After working on my VFX piece of a piranha plant, I created a good piece of VFX that I'm proud of.
We began working on the VFX piece for an entire academic year. The pre-production stage lasted from September-October. The production stage lasted from November-January and post-production lasted from January-May. The post-production stage took the longest as this was a unit specialized in visual effects and it is a lengthy process in the pipeline.
I created multiple blog posts on each process during the post-production stages of VFX.
The best part of the unit was the post-production stage
In this evaluation I will be showing multiple videos:
- The original video
- The video with breakdowns
Here is the original video:
The breakdown video will cover all the elements by each layer in the video.
Here is the breakdown video:
In the breakdown video you will see the following materials used to build up the original video in itself: 1. Completed VFX 2. Camera Plate 3. Camera Plate - Colour Corrected 4. Camera Plate - undistort 5. Match move - workbench with checkerboard 6. CG shadow pass unmasked 7. CG shadow pass masked 8. CG main 9. CG main - defocused 10 Greenhouse door frame roto 11. Greenhouse door frame - tracking marker paint out 12. Camera Plate - undistort off
Feedback:
After creating my VFX final and breakdown video, I showed my videos to the class to get feedback for it.
This is the feedback I received from others:
Sam (teacher) thoughts:
Final video: Regarding the piranha plant creature model its textures are nice but there is banding on the plant pot. Possibly add more subdivisions on plant pot as it is faceted.
The end result is believable due to match movement. Furthermore, the texturing and lighting of the asset make the shot look convincing as it matches up with the camera plate.
Once I got the feedback, needed and improve upon the mistakes, my teacher, Sam approved the VFX shot.
The texture style is in between photo-realism and hyper stylized. Ideally, I was going for a photo-realistic style which is the 'industry-standard' in VFX for film and television.
Breakdown video:
Match move workbench (00:24) should be merged on camera plate and turn down the opacity to about 50. Often they are presented this way in breakdown videos.
My thoughts on the final video: I am satisfied and pleased with the VFX piece. This has been one of the two favorite assignments that I've worked on this academic year. It felt like I was working for a VFX company and using the production pipeline process to create this VFX shot. The VFX Breakdown requires more effort and it was one of the first times where I created a VFX breakdown video. I needed frame wipes (video transitions) for each render and captions which tell the viewer what that element of the VFX is. Once I pieced together all the elements needed it felt satisfying. Essentially, breakdowns are montages of all the elements that were used in the post-production process for VFX. I used a lot of elements to create what was needed for Greenhouse of Terror. Evaluation: I enjoyed the sculpting and modeling process the most mainly because it's something I specialize in as I have been modeling assets since 2018, something I thoroughly enjoy and I'd love to be a 3D modeler for games and visual effects.
One thing I felt like didn't go well was the rendering, thankfully I was able to get over the process of rendering. At first, the rendering process was tedious and painful. I tried rendering my frames at home if all my frames didn't render to cut down the time however, it took more time. This was due to missing components and rendering issues that I expressed So I rendered out the piranha plant comp from Maya using multiple computers and I was able to get on with the post-production process better when working in Nuke.
In terms of good practice, I shoulld've previewed one render with different render settings for the best outcome in terms of presentation and time management. Furthermore on rendering and lighting issues. If I had fire flies, I could tweak the lighting (in the VFX shot) to prevent fire fly issues.
The best part of the process was my 3D Piranha Plant asset. I feel that the asset itself blends in realistically and stands out. I wanted to create an intimidating and nasty piranha plant creature and I feel this sells it. Despite the mix of hyper stylism and photo realism style going for the piranha plant it still looks great. Only thing I'd improve upon it is doing some compositing on the CG element which could do with colour grading.
I enjoyed creating this VFX breakdown video as it gave a good insight into how VFX breakdowns work. I watched Sam's video in order to create my own VFX breakdown for Greenhouse of Terror - Piranha Plant VFX comp.
And my VFX final and breakdown video we're approved by Sam. I am happy!