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Tag: Manos Kanellos

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VFX Fundamentals

Term 1 Final Video Assignment

Ideation

#1 Space Battle

The scene shows beauty shots of large spaceships to introduce scale. Then it shows the deployment of smaller fighter ships going to battle formation. All of these build up to the climax where enemy ships jump in from hyperspace and start to attack and deploy their own ships. This leads up to the high point of tension where we cut because there is no time and budget to do the actual space battle.

#2 Perfume Advertisement

This idea was to try out motion design coupled with VFX. I wanted to try this because I feel like given the time frame of the assignment it would be interesting to explore. Since the intensity will increase as we progress. It is better to do something more ambitious and make mistakes early on.

So the idea was to create an abstract and moody commercial that showcases a uniquely designed perfume bottle.

#3 Chocolate Ice-cream Commercial

#4 Car Commercial

Conclusion

In the end, I went with #2.

Mood board & References

References from Pinterest
AI-generated
AI-generated

FX References

0:10
0:08

Lighting Mood board

Mood Reel

Storyboard

3D Model

Initial Designs
Refine with a better silhouette
Inner geometry, gold frame and cap
Final

Look Dev Materials

Final Concept

Styleframes

s01
s01b_v4
s02
s03 start
s03 end
s04a
s04b
s05

Animations

Animation is not my strong suit, I need more practice. But I tried my best to follow the mood reel’s animation. However, I feel that overall the animation is the biggest problem in this project.

Especially the cut after the bottle’s emergence is very glaring. If there is more time, I would need to rethink how to better transit. Though I could simply merge those two shots into one continuous shot. However, due to the lack of time, I just did a cut as they are simulated separately.

Overall, the pacing is a little fast for my liking, I feel like a lot of the shots can be dragged out. That being said, I do like the last transition from the close-up to the end scene. That one feels smoother and I am happy with it.

FX

For FX, this is the part I love the most and want to improve. It consists of mainly two simulations; (1) Rigid Body Dynamics and (2) Pyro (Smoke).

Having an art-directed fracture is the foundation for both simulations. I employed both procedural and manual boolean slicers to get a fracture that I was satisfied with. In addition, I added interior details in between the fractures.

Fractures
Interior Fracture Details
s02 Node Graph

The smoke simulation is pretty straightforward once the RBD is complete. I just take the pieces where I want smoke to spawn and use them as emitters for my smoke and simply run a smoke sim. viola. The combined FX is shown below.

Compositing

AOV Passes including Light Passes

Compositing is pretty straightforward as well. For me, I like to make my raw render look as good as possible so that I would not have to spend too much time on compositing (a little bit unorthodox I know).

However, sometimes there will still be times when the deadline is very close (like this time) and there isn’t time to rerender. Hence, I always like to output as much information in my render through AOVs so that I have the option to do editing in post-production. (image above).

Also when doing AOV channels, I like to output my light AOVs as well. Having light groups in my render would mean I can adjust my lighting without returning to 3D.

For post-production, I just try to ensure that all my scene colour is consistent. Then I applied an overall colour grade and added some grains.

Sound Design (SFX)

Final Output

Combining everything together after weeks of work, here it is! The final product. Please on sound as there is audio to it as well! Thanks for staying with me until this point. Enjoy

Reflections

Overall this project was a successful one. I learned a lot about the project pipeline. I also realised my weaknesses and strengths. I feel that I would need to improve my animation skills and camera animation. Right now, it is a bit stiff and not dynamic enough. For future projects, I want to try doing another aspect of houdini.

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals

Formative Assessment Feedback

You have a well-presented and thorough blog. It is easy to navigate and see how you plan your documentation even in the areas that are missing. The information so far is good but mostly focused on the technical part. It will be good to see your thinking and reflection for every part of the process. Also try to finish the missing areas for the summative submission, especially the weekly tasks that were given in the class.

