Once again my dear friends, the time has come to put out a new demo reel. The year at Teesside University is behind me and it is time to fill out job applications. Or so I’ve been told anyway.

This new reel is mostly a restructuring of old work, though there might be one or two new shots in there. I’ve also found some new music and created nice, new opening/closing graphics to give the reel a prettier feel than the rather crappy simple May demo reel. Here’s hoping someone out there will like it. Fingers crossed!

For CV, shot list and my all new dedicated demo reel page, head over to reel.thimic.net.

So here is the result of the past months work, from idea to storyboard, previs to film shoot, modeling to compositing. Hope it isn’t entirely hopeless

So it’s been a while a few weeks a couple of months. First there was Easter, then there was intensive work to finish the final year project and write a good report, then Studio Practice & Business had its turn, and suddenly and without quite knowing how I got there, two months had just vanished.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on the AVE ICA, merely that I’ve been busy to the point of not finding time to keep the blog as up to date as I probably should have.

Starting with the week leading up to the Easter holidays, Andreas Nor was kind enough to help me record foley sounds in the Phoenix building. The week after, home in Norway for a couple of weeks, I began building the 3D scene. At this stage I had ruled out Vue as it caused too many new problems that needed solving. Instead, I opted for 3ds max, using Mental Ray as the render engine.

During the easter holidays I created the first version of my 3D tree and tracked all five shots in PFTrack.

As I had only used PFTrack once before several months ago, I had to relearn a fair few things, but the tracks went well and I feel they ended up being pretty solid. Having created the tree and the tracks, I actually began rendering a few shots and performed some test comps.

I wasn’t exactly satisfied, but before I had time to make any changes, Easter was over and I returned to the uni merely five days before the final year project was to be handed in. This forced me to stop working on the AVE project for a while and as I later got an extension on the final year project, two weeks went by without any updates to the AVE ICA.

After delivering the final year project on 26 April I once again returned to the AVE project. During the for lack of a better word “break”, I had decided that the scene I made originally was too heavy, too boring, badly lit and lacking in detail. Starting up again, I therefore chucked nearly everything in the scene. The branches, the lighting and half the textures were some of the things I got rid of.  From there, I started with a tree from seek.autodesk.com, rotated it on its side, added moss and plants and tried to make it look more detail-rich.

Having now created one branch, I converted it to a Mental Ray render proxy and made ten instances in 3ds max. From there I started populating the big tree. Using instanced render proxies greatly sped up the viewport and reduced memory use, though it had the obvious drawback of looking repetitive. In hindsight, I probably should have made a few variations, but time didn’t allow.

As soon as I was reasonably happy with the finished tree, rendering begun. The shots were quite heavy to render due to light spilling through a lot of leaves. With rendering settings dialled lower that what I wished for, only a few days left until the deadline on 7 April and still without finished renders, I had to ask for an extension in AVE as well. By the time the renders actually finished, the deadlines in Studio Practice & Business were closing in fast and once again I had to take an unwanted break from AVE.

In the end, the last Studio Practice & Business deadline was late on a Tuesday and the AVE deadline was set for the following Friday. This effectively meant that I had less than three days to key and composite five shots, solve any unforeseen problems, cut the project together, write a report  and hand in the assignment before 4pm on Friday. I delivered 3:50pm.

Having finished I think the project turned out quite well. Sure, the pulled keys are imperfect in places, the leaves aren’t moving due to Mental Ray render proxy issues and the render and contact shadows/lighting could have been improved in places, but overall it could definitely have been worse. I also gained quite a few skills during the project, such as more advanced use of PFTrack, better understanding of roto and comp, and I used the 3D tools in Nuke for the first time.

Next and probably last post regarding the AVE ICA will contain the finished piece.

Another week has come and gone – way to quickly as usual. This week I’ve been looking at music for the scene, booked a foley audio recording session in the studio, experimented with keyers and possible looks and started match moving.

Here are the music sources I’ve investigated and pros and cons:

opuzz.com university catalogue

incompetech.com

istockaudio.com

mobygratis.com

www.unippm.se

Soundtrack Pro

As eagle eyed readers might tell from the image in the beginning of the post and the video directly above, I’ve started keying the footage and trying different looks for the “apple” the actor is holding. As I didn’t feel quite up to scratch on the advanced keyers in Nuke, I asked Steven in my AVE class for some help and he showed me the basics of the IBK keyer and Primatte. Thanks Steven The key here isn’t finished yet. There is an edge to get rid of and one tracking marker left that needs some painting out. While doing this I ran into a problem where Nuke would crash every few frames for some unknown reason which made the work rather tiresome, but fortunately I found a solution for it in the end. The glow on the “apple” is a tad extreme, might reduce it by a bunch and remove the volume rays.

