Technical Direction for Compositing Blog

Week 10: Project 3 Resubmission

May 28, 2019

Below is my resubmission for the final project. I did not have enough time to fix everything that I would have liked, but I was able to improve the project significantly by increasing the depth of field, adding reflections of the figures onto the table, and simply integrating the CG objects into the scene a little more. I am proud of the project overall.

Week 10: Project 3 Critique

May 27, 2019

My biggest obstacle with this past weekend was time as I went home for a couple of days for my sister’s graduation. Despite this time constraint, I was able to finish the project along with the extra camera tracking shot. Unfortunately, I was rushing to get it finished before the deadline and I was not able to complete the assignment to my liking; but I was happy with the amount I got done in the time I had. The critique today went well, and my peers were able to pick up on a few things I forgot to include in my hurried state. For instance, the shadows on the larger figure are too dark and do not have enough bounce color, as though it fell out of the range of the HDR; I need to increase the depth of field, and I need to add the objects reflecting onto the table. I am hoping to fix these issues for the resubmission. For the camera tracking project, I mainly just need to work on the shaders on the chess pieces and decrease the bounce color.

Week 9: On Another Note… Project 2 Resubmission

May 23, 2019

I have been working on Project 2 little by little since the due date and was finally able to get it finished! I was unable to finish originally due to the Renderfarm going down and due to being ill, but I finally got it done. The animation is rendered, I resolved the exposure issue, and I fixed the breakdown. There are still some things I could work on, but I’m happy with how it turned out.

Week 9: “Houston… We Have a Problem”

May 22, 2019

As it turns out, the video I took for my camera track was unusable for this project as there was far too much noise and grain. I do not have time to redo the project completely and started to worry. I spoke to Professor Gaynor and came up with a solution: I decided that I will take another video for a separate camera tracking project when I go home this coming weekend for my sister’s high school graduation. It is not ideal, but at least I will be able to show my camera tracking skill.

Week 8: Choosing the Interior Animation

May 13, 2019

I was going to do chess pieces inside the box, but I found out that we were supposed to incorporate motion capture as our animated feature. I searched through mixamo.com and found a seated figure implying victory and another implying defeat. Due to the angle of my photograph, Professor Gaynor suggested that I bring the objects outside of it as though they were playing on the real chess board.

Week 7: Masking and Texture Referencing

May 10, 2019

Today’s class revolved around troubleshooting and finding ways to gain the most control over our projects and composites…

In class, we created an RGB mask for the box components (exterior, interior, and lid) to use later in the compositing stage. This will help us have more control as we will be able to effectively shuffle out alphas in these areas to use as masks.

For this project, the most efficient way to create and texture the lid is to create a texture reference. We created this in class and Professor Gaynor showed us how to take these texture references a step further and create a texture image for them in Maya. With this refernce, there were areas along the sides of my lid that carried parts of the exterior box. Altering the lid broke the connection for the texture reference, and it would be inefficient to go back and forth editing the projected image and re-projecting it until it became just right. Therefore, I decided to use the latter method of creating texture images from the texture reference to give me more control—it allowed me to bring in the texture image into Photoshop to modify the texture in these areas quickly and efficiently.

Week 7: Choosing the Pictures

May 7, 2019

After speaking with Professor Gaynor, I decided on going with the chessboard image instead of the tropical themed picture. The tropical photo is a bit crowded and the chessboard has a better composition which will make my final project more visually appealing. Below is the complete set of images for the chessboard. These photos were taken in a living room at a chess table and included a simple wooden box that could have a variety of purposes—like storing chess pieces. I have not decided on the animation yet, but I am leaning toward having chess pieces inside the box that move in some sort of fashion. Below are the images for the chessboard set of photos. The exposure was off for the HDR so I will apply a gamma correction in Maya.

Week 6: The Magic Box (Project Introduction and Photography)

May 4, 2019

This week our third and final project of the quarter was introduced. Project 3, otherwise known as “The Magic Box Project,” would consist of putting a CG lid on a box that we would photograph. We must also incorporate animated objects inside of the box. I am excited for this project because we will learn how to incorporate and combine CG elements with stationary, physical props—an important skill to have in the industry.

With a new project comes new photography. I had difficulty coming up with an idea, so I took a couple different sets of photos. A couple major difficulties that I encountered included being ill this weekend and having to go out of town because of it. Luckily, I was able to borrow a friend’s Canon camera and put together my own light-integration kit so that I would not fall too far behind.

Below are my two image options for this project:

Due to being sick, I missed the last class of the week in which we went over camera tracking. Fortunately, I have done camera tracking before—although I am a bit rusty—and I was able to get notes from classmates.

