Text and Particles

So had some computer troubles which caused this post to come up late but here it is! I tried my hand at a little kinetic typography and ultimately decided it's not something you can do quickly...obviously. I think the biggest problem for me wasn't that it would take a long time - I was expecting that - but that the camera was extremely finicky. I started by creating a simple vignette around a blue solid (both 2d layers) and then made the letters themselves 3d since my original idea involved a lot more 3d camera movements, as opposed to say a lot of 2d used in Cee Lo Green's "F*ck You!" unofficial music video. Anyways, the challenge came in keeping the Point of Interest of the camera locked onto the text as it came up, and since the camera was moving all the time to accommodate the text. Basically when I went down too far the POI wouldn't change and while the camera was still at a "90*" angle to the 3d Text the offset of teh POI made it deform. So...yeah. I ended up making 2 sequences and in the 2nd I kept the camera still but animated the text so the POI and Position never changed.

Mitch in the s'th from kabraz on Vimeo.



The 2nd was the particle shot. I've dabbled with Trapcode Particular, 3D stroke, Form, etc, but never really got the hang of it. I did use Shine a lot but that's a pretty simple one...but after seeing tests of Particular 2.0 and watching a lot of videos I was determined to learn a bit more about it. Based off the Lexus Orb tutorials (crazyyyy commercial...way cool) I used particular to make a constant stream of particles. Unlike the tutorial, I managed to create what I think was a really cool texture of semi-transparent...material that made up the "tails" of the particle streams. I made the "heads" lights and attached Trapcode Lux to amplify them, then parented both to a null which I then used to control both streams. The subtle movements they make individually were achieved by messing with their individual orientations. Anyways, I had fun, learned a lot, and am excited to do more with custom particles.


Particular 2.0 Test from kabraz on Vimeo.

3D model

So still not exactly how I'd like it, but here is my first 3d model! I did R2D2 because I thought it might be easier to work with something mechanical that had no organic parts. Also, I figured if we'd be potentially using the same models for a few projects it would give me time to tweak all the little details. Unfortunately, sometime early in the modeling process the dome I extruded something weird resulting in the top of the dome being kinda deformed, but I decided just to keep it that way.

 I used some schematics and blue prints from the Artoo Detoo builders club website and also based off this guy's amazing model. I also had an R2 USB hub model that I used for some of the details to base it off of.

Not expecting mine to look anything like his but it's good reference...anyways I guess finishing the details at a later date, texturing, and rigging are up next....

Motion Track Test

So this is a tracking test for a short film I'll be shooting in October. The premise revolves around characters communicating through thought bubbles. So this was a short test with a 2d motion track and then another test with a matchmove revolving around a character. The 2D track was done in AE with 2 track points on the light panel and on teh bookcase, and the 3D track done in Boujou and then imported back into AE for the composite. I added a light to the 1st one which I really liked, but the 2nd one was a bit harder since the scene makes itself a 3D camera.

Kinks Motion Test from kabraz on Vimeo.

Visual Effects Assignment 3

So I somehow manage to always do next week's lesson this week...ugh. I had some of those advanced animation and what not with the Star Destroyers but here's what I did this time. I did a 2d motion track with After Effects' built in tracker (which surprisingly held up!). Applied the data to a null and then started with the composites. Just like the Star Destroyers I cut out some helicopters and made them into two 3d layers for the hull and rotors. Precompsed those and dropped them into my main comp with some motion blur. There was 1 on the ground, 1 beginning to take off, and 1 in transition from takeoff to flying. The last chopper I keyframed to ease so the velocity of the chopper would speed up as it leaned forward to push itself through the air, while the take-off chopper had to first build some resistance and then ease into motion. I composited the different layers of smoke and then a general layer of atmospheric smoke - including the smoke that reacts to the choppers (which was just a lucky coincidence from Action Essentials 2 - thanks Andrew Kramer!) and finally composited in the Mon Calamari star cruiser (although masking the leaves out was a huge pain.

VFX Shot from kabraz on Vimeo.

