The VFX Shoot

Today was the day we filmed our project in its entirety, and it went so much better than we hoped it would. Using the Next Gen suite as our stage, Allan went to work doing his best frustrated nerd impression and made as few mistakes as possible.

Things that went right: Most of the recordings went well, we had to redo a few shots once or twice but there wasn't any glaring issues that stopped us from achieving the goal.

With the editing we encountered one problem, the image on a monitor changes from one shot to the next, however Matty taught us an effect where we can move a composition to fit on a TV, we can use this method to fix the issue. Other than that we had no other issues that I could see. If I run into any I will post about it along with any fixes I can use.

Issues weren't a common theme during recording, we had a few bloopers that were noted down, but thats about it, we all know eachother and communicated well without fuss or argument.

I imagine that any real issues will come about during editing, and even then I think we did a good job of keeping continuity in order, so fingers crossed we haven't got anything that ruins the video.

Our project is more of a short skit, there aren't any fight scenes, or explosions, or real drama. We simply have Allan doing some coding work that is too much for him, therefore he clones himself numerous times. Allan is the only actor in the entire video and doesn't say much.

We all communicated well and worked together to make sure it all fit together, I'm quite surprised at the outcome to be honest, I haven't worked with anyone in my group on a project previously and we still got on just fine. No one sat back and did nothing while others had to pick up the slack.

Overall I am very happy, It surpassed my first expectations and we've all started getting to work on editing the clips.

There isn't anything I would change, if we all worked together again I think we'd do the same thing, but with a new idea.

Video Effects We're Going to Use!

We recorded some rough shots for our video today to get an idea of what the final project would look like, and looking through it we knew that it wasn't good enough. Its a glaring sign that the video idea isn't good when even the rough shots feel bad to watch. We had another idea in the works however, something that even sounds more entertaining than the previous.

I'm going to explain some effects we're going to use in our project without spoiling the actual story, (I'll post a full blog on the storyboard tomorrow).

Split Screen: Splitting up the screen into 2 or more parts, often used to show the same actor twice in once frame. To achieve this effect you must record the same scene twice, keeping the camera perfectly still and keeping the set the exact same in each, the only change in the scene will be the actor's movements and/or positioning.

Keying: Tracing around an object, or character and placing them into another scene, or removing the scene from behind them. The image above does a good job using a greenscreen, although you can do it without using After Effects and similar programs. The goal is the same as Split Screen in our case, but using keying is much more precise. 

Close Ups: Simply moving in on an actor/actress to get a closer shot of their face, often used to show an emotion or increase tension. We're going to use this once or twice for comical effect showing the main actor getting frustrated.

Lighting and Colour: An after effect to alter lighting and colour to either match the mood, create atmosphere, or simply make the shot look nicer. This is an effect I imagine we will end up using just to make the project look better, since we're shooting in a light room we may need to alter the colours slightly.

Asteroids in Unity pt 3

In the last episode I finished the bullet physics so they stopped interacting with the ship and effected the movement, now I'll be introducing the asteroids themselves.

To begin I added the asteroid.png to the scene and gave it the usual components, (Rigidbody2d and a collider). I then created a new script called 'AsteroidController' which would dictate the velocity and range, I wanted the asteroids to move much slower then the ship so the player could live for longer, and the game would be fairer.

At this point the asteroids would spawn in the center of the screen and would move slowly to the right, and since I hadn't attached the 'MovementWrap' script, they just kept floating into an unseeable oblivion.

I had a spawn timer set in place, along with a decay amount which would shorten the time between each asteroid spawning by 5%.

To rectify the spawning issue I made the asteroids spawn outside the cameras view, this meant that when I attached the 'MovementWrap' script they would be teleported to the edge of the screen.

Although the scrip teleports the asteroids, it doesn't effect the velocity so they keep their speed when entering the screen. The issue I ran into now was the asteroids would still collide with one another, and some would spawn on the left of the screen moving upwards.

To fix the asteroids that would get stuck moving up/downwards on the sides of the screen, I added some lines to the script which would make the asteroids rotate around the center of the screen. I used the 'x' axis to achieve this.

This solved the issue of asteroids spawning on the edges of the screen, however the issue still occurred when asteroids collide.

