Nira's VFX Blog – Page 8 – A journey through my master

Week 10: Video Presentation

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 20th December 2022
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In this last lesson of term 1, we were introduced to the video presentation task required to present our critical report.

This video presentation must detail the key aspects of our critical report in a 3 to 5 minutes video. This video can be made recording ourselves, or with a Power Point presentation, or even with a brief animation. In order to add a voice over or records ourselves explaining our topic, we should first structure and rehearse our speech. The contents of this video should be as outlined in the following:

Intentions of research presentation
Outlining and referencing of sources accessed
Selection of key areas of investigation that informed findings
Conclusion
Potential applications of this learning and further knowledge that can be achieved in practice or theory.

After this class I continued to finish and polish my critical report and to plan my video presentation. My final critical report looks like this:

Nira-Gonzalez-Critical-Report-1 Download

Form my video presentation, I tried to mix footage from the YouTube videos I used for my critical report and I also included my first attempt at claymation sequences. I edited the video in After Effects and also added some CGI.

The video presentation took me over 3 days between planning, storyboarding, modelling, shooting, editing, and visual effects. However, I really enjoyed the making of this video and, despite my stop motion animation skills need a lot of improvement, I am quite happy with the result.

Tags Critical Report, Video Presentation

Maya VFX Fundamentals

Week 10: Face Animation Render in Maya and compositing in After Effects

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 11th December 2022
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In this class, we set up the lightning and colour corrected our model to get it ready to render and compositing later on After Effects.

To create the illumination of my scene, I wanted to recreate the real lighting of the scene I took as reference. I added 3 spotlights to my scene: one is in front of the model to illuminate the face, and the other two are behind as backlights.

Since the lip sync looked a bit odd without a tongue, I modelled one, added a standard surface material with some shiny highlights (to give a wet look) and animated it in the parts with ‘L’, ‘D’, ‘S’, and ‘T’ sounds.

Using the ‘Hypershade’ editor, I added two colour correct nodes: one linked to the base colour and coat of the skin material, and the second linked to the specular colour of the skin material. I added a soft yellowish base colour to the skin as is shown in the reference clip but then added a blue/purple highlight with the specular colour to make it a bit more interesting. I also added a subsurface scattering to make the skin a bit more translucent, so it looks more realistic.

Colour Correct 1 – linked to base colour and coat colour

After I was happy with my lighting, I set my project render details to half resolution to have a relatively quick render to review the final look. Thankfully, I did not have to change anything as I like how it ended so I set my project at HD 1920×1080 resolution and render the final lip sync animation as an alpha.

Final render

The final render turned out to be good and it is ready for compositing with a background and some nice VFX. So I imported it to After Effects and searched for a proper background for the scene. I found this already blurred background with a futuristic look so I added it to the comp and colour corrected it to make it darker, more saturated and showing more blue hues (I added colour balance and brightness and contrast effects).

Blurred abstract background interior (topntp26, freepik)

Then I also colour corrected the face as it seemed a little flat so using the ‘Levels’ effect increased the contrast and added a bit of more shadows and saturation.

Finally, I also scaled up the face and I scaled down the background towards to end to make the scene more dynamic and simulate the camera movement.

Scale and position of face and background

Final Comp

I think that the final scene turned out good, as I like the contrast between the blue/purple background, and the yellowish skin colour of the face with the subtle blue/purple highlights on the head and forehead. Overall, I think the scene looks realistic and the lip sync and head movements looks pretty natural.

References

topntp26, freepik. Blurred abstract background interior view looking out toward to empty office lobby and entrance doors and glass curtain wall with frame. [Online] Available at: Available at: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/blurred-abstract-background-interior-view-looking-out-toward-empty-office-lobby-entrance-doors-glass-curtain-wall-with-frame_1254627.htm#query=building%20indoor&position=36&from_view=search&track=sph [Accessed 12 December 2022]

Tags Animation, Lighting, Lip Sync, Maya, Render

Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 10: Real Scenarios in Production and Balloon Festival Comp Review

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 5th December 2022
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In this lesson we analysed the different scenarios we can face in production as a VFX compositor and then we reviewed the final composition of our Balloon Festival project.

In production for film, the stages followed are:

Temps/Postviz. The temps are the preview of how the movie is going to look in low quality and the postviz is the preview of the movie but with higher quality (even there are specialized companies in this).
Trailers. It shows the several shots of the movie that are finished at a good level of quality.
Finals. Final product of the film. Usually it is exported to EXR., and two different Quick Times with specific settings ready for being reviewed.
QC. The quality control of the final product is done by the VFX Supervisor, and they decide which one is the best product to send to the client.

There is specific software for the project management that improves the organisation and communication between the team, such us Google docs and sheets, Ftrack, and Shotgun. They are useful to publish the final scenes that are ready for review, to request tasks, to agree meetings, etc.

The production roles existing in a film are:

Line Producer. The person that is below the Producer and is in touch or checking in with the VFX supervisor, director, editor, internal producers, producers, and artists. They manage the client, the timing, and the budget.
VFX Producer. This person makes sure that the studio completes the project, that they comply with the deadline agreed with the client, and that it is completed within the budget set.

