Come Clarity

Since The End of Things is officially complete, please see the blog for my next project: Come Clarity.

Can't have a light, Without Dark to Stick it In.

The film is complete as of October 9th. Until I am ready to post it, I will update this blog a few more times with information regarding the techniques that I used to produce it.

Today I will discuss the creation of the tower’s light beam – the most central effect in The End of Things.

Blocking

There are several steps that I must take before I create the light beam in the scene. The first step is to block it out with a transparent poly-cone.

Blocking the light beam.

This particular scene is built to scale. The camera must truck in slowly and I do not want the tower to be moving at all. Thus the beam has to start far far away. This will cause some problems later when creating the shadows (though I did not know it at the time).

Note the gaps between the ocean waves; it is unnecessary to fill the entire scene. If placed in correct relation to the camera, only four waves are needed to create the illusion of an entire ocean.

Light Setup

The shot’s lighting setup.

In this step I hide the poly-cone and begin to light the scene. I start with the strongest light source (1) – the light beam which emits from to the top of the tower, where its eye should be. Then I place a wide-angled spot light (2) high above the scene to simulate the light coming from the sky or moon. I use a spot light instead of a direction light, because I like to have the illumination taper off towards the edge of the frame.

The third light (3) is an additional spot light that shines on the wave around the boat. This forms the circle that the light beam casts on the ocean’s surface.

Right above Hatchiman, is another spot light (4). This one generates a shadow for the character and the gondola and casts it on the water. Realistically, the shadow would be cast from light #1. However, I thought that the image would be more interesting if the shadow was cast towards the camera.

The two final lights are a directional light that is used as a rim light for the tower (5) and a point light (6) that is hidden behind one of the waves. This one subtly lights the tower from the bottom, creating an interesting gradient that I could later manipulate during compositing.

Tower’s Eye

The tower’s eye is a simple point light with default settings (color white, intensity 1.0). I added a light glow and modified the settings (see image below). The eye is then rendered on a separate pass with a black background.

The tower’s eye and its settings.

The Beam

The light beam’s main shape is a spot light with a fog added to it. Since the light source is quite far away, I’ve extended the decay regions all the way past Hatchiman. I didn’t however, turn decay on. I prefer to extend the decay instead of scaling the light, since scaling seems to cause errors when I map a texture to the light.

The light beam’s main shape.

For this particular light, I mapped a ramp to the color so that the edges taper off in a smoother fashion. The intensity is controlled by an intensity curve, simulating a slight decay.

Like the tower’s eye, this light is rendered on a separate pass with a black background.

Note: With the exception of particles, the entire film is rendered using Maya Software Render.

Fog

Originally, I tried to create all of the light effects on the same light. This caused a lot of problems and produced some undesired artifacts when rendering the animation. Thus I decided to split the light beam into several lights, render each in its own pass and composite them all later in After Effects.

Fog Light and it’s texture settings.

The fog light is identical to the light beam in its settings, except that the fog density is mapped with a volume noise.

Dust

The dust from the light beam is actually a volume noise texture, mapped into the density of the fog. Originally, I tried to use a granite texture (like in this tutorial), and although it looked nice in a still image, it did not animate well.

Dust Light and it’s texture settings.

Using volume noise with small amplitude and an animated time attribute produced a very nice result. It looks more like glitter, which is it what it actually is, but I still refer to it as dust.

Shadows

The light that emits the beautiful shadows in the fog is placed right in front of Hatchiman, and not in the distance where light beam begins. This is because the distant light seems to conjure up flickering artifacts when the shot animates.

The shadows!

In After Effects, these shadows are masked using the original beam shape and thus they appear to be coming from it.

Depth

I projected a black to white ramp on a cone, and scaled and positioned it to cover the beam. Later in After Effects, I used this cone in order to give the light beam a depth of field effect.

A simple cone with a ramp mapped to it.

Animation

Below is the animated light beam in after effects. I’ve placed each pass on top of each other using the Add Transfer Mode.

Click to play QuickTime.

As you can see there is still some flickering in the shadows projecting from the bow of the boat. I tried to raise the resolution on the shadow map and increase some of the quality settings, but was unable to find a satisfactory fix. Thus I ended up lowering their opacity in hopes that they will not draw too much attention from the viewer.

Compositing

Click to play QuickTime.

The colors of the beam are tinted to a golden color, in order to compliment the dark blues and purples of the ocean. This was done using After Effects’ CC Toner effect, which can be found under the color correction effect menu. I’ve also added Compound Blur and a CC Pulse Ripple to create a subtle intensity shift in the light, making it feel more organic. Finally, I tied it all off with a Fast Blur set to 1.0.

Below, you can see the final composited scene:

Click to play QuickTime.

A Little Contact

All of the 3D seems to be rendered (tfu tfu), and I am currently compositing the film. Thanks to the feedback of my fellow classmates, I have decided to recomposite all of the shots, and particularly to fix the colors so that the elements read better while enhancing the desired atmosphere.

