Final Major Project

Week 32

Initial Idea:

Hyper reality
Tracking, rotoscoping, Composition
(FX, Composition, CGI)

References
Experience hyperreality 2050

Starting from a room, walking out with headsets of hyper reality.
Games to play on the way.
https://youtu.be/mM4r2o-9kN4?si=kNFIeGs8VOnsQPbz

A green screen footage to show virtual world
Unreal engine for green screen to put futuristic city
How is the building going to be constructed?
add dinosaurs for CGI in a museum, cooking on am induction with recipe

CAR REFERENCE FOR THE HYPER REALITY

FEEDBACK : Moodboard, storyboard, presentation
(Dreaming hyperrealistic)
Environment, what is the city gonna look like, narratives.
Check: A day made of glass

Modelling a flying car/Air Taxi

I really like modelling; I think with the time I am getting better at adding specific details which I really didn’t care before. I think its the details that make any model look better. The more you focus on small details the better it looks.
For this model I want it to look exactly like it is in the picture. So far I have worked on making it symmetrical and adding every single detail as it is in the picture.
For its tyre, I checked this tutorial on making the honeycomb for spheres.

I have been working on this model as I love modelling, and I feel I have quite improved on my modelling skills and I should use that in my FMP.

I am thinking of painting this in Maya itself as it doesnt need lot of detailed textures. Also my plan was to add some advertising content on the car, so might do that in substance painter or photoshop.

This is how it looks after adding all the materials in the maya itself. Quite satisfied, but the main task is to blend it with the real footage. Also I got a perfect canary wharf HDRI from poly heaven as I am going to use the footages from there itself.

I have collected some footages to check the track and placement of the car. I am planning to do tracking in Nuke and then exporting the same to Maya.

For the last term I didn’t really work on tracking, so I think it is going to be difficult to track so many scenes I have planned according to the script.
Currently working on resolving tracking issues with footages.

I have been working on tracking the above the scene and I realized, there is need of markers on the floor which could help me track the planar that is closer to the camera. At present camera couldn’t track the floor maybe because of the texture.
Also I could have shot the scene where we have some type of markers on the floor.

I tried tracking another footage, and it did a pretty good job at it.
But it is still not the one like in the previous shot. I might use this as one of the shot.

Exporting the tracked scene to maya.

Checking lights in the render.

It blends quite well with the background.
I can use this as one of the scene in my story.
My next task is to show this as a taxi in my story. I recorded few shots in the morning on the street and I tracked them so that I can put the car in it.

I was looking for the spots where I can find more markers or points to track on the road. And this is one of best spots I got. It also has a taxis only written on it, which perfectly matches my requirements. Those markers on the road helped me to get a good camera track.
I will be adding the character in this, the Actor of the story. I Might add the character shot in front of a green screen so that will help me to add more overlays.

I am working on elements to get the render and for some reason the render is missing some of the frames so I rendered the missing frames separately.

Missing frames

when done the composition, I realise the glass material is too transparent that makes it look empty cars. I would reduce the transparency also change the colour, maybe that works. The second thing I need to change is the rotation angle of the car. at the start it doesn’t look as if it going in the right direction.
After changing these 2 thing, I would re render it.

I am also adding another taxi in the above footage. Below are the credits mentioned for the same. I downloaded it from sketchfab.

“VTOL Air Taxi” (https://skfb.ly/oTzIW) by Annelida is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Tracking one more scene where I want to show a close up shot of the cab when someone wearing headset is wearing it.
I shot the scene from two angles and tried tracking both of them.

I am not quite satisfied with this track as it is in the wrong orientation. Putting a car in it might be difficult. And also I dont know if we can change the orientation of the car. So I tracked another scene.

This is how the second shot looks like. if I could work better on this I would maybe reshoot this with the actor in it.

A good decision is to check the render before you render out the whole sequence using render farm. This closeup scene made me do back and forth with maya and nuke and number of renders. The lights were working pretty good in the previous scene when I rendered. but I realized, no its not working well. Fixed the lights and the shadows.

This is how it looks after n number of trails.
I think the size of the car has to be fixed and the shadow catcher plane.
The scene I tracked has much smaller scale than the car I built. I scaled the car down to match the size. I was wondering how lights are not working well. It is now I have realized it was because of scaling the whole car down.

The size looks much better. The interior light, render quality still needs to be fixed.

Thats the final rendered comp.

I want the third scene from the perspective if a viewer if he is seating inside a building. I took a shot with the help of a friend who works in canary wharf.

This is the one of the frame of the shot. I could track it, but I am not enough satisfied with the track. It has given me pointes too far from the camera. i want the car to pass close to this glass.
The challenge is to roto the spaces in between and to put back the glass effect on it. One of the issues with this is, it is the evening period in scene and it has got lights which I will have to make sure I get reflections on the car.

For this scene I scaled up the size of car. while for the other scenes I reduced the size of it.

I used the card and added constant. With the help of merge node, I could reduce the transparency.

Working on renders from the render farm.

I couldn’t find some of then files even when the monitor shows it has been rendered and completed. This has happened before. I have rendered missing frames separately to fix it.

FEEDBACK:
try reflections using an image with overlay on car, from outside.
Can put a Cg character – ( I feel that would affect the script theme as I am not using any other CG character)
by Paul: add one more car flying from backside

FEEDBACK:
Match the grains, whites and black with the background
fix shadows using samples and rendering single frames.