A way to share and review a project development is to set VFX dailies. This is an important meeting to see that everyone is in the same direction and to receive the feedback of the film director, the client, the producer, and/or supervisor. It is usually written and recorded, and what it is agreed there cannot be changed later outside that meeting.

Once we have finished the scene we were assigned to, we will publish it so the lead or VFX supervisor reviews it. A good habit to develop is to make sure that what we are publishing is final and it does not have any errors that makes the review difficult as the schedules and deadlines in films use to be tight. Before publishing a scene, it is good practice to follow this tech check process:

Check notes for the shot
Compare new version with old one
Check editorial (shot that editor sent to take as a reference with the original)
Check if there is any retime in the shot
Check that our shot has the latest ‘Match move’
Write in the comments if we have any personal notes
If we have any alternatives for one shot, inform the line producer before adding this to our published scene.

Balloon Festival Comp

Once, we analysed the different scenarios in VFX production, we proceeded to review the final compositing of the balloon festival project.

For this project I modelled my air balloon in Maya (as shown in Week 3: Maya Modelling Tools Overview Part 2 – Air Balloon and Week 4: UV Set Up & Texturing in Maya).

During Maya lectures, we learnt how to model a 3D hot air balloon and animate it with a simple 360° spin animation. Then, using this and a mountain shot provided by the professor, we were asked to composite a short sequence for a ‘Balloon Festival’. There was no rules, just to put in practice all that we learnt and to have fun with the compositing.

Since I really enjoy designs with an 80s neon style with a dark background that highly contrasts with neon colours, I decided to focus in this thematic. I started trying to colour correct the scene as I wanted a night ambience and the scene was shot in plain daylight.

I tried colour correcting the scene following a tip the professor taught to us in class about separating the colour correction process in primary colours, secondary colours, and shadows. I rotoscoped some sections of the mountains and colour corrected them separately to create a bit more depth and tying to avoid a ‘flat’ look. Then I checked how it would look like with a grey background an refined the roto.

I reformatted the video to fit the size of the main comp, and then I retimed it because, since it was a time lapse video originally, it was playing way too fast. Then I linked it to one of the trackers previously created so it follows the movement of the main plate. Also, I colour corrected it slightly to make it look a bit darker, and also created a roto so it did not overlap with the mountains (created an alpha of the roto with ‘shuffle’ node and copied it in the sky nodes trail).

I did not look the look of the grass in the foreground as it had some gold colour from the original lighting so I decided to add some coloured fog in front to disguise this. So I found a fog video online and added to the comp. I also colour corrected it and made it purple so it matched the palette of colours I wanted to achieved (black, blue/green, and purple).

Following on, I added my 3D air balloon model to the comp. I added four air balloons with different scale position and movement, and also I colour corrected them adding some purple and blue highlights and making them a bit darker. To make the comp a bit more interesting, I also added like magical and colourful trails to two of the air balloons, again, with purple and blue tones.

Then I wanted to add the text ‘Balloon Festival’ like if this were the promotion video of an actual festival. I created a neon effect adding a ‘Glow’ node so the middle of the type is white and the borders have a blue glow. I also used ‘Neon 80’ font to make it look more realistic. Then I added a roto mask to the text to create the transition of the air balloon passing and the text appearing behind it.

Moreover, I added a frame of blue and purple animated neon lights with a foggy texture that I found online. Like I did with the fog and the colour trails, I merged them to the main plate using ‘screen’ option in the ‘merge’ node so the black background is not visible and it only shows the neon lights.

Since Nuke is not very good working with sound, I exported the final sequence with the write node and imported it to After Effects to add the sound. I could also have done it with Premiere Pro, but I was having some problems with my version of the programme so I decided to use After Effects as a quicker solution. I found an 80s style royalty free music ironically called ‘stranger things’ (Music Unlimited, 2022), so I imported it to After Effects and just added a fade out at the end.

Final result

The final result has a funny and eye catching look and the 80s music sets the ambiance suitable for the style. It has been a long and hard process for me as I was struggling a bit with the order of the nodes and when to add certain nodes like ‘premult’, ‘shuffle’, ‘copy’, and when to link nodes using the ‘roto’ mask link or regular link. At the end of the day, with practice everything started to make sense and now I can say that I feel comfortable with Nuke’s compositing process and structure.

References

Apisit Suwannaka. Drifting Smoke Motion Design on Black Background Free Video [online]. Available at https://www.vecteezy.com/video/2973097-drifting-smoke-motion-design-on-black-background [Accessed 19 November 2022]

Distill, 2016. Time Lapse Video Of Aurora Borealis [online]. Available at https://www.pexels.com/video/time-lapse-video-of-aurora-borealis-852435/ [Accessed 19 November 2022]

John Studio. Beautiful colorful particles or smoke abstract background Free Video [online]. Available at https://www.vecteezy.com/video/3052087-beautiful-colorful-particles-or-smoke-abstract-background [Accessed 19 November 2022]

Mim Boon. Neon frame background animation Free Video [online]. Available at https://www.vecteezy.com/video/12276978-neon-frame-background-animation [Accessed 19 November 2022]

Music Unlimited, 2022. Stranger Things [online]. Available at https://pixabay.com/music/synthwave-stranger-things-124008/ [Accessed 27 November 2022]

Tags Balloon Festival, Compositing, Nuke, VFX Production

Design For Animation

Week 9: Harvard Referencing

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 4th December 2022
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In this session, we covered the Harvard referencing system and their methods to cite and reference in an academic text.

