Project : Deep

Deep 

Our production towards the deep project started with several meetings clarifying what scenes it was that we chose to do. Jacob and I had taken an interest in the opening castle scene and agreed to creating this whilst I agreed with Bradley to do the 3d hotel scene.

Production started with Jacob and I gathering some reference images to base our scene on. The idea was originally to build a set extension within Maya. After experiencing lots of problems with the projection mapping technique we had decided that perhaps it was best to achieve the end result by means of matte painting different layers within Photoshop and layering them within 3d space within after effects. We broke the scene down into 6 layers; foreground, front middle, Live action footage, back middle, mountain background and clouds. The live action footage obviously setting the speed at which we track into the castle we placed the layers in 3d space and set up stabilising the  footage. As the footage was very shaky it proved quite difficult to eradicate all of the shake but actually enjoy the slight shake. It was our duty to allow the viewer to tell that the castle was a model and was not created in any other medium. After stabilising the footage we could then start on animating a virtual camera within after effects to match the move of the live footage. 

We distanced the 2d planes to create a sense of depth and scaled them accordingly. We ensured that when creating the painted layers the resolutions were ample for scaling. To create the clouds we used a turbulent noise map and distorted the shape as to take on the sky above the scene. We animated the sub-scaling properties of the noise to create that effect of clouds lower in the sky passing larger ones. Once we had all of the elements, we balanced the levels and converted our colour images to grayscale. We added an adjustment layer to boost the contrast which instantly helped reinforce that hitchcock style piece we were hoping to achieve.

The production with Bradley started actually quite late in the game. Bradley worked well in producing a clean plate for me to use as a background in my 3d scene.

 After creating the objects for the table I had made the decision of actually recreating the whole scene. The combination of real footage and cg elements I was struggling to marry in a convincing way. I therefore started to model and texture all elements of the hotel room, paying close attention to the texture of all things. The lighting was also an important aspect of the overall ambience and although I was not in the room when filming was completed I gathered that there was really only one light source in the way of the sun shining through the window.

I set up an area light ensuring that the direction was correct, it was casting physically accurate shadows and added a tinge of yellow to create a certain warmth apparent whilst I studied the footage. After all of my items were modelled and texture it was time to get on to the animation of the whiskey bottle smash. I initially tried to complete the process within Maya by using an nCloth material and designating the frame of impact, however I was experiencing lots of issues and had remembered that a few years ago I had played around with the physics engine within 3dsmax. I decided to export my whiskey glass and built a scene in max for the glass to interact with.

The way in which the shards of glass interact with other objects I felt was important to sell it actually happening. After attaining the desired smash I re-imported the baked animation into maya and lined the camera accordingly for where I was initially told by Bradley to put it. 

I manually animated a single shard of Glass to fly towards the camera and fill the screen as I thought this would be enough clarification of the sparkling transition required into the sequin dress of the next scene. 

After showing Derek the scene it was apparent that we had slightly different ideas. It was also apparent that the angle of the camera is in an incorrect position. I returned home and set to work at putting these things right. My scene is completely textured and animated however the rendering process is taking too long for me to be able to produce a finished product. Had my initial scenes been approved I would have been able to render straight away and produce an animation.

It did not help that my refraction bounces within Maya had to increase due to the amount of shards layering in front of one another. My whiskey bottle was appearing black originally as there were not enough bounces, as soon as I turned this up my render time went up from 10 minutes per frame to 2 hours.

Whilst I feel the time management part of the project could have been managed better I did enjoy the live brief scenario in working to the desires of another party.