Sunday 21 October 2012

Brief 03 Car Colour Correct - First thoughts

In this sequence, there are two shots, both panning shots. The aim here is to stabilise the footage, and place the car and any other possible components from footage 1 of the car on its own, into footage 2, with the gate on the background. It may be good to add in the puddle, even the gravel perhaps, giving the road a more country-like feeling.

The first thing that must be done though is to make a matte out of the car, covering over the entire body, boot, and under-shadow of the car. One thing that sticks out are the windows, so rotoscoping those out as will help add realism, so when the colour correct is used for the shot, not only will it look a part of the image, but the windows will give it some more depth in terms of realism.

Making the car look to be a part of the shot will take time in colour correcting,the shadow underneath the car will be a prime focus in creating realism, if this is tweaked well, then the windows and the shadow will make the car seem to have more naturalism.

Any additives such as the puddle in the footage 1 shot, shall have to be practiced with once the car is fully colour corrected and intergrated into the backplate, for if the puddle is to be used, what would be reflected in the water, the trees are shown in the first footage, but there is a gate and a hill in the second one, there is a lot more going on between them both, so before any additional ideas will be worked, making sure the car is fully intergrated into the second shot fully before starting to add puddles, gravel or reflection.

Brief 02 Fight and forest Sequence, 001-1089 - First thoughts

This small sequence is very pacey with the camera work and framing, therefore, to work on the footage more in depth, mark down it's light settings, and make it brighter whilst working on the roto scoping, to help better mark out the 'red glass interior' of the 'container' in the shots. To begin with, looking at the first five shots:

1. This shot is rather dark, but at about 00:05 seconds into that first shot, near the very end, the entirety of the glass 'container', glass interior and the mans hand can be seen, this shot will help when rotoscoping, seeing as his hand as well as the 'container' are both in shadow until they come into the light, so making the rotoscope on this frame and keyframing backward will help.

2. This shot comprises of three rotoscopes or more: The man, the container, and the branch. Throughout the shot, the man begins staying quite still, the branch waves above his head, whilst the container moves in his hands, just at the bottom right of the shot.  Outline these, thinking about how the shot progresses, it will help when the mans head turns and the container leaves the frame near the end.

3. This clip has some movement to it, so taking a lot of time going frame by frame to make sure it matches the movement of the shot will create a clean matte. Trying to stabilize the shot when the container comes into view may help when rotoscoping the individual glass interior as well as the hand and the overall container.

4. This shot is quick, and also dark, it will take a lot of time to make sure the glass interior is shown as well as the container of the hand. Lighting up the shot during the rotoscoping to see his hand is advisable for the movement and the container. It would be wise to make sure to bring it back to its original composition, unless told it would be necessary or the extra lighting can be kept inside the shot.

Overall, this sequence will need a lot of patience and planning, as there is an lot of movement in the shots, especially shot three and four in the sequence. Overall, apart from the shot two and three, the others are dark, so the artists should be careful when rotoscoping, and perhaps should lighten up the shot to make rotoscoing easier, bring the brightness down again so that the shot is brought back to how it was lit originally, but with the added roto.

Brief 01 Altar Sequence, 001-449 - First thoughts

Brief 01 Altar Sequence, 001-449

Looking at this sequence of nine shots, a few shots, mainly the first one, have quite a shake on them, the first thing to do is to stabilize the shots using the tracker. If the first shot is stabilised, rotoscoping shall be made easier than If the shot was still shakey.

Good first thoughts are, that some shots are revisited, re-used later on with the same background, so it may be a good idea to break up these shots, name them appropriately, and work on each of the same shots, rotoscoping the changes as they each progress. Through watching it, four different types of framing is used, one of the children from the top, another looking down at the children, a close up of two of the characters faces, and a shot from behind the children.

Some are repeated, this is where you break up the shot into their seperate small frames, working on similar frames such as the two different charactersclose ups, next, the shots framed looking down at the children.

Splitting up the shots and making them over multiple Nuke projects, then compiling them together may prove to be too tricky, muddled up, and disorganised, even with names, so the other way to do this is by simply cutting up each shot and making nine sections inside one project, working on them one by one.

Stabilise the shots that move too much to help rotoscoping work, break the shots up either into their similar frame groups, and label them as they are in the shot, 1-9, or do them all over time, keeping the similar labelling.

These are just initial ideas at the moment,but planning before going ahead on any project will save a compositor time in the long run, if a project is organised before they start.

Sunday 14 October 2012

The 'Clone/Reveal' Tool, and other image manipulation.

This post will be showcasing the use of the clone/reveal tool in the 'Roto-paint' node, here is a picture of a man wearing sunglasses, the clone/reveal tool is going to be used to replace what is seen in the glasses.

The reflection here is strong, and is the centre-point of the photograph, therefore when the reveal tool is used, it must encompass the entirety of the glasses.


In horror films, directors seem to wish for more original ways in showing the villain on screen. Sometimes the protagonists watch themselves in a mirror and they see the horrors shamble up behind them. This is to change the circumstance of the picture just by using the clone/reveal tool, reveal being the tool used.

This is the picture that shall be used, of a group of zombies walking toward our victim.

(Wallpaper Vortex, 2011)

The true difficulty with finding the right picture for this shot, is trying to match the sunlight of our zombies to the light in the original photograph, so this was picture was used due to its similar brightness.


After transforming, reformatting, and slightly rotating the zombie picture in the background (A process used to move the picture around behind our original image), the reveal tool is in the roto-paint node to begin filling out the lenses in the glasses. After this is done, it seems to work fairly well, but the colour in the photo still does not feel entirely natural, and without having to know how to use colour correction at this stage, an easy substitute is to use saturation, and make the overall picture black and white.

The program that was used for the black and white is a similar program to photoshop,  called 'G.I.M.P' (GNU, Image Manipulation Program). This program was used to desaturate the picture. The luminosity was tweaked to at least give it some sort of brightness, by using the 'Curves' option, what this allows to be done is to make the picture black and white, but retain brightness in certain areas of the picture.

In all, not only is this good practice with the reveal tool, but it also shows how editing a photograph by using this simple reveal tool can change its meaning. Even more so, considering the compositor may not know how to use the colour correction, many artists prefer black and white in their photographs to create a different ambience and mood natural lighting gives.

Reference:

Wallpaper vortex, 2011-04-13 16:09:31, Zombie Crowd Wallpaper, accessed Sunday, October 14th 2012

Roto Work

As small practice after our lesson on Rotoscoping, I decided to merely try to do a better job at home with the video of a Tram coming up a hill.

As you can see from the video, it is off kilter, I shall be seeing if I can solve this for next time.
On this particular tram I found that the less beziers I made for the outlining of the tram, the easier it would be to manipulate and control how it works.

I of course learn this at the end, as, after reviewing what I had done, it resembles that of what you would view under a microscope in science class, however, but practice makes perfect, and I found the Tram making it's way up the hill far easier than what I tried to achieve in class, the tram rotating on the spot.

I hope to re-visit the plane roto again, as this one was with only one outline, as the plane would require many as it comes in to pass the camera and fully show its side.

What I have learned from this one was:

- Find a good video capture program.
- The less points, the easier, unless you are willing to go through the hard work, and unless the shape needs more points.
- Practice, practice, practice.


I also found that listening to some music whilst doing the roto work helped greatly, as time fly's when you do this work, but keeping yourself occupied whilst doing it helped me greatly.