The sources that we are going to use in our citations and references need to come from peer-reviewed texts or from online recognised academic material. It needs to be avoided citations found on personal blogs, film reviews or YouTube (except if this material is not available anywhere else), as these materials are not peer-reviewed texts.

According to the Harvard referencing rules, a list of citations would need to be included at the end of the critical report (all quotations and paraphrases must be referenced). If a long quotation is added (more than 40 words), this should be added separated from the main body of the text, and with around 1cm of spacing on each side (no need to use quotation marks in this case).

The text will have a 12 point size, in Times New Roman or Arial font, and with 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing. When including the title of an animation, film, or book, this will need to be in italics, and when adding the title of a journal article, book chapter, or song, we will use quotation marks. We will need to avoid contractions and we will use formal language using the full form (avoid colloquial language). Phrasal verbs will also be avoided and a one word synonym will be used instead. The writing will be divided in paragraphs and these will be linked using connecting words and phrases. The use of personal language needs to be avoided (I, my, we, etc.), as well as sweeping generalisations.

Every argument or statement will need to be backed by evidence from the source of reading used as reference. We will use impersonal subjects (it is believed that…), and with this, also impersonal verbs (tests have been conducted…).

The reference list, bibliography, and list of figures/images will be written following the Harvard style too, and we can use helpful tools like https://www.citethemrightonline.com as reference.

After this class, I decided to work on my critical report referencing and to keep developing the main body, and literature review. I struggle a bit to make the literature review, as I did not fully understand initially the content that this section should show, but after double checking it with the professor, I understood that this section should describe the reason why I chose it for my critical report and not the full description of the book thematic. So far, my critical report looks like this:

**How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations.**

Abstract

Key words

Stop motion, CGI, stop motion evolution, Nightmare Before Christmas, Tim Burton, Henry Selick, Boxtrolls, Laika Studios, Phil Tippett

Contents page

Introduction

This critical report is going to be an analysis of how stop motion is still being used to create great animation movies such as The nightmare before Christmas by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, which has a unique and more refined aesthetic, but it could also be a more expensive process. It will also evaluate how CGI has taken more presence in the animation and VFX industry because of its lower cost of production and its faster creative process. Lastly, it will be also studied how stop motion and CGI are being mixed to achieve even greater and more effective results shown in movies like The Boxtrolls by LAIKA Films.

Literature review

Barry Purves explained in his Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion book (2010) the origins of stop motion animation and its development until today’s techniques. I chose this book for this critical report because it also analyzed stop motion elements such as the lack of motion blur in this discipline and how it was solved, the texture, lighting, realism, and detail that can be achieved with the addition of CGI, and as counter argument to this last statement, the unique personality that traditional stop motion offers.

This book was the base reference of this research supported by two documentaries found in YouTube: Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios (LAIKA Studios, 2018) and The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas BbaGumpSkrimp (2012). These documentaries showed the making of these two movies explained by the directors, producers, animators, and other professionals involved in the making of these animations. These two movies The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Boxtrolls are the chosen references to compare the traditional stop motion techniques and the stop motion with CGI techniques.

For additional information, Lord and Sibley’s book Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation (2015), enunciates the unique and original style of Burton’s stop motion film and how it was distributed and successful worldwide.

On the other hand, an online video made by VFX Geek (2019), Stop motion animation in VFX, shows a documentary that explains how stop motion can be time consuming, costly, and describes its weaknesses like the lack of motion blur in its movements.

A brief history of stop motion and CGI

Georges Méliès was an illusionist in the nineteenth century that when filming the street of Paris, for a few seconds his camera jammed, resulting into a cut between frames. This cut resulted into what we know today as stop motion. Mixing animation and puppetry, stop motion was originally used for the creation of illusions or special effects to trick the audience’s eye. The stop-motion animator is not seen as each frame is shot independently, and the illusion of independent and continuous movement is created. This continuous movement credibility depends on how each frame is shot and connected with the others in terms of composition, colour, and movement. Comparing a stop motion scene with a live action scene (both normally shot at 24 or 25 fps or frames per second), the main difference lies in the blur trail that indicates the direction of the movement, called motion blur. In traditional stop motion there was no motion blur, so the movement needed to be emphasised on each frame (for example, using techniques like stretching or squashing the puppet to define the weight and inertia of the movement) and the environment reaction to the character’s movement needed to be precise (Purves, 2010, pp. 14-20).