I could have simply just made the asteroid a trigger, that would stop any collision between the asteroids while the ship would still react when hit. But I decided to go into the physics2d options and added a new class variant called 'asteroid'. It opened up a new box that I could un-check to stop all asteroids from reacting to one another.

Progress and portfolio

I was updating my portfolio earlier when I stumbled upon some work I had finished months ago, most of which I'm still proud of, but some of it just shows how little I knew at the beginning of the course. I suppose its a good thing to see improvements

This thing was supposed to be an alien, but it hardly portrays any form of extra terrestrial. The reasoning for this alien being so bad was just down to bad communication, if you scroll through to my first few blogs I talk about our small group not communicating well, we didn't speak enough and left the playable characters until last, so they were rushed.

The problem is now long gone and has been for a long time now, look at our other group game, Wolf's Rest and you'll see improvements in every aspect.

On the topic of Wolf's Rest, this was my first attempt at a game poster, something I'm still really happy with to this day. I like the simplicity and the way the red stands out on the grey, photoshop has always been second nature to me, so I knew how to do art like this before starting the course, but I think that learning about the game industry taught me how to make art like this look nicer.

Again something I'm still really happy with, making this Codsworth remake on 3ds Max took over 4 hours to complete. I feel as though I could still do better now if I spent as much time on it, and theres still little things about this that bug me like the noticeable polygons on the sphere and exhaust, but still its my favourite model to date.

My first Unity game that I made outside of college. Looking at this I can see how basic and simplistic it looks, but its still my favourite game I've made just for how it feels to play. The way the enemies move worked so much better than first anticipated, the blueberries rotated leaving a small window of opportunity for the player to land on the platform, while some of the redberries flew around in obscure patterns and always caused issues.

 I feel as though I've improved a lot since making all of the projects above, and when I re-make them or make similar projects, I'm certain they will look/feel better. 

Updates

I thought I'd post an update on all the projects I'm working on and how I'm feeling about the course.

The Course in general: I'm really happy with everything about the course at the moment, nothing really to say, I feel as though I've learned alot since beginning and am learning at a very good pace.

 
Sony Vegas: I've made the shift to After Effects, so most of my Sony Vegas projects have sat still for a while until today. If anything leaving it for a while has been a good thing, I've learned some new effects that look so much nicer. I only want the best, I'd hate to post something I know isn't to the best of my ability.

Of course when I get close to finishing or learn something new I'll post about it and when I do finish this project I'll put the link in a blog entry.

After Effects: I'm very new to After Effects, and haven't properly got the hang of it, but in the next few days I'll learn it with Matty. I posted about it earlier in the week and have no intentions of stopping there, I have a few more in the works and imagine that I'll only learn more about the software.

The learning process should soon result in a short video that has all the editing effects I will have learned and should make for an interesting video.

Unity: Again I am currently posting on this as much as I can, I'm making asteroids from scratch and I'm learning quite a lot about coding. I've vastly improved in coding over the past few weeks and feel as though I'm improving at a good pace.

As I said in one of my Unity posts I have a plan to eventually code a basic game using only my own knowledge, but that's not for a while.

Asteroids in Unity pt 2

Now we have the ship and scene all finished, we can get to work on some real coding and getting a working bullet script in place, as well as adjusting the PlayerController script we made beforehand.

To begin I imported a laser png and gave it both a rigidbody and a box collider, these ensure that the bullet reacts when it comes in contact with another object such as an asteroid. I then saved the work on the bullet and put it in a prefab folder for future use, this means that I wont have to put the rigidbody or box collider on again.

Then I created a script for the bullet which basically consisted of just the speed controls. In the playercontroller script I coded in the basics for the bullet, this began with simply pressing a key, (space in my case), which made a bullet appear in a static location and fly horizontally until it left the playable area. 

I then coded it so the bullet would spawn on the spaceship and would fly in the direction the ship was facing using the code, "Instantiate (bulletPrefab, transform.position, transform.rotation);".

At this point the bullets were firing out of the ship, but were colliding with everything and fired too many bullets at once. I fixed this by changing the box collider settings to 'is trigger', this stopped any collision between the bullet and the ship.

The last thing I needed to do was change the layer order so the bullet looked like it fired out the front of the ship instead of just appearing from on top of the ship.