For the final project you have shown a good number of experiments regarding the design, environment and animation (motion graphics) but you haven’t included most of them in your blog.

Do not forget to make a VFX breakdown video for the summative submission.

-Manos

From the feedback, I realise I need to be more proactive at uploading my progress. Also, I need to at more of my personal thoughts and reflection from the things learnt in class to the blog posts.

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation

27/11 Realism, Rendering & AOVs

Lighting and rendering in Maya Arnold.

Import robot model

HDRIs

ShadowMatte for shadow catcher

Importance of AOVs

Allow for post-production to be smoother

Reflections

This class I feel is quite important as I feel that AOVs will be needed for compositing. It gives compositors a lot of options and freedom to do post-production if necessary data is given to them through AOVs. I forsee myself using them a lot in the future.

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Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals

20/11 Animation

12 Principles of Animation

Timing and Spacing

Timing and spacing obey the laws of physics. How fast an object is moving will be reflected on the screen. The faster the object, the more space in between the position in each frame. The slower it moves, the closer the spacing

Squash and Strech

Objects have some sort of elasticity. More exaggerated in animation. For example, to illustrate movement, a bouncing ball will stretch before touching the floor and squash after impact.

Anticipation

Anticipation is the action to prepare the audience for the upcoming movement, hence making more realistic.

Easing (In and Out)

Movement in the real world is not perfectly linear. Things take time to accelerate and decelerate. Hence there needs to be a slow in and slow out animation for the animation to be more realistic.

Follow Through and Overlapping

Follow through and overlapping action help to give the impression that the animated object follows the laws of physics, including the inertia.

Arcs

More natural movements follows an arched trajectory, following implied “arcs”can achieve greater realism. For example, a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. However mechanical movement, often moves in straight lines.

Exaggeration

As realistic animations can sometimes be dull and unappealing, adding an additional layer of exaggeration can help to make the animation more interesting.

Solid Drawing

Solid drawing refers to ensuring that the animated object has space and volume. Giving them weight.

Appeal

The concept of appeal is to make a character more likeable and relatable to the audience, be it the hero or the villain. They will be to be more real and interesting.

Straight Ahead Action (&Pose to Pose)

The two different ways of approaching animation. Straight ahead action means creating the animation frame by frame whereas pose to pose means to generate key poses and filling the intervals later on.

SAC:

Pros – creates a more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic action sequences.

Cons – On the other hand, it is hard to maintain proportions and to create exact, convincing poses along the way.

P2P:

works better for dramatic or emotional scenes, where composition and relation to the surroundings are of greater importance.

Secondary Action

Adding secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to support the main action.

Staging

Staging’s purpose is to direct the audience’s attention, and make it clear what is of central point of importance of the frame.

Maya

Maya, Press S to set a keyframe.

Time graph

There is different animation interpolation between keyframes.

Reflections

I think animation is super important for any CG artist, whether or not you are an animator. The understanding of movement and timing will definitely help me to become a better artist.

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals

6/11 Texturing with Substance Painter

Today’s class is about how to create custom textures for our 3d models using substance painter. The whole concept of how SP works is pretty straightforward. It is very similar to Photoshop where we paint with masks and layers.

Substance Painter offers a bunch of materials and smart materials that are packaged with the program. Creating custom materials with substance designer or importing existing smart materials is also possible. Most of the existing materials are not exactly usable straight out of the box. But they can be modified or used as a base start point to create the final texture.

I think the most important thing for texturing would be that whatever the artist choose to add to the materials must have their reasons. And that reason is to sell the story and concept.

The image below was a test image that I did for the class. I was trying out the different brushes and materials in SP.

Reflection

Texturing is the next step after UV unwrapping. I feel that it is a important step as it gives the 3d model life. It gives the asset a reason to exist. Without textures, the whole 3d environment will just be plain and dull white clay material. I would definitely be using more SP to create textures for future projects.

