02 October 2014

VFX Project- HOTS- Update 01

The Animatic Of the Final Shot (Plane Crash In North Sea)

Hi Guys!

 
So right now I'm working on a VFX Sequence about WW1 Dogfights, its a kinda freelance project for my old project, its 7 Shots- 30 Seconds- Under 2 Months Deadline- And its for Project with the aim to be as close to photoreal quality as possible.
 
Catch is, theres only one artist doing the whole gig. That's Me!
 
Its day 3 right now and already I've done the shot list (Lots of drafts also!), The Previs/Animatic (See Above) and also Model Prep of the hero plane the Sopwith Camel and full texture painting and UVing for the asset! Been a one man band I really mean only one man, I have no other artists working on this, I started with a brief and a Lowres Biplane asset I made in college last year.
 
The Sequence is no doubt FX heavy which makes it even more complex, but even more awesome, all 7 Shots are FX heavy, I have about 1 week for pre production then less than 1 week per shot, the Final shot involving the plane crash is going to be extremely complex and will take the majority of production time. I feel at an advantage been an FX Artist because I am able to do FX, and because of that have grounded skills in Lighting, Rendering, Animation & Compositing, so this project will be pushing the bar on them skills and really pushing the bar on my FX Skills.
 
Because of just finishing some FX jobs, I've now been able to expand computing power, also upgrade to V-Ray 3.0 and be able to use an Alembic Pipeline on this project. For the destruction FX I will be heavily relying on nCloth in Maya so Alembic is going to help there, also RealFlow for the Final Shot (Fluid Simulation/ Big White Water Splash!) now supports Alembic. And Ofcourse V-Ray 3.0s Alembic Proxy is amazing and will be used heavily not only for assets from scene to scene, but also for Rendering RealFlow Particles for the big Final Shot! I'm also looking into maybe using Houdini for some of the Fluids, I plan to do a RnD to see if the pipeline is quick enough from Houdini to Max, Via Krakatoa Magma, Frost, and V-Ray Alembic. Via PRT and Alembic ROPs
 
I fully prepped my Lowres Sopwith Camel (BiPlane) Asset into a Hires Asset, and re UV'd and fully Textured it within 8 hours! I learnt texturing before I went to college  and use it now and again but not much now as an FX Artist. I used Mudbox, 3DS Max, Maya & Photoshop for this, I've not used Maya for a while!
UV'ing and Model Prep In Maya & Mudbox


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Final Asset In Maya With All Maps Painted Within 6 Hours
 
 
Final Rig Done In 3DS Max
 
Some Time Lapse Screen Captures of the Texturing and Rigging Process:
 
 
I don't think Modelling and Texturing is for me, but I had to do it and make it the best I could with my limited knowledge in these areas! Can't Wait to Destroy this Asset!
 
As you will see below I have my own cloud solution for the project which is very fast and again I created it lone wolf!! In the coming days I will be doing Look Dev for the Planes and environments, Preparing some Preset FX scenes to use for Foundations in Production which starts next week, and doing lots more research and starting some if I have time FX RnD.  I'm taking constant Notes, Screenshots and ScreenCaptures of my working so I can share how I solved problems and show how I got on with the sequence. I plan to do updates for the project once a week for now, and then more as the Deadline on November the 9th Closes in (Project is for Remembrance Day).
 
 

I feel pretty crazy when I think about doing the whole thing alone, but I'm up for a challenge!!

I hope you will enjoy watching the project been created over the coming weeks!

 

Thanks For Looking!

-N

 

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