 

VFX companies (not finished)

Molinare: Molinare started as a small studio in 1973 specialising in sound and vfx. In 2012 Molinare was placed in administration by Centuary Communications, soon after, it was bought out by Steve Milne and Next Wave Partners.

Molinare has worked on many projects including Doctor Who, Man On The Moon, and Dracular. They often allow companies to work using their facilities, for example Carnival Films.

Their studios are based on 34 Fouberts Place in London.

MPC: MPC (or moving picture) is a well known vfx studio based in London, but branches out into other countries across the world. They are part of the Next Gen Skills Academy. MPC have done a number of blockbuster films such as Man of Steel, Spy, Goosebumps, The Revenant, and many more. They are working on a few large projects in 2016 such as Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad.

MPC has had countless awards and nominations, such as an Academy Award for best visual effects in The Martian, a BAFTA nomination for Best Visual Effects for The Martian, and a VES nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects for Fast & Furious: Supercharged.

Milk: Milk is an independent visual effects company with studios in London and Cardiff, they create innovative and complex sequences for high-end television and feature films they were founded by award-winning VFX Supervisors and Producers, (Will Cohen, Sara Bennett, Nicolas Hernandez, Jean-Claude Deguara, Murray Barber).

They have won numerous awards (Including two BAFTA Television Craft Awards for our 

work on the BBC’s Doctor Who), and have worked on numerous large titles such as: The Martian, Beowulf, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Hercules.

Lola VFX: Lola VFX was established in 2000 by Rob harvey and are most famous for facial recognition especially in Captain America and most recently on Ant Man with Michael Douglas, in which they made him look much younger. They often use programs such as Softimage, XSI, Flame, Nuke, and Flash.

They have won an Oscar for the best visual effects in Gladiator, as well as a BAFTA nomination for the same film.

Framestore was set up in 1986 and is based in London, however they have offices based in New York, Los Angeles, and Montreal. Framestore acquired the CFC (Computer Film Company) in 1997.

Framestore are well known for their work on movies such as: The Martian, Everest, Paddington, Pan, Guardians of the Galaxy, Gravity, and many, many more. Some smaller work they have helped with includes the intro sequence to Die Another Day and Doctor Who.

They are nominated for an Oscar for best visual effects for The Martian in which they completed over 300 shots, they're also nominated for best picture for The Martian.

The Senate is a visual effects company most known for invisible effects and CG environments. They were founded in 2002 and are based in Middlesex, London.

The Senate is most known for work on The Martian, Downton Abbey, Wrath of the Titans, My One And Only, and many, many more.

With under 50 employees The Senate is a smaller company, but always provide the best when it comes down to effects, especially in background environments.

Its registered office in London opened in 1991, offering services in visual effects for film and television. It subsequently opened a studio in Montreal in 2014, for visual effects and feature animation.

In August 2015 it was announced that Cinesite had merged with Vancouver-based visual effects company Image Engine. Cinesite has completed visual effects for all eight films in the Harry Potter franchise.

Other than Harry Potter, Cinesite is known for; Robocop, Skyfall, Iron Man 3, World War Z, and many other big titles.

Method Studios is an award-winning international visual effects group with facilities in Los Angeles, Vancouver, New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, London, Sydney and Melbourne. As an artist-driven company known for its creativity, we service high-end feature film, commercial, television, games and motion graphics clients in the global marketplace.

Built around an exceptional team of visual effects professionals, Method's international facilities provide a full range of visual effects services including conceptual design, look development, on-set supervision, 3D animation/CGI, matte painting, compositing and finishing. With our global reach accented by our boutique accessibility, we have the capacity to service clientele wherever production is situated.

Double Negative is an award winning VFX studio founded in London in 1998. They have offices situated around the world in countries such as; Canada, England, and Singapore.

2013 saw the launch of Double Negative Films formed specifically to provide VFX support and investment to British-qualifying productions, its first film being Ron Howard’s critically acclaimed Rush.

They have had countless awards and nominations for critically acclaimed movies such as Inception, Intersteller, Harry Pottor and the Deathly Hallows pt2, Hercules, and so many more.

