Production Pipeline: Tiki-Totem

The Tiki-Totem has already been modeled. I will be bringing it into mudbox the same way I did the Tiki-man textures. I was originally hesitant to do this method and instead find a simpler method. However, I do plan to render these for my own reel at a high quality. If I plan to do this, I would much rather use the actual normal map over the color map I made for in game use. 

On a side note, I am excited to say that was able to see the tiki-man actually moving in the blocks mobile game. He starts the level with a big stretch and dances upon completion.

Shatter Project: Removing the Arm

For two weeks, I have been editing footage to remove the actors arm and remaking whatever would have been behind it. This has been a very tedious and difficult job. Last week I was easily able to completely mask out the arm, but naturally this left a large arm shaped gap in his body as it crosses over. This last week was the far more difficult part, rebuilding his body behind it. I tried a series of methods to find the most efficient and best looking manner of recreating the lost areas of footage only to have all of them fail until I went back to the basics. Using morphing tools and motion paths in After Effects, I couldn't get a fluid and realistic looking transition as his cloth and fringe moved. The most efficient and best looking method turned out to be recreating the body frame by frame using Photoshop and its animation tools. Using the information from framed before and after the arm passes over a section of the body, I could recreate what needed to be there. I had to make some assumptions of the flow of his clothing by carefully studying the footage.

 Here is the original video captured running at 24 fps.

The same video after I edit out the arm.

Here you can see the result of this method. All in all I was able to do a decent job of removing his arm from the footage. Although there are some minor jitters, specifically toward the end with the yellow fringe, these areas should smooth themselves out when the video is run through the Optical Flow effect to slow the footage down.

Video Composite Masking

Now that my primary function as a modeler for the group, it is my job to help other area that need it. One of the jobs that I have been working on the last 2 weeks has been masking and cleaning video. The first scene I have been working with is the scene where the man's arm shatters. This is an extremely hard scene to try to mask because what I have to do is remove the mans arm from every frame and then rebuild/repaint anything that would be behind his arm including the other mans hand, his chest, clothing, belt, left hand, legs, floor and make sure that these frames are not only clean but also work as a fluid animation. This process is still not complete as I have removes his arm, and rebuilt his hand, the other mans hand, the floor and a few other pieces that were needed, however the remake of his body has proven quite a challenge with the movement of his clothing. Next post should have images of the completes composite.

The second scene that I have had to clean for the final video is the initial establishing shot. I had to remove the lights above the actors heads and also remove the track from the floor that the camera dolly rode on.

I remade the floor as closely as I could in Photoshop. From there, I used that image and placed it over the shot in After Effects. Initially it was quite a challenge to attempt to match the cameras forward motion, but using AE's motion tracking and simply tracking the tips of the camera's rails, I was able to get a motion that matched the original footage well.

The Tiki-Totem

It has been a while since my last post. I have been extremely busy with work and simply haven't had a chance to post on here. Since last time, I have been working a lot for these two projects and a very fun camera tracking project for my Tangible media class that I may also end up posting on here.

As for my work with Darkwind, I have the next model that they will be needing, a Totem pole that will be on the island with the Tiki-man. I have the initial concept that they have decided on, and will be receiving a color rendition soon.

 

As with the Tiki-man this model will be extremely low poly. I may follow the same technique I used with the Tiki-man, but I predict something like this being far easier to model with few polygons in comparison.

Shatter Project: Body Collision

Now that the base models have been completed, I have been working on setting up a collision mask for one of the bodies. To create the shatter effect we are using dynamics applied to a pre-shattered model, and when these pieces break off, they will also generate particles. When the particles go flying, we want them to collide with the body for a more realistic effect. To do this, a simple body was rigged and skinned and it was then my job to animate the body to match movement of the actor.

The silhouette this time did not need to be perfect, but at least follow the movement of the body decently. I personally am not too worried about the precision of the collision given that with direction of the impact and gravity effect applied, its unlikely particles will collide with the body, and the few that do collide will not be noticeable due to the amount of action in the shot. Regardless, I matched the body to the best of my abilities. From here on, I will be working on composting, removing the arm from the footage in After Effects.

