FXWars! TORNADO Dutchman, F4, FREEFORM

#1

Hi there! I think it’s time for another FXWar, as I had so much fun on “Big Freeze” and “Close Encounters” a while ago! Instead of making a complete movie with storyline and several effects-shots, I’ll this time concentrate on one shot, of about 10 seconds in length. In the beginning I was planning to hire a HD-cam and shoot it freehand (“Cloverfield”-/“Children of Men”-style) but because of the pain on roto, I’ll do it by stitching together pictures of the location (having only a 2D camera move).

My tornado scene will take place on ‘het Spui’ in the centre of The Hague (30 minutes from Amsterdam). If you’re interested, here you can see the spot on Google Maps. As I live 90 seconds walking from that place, it will be easy to take reference from etc.

The tornado will lift a driving tram from the ground, throwing it to a building (the cityhall - designed by Richard Meier), after which it will crash down on the ground, near the camera. To get some dynamic lighting-effects etc, the electricity cables above the tram will also break and be draged into the tornado.

I made a rough sketch in 3dsmax: some basic animation- and camera blocking, which you can see on Youtube:


previz tornado scene @ Youtube

Updates soon!
-Gijs

#2

Looks like a good location to me. Good idea too to save yourself some work by doing 2d pictures. It doesnt look like your youtube link is there. Perhaps you forgot to paste it?

#3

Thanks for your comment. :slight_smile: Indeed I’m quite confident about the choice of doing this using 2D-plates, as it still can look very dynamic with some camera-shake on it! I’m only now thinking about what wuold be the most effective workflow (if I should render it out of
3dsmax with allready a moving camera in it, or to render only the tornado and do the cameramovement in After Effects/Fusion)

My Youtube-previz was not yet available when posting the first post, but now it is (see above). I’d like to hear what you guys think of it!

There’s going on so much cool stuff in this forum, mainly some very good looking animatics! Inspiring! :slight_smile:

#4

Hey, looking cool! Good idea with the images planes. Do you find it difficult sorting out the perspective at all?

#5

Tris3D, thanks for the nice comment! Setting up my image planes like this was just a quick method to replace the proxy low-res models I had before. I have now a tripod with me, so I can take some nice hi-res plates (photos and some reference video).

I have been thinking about what my most effective workflow would be, and I decided that I’ll first stitch/retouch my plate-pictures in Photoshop. Then I’ll camera-map them on some low-res 3dsmax models and make the complete scene with tornado. Next to rendering in passes, I’ll also export the camera 3D-data, so I can later on place some extra models/footage in Fusion. This will be my first real ‘production’ in Fusion: looking forward to it!

This week I’ll be working hard on this during the nights, so ‘updates soon’!

#6

So: time for an update! Last afternoon, coming back from work (@ Amsterdam), I was listening to the amazing FXGuide-Podcast of ‘Dark Knight’, which is so incredibly inspiring, that I reall couldn’t stop myself from getting on with this challenge! :twisted:

Last friday I finally picked up my photocamera and videocamera and went to ‘the location’ to shoot the plates. This night I’ve been experimenting with some photostiching-software, and I concluded that ‘Hugin’ together with ‘AutoPano’ and ‘Enblend/Enfuse’, which are all open source, can give some pretty nice results! They even support HDR! I was planning to stich all photo’s together by hand (30+ 3K photo’s), but it seems this is a better solution. :wink:

Examples of the first tests:

This building below is the library, where the tram will be trown into. If you watch the previz that I posted before, you can see how these two pictures are oriented in the scene.

Tomorrow I’ll go to watch ‘Wall-E’ (finally! looking forward to it!) but I’ll soon get started on the real stitching and retouching.

Do you guys think this is going well? I think this challenge is really a big challenge: some big very good other entrants allready!

Greetings!

#7

Hey this is looking great! Cant wait to see the trickery at work! Keep going mate! Hope you enjoy wall e, its great! I saw darknight yesterday too! Amazing film.

#8

Thanks for the nice comment, Tristan! I also hope to arrive in the ´trickery´ part soon, to get finally some exiting results! :slight_smile: I enjoyed ‘Wall-E’ very good last week! Especially the first 20 minutes were the most enjoyable of the past… long time! I saw ‘Dark Knight’ two weeks ago allready on the big screen (one of the biggest screens of the Benelux), but it was no IMAX. As I read very positive reviews on the IMAX-version, I’m probably going to see it another time.

I was not very productive on this project during the past days, but tonight I experimented a bit on my workflow. I did a quick test in Fusion and Nuke.

The principle of my workflow:

Hugin
I build up the final panorama-image

Photoshop
I clean/retouch this image

3dsmax
I build a simple sphere in with the panorama-picture projected on it
I create the in that scene
I create the camera-animation
I render out the tornado in various passes.

Fusion / Nuke
I create (a similar) simple sphere, and map the panorama-picture on it
I map moving plates (walking people etc) also on the sphere
I import the camera-movement from 3dsmax
I composit the tornado-plate on top of the camera-output
I finish the shot

What do you guys think of that? I think it would be quite efficient!

I’m know Fusion quite well (while I didn’t really use it ‘in production’ yet: only allot of testing) and I do know Nuke only basic. It could be interesting to get to know Nuke better, as it’s a seriously amazing application (very fast and powerfull) but it might be more logical to just use Fusion, with which I’m far more comfortable. Any of you got recomendations?

After all these tests and such, I think I’m quite ready for the ‘real stuff’! Some exiting updates are on the road! :bounce:

#9

Looking great man. That workflow is way over my head. I’m having problems getting started with the particle system haha. Sounds complicated though. Good luck, I cant wait to see how this progresses. As far as the walking people goes how will you do that? Will they be projected onto the sphere too? If so wont that make them look distorted when the camera moves?

#10

Dragons0088, thanks for your kind reply. My workflow might seem a bit complicated, but in the end it’s just to have maximum control in my compositing-application. Of course I could also place the video-plates (walking people) in my 3dsmax scene, but it’s more interesting to place them later on (in the compositing stage) to be able to see where the composition could need some more movement. As I can also put the (still) panorama-plates into the compositing application, I don’t need to do any frame-by-frame roto, but I can use still masks. That makes the process easier and more controllable for the end-product. :slight_smile: I only project the stuff on the sphere to be able to use the 360-degrees panorama in an effective way: if I set the perspective-parameters right, there won’t be any spherical-distortion on the images.

At the moment I’m enjoying my holiday, so I don’t have my CG-workstation with me at the time. Next week (after the deadline) I’ll be continuing on this project, as I really want to finish it! (as a nice piece for my showreel). Only I won’t be in for the competition anymore… :hmm:

Everyone the best luck on finishing their project! This competition has some very promising results already! :slight_smile:

#11

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