Below is a contact sheet with different color experiments. I picked #4, but I'm open to suggestions.

Contact Sheet

Foaming at the Mouth

Summer is almost over and my last year of graduate school is about to begin.

I have spent most of the summer recreating the materials that I have lost during the crash; this did not take as long as I estimated. However, I did run into several technical problems, mostly concerning the creation of the foam between the moving gondola and the ocean. I will delve into the details of this problem and the journey to its solution in the following post.

nParticles

As stated before in a previous post, foam development was abandoned due to time constrains and the inability to utilize Maya’s nParticles on the hardware that was available to me. Thanks to the extra time that I was allotted over the summer, I had more hours to sit and research different techniques in order to produce this element. Although, a minor aspect, that most viewers won’t even notice, the foam plays an essential part in giving the illusion that the gondola is interacting with the water.

I originally attempted to use particle sprites instead of particle clouds, but couldn’t figure out a way to control the opacity and generation of the sprites. It seemed that I would have to learn scripting in order to do so, which was something that I wanted to avoid.

Fluids

I spent several days studying Maya’s impressive fluids system; I was able to come up with a satisfactory foam effect.

Foam created with Maya Fluids, click to play QuickTime.

The problem was that once the boat moved and the waves were running, the foam seemed to be “swallowed” by the water.

Foam being swallowed by the water, click to play QuickTime.

Constraining the fluid box to the boat, or trying to animate its translation and rotation separately was too difficult, as I had to adjust almost every frame and then check it in the render view. This took up about two weeks of my time and it still did not look satisfactory.

A positive result of this experiment is that I now knew the basics of Maya’s fluid system, and also, I was able to create usable foam for when the breaking waves hit the ocean.

Foam test for the breaking wave.
(See the last clip in this post for a final composite between the foam and the waves).
Click to play QuickTime.

Water splash, created by live action ink.
(Similar effects will be used to create the underwater and abstract sequences).
Click to play QuickTime.

While it worked for the breaking waves, it still did not work properly for the boat. I needed to find a way to create the foam, so that it would be automated and I wouldn’t have to spend too much time adjusting it in each scene.

Textures

The next attempt was to try and build a polygon mesh and apply an animated texture to it.
I created two sets of animated textures, using Particle Illusion, one for the bow of the boat and one for the wake.

Foam Texture, click to play QuickTime.

Wake Texture, click to play QuickTime.

This technique was faster to render than the previous fluid method, but still resulted in a similar problem of being “swallowed” by the ocean. Even though the render was faster, it still proved to be a cumbersome process that would take up too much time to adjust in each of the shots. More so, the animated texture files took up a lot of gigabytes.

Polygons with textured foam. The wake is projected on the Ocean Surface. Click to play QuickTime.

At this point I was ready to give up (not the first time). I left the project for a few days to work on some other things, and soon a new idea came to mind...

...Came Full Circle

I would generate an intersecting toon line between the gondola and the ocean, convert it into a mesh and emit the foam particles from that.

Toon line generated between the gondola and the ocean, click to play QuickTime.

This is what I tried originally with the cloud particles, which proved to be too resource heavy. I would have to bite the bullet and learn some scripting, in order to control the sprite particles, which were faster to render.

Fortunately, I came across Mike Rhone’s Explosion Rig Tutorial, which proved be very valuable as well as educational. Whatever the tutorial didn’t clear up, Mr. Rhone was very happy to help with via email.

Click to play QuickTime.

After reviewing the tutorial several times, and making sure that I understood the coding (learning through practice is easiest for me). I adjusted the parameters of the particle rig and attached them to the toon line that intersected between the gondola and the ocean.

Click to enlarge image.

As you can see in the test below, the foam is automatically generated and killed between the gondola and the ocean. This allows me to import this rig into any scene without having to do any major adjustments each time.

Notice how the foam automatically stays around the boat, click to play QuickTime.

The foam is ready to go, and I am able to focus on the more creative aspects of the project once again. Below, is a clip of the first fully composited shot. I’ve included the wake texture as a projection underneath the boat to complete the effect.

Below is the completed shot, composited and in Adobe After Effects:

Completed first shot with effects. Please forgive the poor compression and colors.
Click to play QuickTime.

A Note About Rendering Sprites

I would like to note that Maya can only render sprites through its Hardware Render. I have encountered a couple of problems using this render, and I would like to share the solutions that I have found in order to overcome them.

Black Frames with Hardware Render
If you are receiving a black or blank frame with the hardware render, try to change the camera clipping. I found that reducing it usually solves the problem.

Slow Rendering with Hardware Render
Generally, Hardware Render is very fast. I have encountered, however, that sometimes it’s even slower than software. At first this seemed very random, as a low resolution scene would take three hours to output, while the same scene at hi-res took a few minutes.

