Week 08
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Critique
shot 1-3 transition feels weirdly horizontal
shot 3-2 transition is slightly off
match black levels between all shots
shots 1 + 5, and shot 2 are all different
The motion graphics shouldn't overlap the ring- covering up the product
Shot 2 (water)
white looks clamped
Shot 3 (flower)
petals feel more hollow/ghost-y, feels like opacity is being used rather than sss
stem and leaves need more sss
add depth of field
ring is blown out
the animation looks a lot better
look into a venation map
shot 4 (cloth)
there's a black line in the edge that looks like a rendering issue
shot 5 (break apart)
bit too saturated
reflection is banding and too 'teal'
ring faceted
This week was very busy, as we had a lot of little things to fix before the mentors visited in person! I was really excited that this week's critique pertained a lot to comp, and they were all super useful!
To minimize render time we chose the more optimal option of adding the background in comp, as we were unsure which background image we wanted to use. I imported the camera from Houdini and setup a basic 3D camera projection setup.
Node tree of basic camera projection
Witness view of camera projection
The background needed a lot of work, so I color corrected it to be much darker. The background was still too distracting so I blurred it even further. I think this makes the flower pop a ton more!
Background slap comp
Background color corrected
Background Blurred
After talking it over with Professor Gaynor and Noelle Robertson (Lighting/LookDev), we made the render purposely oversaturated so that there's more data in each AOV/light group for me to manipulate. It did mean I'd have to switch to the AOV rebuild method used for the water shot (shot 2), but it was easy to transfer over since I already had the template built out. It also meant that the red values were clipping pretty extremely.
Ex:
To fix this, I used the exposure node and made sure to keep the offset distance between red and blue/green values to be the same as before, that way the red elements still stood out like before. It did change the look of the flower, however I think for the better.
rgb of clipped reds
rgb of reds no longer clipping
Next to tackle was the values. The mentors had advised that looking at the luminance channel can help get an understanding of how well the elements are standing out. I hadn't connected the dots at the time, but this is what digital illustrators do for the same reasons!
I wasn't sure exactly how to apply this, but Robyn Roach, (grad student compositor and on Team Little Monsters in this class) who I was working next to at the time, showed me a quick demo of value shaping.
For whatever reason, I was previously a bit hesitant to strongly affect the beauty layer, but Robyn's demo reminded me that it's totally fine! It was actually pretty fun to do, and to see just how much it improved the outcome. That type of headspace is something I should keep in mind for the future, just in case I notice that I'm restricting myself in that type of way again.
Grayscale before shaping
Grayscale after shaping
Value shaping node tree
rotos used to shape
Lastly, I asked Professor Gaynor for some critique on the flower shot, as I had felt a bit stuck. She reminded me to add depth of field as per mentor critique, add a paler hue shift to the ends of the petal, and also advised me to crop the image a bit more— as that'd push the macro vibe and draw more attention to the flower rather than the background. It was a great critique as it reframed (ha, literally) the shot and gave me a push in a direction to move in!
With everything else covered added, as well as general extra color correction, the final comp was made. Here's a breakdown of shot 3, which really shows how everything came together!
The water shot (shot 2) didn't have a ton of new work to do. One of the mentors noticed that the whites looked to be clipped and recommended them to be brighter. Max Jokinen had mentioned that another compositor, Zach Malich on Team Nuage, had used exponential glow to bring out his highlights, so I thought I'd give it a try!
Without exponential glow
With exponential glow
Definitely an improvement. Also a quick and neat trick!
For the cloth shot (shot 4) there also wasn't a huge change. I rotoed out the folded over cloth, which the mentors commented looked like a render artifact. I also painted out the dimples visible in the cloth at the very end, which is a sim issue that we weren't able to fix in time. Robyn recommended the PxF_Filler gizmo to help with larger areas of dimpling, as it takes the color data of the image and smears it at a specified angle within a mask. I used that in combination with just painting out other areas that the gizmo couldn't cover. When I added DoF, it blended everything together nicely.
Dark line visible, no paint outs
Rotoed line
Dimple paint out
DoF added
All in all, I was really happy with the progress this week, and felt like I learned a ton in only a few short days! Below is the end of week 8 edit (with preliminary sound!) as well as the before/afters of each shot, including the ones that didn't change that much (shots 1 & 5).
Before/after of all shots
Shot 1 Before
Shot 1 After
Shot 3 Before
Shot 3 After
Shot 2 Before
Shot 2 After
Shot 4 Before
Shot 4 After
Shot 5 Before
Shot 5 After