Final Shot Composition
I was responsible for the FumeFX render for this shot, and rendered out a pass with a large amount of the buildings smoking. This was then added using Fusion to composite all the passes together. Every part of the scene was rendered separately to ensure complete flexibility and control when compositing.
Final compositing project - Meteor Impact
Here is the final compositing project with all three shots edited together. A variety of tools and techniques have been used to create this short video, each of them discussed on our blogs.
Shot 2 Complete
Shot 2 has now been completed and composited together using Eyeon Fusion. The flame has been heavily modified with substantial blooms added.
Another flame simulation was rendered out of 3ds Max simulating the flame that envelopes around the meteor as it sours towards Earth. The opacity has been reduced, but changes can easily be made when the three of us get together to edit and sign off each shot.
Ian should hopefully have the matte painting ready within the next couple of days for Ben to projection map. In the mean time I will be working on shot 1.
I have decided to work on shot 2 first, with the meteor souring through the atmosphere above the clouds.
Once the fume flame was set up in 3ds Max, the camera from Ben’s projection scene was imported. The direction of wind was then changed to be just below the camera, and the projection information hidden.
Once rendered, the flame was imported into Fusion. As you can see the initial flame on the left looked very fake and CG, so a large amount of work has gone into making it look much more realistic.
Meteor Fume Test Render
A large amount of time has been spent setting up the various parameters within FumeFX. After the simulation had been calculated a quick test render was created. The overall effect is really nice, but the flames are far too slow for a meteor travelling at a vast speed.
Compositing Final Challenge
Ben and Ian have been busy working on our final challenge, and it’s shaping up to look like a very nice project. My task within the project is to create the meteor, add flame and smoke effects to it and composite it into the final shot. I will also apply some colour correction and camera shake etc if required.
FumeFX has been chosen to create the meteor flames and smoke due to its excellent capabilities. Various tests were created to achieve a suitable flame simulation, and renders were broken down into passes for maximum control.
The image above shows a few tests performed in Fusion to composite the passes together. On a previous project After Effects was used, but fusion’s node based approach has allowed better results to be achieved through just a couple of nodes rather than 20 or so layers.
Everything has been rendered out using EXR’s in full float. This allows some really nice blooms to be created in post production. Without the blooms the flames look very fake and computer generated. More work will be put into really getting this project photorealistic.
Compositing Project 4 - Star Trek Challenge
Here is the final video for the Star Trek Challenge. I have been incredibly busy in London all week and was unfortunately limited to this weekend to work on the challenge. I am however pleased with the final result and had to think of some innovative ways of reducing render time as much as possible!
The video has 3 scenes, each of them with added CG elements.
Seems that tumblr does not use vimeo any more and the tumblr hosted video does not have a full screen option. I have uploaded to vimeo instead and used the embed option.
Compositing Project 4 - Scene 3
The missile smoke was created using the same technique as scene 2, so render times were nice and quick.
After effects was used to composite the various render elements together, add camera shake, glow, grain and finally some subtle colour correction. The snowboarder/hoverboarder was imported and masked using the included apha matte, and then positioned and scaled using the keying tools within After Effects.
The windy snow and fog effect was achieved by compositing stock footage from “Artbeats - Detonation Files”.
Compositing Project 4 - Scene 2
A suitable image was found from picasa and loaded into a 3ds Max viewport. I then created a missile silo and some missiles and aligned them up to the photo. I would have liked to have used a 3rd party smoke plugin like FumeFX but due to very tight time limitations this was unfeasible. Instead, particle flow was utilised and each missile was assigned its own emitter object. In order for the particles to look like smoke with quick render times the particle flow emitter was given an image motion blur multiplier of 8x. For this reason the smoke had to be rendered as a separate pass to the rest of the geometry.
After effects was used to composite the various render elements together, add camera shake, glow, grain and finally some subtle colour correction.
The windy snow and fog effect was achieved by compositing stock footage from “Artbeats - Detonation Files”.
Compositing Project 4 - Scene 1
Scene 1 was created entirely from CG elements. The radar was made in photoshop and brought into 3ds Max after uv unwrapping some objects. The scene was rendered out in 32bit EXR files to give as much post control as possible.
After effects was used to add the flashing text, the dot on the radar, camera shake, glow, grain and finally some subtle colour correction.
Hi everyone, this is my blog for the 3rd Year Compositing module at Staffordshire University.