Week 6: Project 2 Submission and Critique

April 30, 2019

My critique went as well as it could go considering the issues of this past weekend. Of course, the Renderfarm and network went down the weekend before this project is due. The A/C went out in the school and the wires melted—I guess you could say it literally crashed and burned. Due to this, many students—including myself—did not have finished animations. Professor Gaynor was understanding regarding this issue and is allowing us to have the animation for the next class. I was able to submit a video and still image of my project to receive feedback. The main issues with my project was that the breakdown was not organized well and that my image was too over-exposed, which also cause the specularity to be blown-out. Professor Gaynor commented, however, that my CG object was integrated well into the plate despite the exposure issue. If I fix this problem and get the animation completed, I feel as though there will be a drastic improvement in my project.

Week 5: Shaders

April 23, 2019

For this project we were supposed to choose a Stanford model to pay tribute to the contribution that Stanford had in developing shading technology. The primary lesson of this project is understanding and compositing complex shaders as well as learning how to troubleshoot the issues that come along with them. For this reason, we spent a couple class periods going over the different elements of the shaders, making AOVs, and making masks that will give us more control while compositing.

We covered a large some of information over the past week such as specularity and reflection layers, AOVs and creating our own masks, and transparency (transmission) and translucency (subsurface scattering (SSS)). For me, the most helpful skill I learned was how to create an aiMix shader to combine the transmission shader and the subsurface shader with a Fresnel mask that will keep the same facing-ratio no matter how the object moves in the scene. With the Fresnel mask, I was able to give a sense of depth to my object as it helped give a little more transparency towards the edges of the object where it would be not as dense and allow more light to shine through, while the center remained more opaque, alluding to a greater density in this region.

Below is an image that shows the object and various shaders in a look development form. The top sphere shows the transmission shader, the middle sphere shows the subsurface shader, and the bottom sphere and Stanford Dragon shows the aiMix shader that uses the Fresnel mask.

Week 4: Gemstone Project Introduction and Photography

April 19, 2019

In the second week of the quarter, Professor Gaynor brought in gemstones for all of us to choose from. I chose a green stone that, after some research, I believe to be Aventurine. The time has come for Project 2 to begin and to finally use the gemstone. This project is mainly about creating and working with a shader that contains some level of translucency and transparency; and the troubleshooting that goes along with it. Like the previous project, the first step is photography.

I was out of town this past weekend and unable to take pictures, so I had to take photographs on Tuesday. It was a great day for taking photos as it was nice and sunny—without a cloud in the sky. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a video with camera movement, so I had to retake them on Thursday. It took longer the second time because it was a cloudy, windy day and I had to wait for the clouds to pass on several occasions. Below are the final sets of photographs I took on Thursday including the final HDRI.

Week 3: Project 1 Submission and Critique

April 10, 2019

I am happy with how my project turned out! I received good comments on my model, textures, GOBO projection, and overall integration. The main suggestion I received was to work more on my ground shadow: the cast shadow changed in value as it moved across the scene and did not match the other shadow as much toward the end, and the ground occlusion may have been too dark. I hope to be able to fix these couple of issues by the end of the quarter, but I think the project turned out well so far.

Week 2: GOBO

April 7, 2019

After setting up render layers and AOVs, this week we learned how to make GOBOs for our CG object–an integral element to our projects so that it appears to roll through the light and shadows. GOBOs are short for “go-betweens.” They are often used on physical sets as silhouettes or “cut-outs” over the lights, and we discovered how to apply them in the CG realm. I did not know what a GOBO was before this class, so it was really exciting to learn the process of creating a CG GOBO as well as to learn their plethora of applications. While not physically accurate, it is—most importantly—visually accurate. To create a CG GOBO in Maya, I needed to set up a light rig with black and white masks parented to that specific light and camera projection.

Week 2: Matching the Camera and Lighting

April 1, 2019

After taking the photographs for project 1 over the weekend, it was time to match the camera in Maya. The picture of the cube is supposed to provide depth information and assist in camera matching. I adjusted the camera settings, including the focal length, to match those provided by the photographs before using the photo of the cube. I created the CG cube and adjusted it to be real world scale, then it was time to use the cube picture. By bringing the image of the cube into Maya, I was able to match the CG cube to the cube in the photo and match the camera angle (as shown below).

Once the camera was matched, it was time to match the lighting. The purpose of the white ball is to provide light and shadow information, so this is where the images of the white cube came in handy. I was able to match the direction and intensity of the light and the shadows.

I gamma corrected the HDRI to bring in more of the colors from the environment that are present in the original image.

Week 1: Photography for Project 1

March 30, 2019

Project 1 was introduced this week and our first assignment was to take photographs that we could use for the project. In class, we were taught how to use the Canon 5D Mark III camera. I took photos outside of Daffins Park where there were metal gates lined along the sidewalk. For our project, we need images of a clean plate, the area in shadow, a cube, a grey or white ball in light and in shadow, and a chrome ball with multiple exposures (for an HDRI).

Thankfully, there were no major issues on the day of shooting. However, it was tricky to obtain cohesive images as the clouds often moved over the sun; and by the time the sun reappeared, there was a significant difference in shadows as it had changed position in the sky. Tip: have everything pre-planned and be ready to take pictures quickly.

Below are the photographs I took for Project 1 and the HDRI created in Photoshop…