Visual Bungalow

Final Project

2008-12-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

The Final Project can be seen here:
http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4.php

Synopsis:
I worked on the Jim the skeleton shot, the lighting to the Kool-Aid man shot, the splash flash intro, took part in filming the scenes, and of course in brainstorming concept(s) and ideas.

Details:
-"Jim the Skeleton"___________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_f.php

Description:

I hand animated "Jim" in Maya. I used a background image of the video projected on a plane to line Jim up with the chair. I also used this image plane as a reference for lighting Jim in the Maya scene. With the lighting matched up and the animation complete, I rendered out Jim (without the background plane). I took this movie into Shake, did a bit of color correction, created Jim's shadows over the background (live footage) and blured Jim a bit to blend the digital foreground into the live background. I rendered this out in Shake. After this it was time to work on the cigarette that Jim had in his hand. Previously I had the cigarette animated in Maya, but it had no smoke and no ember on the end of the cigarette. I went back into Maya and created a plane with the rendered Shake movie that I had created. I brought in fluid effects from Maya and animated a hot glowing ember with a smoke emitter on a 2d plane (2d fluid dynamics) to match with the end of the cigarette. I rendered this out in Maya (without the background movie of course) and brought that movie back into the original Shake tree. I did a bit of post-processesing Shake work to match the digital foreground ember/smoke with background. This completed the "Jim the Skeleton" shot.

-"Kool-Aid Man Lighting"____________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_g.php

Description:

The model and animation was created by Dan. He already had the Maya scene set up for lighting, so I can in and altered a few area planes and created a point light. One of the keys to doing this successfully is to light the background reference as close as possible to the raw movie file when it is outside of Maya. After this is done I work on lighting the Maya elements (digital foreground). If I create new lights of do lighting work, I make sure to not alter the digital background. New lights are unlinked to the background plane. Once I was able to match up the current foreground with the background image, my work was done. We rendered out the Maya scene and Dan added it to Shake for additional work.

-"Opening Splash Intro"_______________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_a.php

Description:

I created the opening splash into with Flash and Photoshop. I idea was to create a 2d scene that displayed the joke behind "Promo/Pormo" and give the project an initial unprofessional or dimwitted feel. I think it works.

Project 3 - Tracking

2008-11-11T12:03:00.000-08:00

I will post a link to a better quality movie soon.

The Final Movie

The Tracking Points

All of our Shake Nodes

Here is the main Shake tree

This is what was left from the jump shot.

The jump's alpha channel

Here is a shot of the Jump Sequence footage that we rotoshaped over the original footage.

The Original Footage will be posted soon.

Project 3 - Match Moving

2008-11-11T11:49:00.001-08:00

The Final Movie

The Tracking Points

The Shake Tree

The Little Toy Man's Alpha Channel

Screen-shots of the Maya File

The Shot of the Original Footage

Project 3 - Simple Compositing

2008-11-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Final Movie

Tracking Points

Shake Tree

The poster image

Here is a shot of the original footage

Digital Background with a Live Foreground

2008-10-07T12:09:00.000-07:00

Digital BG with a Live FG

The Final Composite with Shadows, etc.

Shake's Node Tree

The image of me- post-Photoshop. I tried to make my live FG image appear smoother or what I would call "plastic-y" in an attempt to match it with a smoother looking CG rendering. In Photoshop I applied a Artistic Filter to make the image of myself this way.

The image of me- before I edited it in Photoshop. The white area around me can be considered the Matte or alpha channel, since I cut the background of the image out in Photoshop (I didn't use "rotoshaping" in Shake to get my alpha channel for this image).

A shot of the interior model in Maya.

This is the background image I modeled, lit, and rendered in Maya.

Live Foreground with a Live Background

2008-10-06T22:09:00.000-07:00

Live FG with a Live BG (Two Action Images Composite):

The Final Image

Shake's Node tree

The image alpha - notice there's a slight blur on the top.

The foreground image - Color correcting this image was probably one of the most challenging parts to this composite.

This is the background image.

CG Foreground with a Live Background

2008-10-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

CG Foreground with a Live Background:

This is the final composite.

The resulting Node tree for my Shake file.

This is the remotes shadow that I was able to create in Shake.

This is the remotes alpha channel, which Maya made very helpful for importing into Shake.

This is the Maya scene where I aligned the remote and lite it to match the background image.

Here are some shots of the remote that I built in Maya.

This is the background image that I took to create the scene.

