SDGM 560 - Virtual Collaboration with The Mill - Process Blog Week 4
This week I reworked the matte painting for Shot 2. There was an issue with the card projections and parallax as the camera moved through the scene. The layouts of each mountain layer needed to be adjusted. After meeting with the mentors from The Mill last week, I was advised to add atmospheric perspective as the mountains recede in the background. This was done by color correcting individual mountain layers. I also cleaned up my Nuke Script, and added DisplaceGeo nodes to the cards to give them a bit of curvature when parallax occurs
Displacement on Projected Cards
Matte Painting in Process - Shot 2
Shot 2 Node Graph
The original matte painting for shot 2 video looked off as the parallax occurred. It was apparent that the ground was on separate card than the surrounding foreground mountains. Because of this, as the camera moved forward in space, the ground clearly shifted away from the mountains in an unnatural manor. After reworking the layers in Photoshop, I placed the majority of foreground mountains into one layer, and the parallax seems much more believable.
Parallax Test
Updated Mountain Layer Layout
Previous Hot Air Balloon + MP
Hot Air Balloon Test - Still
Final MP Shot 2
The updated parallax test (right) shows how the new mountain layouts on the cards react with the animated camera in Nuke. I may also try creating "mountain" shapes in Maya with soft select and importing the .fbx into Nuke to project on. However, the actual shot 2 camera does not move much, so the Maya aspect may not be necessary.
I also learned that it is possible to update the .PSD file of the mountain layers, and I can reload an updated version of the layers in Nuke rather than re-ipmorting the .PSD file every time I make a change.
Updated Parallax Test
Pyro - Fire AOV
Pyro - Smoke AOV
Pyro AOV Node Graph
Pyro FX - Merged
Imogen sent me an .exr sequence of a test pyro effect. I brought it into Nuke to experiment with and shuffle out the pyro's AOVs in case they needed adjusting for our final pyro effect. Lastly, I reworked the HDRi for shot 2 creating a mountain-like base for the bottom half rather than having the previous light grey color on the bottom half. I also created an HDRi for shot 4!
Updated HDRi - Shot 2
Updated HDRi - Shot 4