Long time no see! I know there's been a while since I posted something on this blog, and that's because I've had a lot of things on my mind and I haven't really felt inspired to write something. Anyhow, as spring slowly closes in, I finally I feel I got the energy and time to put down some words for myself and those who are interested.
2020 has started with a bang and we finally got to finish our robot projects that we started in August last year. It was a fun project that basically tought us how to build a fully complete CG-character from scratch to finish - from Cube to Character. My result is Ragnar The Robot. A worn out futuristic humanoid robot with some new parts and some rusty parts as well. Ragnar is very special too me, since he's the very first character that is one hundred percent my own creation. I modelled him, I rigged him, I textured him, I gave him life by animating him and then I finally nursed and rendered and comped him into a live action scene. Jokes aside, it was a fun process and we got to try out every part of a real vfx-pipeline.
Another great thing we've been doing is working with proxies. We were supposed to test out the power of Arnold proxies and see how our computer responded to thousands of trees and vegetation by using this technique. For those who doesn't know what proxies is, it's stand ins for 3D meshes and only turns up in your render instead of eating your computer power in the viewport of your 3D scene. It is hard to explain, so I urge to Google it, because this knowledge us just great to know when building large scenes. You can find a breakdown of the proxy shot and Ragnar The Robot down below.
The lesson I learned when working with this is that from now on I really understand and will build my scenes after REAL WORLD SCALE. If you as an artist doesn't work with this in mind because you simply do not understand why (like me until now), look it up. It's just logical to work this way, especially if you're hunting photorealism in your scenes. Everything just matches better. Paralax in Camera movement, lights, textures etc. Just take a moment to check it out and really understand it. It was mindblowing to me.
Next thing that happened now in february is that we got the honor to have a workshop with tracking and matchmoving pro Juan Tigreros from Swiss International in Stockholm. Juan has worked on projects such as Star Wars the last Jedi and Jurassic World to name a few when he worked with VFX giants ILP (Important Looking Pirates) also in Stockholm, before joining Swiss.
Here, we got to know a lot about tracking. Why it is important and why it needs to be perfect. For this we got the opportunity to learn a new program - PFTrack. What an amazing software! Juan tought us the fundamentals of User tracking, auto-tracking, Camera tracking and solving, but also object tracking and Matchmoving. For two weeks we've been tracking in both pftrack and Nuke. We also got the opportunity to track our own footage, recorded with our brand new Blackmagic design cameras that came at the beginning of the year!
Well that's that. Next up - COMP