I’ve also started matchmoving this week and as it’s been a while, I’ve once again forgotten a thing or two about PFTrack. Might look at some of my fxphd classes to freshen my memory or be as radical as to actually try Boujou. Crazy, I know!

This week I’ve delved further into Vue, figured out how to undistort and redistort my plates properly in NukeX and chosen and cut together the takes I’ll be using for the final scene. The cut can be seen below.

To be able to get a good 3D track and also making the CG environment look correct, it is important to undistort the plate before tracking and redistort the CG plate before compositing. As the camera lens is curved and the image rectangular, all lenses produce distortion where what in reality are straight lines become curved to some degree. The amount of distortion varies with the field of view of the lens and also focus if the lens is breathing while focusing.

To figure out the amount of distortion I shot a lens grid for each and every one of the shots in the scene, making sure the lens properties were exactly the same as when filming the corresponding shot. This way, I was able to use the new LensDistortion node in NukeX to analyse the grid and produce a slightly larger, undistorted image; basically by pulling at the corners. I then plugged the actual plate into the node, undistorting the plate itself.

Now that this is done, I can render the undistorted plate and get a better 3D track in PFTrack. This undistorted plate is also the one I’ll be using as a background image in 3d studio max to match my CG environment to the plate. Then, when the CG is rendered, I’ll use the LensDistortion node in NukeX in reverse to distort the CG render; thus shrinking the CG down to the right size and making it look more believable due to slightly curved lines.

It must be noted that in this case, the distortion is relatively insignificant, meaning I could probably do the shot without bothering about it. However, as the distortion can be a lot worse, I feel it is good to get into the habit of doing the thing properly so I know how to do it in the future.

As mentioned in my last post, I shot the footage for my AVE ICA this past Wednesday. That was the plan anyway. Turned out we overshot on time with a lot and only got three out of five shots before the day was over. Might have been the workshop we had on lighting a couple of weeks ago. We seemed to spend an awful amount of time on it. Whether the lighting actually is any good I’ll leave for others to decide. Fortunately, Mark was very kind to me and freed up the Thursday so we could leave everything as it was and come back and finish the next day.

Apart from taking a very long time the shoot went smoothly enough. I think I got all the measurements I needed, I shot lens distortion grids for every shot and photographed the settings on the lens after every shot for good measure.

A big thanks to Thomas Utbjoa who agreed to be the actor and all the other guys who took a couple of days off to help me out.

After the shoot, I keyed and tracked the first shot and must say I am reasonably happy with the result. Next up is creating the scene in 3D which needs to be finished by  26 February if I wish to keep on schedule.

Not much to report in AVE this week. After finishing the presentation I booked the green screen stage so I can shoot the footage I need for the ICA. The shoot will be on Wednesday this week. I’ve also found an actor.

To prepare for the shot I’ll have to print some A3 size lens distortion grids today or tomorrow. The reason for the A3 size is that the grid needs to fill the frame and that a smaller size will have to be too close to the camera to keep it in focus.

As I had some slight issues with sharpness on my test shoot, I want to spend half an hour shooting a test scene and doing a quick keying test to make sure the footage is nice and soft.

Given that everything goes according to plan on Wednesday I’ll be on schedule with the project. Next up will be creating the final environment, produce good keys for the shots and matchmove them.

Christmas is long gone and I’m back in Middlesbrough after a refreshing break. The first thing I had to focus on when I got back was to create a presentation for Advanced Visual Effects where we were to present a storyboard, previs, schedule and a couple of other things regarding the ICA. As I still didn’t have a previs because of work on my Practical Project, this became my main priority.

This is the first project I’m doing which combines CG and live action, green screen removal and 3D tracking. Because of this, I decided to make life a little more difficult for myself than was strictly required by doing all aspects of the work I’m supposed to do in the final shots right in the previs. I did this in the hope that I would gain experience which might help me when doing the real effects shots later.

