Studying VFX

Confidential: postproduction

2011-06-13T22:23:00.007+02:00

Very brief breakdown of how has been realized the alien's eyes for an ad.

The software used was AE: at the end the composition had something like 52 layers (for no more than 6sec of video). The real challenge was create a good rotoscope for the eyes to match a shaky footage. By this you learn (again) how much is important to have a good plate :) (and remember you: shake it in post).
There were other five shots but this is the only one we (fsiddi and me) are allowed to show.

Working on lens flare

2010-11-04T19:40:00.000+01:00

I was wondering how to achieve the same beautiful effect you get thanks the VideoCopilot plugin Optical Flare, without having to actually buy that..
searching on Vimeo I found this very nice tutorial that explains exactly that.

This is what I managed to achieve, tweaking a little bit..

original plate

after lens flare and color grading

So.. hope you like and, especially, hope to be soon able to upload the whole video.
I'm afraid, anyway, that it will take some time.. still have to record all the sound FX and there is still no music at all..

Long time

2010-09-16T11:35:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody. Back after a very loooong time.
I've been in US for three weeks and came back with lot of nice photos of textures that I'll be publishing in a few days. Then I worked for some other multicamera editings.. too much boring to do this again in a future so I've decided to quit this business.

Now, I'm planning some real serious studyings for the next weeks and I'd like to share with u some titles I recently discovered and, in some cases, even bought :)

First of all:
- Maya Studio Projects: Dynamics, Todd Palamar. Bought. Seems really interesting. I'll tell u how it is in a few days.
- The VES handbook (...). Bought. It's huge.. and seems awesome!! But I'll need a longer time to read it XD
And last but not least:
- Introduction to Maya Fluid Effect (DVD), Wayne Hollingsworth from Gnomon Workshop. I don't have this one, but saw some works of the author and seems really interesting.

So. Stay tuned.

Dof

2010-02-19T22:37:00.000+01:00

Dof: depth of field.

The very first tool that photographers have to drive the attention where they want this to be in an image.

I think it even is a fisiological feature of the sight: it is impossible to look at something blurred without feeling strange and, sometimes, even feel some kind of pain.

This way, the photographer forces the audience to look where he wants them to.

This very simple video uses the Dof to drive the attention and through this read a little poetry.

First real script

2009-11-23T23:29:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody!!
Finally I made it! I've just wrote my firts script with his own very little UI! :)
The script is able to create a custom locator that comes without any of the standard attributes and with some attributes copied from the default particleEmitter. Then it goes on linking those attributes to the same attributes of all the emitter you select in your scene. In this way you can easily change just one value to change every emitter you have previously selected: one "locator" to rule them all.. :)

I'll be showing as soon as possibile some images where I used this script.
See u soon!

R4 concept

2009-11-03T00:10:00.001+01:00

Hi there! After the last job and becouse of the really boring lessons (see the previous post) I've been thinking to something to not just waste my time.. so I ended up thinking about this robot and a whole story connected to him.

Here's the first concept for R4.. the texturing is made as a "matte painting", so it still isn't part of the model itself (I still have to prepare the UVs), but up to now it's enough to understand which will be the next improvements needed. As Giulio suggested, I'll have to work on the details of the rust, especially along edges.. hope bumps will help :)

I will be posting some news about this guy soon.
Hope you enjoy!

P.S: Don't be shy. Every comment is welcome!

Boring lesson

2009-10-29T09:40:00.000+01:00

Have you ever had to follow a really really boring lesson knowing that the only reason why you are there is becouse you simply HAVE TO?
Is it boring, isn't it?
Well, since you cannot run away (you HAVE TO stay there) the only way not to go crazy is freeing your mind. And this is where my mind went just yesterday..

A really boring Patology lesson.. :)
Hope you enjoy the Medieval style!!

La strada

2009-10-15T23:21:00.004+02:00

Hi everybody. Today we're gonna talk about the making of the videos for the ArteDanza's show "la strada".
The video were supposed to be used as background to the dancers, but they had to be sincronized with the coreographies in a dynamic way becouse of some live instruments playing.
Speaking about the style, everything should have had a futuristic style, so we started searching for some Boccioni's pictures and other artist of the beginning of the '900.
Once we decided the style, the coreographer lined out the backgrounds:
1. Dawn
2. Bus stop
3. Amusement park

Dawn

For this shot it was asked to create a whole city, with a main street in the middle of the picture. Since the making of the street wasn't such a great challenge, we'll talk a little bit more about the city.
There are three ways to create a city: buy a very expansive software to procedurally create it, model and place every single building hoping that your client won't ever think about move anything or the way used for this shot.
Everything starts with deciding where to place the buildings and this is made creating multiple particles grid. Every particle will be randomly assigned of an ID from 0 to 12.
12 is the total number of the buildings that were modeled and from the ones the script could choose.
After the assignment it was asked to create a dawn effect (about the one we won't talk since is a little boring, in my opinion).
To finish the shot were rendered three passes: AO, used as beauty, a matte used to isolate and reproduce the city and hide the horizon line on the sides, and the zDepht, to reproduce the smog.
We won't talk about this, but it was asked a last pass that was created separatly and was the same city at night (created with a matte panting like way).

Bus stop

I know.. the composition is not correct, but this is what was asked, since this image should be projected behind the dancers.

In the background you can see the city we talk about before.

I'll just say this, since I consider it funny. The trees as are shown were created almost by mistake. Searching a way to stylize them we (me and my brother, who was suggesting me during the modeling) watched the scene in wireframe and noticed that they were better without any texture for the leaves.. so that's it!

