pretty new to all this, so i quickly realized how limited i'd be with a pic like that, trying to keep in mind that i'm trying not to use 3d, for i want to practice my 2d VFX skillz for challenges over here. I would have NO IDEA how you would put water in there unless it was stock, or completely 3d generated (and last time i checked blender wasnt THAT good at water anyway).

1 Thing i'd like to point out is at the base of the CrAcKeD building there are some little spouts of water, that you would either have to paint out, or animate. Another thing is that from what i could see on you're video, that upping the texture resolution of the buildings would probably be a good idea.

GOOD LUCK i hope you pull it all off!

[SdFX]

It's looking very interesting!
We are really looking forward to viewing all the submissions this time. It's good to see you here, Bis. Any thought on the CGTalk challenges? I wrote a somewhat sour letter to the Gnomon guy, but havn't received a reply yet - maybe I p***es him off.

We're really glad you joined the fun! ...oh, and no...only standard cloning!

[Sherif.Nagib]

nice camera matching, this must be very hard.. good job

[T_R]

Hey Bischofftep,

Looking good! I too choose the same image and method for my entry and am having some great fun with it. I went for a slight rotation as opposed to the ''wander"' that you are doing.
Should be intresting to see how this image can go in different directions. I was curious for your geometry of the buildings..you used lite geometry for the jagged edges, but when you project, how come none of the sky is visible. In your .avi all edges look great and look as though they were modelled. The reason I am asking is because for this image I modelled the edges(just tracing them in a front view then extruding the geometry) and I would like to be more efficient in doing so. I was wondering if you could post another angle of the geometry of the main building please.

cant wait to the the final!

[Damo]

Hey Bis,

what can I say but.... respect !

Looks great. Can't wait to see it move.

Best,

Damo

[Bischofftep]

Hello, again!

First, some replies. Thanks for the encouragement! This will be my first project using Combustion 2.1.1 so it's a heck of a learning experience for me.

SdFX: Thanks for the welcome! I notice there's a new challenge up at CGChallenge, but no VFX version... yet. They seem to lag behind a bit anyway. Remains to be seen if they'll lower the bar a little to get more entries...?

VectorMan: Saw your stuff: wow! I did clone out the water spouts from the foreground building, but those will be back... Hm... lessee... particle systems in Combustion... Also yes: I'm done with the 3D work, and I hope that the rest of the finished product shows that the focus was indeed VFX work. Remains to be seen, I guess. See below!

T_R: What I did was to model rough outlines of the objects. The foreground building had a lot of protruding edges (damage) that needed a framework to sit on, but otherwise didn't need to be modeled exactly. The detail work of getting the edges "just right" was done by making a mask for each building in Photoshop: then applying this as an alpha mask to the building geometry. This way my modeling doesn't have to be completely exact and the building edges will still mesh well when composited over the sky and water images.

So what's next? Opening up Combustion and diving right in...

The water was a larger challenge than I thought. I wasn't able to satisfactorily model it in Blender, and couldn't find any stock footage that I liked (less than $99...). Combustion to the rescue! There are some warp & ripple tools in there which help add just a little bit of motion to the water. I'm not thrilled, but it'll do. Here's a link to a small movie showing the water & sky composited with the buildings in Combustion:

Click Here for the 300kb QuickTime MPEG-4 file.

I'm relatively satisfied with this: the motion of the water was handled by creating three separate "zones" in Combustion: left, middle, and right. Each of these has its own movement & scaling, and then the three are gently blurred into each other for a (hopefully...) seamless transition.

Compression artifacting is obscuring most of the water movement for the moment, but that'll be ironed out in the final. (I hope!)

Now: the second part of my attempt to tie all this together involved a scene of the city when it was vibrant and new. To accomplish this I used some heavy PhotoShop work to create a matte painting where roads & cars and shiny buildings replace the water & destruction. This isn't intended to be the final version, or I would have paid a lot more attention to gray balance. I'm not totally happy with the perspective, but it will serve for now. Here's the grayscale version:



I'll readily admit that I am a horrible pencil & paper artist. Once again, PhotoShop to the rescue. A number of Filters and some careful Levels and Blending work later, and we come up with this fairly realistic "drawing" of the city. Note that most of the problems with the grayscale are gone now... only the slight "um?" of the perspective remains, and at this point I'll have to live with it.



Next step is to bring some life to the pencil drawing, then tie it all together!

[Bischofftep]

Okay!

That was fun.

There's some tweaking to do on the particle emitter positions, but I'm quite pleased with this.



Click here to view the 800kb QuickTime MPEG-4 Movie

Getting the hang of Combustion!

Crits & suggestions welcomed!

[Damo]

Majesty Bis... Pure Majesty.


That looks great.

What did you use to displace the water? It blends together really

well.

I use ParticleIllusion which is what Combustion particles are

based on. I'd love to know in detail what you did.

Maybe after the end of this challenge you could post some info

on this.

Best,

Damo

[Bischofftep]

Originally posted by Damo
What did you use to displace the water? It blends together really well.

Thanks for the compliment! I'm really enjoying Combustion, though at times it doesn't seem to do what I think it should do... User problem no doubt.

The water was actually put together using two techniques:
1) The water plate (a still) was divided into three regions: left, middle, and right. Each region's layer is set to move and deform (skew) to more or less simulate the movement of the camera over the water. Three regions are needed because the parallax, distance, and apparent motion of each area is different. The three are blended together using edge gradients. The masks and gradients are animated throughout the length of the clip to keep a seamless border.

2) These three are nested together, and a "Pro Ripple" effect is placed over the top of them with some subtle settings. The net effect is water that shifts & moves, and has some low-angle ripples in them. It's not perfect, but it looks decent!

Now, I had posted pics of the pencil & ink "drawing" of the city when it was new. This is the result of putting a little Combustion work on top of that matte:



Click here to view the 500kb QuickTime MPEG-4 Movie

Two last steps in the video portion remain: the transition from the pencil to the color push-in, and the text work that will link it to the theme poem.

After that, if I have time, voiceover and music. *whew*

[VectorMan]

OMG this is great man, how long have you been doing stuff like this? Water looks pretty cool, the spouts are dead on, i can't wait to see it all tied together!