Basically, I tracked all five shots in PFTrack, modelled and rendered a fairly simple scene in 3D Studio Max, quickly keyed the footage and composited it together using Nuke. As this is just a previs there is still a ton of errors and problems with almost everything. I have continuity errors, issues of scale, existence of contact lighting and shadows in odd places, lack of contact lighting and shadows in others, horrible keying/roto, no colour and grain consistency between shots and so on and so forth. There are also two different actors as I was shooting on two separate days and didn’t have the same people available.

The process of creating the previs took about three days and in hindsight I’m very glad I did it. As a result I will at least do these things differently when creating the final piece:

This Thursday I headed over to the green screen studio in the Phoenix building to finish my test shooting for the Advanced Visual Effects ICA. The person I used as an actor on the first shoot couldn’t be there, so I’ll have two actors playing the same role in my previs.

This doesn’t matter much as the previs is meant for working out camera angles, timing, technical solutions, etc. and isn’t much about the performance. This time around I used Erlend which I might ask to be in the final shoot as well.

While on the shoot, I forgot to shoot test charts for lens distortion so I’ve booked an hour in the studio this Monday to get those. I’ve noted down focal lengths on all of the shots so it shouldn’t take long. Getting test charts for the test shoot might not be that important, but I’ve never tried undistorting footage in order to get a better track and better results in compositing with CG elements before so thought I’d try.

Here are some reference images I’ve gathered.

What I think I’ll do is to create a few trees in 3D, or rather just one tree and create some variations for it. Somewhere between six and nine trees should be enough. In the foreground I’ll use the 3D trees. Further back I’ll either find images of trees or render my 3D trees to 2D images and stick them on cards in 3D space. In the far background I’ll use a matte painting of some sort, mapped to the inside of a 3D cylinder or sphere. Hopefully, that should be enough to create an illusion of depth and keep the amount of work manageable.

What worries me most at the moment is the creation of the leaves. I think I’ll make some in 3D and use them sparingly in the foreground. Further back I’m hoping the depth of field will blur them quite a lot, so I’m thinking of either creating random particle clusters of them in 3D without actually sticking them on branches or alternatively extract them from images and stick those up on planes in 3D space.

I write this on a Sunday and I’ll be leaving Teesside early Wednesday to go home to Norway for the holidays. This, therefore, is likely be my last blog post for a while, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be working on the ICA. As I’ve been spending most of my time on Practical Project 60 and Studio Practice & Business lately, I’m planning on finishing most of the AVE previs and presentation over the holidays.

After the holidays I’m planning on approaching the Teesside Drama Society to see whether I can get an actor for my shot from there. If that falls through, I’ll probably use Erlend as mentioned earlier. As soon as I have an actor, I’ll book another shoot in the green screen studio to get that out of the way as soon as possible.

I had the presentation in Studio Practice & Business this Wednesday. As I don’t particularly enjoy being the centre of attention, holding presentations isn’t exactly a favourite of mine, though I believe it went reasonably well.

You can download the presentation as a QuickTime file or as a PDF below.

Is visual effects a growing or a declining industry and how has this changed over the past 5-10 years?

It’s hard to say. In the past 18 months a lot of places have closed. Especially smaller facilities. The economic situation has hit the US very strongly and some big long term providers have fallen over as well. I think the industry is consolidating. Less companies, stronger large players.

Which cities worldwide would you consider to be the most important from a visual effects point of view today compared to 5-10 years ago?

I can only speak about large budget film VFX. But in that sector it has always been LA, San Francisco and in the past 10 years London. Sydney and Vancouver are secondary players, Wellington is the exception but really there is only one big studio there. Wellington, Sydney and Vancouver (and a little bit Toronto) have become more important. I know that Mumbai and Shanghai are also beginning to feature in their own market but they are not very significant in Hollywood vfx yet.

On average how many visual effects shots would be normal in a film today and how does that compare to 5-10 years ago?

Its hard to make an accurate estimate as there is no ‘normal’. I will say that When Star Wars Episode 1 was done I think they did over 1000 shots and that was a milestone. Now films like Avatar and some of the others have well over 2000. Lucas and ILM really lead the way on large number of shots and big sequences, they have always had the highest shot counts in the past.

Roughly how many artists are employed by each of the bigger visual effects facilities?

