VFX Breakdown | Los Elegidos Second Shot
VFX Breakdown | Los Elegidos Second Shot from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
This shows the breakdown for the second shot I did for the student short film Los Elegidos. Everything was done mostly in my spare time :)
It’s by no means mega high quality work but I am young and still learning a lot with every project I participate :P
The time frame was quite short considering that I have a full time job. Big thanks again go to Eugen Kelle, a very good friend and colleague of mine, for the Blackhawk helicopter model with textures and to Guillermo Ruotolo, writer and director, for giving me the chance to create the shot!
A few keywords concerning workflow: Maya, Max, Mari, Nuke. Details available at my blog SOON!
Hope you like it.
The full-lentgh short will be published in the near future.
VFX Breakdown | Los Elegidos Establishing Shot
VFX Breakdown | Los Elegidos Establishing Shot from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
This shows the breakdown for one of two shots I did for the student short film Los Elegidos. Everything was done mostly in my spare time :)
It’s by no means mega high quality work but I am young and still learning a lot with every project I participate :P
The time frame was quite short considering that I have a full time job and the rotoscoping just took forever and stole a lot of concept time (I already feel the slaps from specific artists). Big thanks go to Eugen Kelle, a very good friend and colleague of mine, for the Blackhawk helicopter model with textures and to Fabian Lehman, savior of the project by helping me a lot with the rotoscoping and of course to Guillermo Ruotolo, writer and director, for giving me the chance to create the shot!
A few keywords concerning workflow: Maya, Max, Mari, Naiad, Nuke. Details available at my blog!
Hope you like it.
The full-lentgh short will be published in the near future.
VFX Making Of | Los Elegidos Establishing Shot
Hey there,
after quite some time of silence here (was working veeeeeerry much) I have some new stuff to post. I am going to start with two little making ofs and VFX breakdowns for a short film project called Los Elegidos. When I saw the plates for the shots and after the director Guillermo Ruotolo spoke with me about his ideas and wishlist I knew this would be a perfect chance to do all tasks I want to specialize in. Concept art, matte painting, fx and compositing…all in one, well two (:. Oh, wait…did I forget rotoscoping? Well, I guess it’s crystal clear that rotoscoping was the best part…NOT. I definitely underestimated the time it takes to rotoscope humans and this cost a lot of time I missed in other steps. Luckily I was greatly supported by Fabian Lehman who did a great job on rotoscoping almost two soldiers for me! Additionally, I have to say big thanks to Eugen Kelle who gave me his high detailed Blackhawk model with textures and to “Unknown Name”‘s free Dumvee Humvee sketchup model (url: Link to Humvee). I don’t know if this is his account name or if he uploaded the model anonymously. Anyway, thank you! As I already mentioned in the vimeo description, this is no high end work here but I am still happy how it turned out in the short time.
Let’s go!
For the first shot I started with a rough sketch to get a better idea how the shot will look like.
Simultaneously, I began matchmoving in PFTrack as I knew I definitely need a proper 3D camera for some passes. I always got a jumpy camera when the crane movement ended and the camera began to zoom. After spending hours and hours trying to tweak the cam I decided to use a 2D track for the main background haha (no visible parallax anyway) and come back to PFTrack later. For the water and the smoke/fog on top I ended up splitting the shot into two clips, doing to seperate 3D tracks and combining the cameras in Maya :O. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS…but it was the only solution I had left :D
matchmove preview (caution: shaky iphone video) <- LINK
Also, I blocked in the geometry for the brigde (Maya), fractured (3dsMax) and modeled (Maya) the parts I needed. I prefer to have my matchmove scene in Maya and exchange geometry between Max and Maya.
The project should be a sandbox to try all kinds of workflows. That’s why I textured the bridge in Mari with PTEX. It took a hell lot of time and nerves to get my geometry to Mari for painting and to send the textures back to Maya. I had several issues with the PTEX file saying that my geometry changed and that I cannot apply the texture. And after many Mari crashes I had to start all over again because of the error mentioned before… Then I finally managed to apply the PTEX to one part of the bridge in Maya with Vray but after applying multiple textures to different geometry I only got white renders :/. Long story short: I exported my bridge parts seperately as OBJs, painted them in one rush to make sure I don’t lose my textures again. I then exported the .ptex files out of Mari and started a fresh Maya scene where I imported the previously exported OBJs and my camera.
Next, I applied the PTEX shaders and rendered one frame to use in Photoshop for the next sketch.
Mari screenshot
2D track, rough pre-comp with background sketch
shaky iphone preview <- LINK
Finally, the fun part could start. Rotoscoping.
Rotoscoping with new background wip and first helicopter version
preview <- LINK
The smoke element on the left is the sim you can see in my previously posted RGB relighting video :o)
I went on compositing my elements in Nuke and don’t forget: roto roto roto. I created various versions of helicopter animations and wanted to do the water reflections. At first, I thought I could fake the reflection in Nuke but I didn’t reach a proper look. So, I did go the 3D route again and Vray soon enough put a spoke in my wheel. It just didn’t want to render the animated Maya water texture…soooo I thought when I am experimenting all the time anyway, why not make the water surface in Naiad :D? I quickly created an ocean surface with NOT, exported it as EMP back to Maya, scaled it down immensely in the Y axis and rendered it with Vray. It’s still kind of big, but I somehow like it.
water preview <- LINK
I used a plane with a still of my comp for the reflection. This was the step when I created two matchmoves.
Back into Nuke I noticed a horrible issue…I needed more rotoscoping to insert my water. The roto was done very loose and I just cut off the grass and added a painted layer on top :P.
Okay, when I don’t forget anything right now that was it for the first shot!
One last thing: I rendered seperate passes for the helicopter and the rotor to get the look we were after (different motionblur settings)
and I rendered the heli with RGB lighting to adjust the lighting in Nuke.
WIP | Naiad, Krakatoa & Frost
Last night I did the first meshing of my simulation in Max with Frost. Unfortunately, my workstation couldn’t handle many frames in that time frame :D
That’s why I can post only stills for now. Thanks to Bobo from Thinkbox I managed to fix the exploding particles inside Max (:.
WIP | Naiad + Krakatoa
Here’s an update of my current personal project. Starting to look as I want it to except for a few exploding particles :)
WIP v006 | Naiad Krakatoa from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
This is the first rendering test using Krakatoa.
WIP Naiad | Naiad and Maya mocap
WIP v003 | Naiad and Maya mocap from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
This version turned out to be quite funny. Reminds me of a firecracker ;D
Still trying to control the fluid. There are some collision issues resulting in exploding particles.
I like the first version more as one can see the actual emitting person :)
v001:
WIP v001 | playing with Naiad and mocap data from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
I’m currently excitedly messing around with Mayas integrated mocap data inside Naiad. My evaluation license for Naiad is running out very soon :(. This is an early test.
VFX breakdown of Volkswagen commercial shot
VFX breakdown of Volkswagen commercial shot from dziga kaiser on Vimeo.
This shows a breakdown of one shot I did for a Volkswagen spot last year. It contains stylized flames simulated with Maya fluids composited in Nuke. Matchmove by Marco de Goeij.
dziga kaiser 