Week 7 / Class 13

Goals for this week...

• Match grain in shot 3

• Continue to refine shot 3 comp (car disintegration)

• Continue to refine lighting for shot 3 (add headlights into FX pass)

• Continue to refine atmosphere for shot 3

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SHOT 3 FINAL:

No Atmosphere:

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For this class, I updated the lighting and comp for Shot 3, I refined the atmosphere for Shot 3, and I also adjusted the final grade on our shots. I also re-rendered the FX for Shot 2 and adjusted the smoke density within Maya for Deanna to adjust further in comp.

The first thing I did was adjust the lighting for Shot 3. We got the critique last Tuesday that it would be a good idea to sculpt the lighting more like we did in Shot 1. Deanna repainted the back plate while I got to work adjusting the lighting within Maya. I brought down the intensity of the lights on the left side and increased the intensity of the lights on the right.

I got a critique about how the shadows fell and how the shadows from the car should be more vertical. Since I am using point lights to recreate the street lamps, I don't have much control over the angle of the light but I had been thinking about this critique all week and wanted to ensure my shadows were falling accurately in the scene. To do this, I placed a cylinder where the tree would roughly be to see how those shadows looked. I then moved the car to the position it would be passing the trees and compared the angle of the shadows. Given these angles, the shadow of the car would be falling diagonally rather than vertically.

I think the issue was the shadow from this street lamp as it passes is a double shadow so it didn't appear too well in my previous iteration. To adjust for this, I graded the alpha for the shadow pass so the double (diagonal) shadow would be more prominent. I also got the critique that the shadows would be interacting with the light some more and be softer where the lights are shining down. To do this, I ramped the shadows on the left side so shadows falling on the sidewalk would be much softer since they are the lights. It's not working as well as I'd hope so I might just have to end up making multiple shadow shadows for each light so that I have more control.

After I set this up, I redid the atmosphere for Shot 3. I did this by creating an aiAtmosphereVolume for the scene and then plugging an aiCloud to the density. I then adjusted the levels within the aiCloud and then keyframed the placement of the aiCloud so the atmosphere would be slightly moving within the scene. I then brought this into Nuke and color corrected it so it wasn't so heavy and created a roto so it would be concentrated towards the street.

Once in Nuke, I worked on how to disappear the car since we are no longer doing it in Houdini and rather doing it in comp. Right now, I have the car fading out as the smoke gets larger and I am doing this by keyframing the mix on the merge of the beauty layer over the background. I also keyframed the shadows from the car so they would fade out as well.

The last thing I did this weekend was adjust the color grade for our shots. The critique we got was that the grade should be more green and cool toned with some orange. I brought the blue in the shadows and the midtones up and added a little green to get more of a teal. I then adjusted the highlight so they would be more orange. This is a before and after for Shot 3. Deanna sent me her frames and I applied this grade for the all the shots.

No Grade: Grade: