Nira's VFX Blog
A journey through my master

Tag: Photoshop

Categories
Advanced & Experimental Personal

Week 11: Motion Blur in Maya, Matte Painting in Photoshop, Nuke Comp, & Final Render

This week, I researched pictures that I would use for my matte paintings in Photoshop to then implement the m in Nuke for my final comp. I also rendered again my scene from Maya with motion blur added.

Motion blur added in Maya render

I was not convinced about the way the render of the scene was looking, so I asked Marianna for help and advice. I explained that the image look too sharp and neat, and it did not look realistic at all as it was missing depth of field and some blur. Then she explained to me that in Maya I could really easily apply motion blur in my render settings (literally just need to tick an option), and Maya would add the motion blur and depth of field for me.

Mayan environment with motion blur

Matte paintings in Photoshop

For the sky matte painting, I took a sunset sky picture and using the ‘offset’ and the ‘stamp’ tools in Photoshop, I made an ‘infinite’ picture so the edge of this is not visible if applied in a sphere or a cylinder to recreate the environment background. The background mountains were made like this too, however, in the rest of the matte paintings I only removed the the sky of the pictures.

‘offset’ tool in Photoshop
Final sky matte painting
Final background mountains matte painting
Foreground mountain matte painting
Rainforest matte painting

Compositing in Nuke and SFX in After Effects

In Nuke I added those matte paintings previously made in Photoshop. I added the sky as a sphere texture so it looks more realistic and has more sense of depth. The background mountains were added to a cylinder was they were going to surround the whole scene (as the camera movement rotates through all the scene, this needs to be visible from all the angles). The foreground mountain and the extra rainforest bits were added as projections to simple cards since they constitute small sections only so do not need curved surface. To give more depth to the scene, I added some highlights and shadows to the mountains using rotoscoping. Lastly, I decided to search a clip of a waterfall to add it to the back of the scene so the river position has sense and continuity. Since the cards of the waterfall were giving me problems as they would get in the middle of the camera movement and they would show were the should not, I set their lifetime until only farm 400 so they disappear after. I also had to colour correct the water if the waterfall to match the colour of the river and I also gave the sky an orange/yellow tone so it matches the sunset sky’s colour.

Sky added to a sphere
Background mountains added to a cylinder and rest of the elements to a card
Adding highlights and shadows to mountains with roto
Adding highlights and shadows to mountain with roto
Waterfall’s water and sky grading with roto
Limiting waterfall vidio lifetime till frame 400 so it does not get in front of the camera
Final comp nodes graph
Final comp nodes graph
Final comp nodes graph
Final comp nodes graph

Mayan Environment Final Comp

Mayan environment final comp
Categories
Advanced & Experimental Personal

Week 5: Tree Branches Modelling, & Leaves Texture Cards in Photoshop and Maya

This week I focused finishing the tree branches to incorporate them in the trunks I previously modelled and prepared the leaves texture in Photoshop to add to cards as shader in Maya.

Branches

For the branches modelling, I followed the tutorial I found last week. I started extruding some faces of a scaled-up cube, to then scale down the tapper in the ends of the branches. Then adding some rigging to this shape, using a ‘randomizer’ tool, and adding some manual tweaks to it, I created some random shapes of a branch. Once I was happy with the shape generated, I duplicated and tweaked again the original shape. I created 5 variations of the branch which I incorporated to the trunks I previously made. To add the branches to the trunk, I positioned them first where I wanted to place them, then deleted the faces of the trunk where I wanted to add these branches, combined the two meshes, selected both edges in both ends and bridged them.

Branch shape extruding random faces of a scaled-up cube
Rigging of the branch
Selecting joints created and the ‘Randomiser’ tool to deform branch (creating a more natural look)
Branch deformed – view in ‘smooth – 3’ mode
I created 5 variations of branches
Addition of branches to tree 1
Addition of branches to tree 2
Addition of branches to tree 3
Addition of branches to tree 4
Addition of branches to tree 5
Final trees
Addition of trees to environment to have an idea of how it would look like and how to orient them in the space
Trees placed previs

Leaves

For the leaves I decided the add an alpha and a bump map to a card instead of modelling them as this last would be time consuming and will be quite heavy tot render. Therefore, I found a tutorial that shows how to create your own normal map and alpha from the image I am going to use as texture.

Leaf tutorial (Rees3D, 2020)

First, I search for a leaf image that is placed flat and has a white background. Then in Photoshop I made the background pure white (as it was slightly darker). Then selected the white area with the ‘magic wand’ tool, created new layer, and using the ‘bucket’ tool, I painted this layer in black. Then, I changed this layer blend mode from ‘normal’ to ‘colour’ and I ‘merge down’ with thee original layer. Then, I selected the ‘generate normal map’ 3D filter and in the pop up window, I tweaked ‘blur’, ‘contrast details’ and ‘detail scale’ to design the normal map of the leaf. Lastly, I exported this result in JPEG.

To create the alpha layer of the same leaf picture, in Photoshop, I selected the white area with the magic wand again and created a new layer to paint it in black with the ‘bucket’ tool as I did before. Then, I changed the blending mode from ‘normal’ to ‘colour’ and ‘merge down’ as before too, but this time I used ‘curves’ tool to adjust the image in the curve graph until the main image of the leaf looks black. Lastly, I used ‘invert’ to swap the white and black space and exported the image en JPEG.

Leaf texture (Kelly, 2019)
Normal map made in Photoshop
Final normal map result in Photoshop
Final alpha result in Photoshop

Once I had my texture maps prepared, I linked them to a plane in Maya, connecting the original leaf picture to the base colour, the alpha to opacity, and the normal map to the bump map. Then, I oriented the UV map slightly so the leaf centre line was aligned with the centre of the plane, to then bend the plane slightly so it doesn’t look totally flat. Lastly, I duplicated this and arranged the duplicates to form a group of leaves attached to a small branch. Then I started to add them to the trees.

Texture maps linked in Maya
Leaf render with texture in Maya
Leaf UV map
Reshaping plane to give a more organic look to the leaf
Reshaped leaf render
Reshaped leaf render
Leaves arrangement
Leaves arrangement render
Addition of a small central branch
Leaves with small branch render
Leaves with small branch render
Addition of smaller top leaves and variation of leaves shapes and size
Addition of leaves to trees
Branch with leaves render
Branch with leaves render

References

Kelly (2019). Green Leaf (online). Available at: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-leaf-2559931/ [Accessed on 13 May 2023]

Rees3D (2020). Transparent Leaf [Maya Tutorial] | Rees3D.com (online). Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM0VgEbc4pw [Accessed on 13 May 2023]