This is hard to discuss. People don’t like publishing these figures for a lot of reasons. I cannot accurately answer. I know that Disney is probably still the biggest or Sony, as they have a feature animation dept, visual effects dept and a few other things all in one place. Sony and SPI and Sony Feature Animation together must be over 1000. Very few places are anywhere near that. Pixar is very big as is Rhythm & Hues.

I believe I heard that visual effects facilities nowadays are more involved in the pre-production process and that’s how the post-production on some films are finished in a very short amount of time. Is this the case and do you think we’ll see more or less of it in the future?

Large key players are involved in really groundbreaking stuff. But many facilities still just get to bid after the fact. Its easy for a PR to talk about how they managed to get work done because of this, but often this is actually just marketing after the fact. Vfx companies have mainly gotten better at doing what they do. This means that they can do more work faster. As someone involved in making the effects, the real situation is just the people are having to work faster and harder to more unrealistic deadlines to appease the studios.

Has the price drop on hardware/software over the past few years resulted in a more fragmented industry? Can for instance a small facility with only a handful artists specialise in one particular field and actually compete with much bigger facilities for shots within that field?

In the high end I do not believe so. I think this has has a big impact on smaller facilities and those servicing the motion graphics and broadcast market and the smaller commercial markets. For large VFX facilities the main cost is always staff. Software and hardware fluctuations are not that important. Most large facilities, if they specialise at all, most don’t, do so because they have invested money in R&D and building pipelines that are better at one thing than another and then can outdo someone else on a specific thing, i.e. water or characters. Most big places need the range of work a large sequence or show will bring to them and cannot afford to be seen as a specialist house.

On a related note, would you agree that while bigger facilities to a larger extent bid on whole films in the past, it is more common these days that studios divide work between many facilities, big or small?

It is becoming more common to see some places bid on whole films. Previously only ILM and maybe some of the other LA houses could take a whole large 600+ shot show. Now a lot more can but it is always hard for anyone. Still there are only maybe 5-6 places in the world that can carry 1000 shots. Most of the big shows of recent times, Harry Potter or 2012 or whatever, still use multiple vendors.

Are there any differences to how the visual effects facilities operates in the UK compared to other countries?

The only difference I see is in the labour laws. UK companies don’t pay overtime or time-and-half or whatever. They still only pay pro rata for a day or do Time Off In Lieu (TOIL). Some US places have a unionised/guild approach and have better worker entitlements. Apart from that it seems the same.

In terms of locations, where do you believe it will be easiest to find work in the next year or two?

I think right now it’s London. It will stay that way till at least 2012 when some of the big shows are done. In two years the tax laws will swing back and maybe things will change again. I think things will either shift back to California by 2012-2013.

Are the traditional positions such as roto artist, matchmover and runner still the most normal way of getting a first job in the industry?

In a big studio yes. Unless you are coming in to do R&D programming. In smaller places there is always a chance to skip that phase.

What, in your opinion, will the industry look like in a couple of years (will stereoscopic still be big, will we still be shooting on film or just digital etc.)?

I have no idea. I hope stereo is just a phase that will go away. It’s not doing much good for film making. Chances are Avatar will come out and make a billion dollars and then the Studios will want everything in Stereo for a few years until the public gets bored of it. In my opinion its a gimmick that lets people make bad films because it is flashy. I know Disney are really big behind stereo and that a lot of weak films will get made just because they are going to be stereo. It was a fad in the 50′s when they invented it and it is a fad now. I think good stories and good ideas never go out of fashion but they get overshadowed by the ‘next big thing’. That is what is happening now.

Film is long since past its used by date. Digital is the way forward. Everything is scanned and run through DI now. Digital Acquisition is totally up to the task but the DOPs and Directors are mainly in the 40s or older and come from a time when shooting on real film was more prestigious so they insist on it. So that will shift sooner or later.

I like studio films so I hope they never go away. 5-10 years ago everyone was saying that some kid with a DV cam would be the next Spielberg and we would all be watching their films by now. It hasn’t happened yet. Mainly because making a good film is hard. Everyone thinks that they can do better but the proof is on Youtube, Vimeo and a million other sites…. Lots of one trick pony shows and no really good dramas.

Good drama is really hard to make and most people just do not have the skills or the understanding. It has nothing to do with technology or budgets. It’s all about the skill and hard work of the people doing it.

I must say I am truly grateful to the person who answered my questions. From having very little information due to the secretive nature of the industry, I now feel I have the information I need to put together a decent presentation.