I want information to pop on building in my first footage. I am using After effects to create panel effects as it is easier to create effects.

This is not clearly visible. I will need to find some references to display these panels.
I took some references from you tube videos which I have added on my mood board.

This is the final look. I still need to take render of the cars and also some color grading.
I had to reshoot the footage of booking a cab as I planned o put a green screen footage of the actor in it. But as Manos suggested to take it in live footage I reshot the footage and now working on its track again.

This is how the new shot looks like.
Camera tracking used to be quite challenging for me, but in this project, I’ve finally overcome that hurdle. I feel more confident now, and I’m no longer afraid to experiment with it. One of the most crucial aspects was setting up the camera accurately for tracking, including alpha masking, camera lens details, and lens distortion. Working on these details made me realize how essential it is to follow this process carefully to achieve the best results.

After track results.

I have been working on two different scenes together. For the cab closeup view from the building, I have to show the reflection of the building in the car.

it is a bit challenging to do. I have never done this before. Roto was not working on this maybe because I have done the merge operation. I also tried premultiplying it, but it didn’t work. The last option was to render it out and then do the roto.

After roto results. added edgeblur. This is how it looks, but I am not quite satisfied with the results. I think it needs more color correction or fixing merge bending modes.

Got it!!Now I think the reflection looks good. Still the reflection on the front side glass is missing. and adding that would also look good.
I think this is good enough for this shot. I would still be adding some more cars in the same scene.

I am almost finished with the above scene. I added few more cars in the background also added some holograms to make it look more hyperealistic. for all the scenes that I worked on, I feel the most important part to do as post production would me to add more and more holograms.
In the above closeup shot that is from a perspective of a person sitting in the building looking at the car. Added a hologram on the table.

Adding some holograms.

Adding more cars in the background.

Booking a taxi scene is also done.
Added the holograms.
Fixed the defocus.
Blurred the background when the car arrives.
rendered the shadow and the car separately.

For the above scene, I added few more cars. Also from the feedback, cars should be seen as different sizes. Fixed that and it looks much better now,.
I am kind of not liking these panels as they are not matching with my other two shots. Also it needs more holographic information to make it look hype realistic.

I have thought of rewriting the whole story, depending on the scenes I have created. Working on the script as well. I plan to show it as a world of 2050 which is very different to today. People stop using there phone and now have adopted to wearing virtual headsets. 

I downloaded few holograms, and I am looking to add it in this scene.
Footages from: Hologram Videos: Download 66+ Free 4K & HD Stock Footage Clips – Pixabay

This is how it turned out. Found the footage of exactly like the concept I had in my mind. I wanted some connecting dots to the building. added a card to the tracked scene and placed the footage on it. card seems to be having issues, as I placed two cards.
Also this scene has a bit different lighting than the other two. need to work on grading. for the cars flying, I need to add blur effect to the cars that are behind the front ones. I am still not sure how I am going to do that.
I remember somewhere we used a Zdefocus node when Gonzalo taught us. And it resolved the issue.

Node graph so far.

Feedback for the renders:

Size of the car has to be made very tiny : re-render it.
Also the blue lines needs to be done masking

To remove the unnecessary hologram at the back of the wall
Change the start and the end of the car coming in the frame.

make the center of hologram to the actor’s headset.

Did the changes reccommended.
Removed the hologram from the closeup shot of a car. added a globe hologram downloaded from pixabay to make it look like someone is working in the office with headset on.

Hologram globe Video by Bellergy RC from Pixabay

I wanted to add one more scene to the whole scene. This is one of the random shot I took while walking and I thought about adding some information of holograms and information to the scene. I was a bit worried if I could just track the scene. but I think I am getting better at it. Most important part while tracking is I feel the LensDistortion and the mask alpha to track the scene. This has helped me so much with tracking..
I took a footage to put as a background for the frame from pixabay. Did the editing in After effects. Markers on the path also helped the track get smoother.

The initial idea started with doing something that will promote advertising using vfx. But when I started working on it I felt, I wanted to work more on my compositing skills. After working on all these scenes I am more confident on using Nuke now. I always liked to do modelling but compositing was a difficult task for me. I worked more on my compositing, fixing renders, lights and reflections. So eventually I changed the story according to the work I wanted to do and practise more on rather than being very specific about doing one particular script.

The story now goes like, how our everyday life and habits will change in 2050. It starts with introducing the story name on the screen saying ” Are you ready for 2050?” And it then begins where the actor leaves home with his headset on leaving behind his phone on the table, showing its the time we not use mobile phones anymore. Walking towards the taxi he can see and access the information panel. People will be using air taxis, how they will look in the air and the last scene where we can see a perspective of a person working in his office conference room and can see the air taxis. To end the story, I used the rewind as if its just a imagination and the story ends with a glitch.

Overall I am satisfied with the renders but I think I could have done much better at making it a good story, with a good start and end. I thought of keeping it short and not too long so that whatever I work, has to be the best of my efforts. It also helped to me to get reviewed from the professors before time and make the necessary changes. The more the changes and renders I did , I could see better results for the scene. If I look at the whole video, I think it still lacks colour grading and correctness. It was fun to work on the project and to see it turn out into a whole story video of the concept I visualized.