Month: November 2024

25/11/2024

Unreal Engine

This week I wanted to create a landscape for my cabin to be placed in, as I have used the Unreal Engine landscape tool before I wanted to try using other software to create a heightmap that could then be imported into the landscape. To get references for the landscape I looked up the location of on of my inspiration cabins as I really liked the view.

After finding the location I measured the distance and height of important features of this area so I could get a realistic scale when creating the landscape.

Once I had enough reference information I started to recreate this environment in World Machine. After following the tutorials built into the program I was able to edit one of the preset worlds to create a heightmap that looked similar to my reference.

18/11/2024

3D Tracking

This week I had to track a more complicated scene, this meant I had to place a lot more points. To manage all of these points I grouped and coloured them per building and floor.

After fixing the lens, distortion and deviations I exported the camera and point data into Maya. With this data I am able to recreate the buildings in 3D and have the camera move through them correctly.

Balloon Festival Modeling

For my balloon festival I wanted to create a futuristic sci-fi balloon. Once I created a moodboard of balloon ideas I decided I wanted to create something with metallic plates that somewhat resembled a spaceship.

I started my doing some tests with the Random Flow add on for Blender, this allowed me to quickly create metal panels and details that would take a very long time to create manually.

After creating a sphere with metal panels I started add hanging cables and other details to the side of the balloon such as antennas, pipes and lights.

When I was happy with my model I added a HDRI to light the scene and give the model realistic reflections. I then animated the model rotating and rendered it with a transparent background.

The next step was to import this render into nuke and scale and position the balloon behind the mountains that have previously been masked.

Once I have the balloons in my shot I began to grade the scene to look darker and give it a sci-fi feel.

11/11/2024

3D Tracking

This week I tried tracking 3D camera movements in 3D Equalizer. To start tracking the shot I needed to add lots of tracking points throughout the shot, these points needed to be at areas with high contrast and unique patterns.

In order to get a good track I had to create points in the foreground and background that had a parallax effect.

Once I had all my tracking points set I had to calculate the lens and distortion from the camera that was use to record the shot. Then I reduced the deviations and bad tracks to get as low of a value as possible.

Modelling

I exported two models from Zbrush to rig in Maya. For the human rig I used the quick rig built into Maya. For the dog I had to manually place the bones and make sure the hierarchy was correct.

04/11/2024

Project

This week I created 3 different ideas for what my model will look like. Out of these 3 shapes I decided to move forward with the middle design.

Once I had chosen a design I added materials to it to get and idea of what It would look like when completed.

Then I tested how the model looks in different lighting scenarios.

When I was happy with my model I checked how everything looked with the wireframe view.

Modeling

To apply textures to specific areas of a model, I unwraped in then carefully placed my building textures in photoshop so they aligned with the models UV map.

I tried texturing a model in substance painter. To apply one of the sample materials in substance painter I simply drag it onto the mesh, then I can change the masks and settings of the material in the right panel.

Nuke

To start tracking an object in Nuke I used the tracker node then selected key points on my object with high contrast. This is so the tracker has an easier job distinguishing pixels.

Using these tracking techniques I can match move or stabilise a shot. In this case I tracked a phone then stabilised it. With this stabilised shot I can more easily replace the phone screen with my own content.

After this content was fit to the screen I animated scrolling to match the finger movement within the shot.

A mask of the finger was made using the roto node so that I could be overlayed ontop of the replaced screen.

Separating Instagram content and top and bottom bars

Finally I added motion blur to the shot and colour graded the replaced screen to match the shot and add more realism.