Phil Tippett, a stop motion animator that worked in famous movies like Jurassic Park and Star Wars, developed a technique to add motion blur to stop motion called ‘go-motion’. This technique uses a computer that is programmed to move some parts of the puppet during each exposure of a frame, resulting in a more realistic effect of motion blur (VFX Geek, 2019).

Stop motion used as special effect itself stopped being used in the 90s with the raise of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery). This CGI evolution was shown in the first Jurassic Park movie in 1993 where the physical puppet armature motion was transferred to the 3D model. Stop motion nowadays is easier because of the introduction of digital cameras that allows the animator to preview the shots taken and correct errors in the moment, whereas with analogue cameras, the animator needed to be deeply focused on the shot and puppet movements, with no distractions or breaks in between, as they could not preview how the movement of the animation until the whole sequence was made.

Traditional stop motion: The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012) shows how Tim Burton and Henry Selick spent three years and recruited a team of over a hundred artists and technicians to finish this film, only using traditional handmade stop motion animation frame by frame. They needed to hire animators, artists, puppet makers, set builders, prop makers, and specially trained camera operators. All of them had to create and build hundreds of sets and individual puppet characters, since shooting at 24 fps meant that the character needed to be posed 24 times in one second. All this work and attention to detail involves that one minute of finished film, would take an entire week of shooting. Moreover, every facial expression of each puppet meant that a different head needed to be sculpted and, in this case, they used over 400 different heads. In this film, they also had to take in consideration ambience effects such as fire, smoke, snow, lighting bolts, shadows, and flying objects. These effects were added in post-production with rotoscoping techniques or hand-drawing directly on the physical film a frame at the time. Burton and Selick’s animation had also the inconvenience of being shot with analogue cameras, which put a lot of pressure in the animators: if a single frame had a mistake that could not be corrected in post-production, they had to retake the whole sequence from the beginning. As Tim Burton said in the previously mentioned documentary, “stop motion is like making a live action movie in slow motion really”.

According to Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation by Peter Lord & Brian Sibley (2015, p. 43), “The nightmare Before Christmas was the first stop-motion feature film to receive worldwide distribution”. The unique, grotesque, and imperfect style of Tim Burton’s characters was created by some of the best stop motion animators in the world. They needed the best professionals they could find to elaborate that detailed world with imperfect angles, shapes, and textured materials to recreate the cross-hatched style drawings that Burton designed in his original drawings. An example of a masterpiece model design is Jack Skellington, the main character of the film, with a skeleton-like look, a black suit, and long and skinny legs and arms. Despite the creepy look of this character, the stop motion animation of it was elegant and neat.

Stop motion and CGI: The Boxtrolls

Nowadays, with digital cameras and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), animators have less pressure when shooting a stop motion sequence since they can preview it in real time and replace specific frames that have any errors by new corrected frames. Taking The Boxtrolls as reference by LAIKA Studios, there are certain elements of a scene like floating hair or cloth, that are achieved with the help of CGI. To make a dance scene with both cloth and hair moving, first they had to take a real dance scene as reference to see how they moved. They also asked the dancers to create a choreography and movements so they also could include them in the scene with the puppets. Since the puppet’s cloth is not rigid, they had to attach the dress fabric to a joined mesh which was articulated and let the animators to move and fix the desired position to take the shots of the sequence. However, since the scene consisted in a room full of dancing characters, and to create an articulated puppet for each one would be costly and time consuming, they decided to only use traditional stop motion with the main characters and add the rest with CGI (taking as reference the hand-made puppets). This scene has four hand-made puppets and around 50 to 60 CGI characters to fill gaps. The aesthetic of the hand-made puppet was reproduced digitally, and its mistakes and imperfections were transferred to the CGI puppet, making it look more realistic than it would have been by simple designing the characters in digital 3D without a reference. This is a clear example of how CGI and stop motion can be beneficial to each other and better results can be achieved.

Conclusion

References

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios [online video]. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015, p.43) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4^th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

Purves, B. (2010, pp. 14-20) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

VFX Geek (2019) Stop motion animation in VFX [online video]. 13 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfJx5D-8×8 [Accessed: 14 November 2022]

Bibliography

Anderson, W., Specter, M. and Lewis, R. (2009) The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Gasek, T. (2017) Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion: The Guide to Non-Puppet Photographic Animation Techniques. 2^ndedn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4^th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3^rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Filmography

AT&T Developer Program (2018) The Art and Science of Laika [online video]. 5 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGeGcV9dXw [Accessed: 23 November 2022].

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 16 November 2022].

VICE (2015) My Life In Monsters: Meet the Animator Behind Star Wars and Jurassic Park [online video]. 22 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTGQ_K0DBPo [Accessed: 14 November 2022].

VFX Geek (2019) Stop motion animation in VFX [online video]. 13 July. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTfJx5D-8×8 [Accessed: 14 November 2022].

List of figures

Tags Bibliography, Citations, Critical Report, Harvard referencing

Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 9: Blur, Defocus, and 2D Clean-up in Nuke

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 4th December 2022
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In this session, we learnt how to use ‘Blur’ and ‘Defocus’ in a scene and how to do a 2D clean-up using ‘Roto Paint’, ‘Difference’, ‘Regrain’, and ‘Grain’ tools.

