After the rendering was complete I went onto After Effects. From there I created a new project and saved the file as "Robot Match Move comp" I exported my undistorted camera plates and the 1st robot frame. As for the robot frame it was recognized as a TIF file and what this means is that it will implement every frame of the same name as that file. Since I have a 180 images worth of render this will load the 180 images in the after effects.
Now the robot's frames were 30 FPS and the undistorted camera plates frames were 25 FPS. This had to be changed to 25 FPS so I right clicked on the robot match move animation and interpret footage > main. Frame rate from 30 FPS to 25 FPS. This in effect will update in the timeline itself. In the timeline I stretched the duration for the frame and clicked onto composition > composition settings > duration. These were my composition settings after changes were made. The time would be shortened back to its original time being 7 seconds and 5 frames.
Afterwards I added a frame hold. To be accurate enough I zoomed into the timeline. I pressed '+' key. So I dragged my slider and and right clicked on the frame (via timeline) and selected "time" > freeze on last frame. You can extend the robot animation frame if you wanted to. In my case I didn't do it because I did not want to mess up my animation.
Now I set back the original duration time from the current duration time back into composition settings.
After that I panned around the image in 100% zoom.
Now I added some exposure for the robot due to the brightness and shadow of the robot being out of place. Always look at the CG render in relation to your scene so you know what to do with the robot. I changed the exposure in the master control slider (located on the left side of the screen) and you can turn the Fx icon on and off to see what it looks before and after. To get the exposure go to effect > color correction > exposure. You''ll repeat this process again in the color connect twice later on for the robot. Although those next 2 times I added in lumetri color and camera lens blur. Make sure the effect is on the robot and not the footage itself.
I added the lumetri color effect and adjusted the color wheels. Located in the 4th row under "lumetri color".
These color wheels shown in the image are split into 3 sets. Shadows, midtones and highlights
Here in this image I made some adjustments and adapted on the appropriate shadowing, toning and highlights for the robot.
After the use of Lumetri Color I implemented the camera lens blur.
Now this became blurred out so I made some adjustments in the blur radius slider. After having played around with the slider. I set it to 0.3. I saved my file again and incremented and saved the file. Once I was satisfied I exported my render. Afterwards I added my render to the render queue in the Adobe Creative Cloud Media Encoder CC.
When the program launched I saw my file in the render queue (in the right hand side of the screen). I looked at the blue text (under the output file column) and checked to see the file was in the appropriate place. Whilst I was saving it in the appropriate file desination I created a file called: "OUTPUT RENDERS" Once the file was in place I pressed the green play button.
After that was all done I found the video in the file destination. With that being said, here is my match movement robot animation:
Personal thoughts: This was my first ever animation I had produced for a VFX. I had my ups and downs in the process but when you do something for the first time, it won't be your best piece. I genuinely liked my robot design a lot, on top of that I liked my graphs and concept art that I had produced for this robot in the early stages. I will admit it was massive and it showed when I implemented the reference onto my Matchmove. Therefore, I scaled it down to the appropriate size for the shot. I really enjoyed producing the key poses and frames for my robot animation. This might've been my favorite part. Not only is it tweak-y but you get to play around with the animation, figure out what you want the object or person to do and from there set key poses.
With Nuke
My downs with the project:
Rigging phase
The rigging phase. Specifically painting the skin weights. Maintaining the influences and using the color brushes to get the right color was personally annoying to get around with. Finicky process.
Non linear process
There were times where the process got non linear for me and asked for support many times. For example, I had the issue with my UVs and textures. I sent an email of my robot rig to Luca and he fixed the issue of my robots UV. From now on, I will have to remember to stick to one file only than another file with a different UV layer. In fact, I will double check the UV layout as my top priority. Preventing me from repeating the same mistake again.
Pros and cons aside and despite the long process. I enjoyed producing the animation. I can't believe how much process is involved when creating your own animation!
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