What I discovered, is that if you cache the particles, Hardware Render will work very fast. If they are un-cached, that is most likely the cause of the slow render.
Here is a quick tutorial about particle caching.

Semester Conclusion

It is the end of the semester, and I must type up a conclusion for the directed study courses that involved this project. One dealt with the style and look of the picture, while the other dealt with Stereoscopy.

Looking at this blog, I think it premature to arrive at a conclusion, as a lot still seems to be missing.

This is not exactly the case, however.

Two days ago I was very close to finishing this project, the files were all set to render over night. When I arrived at the lab the next morning, there were errors on every single computer that I set to render. This is normal and I was ready for such an event to happen. What I was not ready for, was a corruption of the files. It appears that the combination of Render Layers and References can cause serious problems to the Maya files (http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=316471). Thus most of my files have been corrupted and been rendered useless.

At first this did not seem like a major setback. I had older versions on a portable hard drive and it would take me about a day to setup the files again in a proper fashion without using render layers. As I turned to get my hard drive, its cable was caught in the wheel of my chair and dropped to the floor. This of course was its demise. I have backups of all the files on another computer, but as of now they are at least two weeks old. Thus I am unable at the moment to conclude this research with all of latest materials.

I will go ahead and write about some of the intentions and discoveries that I have made all the same, and how I think this will reflect in the continuation of this project (I am determined to finish it very soon) and my following project – my thesis.

On Learning Maya

At the beginning of the semester I had no knowledge of the Maya software package. I have worked with 3D Studio Max before, but opted to switch as many people around me were familiar with Maya, and so could help me if I ran into difficulties.
In the past six months I have learned to model, unwrap, texture, light use nParticles, Toon and PaintFX in Maya as well as a little MEL scripting.

I have also discovered that the working process in Maya is %20 creation and %80 percent problem solving. While I do not mind the challenge of an occasional problem, this ratio can get tedious under a tight deadline.

When working analog, every change one wants to make should be considered harshly, as it will usually cost a massive amount of time to execute. But in Maya, things are so easy to change and tweak that I tend to lose track of the big picture and misplace myself in detail.

This is something that I have to watch out for should I continue using this software. In my further projects, I will cut a new animatic once a week, so that I can always keep an eye on the entire process.

Working Pipeline

Since my entire rendering and compositing pipeline was based on Render Layers (which could be an incredible tool if properly implemented), and since they seem to be the cause of the file corruption. I have to find another way of setting up the project. The old school way of setting up a different file for each pass will probably do the trick. I will also import all references and cache all of the animation before render is to begin.

Perhaps this particular film was not the best for testing out a style. The Ocean itself was such an undertaking – creating the moving waves, textures, foam and splashes -- that it took up most of my time. I had less time then, to work on the character and how it will blend into the environment. In that sense, the crash could have been a blessing, as I can now take a few more weeks to focus on this aspect of the film.

Over the next few weeks I plan on rebuilding the corrupt scenes in a more organized fashion and hopefully come to a more positive conclusion before thesis work begins at the end of June.

Stereoscopy

The Stereo cameras in Maya 2009 are another one of the software’s blessings. They are easy to work with and allow the artist to focus on the shot more than on the technicality of achieving the stereo effect.

When I first began to learn about Stereoscopy at the start of the academic year, I was convinced that every film should be in stereo. I am less convinced of it now, as it adds another layer of work to an already challenging process. However, I do think that that extra layer can be used on some films, particularly animation to add another dimension or simulate a point of view which would be harder on a flat image.

Setting up Stereo cameras in Maya is quite easy, and once I have my files rebuilt, I will cut a new stereo-animatic for this film. I believe that the depth of the media can add to the feeling of separation that the character has with its environment.

Animatic - May 2nd, 2009

With all the hard work that went into rigging the waves, animating them still proved to be an "ant-work" process. Thus I decided to cut out the first shot of the film because of its length and complexity, and substitute it with several shorter shots.
This way, I could avoid animating the waves for a minute and a half straight.

During this time I added a couple of more shots to the film. Being a few weeks from the final deadline this was a risk, but it ended up making my job easier and making the film stronger.

Click to Play Quicktime

Smudged Edges

Several posts ago, I wrote about the smudged edges that I wanted to have on top of the geometry. I was partially successful in applying this theory to practice.

These smudges were created by assigning a toon outline to a surface shaded object and then attaching a paintFX brush to the toonline. The brush is then set to SMEAR or BLUR, depending on the desired effect.

It all works well until things are set in motion:

Click to Play Quicktime

As you can see, the toon line and paint brush causes everything to jitter when the elements are in motion.

Click to Play Quicktime

With minimal movement, things look better. Unfortunately the character will be riding the waves and moving frantically up and down. Due to lack of time, this technique will have to be dropped and the smudging will be done in post.