Digital Domain was founded in 1993 by James Cameron, Stan Winston and Scott Ross and is one of the largest visual effects studios in the world. The company’s headquarters is located in Playa Vista, California. Digital take part in multiple parts of the Industry, including movies, commercials, video games, music videos, concerts and virtual reality projects.

Digital Domain has earned Academy Awards for best VFX in ‘Titanic’, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ and ‘What Dreams May Come’. More recent films they were nominated for are X-Men; Days of Future Past. Iron Man 3 and Transformers; Dark of the Moon.

Asteroids in Unity pt 1

I've started watching Ants youtube tutorials on making the classic game Asteroids on Unity. I have the basic code for making the ship move around the playable area, and I have all the sprites installed.
I'm focusing on the coding side of things on this project with my goal being able to recreate another simple game using only my own knowledge.

   Above is the 'PlayerController' script I made, it allows me to control the spaceship using the w,a,s, and d keys. To move upwards I press 'w' and to move downwards I use 's'. I use 'a' and 'd' to rotate the ship left and right.

This is my 'MovementWrap' script, it keeps the ship in the cameras view by wrapping the screen edges. Its similar to the effect used in pacman when the player exits the screen on the right only to appear again on the left. Without the code the player would just fly away and get lost in an invisible void.

To get this code to work I found the position of the edges of the screen and then told the ship to teleport to the other side, for example 'if (transform.position.y < -4.2f) pos.y = 4.2f;'. I like to picture it being a room with 2 doors, and when you leave through one it teleports you to the other, meaning you are trapped in the room.

Learning After Effects: Basics and Keyframes

I've started learning how to use After Effects recently and thought that I should post some of the progress here. Now I am starting from the very beginning, so the first week or so shouldn't be anything amazing. My plan is to use a video I recorded a while ago and edit it using the techniques I learn from both college and the video series I'm currently watching, when I have learned enough I'll have a well-edited video.

Basics and Keyframes: To start working I first had to import a video file from my computer, I use Nvidia shadowplay to record my gameplay and save it in a folder on my desktop. To import the file you can either go to file, click import then click file, or you can use control+I.

The file will open in the project tab in After Effects to begin with, to begin editing and viewing the video you can either drag the file to the centre of the image, or down to the "create new composition" button.

Now you can begin to edit using the timeline at the bottom of the program, any effects you use will be visible on the video above. You can move frame by frame when editing, this ensures that any effects you add can be almost perfectly lined up, for some effects you can use keyframes. Keyframes tell the program when to start and finish an effect, I used a slight zoom effect when the gun fires.

The first keyframe, on the left, tells After effects that the zoom should start when the video reaches that point, the second keyframe, in the middle, is where the zoom is at its maximum, so if the zoom is set at 120% the middle keyframe will be the point where it reaches that percent. The last keyframe is the point where the effect ends, so the zoom will return to normal. I like to picture keyframes as being commands for After Effects, they tell the program what to do and when to do it.

The video I used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVzqU2GRwU

VFX in Ant Man (spoilers)

I've watched Ant Man recently and have focussed primarily on the VFX, I was honestly surprised on how far through the film I reached without noticing any definite use. I know only from some behind the scenes footage that the ageing process on Pym in the beginning was achieved using VFX, also the mask is almost entirely created in post. If I hadn't watched any behind the scenes I would have never noticed these, and in my opinion that's a good thing, subtle effects that aren't distracting keep the viewer invested.

Not too far into the film, Scott uses the suits powers for the first time, in the bathroom. Its difficult to imagine such a scene in such a setting being exiting in any way shape or form, but the scale of the bathtub is so overwhelming all thanks to the clever use of VFX. The bathtub almost resembles a huge valley with towering walls on either end, and when the tap is turned on a tsunami rushes from one end to another. Its something you expect in The Day After Tomorrow, and then you realise that its a man in a bath.

 

The movie is everything you'd expect from a superhero blockbuster, just with another layer in between, the fighting sequences flow together much nicer than some other films. Overall Ant Man is a joy to look at from a visual point of view, the amount of detail in every scene is incredible and is easy to enjoy, some parts drag a little and the vast number of tiny ants wandering about can draw a bit too much attention but nonetheless its really good.

Updates

I've been ill over the past few days, been to the doctors and had enough painkillers to keep me asleep for 6 months, but the urge to work has pulled me from my slumber and onto the computer!

