Final Thoughts our Clients and project summary

Clients have been extremely happy with our progress and what we have done. So happy that we have all been offered to work on the full production. So as these being test shots we will now take the script and start looking at what scenes need what and work out some animatics and start developing the production model of the spitfire plane.

This project has been a steep learning experience for me rather than a really amazing final out come. We all had to learn different things to get the result in the short space of time we had. I never planned to rely on textures so much to get the outcome but it was a great practice to do it. During the summer I am planning on working on the high res model that will be based on the shape we have now but with all the detail of a real spitfire.

During these 8 weeks I have earned myself sometime at being a modeler at Framestore which again I got great feedback and should be working there as a modeler over the summer.

As for the outcomes I am fairly happy. Unfortunately Nuke, the compositing software we have been using was only on one machine and it wasn't a fast machine so each composite was an extremely long process where we had to take around 2 hours to render out to see our work then another 2-3 hours after we make changes. Whilst in aftereffects we tried every codex and pixel size variation to try get the best picture ready for broadcast settings and h.264 was the only one that seemed to retain the actual resolution but the quality of our work was lowered and the nuke composites seemed to no really look like what we had in nuke once rendered from aftereffects. The shots came out more blurry and transparent due to the depth layer on to high which wasn't the case in nuke. But this project meant to be making mistakes and learning as we were only doing test shots and learning techniques and work out how to make a spitfire plane look real in a shot. Did we mange to get realistic in our test? No, I don't think we did, but I think that's due to time and the fact we were learning so we now know what to do to get what we want.

First thing I have learnt is about my model. It's to low poly, I planned I to be a low poly model so we had a fully work plane, doing a full high poly model would of been costly in renders and A lot harder to texture. Secondary get nuke on a powerful computer and leave more time to develop things in Nuke as that was our weakness, we do not know the software enough to be able to take our composites to the point of realistic. But we have made the first step!

My role on this project has been group leader, modeller and texture artist. Towards the end I was compositing but the outcomes I feel don't show what we had in nuke so that's our learning point for the summer, retaining the quality. I edited the final video as well as getting and talking to the clients.

http://spitfiretuck.blogspot.com/

Above is the link to the clients blog where they were looking at the stuff in progress and they would email me wit feedback and thoughts. They have been impressed and I am due to meet them later on next week. Well the one that doesn't leave in America.

I have also been working on another project with Rory in the third year. The blog link is at the top of the page. I modeller and created the blend shapes for his main character.

Final Turntable of Spitfire

Here is the final render of the turntable of the spitfire. I am happy with the outcome, I stayed to a low poly mesh as I could as it was a small deadline and we wanted to develop the look quite alot and it was a great experimental process for me and my development. I have already been asked to model on the actual production so I plan to start a fully high res detailed model over the summer working with a texture artist from Framestore.

Motion Blur Development

Start to grade the shot to make it blend with the plate abit more. Tweaks are all being done in nuke now, still got to render out some of the passes again so we get the best out of them.

Motion Blur Development

Here is   of development of the first render. Start to play with motion blur as we had some troubles with rendering it without loosing so much of the detail and form of the plane. So we have developed a render pass called 2d motion vector pass which we get complete control over the motion blur within nuke.

First Renders, First thoughts! and Client Feedback!

Here is a first look at the Shot Render!

We tried motion blur the first time round but everything came out very strange and gave us nothing to work with. Although the actually beauty shot came out nice it just wasn't enough for us to work with.

But here is a first composite of the shot. I have recieved some feedback, they like the idea and concept behind the shot as well as the animation. But after talking to them they feel there needs abit of tweaking:

        - Colour grade on last plane: this was my own idea as the back plane looks out of place and strange.
        - odd frame jerk- there seems to be a random frame where the plane jerks. So we need to edit the track for that
        - Play with motion blur- Again something I wanted to take further anyway but its nice to hear the clients also agreeing.

Some other things I want to edit are the ground shadows passed failed to work and the shadows on the plane need abit more to give some more contrast to the actual plane.

I am fairly happy with the first draft but still loads of editing to do.

My Time at Framestore!

I recently I have been asked to model on a Framestore project involving McLaren and our design department! So this is a 3rd part to my 3rd term project.

