VFX= Tent Sewing, Set moving and Rock Collecting. Who Knew?

Over the last two days I have sewn tent covers.  Ok, so that's not all I have been up to- I've also helped with moving sets to our filming locations and today I helped collect a pile of rocks for set dressing.

These are two of the four tent covers.  They still need a bit more work, my job for tonight.

I don't mind helping with these kind of things.  It's nice to have sometime away from screens and computers and to get outside on occasion. 

I am a little worried about the pile of VFX work we will still have to do though once we have got this all filmed.  We are all going to have to do some serious juggling of our time between Bones of Essimer and our own personal projects.

I'm having a bit of trouble coming up with an idea for my personal project.  I have lots of possibilities and ideas that I didn't use in the past that I could have another look at.  But I do feel that there is probably a good reason I choose not to use them already.  Maybe I'm overthinking it.

On a side note- you know you are sleep deprived when you try to open a gate towards a hill, and can't figure out why it won't move....

Bones, Bones, Bones!

As you would expect from a cinematic called 'Bones of Essimer', the animators have been busy at the moment modelling and texturing bones using Maya and Mudbox.

I am loving Mudbox for texturing at the moment, although I never seem to be able to link my projects to Maya.

I've been focusing on modelling bones that will be quite versatile for combining into the spires of the cultists bone ships.   These are some of the bones I have modelled and textured so far:

Preparing the Set

Last week a group of us got stuck in to get the soundstage ready to go.  Because of the weather we had made a decision that we would film the majority of the remaining scenes on the Greenscreen.

I went with some of the crew to put up the Greenscreen, so it was up and ready for a groundplane to be created. 

Once this was done we spent two days digging and moving 4 trailer loads of dirt from the quarry to create a nice exterior look for our sets ground plane.

Now we just need some set dressings in and Essimer will come to life!  


In other news, James and I had another look at the test footage and had a refresher course in camera tracking. 

Hair and Fur Simulations

I have been working on hair simulations for an assignment recently.  In class we first looked at adding fur to geometry and manipulating its appearance.

 

We then learnt to add hair dynamics to the fur and created a grassy field which would interact with an object, which is pretty neat.

 

 
At the moment though, I have been practising creating custom hair styles for my character from last year.  So far I have been working in Maya and creating the hair strands manually using NURB curves.  Here's a couple of the variations, they both need some fine tuning to look more realistic still.

 

I like the shape of the second design, but unfortunately Maya doesn't seem to like it much as it crashes every time I try to go any further with it. :( 

 
 

Time for a Breather

It's been a couple of weeks since my last blog, but that doesn't mean nothings been happening!  It's been a really busy period so it's about time I take a breather and sit down to work on my blog

Since my last blog entry I have worked on getting prepared for the first weekend of our film shoot. 

For me that meant sorting out my paperwork and completing Visual Effects Breakdowns for every shot.

I also created templates especially for this project to ensure that I was collecting all of the relevant data from the film shoot, which is really important for once we begin compositing.

I got the chance to test these out over the weekend of the 2nd of May when we began our first lot of filming.  It was exciting to be on my first film shoot and I had to learn quickly how things work on set.  It really puts into perspective the amount of talent that there is within our group (both crew and actors)- something that isn't always obvious until you see people in action.

Unfortunately we had a few issues come up on our second day of filming, as we were unable to shoot on our preferred location and the weather was limiting our other options.  There was still some amazing footage shot this day from other scenes and it was great how our team picked itself back up and carried on despite less than ideal circumstances.

The issues from that day have come with a great amount of lessons learnt, and we have decided going forward to shoot the remainder of the shots inside on a Green screen.  That is going to mean that my job on set becomes even more important so that we can later get some great plates from the environments we had hoped to film in which will match the footage.  There's also going to be a greater amount of compositing involved this way, but it may end up being an easier job as we will not need to match the backgrounds already in shot.

It's a new experience for the film crew to light and film in front of a green screen.  With this in mind we ran some tests over the weekend.  I wanted to test camera tracking as I haven't had to use it in any of my projects.  It will be great to know how far we can push things before they start looking awful.

We also tested on set lighting of actors in front of the greenscreen, but ran out of time for a flat lighting test.  I'm hoping to get a basic scene ready in Maya at some point that I can look at with our DOP so that he can get an idea of what we can do as far as matching or relighting a shot.      

For our tracking test I used yellow tape on the green screen.  Often in the industry a green tape of a different shade is used which helps with the removal of the trackers.  It seems we have some dark green tape that I could try next time round.

I am still working on testing the track but am hoping to get it done ASAP.

In my off time I have been continuing to help out with getting the sets ready, just by completing odd jobs here and there.  One of the things I have been working on is sewing flags to be used for set dressing.

I've done quite a bit of sewing for set dressing over the last few weeks, as I have also sewn flags for the interior shots, the baby blanket, two bags and a variety of pouches.  Those three years of sewing classes have come in handy!


These hanging decorations I made were used as decor for young Kristana's home during the shoot on the 2nd.