Perspective

Consulted with my brother last night (he’s an architect) on the problems of achieving realism in the “Reveal” composite. He pointed out a perspective issue: a roto’d, live action element seemed to not match the rest of the shot, perspective wise. Found this nice blog that illuminates the perspective basics we learned in art or drafting classes. Good stuff.

Composite elements coming together

Perspective view of some of the 2D elements (+3D fog, feather elements) for “Reveal” scene in “Wood.”

Adding Atmospheric Elements

The past few days, I’ve been working through issues related to importing atmospheric elements into the “Pullout” composite. (These will also be used in the “Reveal” composite.)

Sunbeams filtering through the wood’s canopy, fog, and more feathers are being generated by Apple’s Motion’s particle systems and replicators. Slow goings, because I don’t have much RAM, and VFX takes a lot it. So it’s a lot of waiting and waiting for a scene to render, so I can see how the elements are working together (or not!).

Protected: What’s Left to Do for “Wood”: A Breakdown

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Light Changes Everything

I added atmospheric lighting to the composite last night, and oh…so beautiful…I want to be in that place. It looks so real, and I can’t believe the vision is coming to life.

Post “Previs”

The past week or so have been spent going back to the edit, and making rough composites to see exactly how the real composites should work into the edit. Looking good.

Still Roto’ing

First horse roto is a no go.

After thinking I’d finally found a way to use my horse roto–despite all the branches in front of the horse (see “First horse roto…” pic), the “solution” didn’t work out. I thought I could blur out the branches and adjust the branches and leaves to the color of the horse, but it looked terrible. I was able to blur the torso satisfactorily–there used to be lots of branches over it. But look at the horse’s tail–forget it, and the head would lose the eyes and facial features.

So, I went through all the horse footage I had, and selected another shot that was much cleaner. I’ve been working on this new roto this week, and have about a quarter of the shot finished (140 frames total).

The reason I didn’t chose cleaner shots to begin with was because none of the cleaner shots of the horse had the right movements needed for continuity in the edit.

I did a quick test of the shot in the composite, and it will work–much more beautifully than the first shot, as it turns out. After I insert a cutaway shot, the continuity problem won’t be an issue.

Here’s a look at the successful horse roto in progress:

Successful Horse Roto -- Head

Neck

Preliminary result (without edge blur and color correction)

Eureka!

A problem’s been stumping me for several weeks: now that I’ve roto’d the horse, how do i get rid of all the many leaves and branches that are “on top” of the horse? After lots of experimenting, I’ve found a way to make that horse look gorgeous and white and still keep its muscle tone and 3D contours. And he looks ethereally beautiful, besides–which is exactly what he needs to be! Can hardly believe it; was getting really discouraged, so this is a little victory.