This Monday, Andreas and I went to the green screen studio in the Phoenix building to shoot some tests for our projects. This was basically to work out setups and camera angles before we do the real thing. We will be using the footage to do some quick keying, tracking, compositing and maybe 3D to see what works and what needs to be changed. In theory, this will make for a quicker shoot and less problems when we come back for the main shoot later. Andreas beat me to booking an appointment, so I only had 3 hours at the end of the day in which to do my shots. As a result I didn’t quite finish and need to go back to get the last two.

As I’m currently working on a short film over at fxphd.com, the “pickup shoot” will probably have to wait for a week or two. At the moment I’m thinking of the 10th of December. I will ask Mark about it on Monday.

As soon as I have all the test shots, the plan is to create a simple version of the 3D environment for the scene, track and composite Bjørne, the guy nice enough to be my test actor, into the scene and use that as a previs which is to be presented the first week back at the uni after Christmas.

After Bjørne helped me come up with a new idea for my AVE ICA (Advanced Visual Effects In Course Assessment, quite a mouthful) I’ve been meaning to create a storyboard so I can start test-shooting in the sound stage. It’s been a busy week and once again I’ve worked into the wee hours, but finally draft 1 is finished.

As I’m not very comfortable with drawing, the storyboard was created by doing some quick modelling in 3ds max and using the Max rig. I tried different camera positions/angles/FOVs trying to frame the story. When finished, I asked Andreas for some advice and we went through the shots I’d made together, changing some.

High-res storyboard frames below:

In this project I will explore methods and techniques used to produce digital visual effects shots. By using said techniques I will produce one or more visual effects shots that will become part of my show reel. I will use the research from my ongoing Portfolio module to figure out the skill set visual effects facilities are looking for in a graduate student, and will come up with ideas for shots based on the results.

From what I have gathered from the Portfolio research so far, most entry level jobs in the visual effects industry, at least jobs in the bigger facilities, basically boil down to tree positions: Rotoscope artist, Matchmover and Runner/Assistant. As I don’t want to start as a runner, I should make sure I incorporate rotoscoping/keying and matchmoving, both 2D and 3D, in at least some shots. In addition I would like to look closer at a few other techniques, such as camera projection, 2.5D and colour grading.

At this time, I haven’t yet decided on what shots to do, but I have a few ideas I will be discussing with my supervisor. These include a crowd duplication shot, a helicopter crash shot I already have footage for, compositing one or multiple 3D airships, space ships or hot air ballons over a city skyline, your basic car-hits-person-shot where I also already have some footage, doing set extensions and maybe have a go at bullet time/freezing time.

To make things easier for both my supervisor and me, I will carefully consider ethics and the limitations of the university equipment when I’m coming up with ideas for shots. In other words, on the ethics side of things there should be only Teesside University student actors, no child actors, no stunt men and generally no stepping on anybody’s toes. When it comes to equipment limitations I should stay away from actors running in front of the green screen given the limited space, no helicopter shots or outdoor crane shots and no jumping from great heights while the camera looks on from below if a green screen background is needed.

Just read the ICA. Looks good except the part about “must use XSI”. Hoping 3ds max or Maya can be used as well as I’ve never even set foot in XSI-land.

Other than that, I’m bouncing ideas around at the moment. Thinking of doing a crack opening in a glacier and have someone fall in or almost fall in. Another idea I got right this very minute (why does it has to be past midnight for me to get ideas?) is a guy playing basket ball in a parking lot or similar. Suddenly, the ball falls right through the asphalt like the ground was made of paper. The hole is pitch black and is getting bigger as the paper/asphalt continues to tear… Not sure whether that made any sense whatsoever, but at least I’ve written it down now

Oh, and I have to ask Simon or Chris whether it is possible to use Nuke for compositing as it isn’t listed in the ICA.

Another course module I have this year is called Practical Project 60. In this module, students are supposed to come up with their own project where they can work on whatever they want.

As I am hoping to get into the visual effects industry, I’m planning on creating one or more visual effects shots to put on my showreel.

This far, I have mostly thought about techniques I wish to learn or use during the project:

Having recently acquired a digital SLR, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around concepts such as hdri, tone mapping and photo stitching lately. So far, I’ve been climbing the local hill a couple of times to get some footage to play with. I’m still at the stage where I’m experimenting with applications and workflows, but I liked how these two turned out.