In order to add realism to a scene, it is a good technique to add some ‘Blur’ or ‘Defocus’ to it. However, depending the desired effect, we use one or the other. We use ‘defocus’ to emulate what happens with a real lens when unfocused, so since this is a more realistic and natural effect than ‘blur’, this is more commonly used for a more cinematic and more visible effect. On the other hand, ‘Blur’ is used when we need to defocus a colour or something minimum that is going to be barely visible (more for correcting purposes rather than effect wise).

‘Z Defocus’ and ‘Z Blur’ are used to defocus or blur specific areas of the plate and can be also used to blur or defocus taking in consideration the depth of the shot when the alpha is converted to depth. With these nodes we could also defocus or blur following a shape like a disc, bladed or following a roto we made. These nodes can be used together with ‘Convolve’ node in order to defocus or blur with a roto shape in different forms.

Nuke is also used for cleaning up a scene. This can be made using ‘Roto Paint’ node with which we can paint, clone, blur, dodge, and burn specific areas of he shot. After this, we could add a ‘Difference’ node to subtract the alpha taken from the ‘Roto Paint’ area followed by a ‘Copy’ and’Premult’ nodes. Also, we could add a ‘Frame Hold’ node to freeze the reference frame where we are going to do the roto painting.

Once we added the patch or correction to our shot, it is good practice to add a ‘Grain’ effect to match the grainy texture of the video and the patch blends in. We can use ‘Grain’ node which is applied through the alpha so it does not affect to whole plate but just the alpha area, or the ‘ReGrain’ node which will affect the whole plate as double grain (so it cannot be applied multiple times).

This week’s task was to practice what we learnt today trying to do a clean-up of the school shot provided: removing some papers that are on the wall, adding some roto paint in the side of the lockers, adding something to the background door (in my case I added some animated text), adding something in perspective in the left side doors (I added a video of what it looks like a circular magic portal), and adding something interesting on the floor (I added another magic portal).

To start, I wanted to remove some papers from the pin board on the right. To do so, I added a ‘Roto Paint’ node and used the ‘clone’ tool to paint on top of the papers using the texture of the board. Then with a regular ‘Roto’ node I created the alpha of the painted area followed by a ‘Filter Erode’ to soften the edges and a ‘Premult’ to transform it into an alpha. All of this has been done with a ‘Frame Hold’ node so it is easier to build up the roto. Then I tracked the area with 4 tracker points and created a ‘Transform (Match Move)’ tracker node to match the move of the scene. Finally, I added the ‘Grain’ node to match the grain of the Roto Paint with the scene grain and merged it with the main comp.

Secondly, I added an animated ‘Roto Paint’ to the side of the lockers. I used the already existing tracker node that was used to remove the poster that was in the same place that I wanted to add the new ‘Roto Paint’. I created a ‘Transform (Match Move)’ tracker node and attached it to the ‘Roto Paint’ node with the animation. To animate the painting, I played with the colour and opacity adding key frames in these features. Then, I linked this the the main comp.

Animated Roto Paint at the side of the lockers

Thirdly, I added some text in the back doors tracking the area first and then adding ‘Corner Pin 2D’ first baked to fix the frame and then another one to match move the scene movement. I also added an animation to the text key framing the colour section, and the merge it to the main comp.

Animated Text fixed with Corner Pin 2D nodes

For both magic portals I used the same technique that we used last week with the ‘Planar Tracker’ and creating a ‘Corner Pin 2D (Relative)’ to fix the image to the area selected. I reformatted both clips and corrected the saturation and grades. Then I merged them to the main comp using ‘screen’ option so the black background disappears and there is an transparency effect in the colours.

Tags 2D Clean-up, Blur, Cloning, Defocus, Difference, Grain, Nuke, Roto Paint

Maya VFX Fundamentals

Week 9: Speech Lip Sync in Maya

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 3rd December 2022
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In this class, we learnt to synchronise the mouth and facial expressions of our face model with a short speech that we selected.

First, to capture a video from internet (YouTube) in this case to use it as a reference to build up our speech lip sync, we used ‘OBS Studio’. With this programme we can record the screen and sound of our computer’s desktop and then edit the length and export in the desired format in Adobe After Effects, or Adobe Premiere Pro. The sequence that I chose shows Charles Xavier talking to Magneto in X-Men Apocalypse (Movie Scenes, 2021).

Magneto’s Final Talk With Charles Xavier | X-Men Apocalypse (2016), (Movie Scenes, 2021)

Then, we imported it to Maya as an ‘Image Plane’. It is important to have set the timeline with the same fps (frames per second) to our clip, otherwise, it will not be in sync with the audio. In my case, I exported my clip at 30 fps so set Maya with the same value. To import the audio, we right click in the timeline and import it from there. If we want to preview the clip with the audio to double check that they are in sync, we can use ‘Playblast’ feature which will show a low-resolution preview.