I am working as a modeler, where I have been building props and building up sets for the production. I have also had the chance to work on character modeling where I have design and modeled Jenson's Button's hair. I also got to model one of the cars and clothes for the characters.

The sad thing is that I am unable to show any of my models or workings as they release date is after the deadline for this term, but soon as I get images or renders I'm allowed to show I will post them here!

Pilot Development

Spitfire texture Draft 02

Above is the Turntable of the first fully textured drat of the exterior elements of the Spitfire. I have no sent this turntable to the clients to get some feedback and thoughts. During that time I plane to start on the interior and start getting that textured ready for first renders by the end of next week.

Below are a selection of images showing the development of the colour and textures of the exterior. Alot of it was tweak colours and dirt here and there to give that look of wear and tear. For some of the objects I textured completely in Mudbox as I have learnt some nice techniques to get some nice texture outcome.

 The image below and above show the example of myself tweaking the colours and saturation of different elements to make sure they blend together. Top image shows how I brightened up some of the textures as they seems to dark and no variation in colour.

Spitfire Texture Draft 01

Model Development: Pilot Base Mesh

Concept shot 02- Joe Animation

Here is a Render I did ready to show the clients what we had so far of the animation. I added some blur to give the sense of depth and to test how we could play with the views focus using blurring. The clients liked the shot. They thought the animation needed some tweaking, so Joe has been given the notes to work from.

My next plan is to maybe start some motion blur to start getting to see how long the render take and to see the effect as most of the rendering will need motion blur as we have moving cameras.

Animation Dev

Here are two concepts for two different shots we filmed on film day 02! we like the idea of playing with groups of planes and develop a tag team idea where they fly as a unit. As for the main production it would be needed.

The idea for the top shot was to have the planes fly over head as a group, not in a real army formation but as a general follow the leader role. But we wanted to play with more of the movements. So we have one high then mid level then finally a low flying spitfire to finish it off. They all pull different types of banking to test out a few variations of how to turn. So this shot gives a wide range of development and ideas on how to maybe film these type of shots or how to work with groups of planes.






The is the second concept with the footage we have chosen. This is only two spitfires, coming together to fly off. We wanted a nice sweeping shot where we follow a peaceful spit on its on, then have a fast entrance of a close low flying spit where I feel adds a nice comparison and gives us the chance of getting close to the plane from the ground level which is where most people see planes, whilst looking up so I liked that kind of hand held camera moment catching these two planes in action.

Film Day 02!

So we went filming again this week. This time we traveled a lot further to reach the site. We found a hill that was only habited but a few sheep and have tried to get some more landscape shots that would give us loads of room to try get some beauty shots of the spitfire! This time we didn't haven't to worry about the tracking markers as greg has worked out a way to track without them.

Model Development: Modeling and Texturing Dev

Below shows the development of the bump elements underneath the plane. The top image shows some improvement but still along way to go before I am happy with the result as the center park of the plane seems that the line isn't clean so looks like the panels are fading which is not wanted.

 The images below show the bump development at the front! the image below shows the final render of that development, I was fairly happy with the outcome and will have to do the same with underneath and back aparts of the plane.

The image above shows an image of the model with elements of the wing starting to be added as well as first tests at the bump map. The problem I had was that I had to hand paint all the bump maps, black areas for parts I want to intrude such as panels and white areas for the bolts to extrude. I had to play with opacity in Photoshop and bump value in maya to get the right look.

At first I was concentrating on the main body as thats the main thing we will be focusing on and the area with the most detail needed.

Here is a an update on the development of the textures! The first image above shows the texture at an early stage. I was blocking out ruff colours and started placing some of the panels and details. I had planned to use projection in mudbox but with the lack of reference images of the same spitfire made it really difficult to use it. So I had to base it out in mudbox then in photoshop start adding in all the details.

Model Development: Base Mesh Exterior

Above is the Turntable show the development of the model. I have posted it to the clients and they have given good feedback. The like the shape and layout so far.

My personal feelings of the model so far are fairly positive. I want to develop the model so when I subdiv it I keep abit more shape and more defined edges. I want to work on the cockpit more as at the moment I feel its abit empty when a cockpit should be busy and packed.