Smaller (monitor friendly) Web Version

2008-09-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

Final Composite

2008-09-10T21:44:00.000-07:00

The article is at the bottom.

Compositing Process

2008-09-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

I used Adobe Photoshop for this project because of its efficiency with single frame timelined compositing approach. (Although, for further editing of the images, a node bases structure could be better- not as much data is lost.)
First, I had to find images with the right camera angle and lighting. After that I had to cut the primary images and project them over the background images. To manage the hierarchy I used the Layers window.

Much of the work needed to make the image's edges match up composed of using the erase, move, blur, dodge, burn, and marquee select tools. Move tool: to position the images. Dodge tool: to lighten areas of the image. Burn tool: to darken edges of the image and apply shadows. The blur tool was very helpful to blur the edges of the images so that they wouldn't look too sharp -helping it blend in. The image to the upper left shows how I used the marquee tool to select the duck's feet and copy/duplicate them. I flipped the duplication, lowered the opacity and blurred the image to look like the ducks reflection.

One rule of thumb for me is to always do as much color correcting as I can before I convert the images into greyscale. This blends the images up nicely before we loose their color data. Before I converted the images to greyscale, I color corrected the color intensity and contrast of the images to match using the Levels and Brightness/Contrast features shown below. I then matched up the lesser quality (pixelated) images to the cleaner ones by using the film grain artistic filter.

Centaur Olympics Source Images

2008-09-10T11:20:00.000-07:00

The runners are moving in the opposite direction, but it would have been obvious if I flipped them horizontally (vertical axis) to match the horse and runner. The runners have letters on their jerseys which would have made an image flip a dead give-away.

The image quality of the horse is low, so the quality of the other images had to be reduced to fit. Since this is for a tabloid magazine, it is not that much of a problem.

The lighting for the main runner had to be lowered. The contrast also had to be raised to give him less of a washed out look.

Source Images - Goose Story

2008-09-10T11:00:00.001-07:00

One of the most challenging parts of this composition was finding an image of the bowling lanes that would helped place and position the goose correctly.

Tabloid Article

2008-09-09T12:07:00.000-07:00

- Centaur Wins Olympic Gold

Romanian Olympian Gandor "The Stallion" Kazziski qualified to run the 400 and the 800 meter track and field running competitions during this summer's 2008 Olympics. There was much opposition from other qualifying countries across the globe for letting Kazziski, who happens to be a centaur compete. "The Olympics is no place for half humans- only whole humans!", stated runner Bigby Jones of Canada. "Indeed, Kazziski is half horse half man, but there is no Olympic rule that disqualifies a partial human-being from completing.", stated one member of the Olympic Board Committee during a press conference.

Kazziski ran with race-horse speed for his country and ended up receiving gold in the 800 and a bronze in the 400 meter events. Although, the controversy doesn't stop here. Further blood analysis tested Kazziski positive for horse tranquilizers that may lead to a post-disqualification and a medal repeal. Upon further questioning, Kassiki commented with a brisk "Neeeeeeehhhhhh!".

-Goose Bowls a Perfect 300 Game

Pappy O'dannar entered his goose into this year's the New England Pro Bowler's Tournament in Bryson, New Hampshire. It was amazing to see that his goose, Bessie, was actually fully trained and ready to hit the lanes. "Her average score is usually around 275," stated O'dannar, "but this week she has really pulled her game together."

Bessie started her hobby of bowling by rolling her rotten laid eggs out of the chicken coop. Pappy noticed her talent in this endeavor and quickly started training Bessie to roll heavier objects into precise locations, such as cantaloups into trash cans. Within a few weeks she was capable of bowling. It took a while to get permission for Bessie to use the local bowling alley, but not long after she was rolling strikes! She became the lead member of her bowling team, "The Pins Pals" and eventually developed a street reputation for being a bowling alley hustler.

People thought it was a joke when Bessie stepped up to bowl in the New England Pro Bowler's Tournament, but after Bessie's third strike, spectators weren't calling out "Turkey!!!" for three strikes in a row, but rather "Goosey!!!!" Bessie cleared the boards with a perfect 300 score and won the tournament along with a $200,000 first place prize. She intends to donate all for her winnings to PETA, under the assumption that it will also help fund the Save the Fowl Foundation.

Ahoy hoy!!!!

2007-11-05T11:43:00.000-08:00

Hello all,
Welcome to the Visual Bungalow- a place to show my CPSC 815 progress at Clemson Univeristy.