Once we had our reference clip set, we started to animate the mouth creating new targets in the blend shape previously created to fit the mouth shape to each sound of the speech. Then, using keyframing we set the exact movements we wanted and smooth them editing and adjusting the key frames in the ‘Graph Editor’. A useful reference to build the mouth shape depending on the sound of each syllable, I took as a reference an online image from Preston Blair Phoneme Series (Martin, 2018).

*Preston Blair phoneme serie* (Martin, 2018)

I did not create all the phonemes as not all of them were used and I actually blended 2 or 3 phonemes at the same time to create a different phoneme with this. I also animated the tongue, the eye brows, the jaw, the head rotate, and the neck (Addam’s apple). Below there is a sequence of screen captures of all the movements together and the targets that have been used.

I really enjoyed modelling and animating the facial expressions. I definitely need to improve and refine the animation part as some of the phonemes are not as polished as I would have liked but to be my first time animating a face and lip synching a speech I think it looks really good. I feel like this is an area that I would like to explore further.

References

Martin, G. C., 2018. Preston Blair phoneme series. [Online] Available at: http://www.garycmartin.com/mouth_shapes.html [Accessed 12 December 2022].

Movie Scenes, 2021. Magneto’s Final Talk With Charles Xavier | X-Men Apocalypse (2016). [Online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gZqgfiWDh4 [Accessed 28 November 2022].

Tags Animation, Blend Shape, Lip Sync, Maya

Design For Animation

Week 8: Developing a Research Topic

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 30th November 2022
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In this lecture, we reviewed the process of researching a topic and how to structured it for our critical report.

Before start our research of our topic, it is important to consider why this research is relevant to the field of study and how it informs the audience. We also could consider what do we want to focus on when graduating, why skills we want to develop, and how are we going to show case our final major project (FMP).

The aspects that we could explore are if our topic is:

Experimental or commercial
Emergent
Screen based
Expanded cinema
Installation
Interactive
Studio/cinema/games

Also, our research should show enquiry (engagement, analysis, evaluation), knowledge (analysis, synthesis), process (methods, practical work, experimentation), communication (arguments), and realisation (improvement). There are several resources to do our research like Google Scholar, JSTOR, EBSCO, Animation studies 2.0, UAL Library, etc.

Once we have done our research, it is time to start thinking in the structure of our critical report. The standard structure that a critical report should have is the following:

Title: subtitle
Acknowledgements (optional)
Abstract (short summary of dissertation: question, methods, results)
Key words
Contents page
Introduction (to orientate, inform, and attract the reader’s attention to the topic, along along with stating focused topic and context)
Literature review (synthesis of books’ topics and why they have been used in the critical report – presentation of sources)
Main body of text (can split contents in chapters, and the arguments and statements should be supported with proof or references)
Conclusion (add findings and position – summarise points made in main body)
Appendix (optional)
Bibliography/Reference list/Filmography
Image list (optional)

It is also important to establish the audience and the purpose of the critical report along with the topic and structure.

After this class, I decided to restructure my critical report, adding the sections that we have reviewed today and separating the main body into chapters. Currently my critical report structure looks like this (the coloured text are personal annotations of possible arguments to add):

**How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations.**

Abstract

Key words

Contents page

Introduction

The world evolves with the pass of time and the technology with it. Some original practices get perfectioned and others are replaced by more suitable ones. This critical report is going to be an analysis of how stop motion is still being used to create great animation movies such as The nightmare before Christmas by Henry Selick and Tim Burton, which has a unique and more refined aesthetic, but it could also be a more expensive process. It will also evaluate how CGI has taken more presence in the animation and VFX industry because of its lower cost of production and its faster creative process. Lastly, it will be also studied how stop motion and CGI are being mixed to achieve even greater and more effective results shown in movies like The Boxtrolls by LAIKA Films.

Literature review

Explain what each source says or explains (TNBC documentary, The Boxtrolls documentary, stop motion books).

A brief story of stop motion and CGI

Where did stop motion come from and when and why CGI made its appearance in this discipline?

Stop motion was discovered due to an accident that turned out into a discovery.

Pros and cons from both techniques separately.

Stop motion pros: aesthetic, refined result, high quality, unique, adds more value to the final product.
Stop motion cons: costly, time consuming as made frame by frame, no motion blur (Phil Tippett).
CGI pros: cost effective, less time consuming, can correct errors without having to reshoot a whole scene, can be more precise.
CGI cons: digital aesthetic (errors or mistakes done are what makes our work ‘ours’ and unique, and sometimes we can create something different or never done before – with CGI this can hard to achieve as we can correct errors easily)

Traditional stop motion: The Nightmare Before Christmas (395)