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals

30/10 UV Texturing

UV mapping is the process of generating a flat representation of a 3d dimensional geometry. This UV map can be represented by UV coordinates which are also known as texture coordinates. Since it’s 2d, the two parameters it are U for the X-axis and V for the Y-axis.

Applying textures – right click assign material (either existing or new material)

Creating materials – edit from hypershade

Maya’s UV editor – interface to edit UVs if needed, auto unwrap works most of the time.

Demo example: Earth and Moon

Earth texture (source: USGS)
Moon texture (source: NASA)
Earth and Moon geometry in Maya viewport

Reflections

As most of the modeling work will be done in Maya, the next step will be to UV wrap them. Having proper UV maps is very important to ensure the textures does not appear in the wrong places of the model. For the class activity, we are tasked to texture two different spheres with the earth and moon’s texture from online sources. The task was pretty straightforward as when unwrapping a UV sphere the projection is already the same as the geographic projection of the images (Mercator Projection being the most popular for maps). All we have to do was to auto unwrap and apply the textures with a standard material in Maya. I look forward to further texture lessons.

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals Zbrush

23/10 Organic Modeling II – Dynmesh, Remesh

Dynamesh

DynaMesh is a great tool for free-form sculpting because it removes the need for concerns about a geometry’s topology. It’s possible to change the overall shape of any DynaMesh by using the brushes in Zbrush. I think it is very useful for me to create low and middle-resolution sculpts, for blocking or low-resolution models. It is also a great way for me to make the base mesh before adding more details to my models and progressing to high-resolution models.

Zremesher

I find the remesher tool in Zbrush really useful, it automatically produces topology for my dynamesh model. Also in the V3, the new algorithm can produce better results on the sculpts.

Reflection

Today we continue with Zbrush organic sculpting/modelling. I really enjoy sculpting because somehow I find it very therapeutic. I continue to work on my skull. I also try different brushes that is inbuilt within Zbrush. I also found out about stencils where you can sculpt details with texture alphas which is super cool.

Another cool feature about Zbrush would definitely be Dynamesh and Zremesher. Dynamesh quickly allows me to start sculpting from a sphere to a base mesh with low details in a short time. After having the proper proportions I can then increase the amount of polygons to sculpt in even more details. I am amazed by how much polygons Zbrush can handle and not crash. Previously sculpting in blender gives me quite bad experience as the software will crash after the geometry exceeds >1mil polys. Zbrush can handle a few mil polys easily.

Furthermore, ZRemesher is really a cool tool to quickly optimise the topology of my model, from a few million polygons to a few hundred thousand in just one click. The software dev behind this is really a genius.

INSERT SKULL SS HERE

Categories
Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation VFX Fundamentals Zbrush

16/10 – Concept Art & Organic Modelling

Importance of concept art. It occurs early in the creative process and the pipeline whether games or film.

Discussion of Assasin’s Creed concept art. Breakdown frame composition/color/mood/shadows etc…

Shape design/ Silhouette design

Concept art allows ideas to be more grounded and concrete. It also allows for further development.

Discussion of photo bashing, a combination of different elements into one concept art. Fast and efficient over quality. The idea is to quickly generate many different variations over polishing and refining a single concept.

We gave photobashing a try and we all collected some images online and created our own concept art.

For my work, I tried to combine a bee and a shark with a cybernetic element included in the final result

Final Work

Introduction to Zbrush

What was covered:

  • Basic UI navigation
  • Masking
  • Some brushes
    • Move
    • Clay Tubes
    • Smooth
  • Colouring
  • SubDiv Concepts
  • Importing & Exporting
  • Saving files

Reflection

As someone that struggled with drawing, I always admired people that can create good drawing. I always like those hyper realistic portrait drawings or breath taking big scenes. They always leave me in awe and wondering how it is humanly possible for someone to complete it (i am guessing years of practice). Although I feel my skill level at concept art is really low, I do appreciate good concept artist as they lay the ground work for any content. Without their imagination, we will not have such diverse content on our screens.