First Animatic Flyby

This is the first draft of the intro shot, showing the spit. The idea is to have clouds in the foreground with gaps where we can see the ground below. As clouds come into view you get to see the spitfires shadow and then the spitfire itself came into view panning from back to front then slowing down. The spitfire banks to the left away from the camera and reviles its path with a matte painting of Biggin hill in the distance.

The pilot will be animating looking around as he fiddles with controls and switches then a quick glance before banking off away from camera.

Random green and white rectangles are to represent the clouds and ground. Ground being Green, white being clouds. Basic but easy way to plan things out.




Second shot with spitfire flying pass quite close to camera. This shot can either be matte painting or real footage with matte painting elements adding in which might be a good experiment. The idea behind this shot is to have the plan entering from the left flying across the screen and the camera pans around following it as it straightens up showing Biggin hill in the background with the plane flying towards it.

Rocket Girl Part of Project

http://rocketgirloliverkane.blogspot.com/

Here is the link to the other project I am working on during this term for a 3rd Year project. Also there is a tap at the top where you can follow that onto the blog as well.

Day 01 of Filming: Flyby

Today we had our first day of filming!

It was more of a learning experience that we thought. We had an idea to setup out tracking grid with little sticks with red tape on. We took over the field and set all 36 up when we found out the camera couldn't see them. We tried to make the tracking markers bigger however it was not to be, the camera couldn't pick them up as the movement of the camera blurred the images to much so they were lost.

What we had to do for this test was to use myself, Sanjay, Joe and Nick to stand in place as the tracking markers so greg could track us!

Below is the final track footage which greg didn't need us for tracking in the end but was worth the test! Nick has started the animation but we plan to take this to the next step soon when we get some textures done. But these first filming days are mainly to build concepts and get some idea what our clients want.

Client Blog

http://spitfiretuck.blogspot.com/

Here is the Link to the Client Blog. Where we plan to upload all the tests and model we want the clients to give feedback on. We plan to do Weekly's where each friday we upload all we have done up to that day. This will show that we are working and keep the clients informed and up to date.

Model Spitfire Development

For this Project I need to model two main things!

First being the Spitfire which is the hero of all the shots we plan to do. Second one is the pilot which won't play a major role in things but still a challenging model that I plan to take further either during this project or for the production of the film.

OK! so Plane. The Spitfire Version is the MK1 which was flown by Robert Stanford Tuck who is the hero and main character of the production. He normally flew a Hurricane but in the period when the film was set  it was a Spitfire.

So first thing I have done is start gathering some Reference images. The version of the plane changes but its generally about the shape at the moment more than the finer details.

Project Introduction & Brief

For this Project, me and the group are working as the VFX team for our client who is a Director from Framestore. We also have the writer and producer working with us closely as he has a lot of knowledge in what planes should look and move like.


The film is based on a famous Spitfire pilot called Tuck and we are going to be making shots to show a spitfire flying, swooping, banking and landing in CG.


The idea behind the brief that I have discussed with Chris (Director) and Greg (Write and Producer) is that we are their R&D department (Research & Development). They aren't sure how to shoot this film and weather its easier to make fully cg shots or to film on location. What we are here to do is do is to experiment with methods of making a CG Spitfire Plane looking real! The key thing about this project is Realistic. We plan to make 3 shots:


Cg & live action- This style of shot is for the idea of shots looking up at the plane seeing it fly over etc. So we will be testing how to track this and how to make sure it fits the live action.


Fully CG Shots - This shots are for the more fully in the air shots. So maybe dog fights or general shots that need the plane to be high up, which makes for filming very expensive which our client doesn't have so CG would be the way forward. We will test out a number of shots and methods using matte paintings and dynamics to give the impression of the planes flying high.




We plan to make many tests and examples for our clients but at the end of this project we want to have three shots to show that we have developed the idea of how we could make the Spitfire and the shots needed for the real production which we plan to start after this project is completed in the summer.


- I will be VFX supervisor during this project as well as modeler and texturing artists
- Stephanie joy: Compositor and Matte Painter
- Sanjay Sen: Rigger and Lighting
- Greg Martin: VFX TD and Tracker
- Nick Georgeou: Animator
- Joe Henson: Animator