The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012) shows how Tim Burton and Henry Selick spent three years and recruited a team of over a hundred artists and technicians to finish this film, only using traditional handmade stop motion animation frame by frame. They needed to hire animators, artists, puppet makers, set builders, prop makers, and specially trained camera operators. All of them had to create and build hundreds of sets and individual puppet characters, since shooting at 24 fps (frames per second) meant that the character needed to be posed 24 times in one second. All this work and attention to detail involves that one minute of finished film, would take an entire week of shooting. Moreover, every facial expression of each puppet meant that a different head needed to be sculpted and, in this case, they used over 400 different heads. In this film, they also had to take in consideration ambience effects such as fire, smoke, snow, lighting bolts, shadows, and flying objects. These effects were added in post-production with rotoscoping techniques or hand-drawing directly on the physical film a frame at the time. Burton and Selick’s animation had also the inconvenience of being shot with analogue cameras, which put a lot of pressure in the animators: if a single frame had a mistake that could not be corrected in post-production, they had to retake the whole sequence from the beginning. As Tim Burton said in the previously mentioned documentary, “stop motion is like making a live action movie in slow motion really”.

Stop motion and CGI: The Boxtrolls (400)

How can CGI help stop motion to be more cost and time effective?

How are stop motion and CGI techniques put together to achieve a better result?

How is the mix of these two techniques affecting the quality and aesthetic of the animation, and how nostalgia can influence when taking the decision of using traditional stop motion? (The Nightmare Before Christmas)

Is traditional stop motion becoming obsolete as CGI is developing into more refined techniques to reach and match the quality and aesthetic from traditional stop motion?

How are animation studios approaching stop motion animation like LAIKA Studios in The Boxtrolls?

Conclusion

References

Name of person or organisation posting video (Year video posted) Title of film or programme. Date uploaded. Available at: DOI or name of streaming service/app or URL (Accessed: date).

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis (Accessed: 16 November 2022)

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 (Accessed: 16 November 2022).

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015, p.43) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4^th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

Bibliography

Anderson, W., Specter, M. and Lewis, R. (2009) The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4^th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3^rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Filmography

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis (Accessed: 16 November 2022).

LAIKA Studios (2018) Making the Dance: A Look Behind the Scenes at The Boxtrolls | LAIKA Studios. 27 March. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxexaE4Ge70 (Accessed: 16 November 2022).

AT&T Developer Program (2018) The Art and Science of Laika. 5 June. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NGeGcV9dXw (Accessed: 23 November 2022).

List of figures

Tags Critical Report, Research, Structure

Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Week 8: Planar Tracking in Nuke

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 29th November 2022
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In this lesson, we checked further nodes in Nuke and we learnt how to use a planar track to add a flat image to a sequence.

We reviewed nodes such as ‘Reformat’ (to change sequence format to match main plate), ‘Crop’ (to crop an image or a video as required), ‘Merge’ (we saw how to use it to fix the size of the bounding box of a sequence to the Alpha layer or the Background layer), and ‘Shuffle’ (to add or remove channels – R, G, B, Alpha, and Depth).

We also learnt how important is the concatenation in a Nuke comp. Concatenation is the process of moving pictures/frames in a sequence. Nuke does calculations that need to follow a logic and if this logic is broken, the final result will not work. Following on this, we analysed several ways to organise the nodes in Nuke so they follow an order and, therefore, we achieve the desired result without any error.

Finally, we also studied how to use the ‘Planar trackers’ to add a 2D image to a 3D space and how to make it follow the movement of the sequence. First we added the ‘Planar tracker’ node, select the area we want with tracking points and track like we do with a regular ‘Tracker’ node. Then we turn on and align the grid to the tracking points to create the perspective desired, and finally, we create a ‘CornerPin2D (absolute) to create the tracker node that we are going to link to the image that we want to add. We can track translation, scale, and rotation together or separately if desired. When there is an object in front of the area that we want to track, we can track the object separately with another ‘bezier’ in the same ‘Planar tracker’ node, so Nuke recognises that object as an area of exclusion (so it does not take it in consideration when tracking the area that we want to).

As a homework, this week we were asked to add an image to the following sequence using what we learnt today in class.

First poster planar tracker showing bezier and grid lines adjustment

I added both posters using a ‘planar track’ node to track the plane where I wanted to add the poster. For the left poster I just tracked it, adjusted the grid lines to the perspective plane I wanted, and then created a ‘corner pin 2D (relative)’ that will be linked to the poster. This node will let the poster or image added to follow the movement of the shot that we have tracked.

Second poster planar tracker showing both beziers and grid lines adjustment

For the second poster, it was necessary to add second bezier that tracks the pole that passes in front of the poster so the programme understands that the area of the second bezier does not have to be taking in consideration when tracking the first bezier area (it is excluded). The roto of the pole was already added in the comp by the professor so I just had to ‘merge’ the second poster ‘corner pin 2D’ to the main comp. I also adjusted the ‘grade’ and ‘saturation’ of the posters, skewed them a little bit with ‘transform’ node to fit 100% the perspective, and added some ‘blur’ to remove the sharp edges from the posters and blend them in to the comp.