3d Renders

Right so this next assignment was a lot of messing around - trying one thing and then kinda getting something else. Which isn't entirely bad...I'm pretty happy with the way some of them turned out. But...I'd like to get to the point where I'm doing these things on purpose rather than tweaking some settings and having stuff kinda come out.

For the logo I did Panda Cheese based off the hilarious Egyptian commercials for the product. With the bezier tool I traced over the entire thing and it came out....lumpier than I'd like. I then changed the curves to planes and colored them.

Next I did the revolve - and this actually came out sort of how I wanted. I drew from the Right side view half a profile of a lightsaber handle (I've been playing way too much Force Unleashed...haha) and then revolved that around. Unfortunately, still not too comfortable with working in NURBS I just created a 2nd cylinder and stuck it through the handle "wall" for the button.

Also, while saving these frames as png's I guess I didn't have a background so it rendered as white? For the extrude I had the concept of a wall in mind so I designed the curve of one here

 and then drew a curve to create the wall. But messing with some of the rotation functions I thought it looked like it could serve as more of a roller coaster...so I just went with that.

And lastly I messed with the lofting for a bit and then by accident created something kinda cool (which I didn't render out...probably should have but didn't think it'd get anywhere.) Basically it looked like part of a cape wrapping around somebody. So going off of that and a love for the characters like Batman and Spawn who always have these crazy capes enveloping their bodies, I drew curve layers to loft. The bottom layer was fanned out like the bottom of the cape along the ground while the 2nd was the "shoulders". I had no idea the "cape" would wrap the way it did but I was pretty happy with that. Just for reference I added a head and gave him some Batman ears. Baha.

Elevated view from the back - cape kinda swirling? Maybe?

More of a side view

A straight on view didn't look really right the way some of the layers overlapped so I just tried to hide it...anyways, with some things coming out planned and others that kinda made their own way, here it is!

City Invasion

So finished up animating my scene. At first I had the whole sequence as a still shot with a little camera wiggle, but later I decided add in a more handheld camera feel, full with the rack focuses and stuff.

Little breakdown of what's going on here: I had the cutouts of all the ships but this time I cut out the tall building foreground to put the 2nd ISD behind (I even named them!) I then did some simple animations to get a feel for the movement of all the ships (I really wanted to emphasize the hugeness of the ships so I had them move really slow). It was also really important that I get the engine heat distortion set up so I worked on that first - I added a particle system (2 on top of each other) and then used them to act as a displacement map for the Destroyer. Since only the leftside engine would be visible I only did the engine distortion on that side - I had tried to do make some engine glow but that ended up not working well since I couldn't play the light off the hull. I then parented the particle system to the engines and made them 3d layers so I could push it back.

The next big item was the helicopters. I took the cutout (it was the whole chopper) and split it into 2 layers - one of the body and one of the rotor blades. I made the blades 3d layers and keyframed them to rotate around, then precomposed them and duplicated. I did the same for the 2nd helicopter body - I had them separated as the Military chopper (screen left) and the 4 "news" choppers.

I added in the TIE fighters squadron too and had them drop down from the shadow of the ISD "hull".

Finally the last touches were precomposing the entire scene and putting it into a slightly smaller composition - to give room for the camera wiggle and handheld stuff. I made the composition wiggle on it's own, but after adding a 3d Camera I also put a wiggle expression on the z-orientation. Finally checked all the motion blur on and animated the camera - unfortunately I didn't have a realistic lens focus effect so I just added a gaussian blur and manually keyframed it once the camera moved. After several test renders and tweakings here's the final product!



City Invasion from kabraz on Vimeo.

Perspective Digital painting

So for the Perspective Digital Paint I thought it'd be fun to kind of mess with the color palate a bit. Going for a bit of a cartoony look I have everything shaded in weird colors, but I tried to keep the fundamentals of design and color in mind. For example, I still tried to make darker colors represent closer objects and lighter ones in the distance, including the sides of the house for shading.

The house and overall silhouette were on one layer that had a transfer setting of multiply attached to it so I could paint within the outline. For big expanses, like the foreground and sky, I added to their own layers and just wiped across the entire area. Also, in those big expanses I changed the brush type to a feathered brush with opacity so I could (attempt) to do some fall-off with distance. That was about it!