Final Project Entry : 1 - Ideation and preparation

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 Before I get started with the project I need to revise everything that was thought since the beginning of this module. There was a lot to take in and all of it was new to me, so even after going through my notes I feel kind of lost, mostly around the Maya workflow. Thankfully, there are a lot of incredibly narrated and structured tutorial videos on Canvas by Richard. These were extremely helpful, alongside these there were a lot of external tutorial videos as well, which really rounded out everything. Now, I'm ready to tackle the VFX sequence assignment. I also added few important Tips to all of my blog entries along with reasoning as to why we them that way, after Jamie's suggestions, which helped out a lot in the end.

First I started out by going through the footage provided, waiting for some inspiration to hit me. I had lots of ideas popping in while browsing the all the different footage, but in the end it all came down to what assets I could find to realize these ideas.

So, I set out to find PBR assets. Initially I had a Kong vs Godzilla concept in mind, but I couldn't find a good footage with a wide view looking above the buildings or at the sky, all shots were at the ground level. So in the end I settled on  the graffiti footage on a flat grass ground. This footage was kind of basic in its setup, so I could add almost any asset on it and make it work.

Since it was around Easter, my mind started going Biblical and I also happened to have found a really cool looking Sun goddess like statue, not purely Biblical but gave this medieval Christian cult like vibes. It also has a heart with 7 daggers stabbed in it, so it greatly reminded me of this called Blasphemous that uses a lot such religious iconography. I suggest anyone reading this to look up the game's art style. 

All I needed now was a Medieval looking character who like submits themselves to the goddess. I found this incredibly well made and fully rigged female fantasy character, who came with a lot of premade animations too. But, none of those were fit for my vision. 

So I opened up Mixamo and found this rather perfect animation of one dropping to their knees and raising their hands to prayer. So that's what I settled on in the end.

So I wrote down a sequence of steps for the entire workflow, so that I dont miss out on any crucial step.

1. Raw Footage Color Grading and correction- to match the black and white points with the CG assets and color correction to add tone and set the mood.

2. Undistort footage. Create STmap. Export Undistorted sequence for CG reference.

3. 3D Camera Tracking. Enter all known values for focal length and camera back preset.

4. Track and solve, bring down error rate as much as possible, with as many tracking points in the end.

5. Establish ground plane. Set scale.

6. Export Camera tracking scene, geometry, camera and point cloud as an FBX file.

7. Create HDR image from source provided, crank up the exposure.

8. Import the camera tracking FBX scene into Maya.

9. Add Arnold skydome light and connect HDR image to it. Add Undistored Image sequence as backplate to camera.

10. Set Camera visibility of Skydome to 0 and disable backplate visibility in camera.

11. Add ground planes and any other surfaces to catch shadows and reflections.

12. Bring in you 3D Assets. Apply all the textures with the correct color space and enable 'Alpha is luminescence' as necessary.

13. Test animations and textures in Arnold render. Set sampling values.

14. Setup up render layers, shader overrides and all the required AOVs.

15. RENDER !

16. Import all the rendered CG image sequences into Nuke.

17. Attach Shuffle nodes for each AOV. Merge and make sure output matches beauty pass.

18. Color grade and correct AOV where necessary.

19. Layer the backplate, shadows and CG assets.

20. Reintroduce lens distortion to CG elements.

21. Add additional nodes for motion blur, depth of field etc .

23. Final grading and correction to make the CG assets blend in more.

24. Write out the Composited sequence.


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