Tiki-Man Color Texture

 

Above is a screen shot of the Tiki-man with his color texture applied. Using the normals' red and green channels, I generated a gray-scale texture for the Tiki-man. This gray-scale texture became a template for coloring him. The gray-scale texture was also used to create the illusion of depth within the diffuse texture. Using photoshop, I was able to use the template I had created to paint in the colors where they were needed. I attempted to remain as close to the original concept art as possible.

Digital Studio: The Body

There has been a ton of progress on the body model over the last week. I initially modeled the Body from the orthographic images that I gathered when the team was filming. The body did not have to be a perfect human replica because, given that it only needs to work under the same circumstances as the arm, it just has to silhouette the actor's body from the final footage.

Body model of actor made from orthographic references

One of the primary issues that I faced making the body was keeping it simple so the poly count was reasonable for the shatter effect without generating too may particles to calculate. Another issue that I have never encountered before on a more realistic proportioned human was the extremely baggy and lose uniform. The cloths made the model hard visualize proportionately and also harder to pose. Once the model was complete, I UV mapped him, created a simple skeletal rig, and positioned him to silhouette the film.

Wireframe of the model in position showing the silhouette process.

Positioning the model I faced a number of additional challenges. One of my major concerns was that the model needed to be positioned to match the shot shown above and an additional long shot. Because they are the same shot but done twice and at slightly changed times, the torso and legs do not properly line up, and because we do not have a scene that contains both cameras in the correct position and moving the right ways due to time constraints, it was much harder for me to get them to match. The second major concern i had was the focal length of each shot. The close up shot (shown above) is shot at 20mm focal length, and the long-shot in which the legs are matched is shot at 50mm. I was told to model and align the images in the front prospective which is unaffected by perspective and worry that when the shots transition from the closer shot to the longer shot that things may appear distorted. I was assured that this would be alright, and also agree believing that things at this point in time will be moving far too fast for anyone to notice such a slight change in the model.

Test render of texturing and rendering process.

Above is a test render I made for myself. The image is of the positioned and silhouetted body model with a screen of the actual film applied in a planar map down the front access. This test shows that the model matches the actual body reasonably well with only a few minor adjustments needed around the hands. The texture only works from this angle however, if the camera rotates around the model the texture fails.

-E.Doody

Digital Studio: Shatter Project - Silhouetting the Arm

Because we have not heard back from the Dreamwork's mentor, the "Dreamworks Project" shall, for now, be referred to as the Shatter Project. These past weeks I have been working on a few separate sections of my part in the project. First, I have been working on the Body model for the actor that needs to shatter completely. That model will most likely be posted here next post over the next few days. Secondly, I UVed the arm model that I had created a few weeks before so that it can be easily textured in the next part of the project.

I UVed the hand open before I closed it for its final position to make it much easier and avoid any overlapping UVs. The final part that I have been working on is silhouetting the arm model to match the arm of the actor in the actual footage.

Here is a shot of the wireframe model over the actual arm. Using this, the texturing team will project the film over the arm simplifying the texturing process.

Production Pipeline: Tiki-Man Normaled

It has been a long week of texturing, sculpting, and normal mapping. I have completed the Tiki-man normals. The normal maps transferred better than I had even hoped. Also, I finished the staff that he will be holding. I have sent the files to Darkwind Media where they will rig and animate the model. The original plan of having them rig him and then me animate has changed. Because they need more assets for the game in a relatively tight time span, I will instead be finishing the colored Tiki-man textures and completing a number of other models for the game. Here is an image of the model with normals applied next to the exact same normal with a flat shaded wireframe.

On the left you can see the model with normal map and transparency map applied, the right side image is the actual geometry of the model. Normal maps are a fantastic way to add detail and and give depth to a much simpler model. From here I need to take the normal map and generate an actual colored texture for him.

Above you can see the combined normals which will give you a good sense of the UV layout on the model. The model was kept to a single UV map to optimize the process required to load the model and textures in a real time game engine.

Until next time,
-Doody