VFX:

I've continued making the video and have watched quite a few tutorials for Sony Vegas to get some ideas, so far the video looks quite nice and will have much more effects than first anticipated. I also watched Ant Man to see some VFX in action and will post a full page on that over the weekend. Other than that I tried to find some podcasts I could get into while I'm playing some games, they're helpful for getting opinions and some behind the scene explanations.

Design:

I've made some pixel art recently and have shared it on twitter to get some feedback. Some of the art I knew wasn't the best and I could have put more time into it, but I made a few pictures that I'm really pleased with. I'll keep creating little projects here and there and if anything does well I'll show it here.
Anyway here are some of the pieces I'm happy with:

Coding:

I'm going to create a fully working asteroids game over the weekend, I'l post the steps here and if I can I'll leave a download link as well. Other than that I've done a fair bit of revising, and have played around in Unity. Things are starting to click now, but there's still quite a way to go.

New Blogger background + Overhaul!

Last week we reviewed each others blogs around the class giving advice on what people could do to improve. One review that stood out to me was my background and overall layout, I hadn't noticed until that point that the overall blog looked really low quality.

I have made a new background that looks much better than the previous, here are the steps I went through to get the outcome.

1: I really want a retro style background, something that looks like an old arcade game but with a sharper look, I'm going to use Spelunky as a reference.

I like the how the walls and background are both detailed, but there is a clear border of what is playable and what is not. Since Blogger uses a central column design, I will make two walls either side with an orange brick texture, while the centre will be grey with some gems shining through.

2: I've used a resolution 10x smaller than Blogger's recommended size so I can design it all with a pixel art-esque style. I will then upscale it to the correct resolution.

I simply used the pencil tool to draw lines and bricks into either side then used a bolder colour to fill in the bricks. I used the pencil tool again on a gradient of 40% to make the shadows.

3: I used the same techniques on the centre of the image as well, using a black pencil with 40% opacity below the gems, and a white pencil with 50% opacity for the shine off the gems. Other than that I just drew straight horizontal lines and a mineshaft entry point.

And that's my new background! I also used Blogger's own template system to make the entire page look more professional and just appealing to everyone.

Video Progress and pixel art

A few weeks ago I posted an update on a video project I was working on, I'll link it below;

I haven't updated it since the end of the Christmas break because I had to get back into the swing of things in college. Now we're doing VFX I can continue with the video in my spare time and gain some more experience in Sony Vegas' FX tools.

I've always used Sony Vegas for cutting and combining clips of gameplay, but I have rarely touched upon the effects side of things, I'm going to start getting some practise in now and before long I should have a nice looking video. I'll have it done in the next few weeks so stand by.

I've also started looking at Pixel Dailies on Twitter, Ant told us about it a while ago so I figured I'd try some things out. The first image had to be related to apes.

Its more time consuming than difficult, I simply brought up an image of a monkey on one monitor and then used Photoshop to make a cartoon version using the pencil tool.

While the second was about headshots.

This one was a little more in depth, as you can see I used a black pencil with low opacity to make shadows look nicer then went over it multiple times to give a gradient-look. I'm really happy with this.

A few pixel art accounts have retweeted and liked it which I'm really happy with, I'm going to continue creating these whenever I have time, if anything interesting happens with them I'l post about it.

VFX!

I need to make it a priority to get After Effects in the upcoming weeks to help with VFX practice at home. I've very briefly used After Effects a few years ago and really liked everything despite being terrible at it. Sony Vegas is useful for editing existing videos, gameplay especially, but when it comes down to actually editing videos it starts to get confusing.

I'll most likely start by adding effects to some games I own on steam and see how they look. Although I really don't like Call of Duty montages, some of the editing is really high quality and looks nice. 

I'm really excited to get started on VFX, its a really big hobby of mine and I've been wanting to get into this part of the course all over the Christmas break. So far it seems like something I'm going to enjoy and hopefully that reflects in my work.

I really don't have any negatives right now, maybe a few minor ones will show up as the year goes on, but I'm sure it wont effect much.

I need to get work started right away, get all the programs installed by tomorrow and start playing around in the programs. I really want to get some form of project out by this time next week and get some feedback.