Poster’s in street added using ‘Planar tracking’ technique

This practice seemed pretty easy to me compared with other assignments as ‘Planar tracking’ is a straight forward tool. However, at the beginning I had a problem with the middle poster that has the pole obstructing part of the view in front of it. The ‘Planar tracker’ was not reading the area properly as the tracking points were jumping from the area selected to a completely different area and was not keeping the perspective I wanted to keep. I solved this making the tracking area bigger so the programme had more information to create the track along the frames. I also colour corrected the posters to blend them with the scene and make it more realistic. Overall, I am very happy with the result.

Tags Bounding box, Concatenation, Nuke, Planar tracking, Reformat

Maya VFX Fundamentals

Week 8: Facial Expressions with Blend Shapes in Maya

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 27th November 2022
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In this week’s lecture, we learnt how to edit blend shapes to create facial expressions and how to make those actions interact with each other so we achieve a natural movement when animating.

Creating blend shapes and targets inside these, we can animate our face’s expressions. One by one I created the expressions as full smile, half smile, frown, half frown, blinking eyes, and open mouth. I built up the expressions using the brush and relax tools. I also added a correction in the mouth for when it is opened to relax the sides of it and make it look more realistic. Since this correction is only needed when the mouth opens, I set the mouth correction target as a driven key and the jaw joint as driver and key framed the animation.

Mouth correction for open mouth movement using ‘set driven key’ tool

Mouth opening with final frown animation experimentation

Initially, I struggle a bit creating the facial expressions as sometimes I forgot to switch the ‘Edit’ button of the target I was manipulating at the time and I had some errors when animating that affected previous targets. Also, I seemed to have a duplicated head node in the background and some other duplicated ‘set’ nodes that were giving me an error message all the time. After asking Nick for help, he found this duplicated nodes in the ‘Node Editor’, and after delete them, my face model started to work better. I had to delete all the targets and the blend shape I had and start from scratch. I did this numerous times before finding the real error, and it was really time consuming, but at the end of the day, it was a really good practice and I learnt how to solve the error myself for future projects.

Tags 3D model, Animation, Blend Shape, Facial expressions, Maya

Design For Animation

Week 7: Individual Tutorials

Post author By Nira Gonzalez Sanchez
Post date 23rd November 2022
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This week, we had individual tutorials with the professor to double check and ask question about our critical report ongoing work process.

After passing last week researching sources for my critical report, I found two documentaries in YouTube about the making of The Nightmare Before Christmas by Tim Burton and Henry Selick (BbaGumpSkrimp, 2012), and the making of The Boxtrolls’ dance scene by LAIKA Studios (LAIKA Studios, 2018), where it was really well explained the techniques and the process followed to make these two stop motion animations: one with traditional stop motion and the second mixing stop motion and CGI (Computer Generated Imagery).

Then I decided to go to the UAL Library and check some books related to stop motion animation and CGI. Digging into the animation section, I found two books: Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion (Purves, 2010), and Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation (Lord and Sibley, 2015)

In Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion book (Purves, 2010) it is explained the origins of stop motion animation and its development until today’s techniques. I chose this book for my critical report because it also analysed stop motion elements such as the lack of motion blur in this discipline and how it was solved, the texture, lighting, realism, and detail that can be achieved with the addition of CGI, and as counter argument to this last statement, the unique personality that traditional stop motion offers.

Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation focuses in the process followed by Aardman to create his iconic clay animation, and also explains various 3D animation techniques, and the history and evolution of stop motion. I focused in the stop motion history and evolution section as it was really well explained and it also offers some insides about The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I also found some books I already own, like Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation (Shaw, 2017), which explains the different techniques that can be used in stop motion animation from modelling to filming tips.

This research plus a brief chat with the professor already gave me a rough idea of how the structure of my critical report is going to be and it also helped me to set the title: How CGI has enhanced or affected the stop motion production and result, taking as reference The Nightmare before Christmas and The Boxtrolls stop motion animations. The possible structure I out together looks like the following:

Abstract
Intro
- What is the critical report going to explain?
Main Body
- Where did stop motion come from and when and why CGI made its appearance in this discipline?
- Pros and cons from both techniques separately.
- How can CGI help stop motion to be more cost and time effective?
- How are stop motion and CGI techniques put together to achieve a better result?
- How is the mix of these two techniques affecting the quality and aesthetic of the animation, and how nostalgia can influence when taking the decision of using traditional stop motion?
- Is traditional stop motion becoming obsolete as CGI is developing into more refined techniques to reach and match the quality and aesthetic from traditional stop motion?
- How are animation studios approaching stop motion animation like LAIKA Studios or Aardman Studios?
Conclusion

References

BbaGumpSkrimp (2012) The Making of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [online video]. 30 January. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLw-Fo8uhis [Accessed: 12 November 2022].

Lord, P. and Sibley, B. (2015) Cracking Animation: The Aardman Book of 3-D Animation. 4^th edn. London: Thames & Hudson.

Purves, B. (2010) Basics Animation C4: Stop-Motion. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.

Shaw, S. (2017) Stop Motion: Craft Skills for Model Animation. 3^rd edn. Florida: CRC Press Taylor & Francis Group.

Tags CGI, Individual Tutorials, Research, Stop Motion, The Boxtrolls, The Nightmare Before Christmas

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