Amusement Park

Here's the last shot. This was the most challenging one since it had to be all animated (in sinc with a music track, Tosca, "Il terzo fuochista").
At first the client asked for a video where only lights could be seen, but in this way it became too hard to understand what was happening and where the action took place, so the surfaces where added. Now, this is something I will talk about becouse I consider it very important.
The video is based on three different render passes: the glows, the solid structures and the sky. At first, I did this way just to make some experiments with the rendering passes becouse there wasn't a really need for this, but suddenly, when it was too late to start a new rendering of the sequence, the client asked for a brighter scene. If it weren't made a different pass for the solids, this request would have been impossibile to satisfy. But we did it. So..
In the video is shown only the first part of the sequence.

Hope you enjoy this article and the images.
See you soon!

2 new DVDs

2009-09-16T14:10:00.001+02:00

Hi everybody!
Here there are my latest works, both filmed in June and both edited in August (almost).

and

They are two dance assay for the end of the schools, filmed in multicamera.
Thanks to the camera operators: Giulio and Ermanno!

And Shake?

2009-09-13T11:15:00.000+02:00

This morning I was surfing the web searching for some good referenceto learn in a productive way Shake (famous compositing software from Apple) and decided to check the official web site to see if there were any tips about books or courses. Well, the first surprise had been not finding anymore the application in the usual list. Then, searching with the search bar, understanding that the old Shake web site redirects to the Final Cut one's.
Now, the question is.. Has finally Apple decided to shut down one of the most famous composito g application OR (and here's what I obviously hope and think) there will be a new reales soon?
Since dreaming is free, we all hope to see soon a new Shake.

Remember: never give in!

2009-08-13T15:05:00.001+02:00

Just a very simple reminder. Keep trying, never stop because something went wrong.

It’s hard to remember, and sometimes even harder to accept, but mistakes makes you stronger, while victories are almost unuseful (very gratifing to achive, but almost nothing more).

Why writing this? For the first time something really personal without an image. Because I need to write it somewhere. To remember and to share something more important than any “tutorial” or “how to”. Never give in. I don’t know how many people read this, but for all of them who does, remember that working with the CGI is, first of all, a challenge with yourself. It’s not only science, or art. The really first thing is: “Am I able to do this? Can I realize this VFX? Can I animate this character the way they’re asking?” and so on.

And to share something more useful, for the ones of you that are intrested in VFX this link could really be intresting..

Impact

2009-08-13T15:03:00.001+02:00

Time for an another little experiments..
With the help of a wounderful tutorial on DynamicsExpression I finally managed to make instancers work (it’s probable asked to log in to see it.. it’s free so no problems)!!

The following updates will be:
- the cracking test
- the raw footage ready for the tracking
- the final video
- the render-passes video

I think it could be really intresting see all the differents passes: I always enjoy seeing the trick beyond the magic..

The new 500

2009-08-13T15:00:00.001+02:00

Nenikekamen! At the end I managed to complete the car. It’s rendered and I’m pretty happy with that.

This image is a very simple compositing of the Original Rendering and an Ambient Occlusion blended in multiply mode (obviously).

As promised, which are the most important thing to keep in mind when you model a car?

- Being patient. Modeling is all about being patient and remembering that whatever you will do will be somehow seen and if you don’t do something it will be seen even better
- Start studying. In this case what’s important is to understand which lines are important for the profile. Understood this part, model them first, then do everyhing else
- Starting with the NURBS modeling is a great way to have enough definition on every part and do not have too much
- Dividet et impera. Understand how to model every piece alone and if you can extract it from the main mesh, do it. Everything will be easier.
- Always think for level of detail. Remember that you have to start with low res and then add it. Try to keep on the whole model always the same amount of resolution. Don’t focus only on one piece doing it perfectly and then do the others. You could understand too late where the resolution is needed and where it’s not.

I think that those are the most important things to rember and they should work (except for the NURBS and the extract) in almost every modeling.

Hope you like.

___________________________________________________________________

Here’s the last modeling I’m working on. It’s not finished, obviously, but I wanted to show this first part. Unlukly the time is never enough to complete this job. Probably I’ll manage to next week.

Then I’ll update the post and write down some notes on car-modeling (simply to remember them and at the same time share something I hope can be useful for somebody else)

Landing

2009-08-13T14:53:00.000+02:00

Some weeks ago I managed to complete a quite simple excericise on compositing.. but what I thought should have been the most simple part of the process has tourned out to be the most difficoult.. so I have to link the video because I don’t manage to embed this..

Enjoy
Obviously critics and comments are absolutely welcome.

rendering test

2009-08-13T14:51:00.000+02:00

A small mountain village modeled for a dear friend of mine. Here’s only the ambient occlusion pass. I’m still working on the texturing.

the skater

2009-08-13T14:43:00.000+02:00

Some other experiments. The subject in the photo is Iacopo, a really great skater (http://destroyonline.blogspot.com)

mad's dreaming

2009-08-13T14:40:00.000+02:00

It’s not the dream of a mad, but the dream of Mad (name of the girl).. hope she likes the picture.

Imprevedibile

2009-08-13T14:36:00.000+02:00

This picture was realized for a girl.. but in the end I found out she was not how I thought she was..

Splash!

2009-08-13T14:34:00.000+02:00

Birthday present for Giulia. A funny thing is that, when she gave me my birthday present, she gave me a picture too..

Il riposo del filosofo

2009-08-13T14:28:00.000+02:00

An old friend of mine did this on a paper during a lesson. I turned it in 3d.

New Blog

2009-08-13T14:26:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody. I moved to an another adress the whole blog becouse of some problems with Wordpress: now I can embed video from Vimeo.. that's one of the best new things.