For the next part of the Zbrush class, as half of the class before covered concept art, we did not have much time left to cover for Zbrush. We only went through the basic UI navigation. We were tasked to sculpt a smiley face to ourselves familiarise with the brushes and operators in Zbrush. I know that we need to sculpt a skull so I started to find some reference images of a anomaly accurate skull. I started with a sphere and did the base shape. I will continue working on it during my free time in the week.

Categories
Emily - Unreal Engine Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation Unreal Engine 5 VFX Fundamentals

09/10/2023 – 3D modelling in Maya, Asset Gathering and UE5 Modelling Tools

We need to model a hot air balloon as it will be used for a class assignment with Gonzalo for composition class in the coming weeks.

Using reference images, we model the air hot balloon so that we can use it for our compositing assignment.

Concepts of modelling technique used:

extrude, edge loop, inset, and soft/weight transformation,

Reflections

Since I have not touched modeling for some time. I feel quite rusty with the software. But after awhile, it gradually came back to me and I was able to model a hot air balloon as requested. As part of the nuke assignment, I think the next step will be to UV unwrap it and apply textures for rendering. I look forward to the next modeling class with Manos as we will be covering organic modeling with Zbrush.

Emily’s Class

Asset Gathering in UE5

Need to enable the various plugins that support the file formats to be imported into UE5.

Sketchfab.com is a good place for 3D models but caution the copyright rules.

Models need to follow the proper naming conventions so that the correct material IDs can be assigned.

Modeling in UE5

Unreal DOES NOT support quads or N-gons so all models will be triangulated.

Nanite in UE5 supports VERY high poly counts such as photo scans or Zbrush sculpts.

Reflections

Today we learnt a bit of modelling with UE5. Although, UE5 can do modeling, I feel that maybe it is not the best tool for the job as I feel that it is missing some of the features that the other software has. Perhaps it would be better to just model in other DCCs and import it to UE5 for layout and rendering. But it is comforting to know that UE5 does allow for simple geometry editing.

Homework:

  • Find references for cabin in the woods, and relevant small environments
  • Also, need to block out the environment for the UE5 assignment
Categories
Emily - Unreal Engine Manos - Modelling, Texturing, Animation Unreal Engine 5 VFX Fundamentals

02/10/2023 – Intro to Modeling, Unreal Engine 5 Workshop (Quixel Bridge)

Manos’ Class

Basic Maya interface navigation.

Basic modeling techniques. Rotation, Translation, Scale in Maya.

Poly bevel, Poly extrude.

Emily’s Class

Introduction to UE5:

Advantages: Real-time, High fidelity (relatively), flexible workflow

Uses:

  • Game Dev
  • Arch Vis
  • Training & Sims
  • Film & TV
TV/Film Pipeline

UE5 is used in VFX

  1. LED Wall Cinematography
  2. Projection Screen Cinematography
  3. Eg. Mandalorian

UE5 Course Content Page

  1. Introduction
  2. Asset gathering and Quixel Library
  3. Creating and Editing Static Meshes
  4. Materials, Textures and UV
  5. Landscapes, Foliage and Water Systems
  6. Lighting, Atmospheric, and PPV
  7. Cameras, PPV, and Sequencer
  8. Rendering and Movie Render Queue (MRQ)
  9. Niagara Particles
  10. Blueprints and Visual Scripting

Basic UE5 interface and operations

Reflections:

Today is first day of school and it was nice meeting the 2/3 of the lecturers. It was also a pleasure getting introduced to the classmates for my course. We did a bit of introduction to the two main software that we need to learn for this term. It wasn’t very difficult as I already understand some of the basics of 3D.

Manos taught a bit of the basics of Maya, I modeled a snowman, but I deleted in at the end of the class so I did not have a screenshot of it.

Emily introduce us to the basic pipeline of VFX and the real life applications of UE 5 in VFX. She proceed to teach us the basic navigation of UE5.