Reel Breakdown
Hand-selected by the VFX Engine team
Shot 1:
- 3D tracked drone footage I shot.
- Roto'd myself (mix of silhouette and roto)
- Projected that onto a card to get a reflection using the Rayrender
- Placed Gaussian Splats of Home Videos in 3D space using Irrealix's Gaussian Splatting plugin for Nuke. For integration, I used two extra layers with a stronger noise and less opacity. More on the workflow on this Rookies post:
- [From Home Video to Memory Cloud: A Compositing Experiment](https://www.therookies.co/entries/36950)
- Higx Point Render Atmospherics and Nuke particles
- Used Optical Flares to create flares based on references.
Shot 2:
- Used Mocha to 2D track the stadium signs
- Painted the original signs out and replaced some of them with new moving signs
- 3D Tracked the plate in Nuke and projected the set extensions on different cards positioned based on the point cloud I got out of the 3D Camera track
- Keyed a plate of people cheering and, same as the set extension, projected it into different cards.
- Used Silhouette to get a matte of the soccer player, fixed it with roto, and refined the edges to recover as much as possible from the plate.
Shot 3:
- Used Mads Hagbarth’s Higx Point Render to create the particles inside the sphere.
- Added caustics and reflections using the Rayrender.
- Created a subtle refraction using a 3D sphere.
- Projected that onto a card and created a reflection in the ground using the Rayrender.
- Used VolumeRays node to create a spotlight and added a very subtle lens flare.
- Added Nuke particles.
Shot 4:
- Because I had a full 3D scene inside of Nuke for the previous shot, I only had to move the camera closer to the sphere and tweak some of the effects for this close up. The only extra thing I added was a heavier defocus.
Shot 5:
- Similarly to Shot 4, I reused the setup, adjusting the camera position and fine-tuning the effects.
- I rotoscoped myself from the filmed plate, projected the result onto a card, and used Rayrender to create a ground reflection.
- As in the other shots, I added a spotlight and a lens flare, as well as Nuke particles.
Shot 6:
- Again, reused the setup with a different camera position.
- Created a luma key of my hand from the plate and refined it with rotoscoping. Integrated the hand into the shot by adding its reflection in the sphere and applying sphere caustics onto my hand. Used an STMap and the plate to deform the caustics to match my hand's shape.
- Added a subtle spotlight, lens flare and Nuke particles.
Shot 7:
- Used Syntheyes to 3D track the plate.
- Exported the trackers and the camera and imported them into Maya. Modeled proxies of the main buildings so I could catch the shadows of the spaceships I was going to add.
- Used spaceship models from ProductionCrate, placed them in the scene and animated them. Matched the lighting of the plate so the integration of the spaceships was as close as possible.
- Rendered out deeps of the proxy environment and the spaceships, as well as renders of the spaceships and the shadows, using Maya render layers.
- Comped the CG renders into the plate, using the deep renders to hold out the buildings-spaceships where needed.
- Used the tracker point cloud to place cards in 3D space with projected 2D elements
- Color graded and added some frames of a 2d lens flare video so that it fit in the shot.
- Added Camera Shake when main spaceship flies close to camera