At long last, the project is almost over. Less than two days away as of this writing. After delivering the final film a couple of weeks ago, I’ve spent my time relaxing, creating a short “making of” with the rest of Green Spill, writing stuff on this blog and a self assessment document. The self assessment document isn’t quite finished yet. I’ve written most of it in short form which I suspect only I would understand, so I have a feeling I should go back and do a rewrite or three. Also yet to be done is to update the DVD cover and label. We need one version for the “making of” we’re handing in on wednesday, and another version for the team: The version destined to collect dust on a shelf somewhere, but which will be taken out and looked at every few years. The very special Green Spill team member version. With any luck, I’ll be on that right after finishing this post, and the only thing I’ll have to worry about tomorrow is straightening out the self assessment document to something resembling the language of english.

This being the last post I write about the Student Film Project at Noroff, 2009 (at least I think it is), I guess the time has come for looking back and reflecting upon the last five months of work. Don’t worry, I’ll be quick. Or as quick as I can be. Which can be pretty slow sometimes, but I digress.

Looking back, it has certainly been an interesting five months. We’ve gone back and fourth on story, had our moments of inspiration and desperation, experienced conflict and unity and last, but not least created a film!

The film itself turned out OK, though I certainly think there is room for improvement. Story, continuity, animation, graphics, simulations, compositing and editing spring to mind as points where we could have improved given more time or by making better use of the time given. Having worked on the film for five months and knowing about every fault from the tiniest to the most humongous, I might just be extremely fed up though

On the whole, I’m one experience richer what film making is concerned, have learned a lot, both about team work, planning and skills, and though it has been trying at times, it’s an experience I wouldn’t be without. I think all there is left is to thank my team mates, Aleksander, Andreas and Jamie and wish them, my teacher, Paul, and the rest of 3D Film Production in Oslo a very happy holiday

Now onto those DVD-covers…

Having finished rendering and vfx shots, and with a little more than a week to deadline, compositing was next on the list. Beforehand, I had estimated compositing would take a day or two. I had already test comped nearly one third of the shots and thought I could use those as templates for the rest. The only thing I hadn’t done before in any shot was thinking about the suns position and the movement of the clouds.

When applying math however, it turned out I would have on average 11 minutes to complete a shot, rendering time included, if I were to do all shots in one day and have time to eat and sleep too. Considering I would have to do some rotoscoping on most shots, and the longer shots could take up to 12 minutes to render, I set my aim to finishing in four days in stead. This would give me approximately 45 minutes per shot.

The process went fine, though it was rather tedious and repetitive. While working on the first few shots, I realized the ground had a quite homogenous yellow colour that looked pretty boring. Seeking to resolve this, I thought I’d introduce cloud shadows on the ground to break things up a bit. Shadows moving across the landscape would also slightly liven up the background. I had seen Gareth Edwards do this on Attila the Hun and thought it had a nice effect. Unlike Edwards however, I didn’t have the render passes and with no time left for going back into 3ds max, I decided to fake some. My approach was to use the noise map in Nuke combined with a corner pin to make the far away shadows appear smaller than those closer to the camera. This worked well as long as everything stayed nice and flat, but the effect was ruined if something that wasn’t flat and level with the ground entered the frame. Such as a prop or a character. As a fix, I had paint out the noise map where it happened to intersect with a character or prop. I thought nothing of it for the first 10 shots or so, but then realized there were 54 more shots to rotoscope in the same way. Luckily, I soon discovered a better way that worked most of the time while watching Greg Astles talk about Nuke on fxguidetv #059. By using the ZBlur (Depth Of Field) tool in an unconventional way and leaving the Focus Plane feature on, I could zoom in on a particular “slice” of the z-depth map I had already rendered and get a decent matte from it. I later found the ZSlice tool which I guess does the same thing, only simpler to use.

I ended up compositing the film in four days, though I had one day off in between, and am reasonably happy with most of the shots. Some shots have a look that is a little too different from the rest, but I really didn’t have that much time to stop and reflect when compositing 16 shots a day.

With less than three weeks left of the project, animation was finished to a point where I could start adding fire and smoke to finished shots. Having used FumeFX in the past, it became the natural choice now.

I anticipated this to be a fairly simple task, but didn’t have to work long before it became clear that I had greatly overestimated the ability of 3ds max plugins to work properly together. Having successfully used FumeFX with V-Ray before, it never occurred to me that one tiny change would throw the whole thing off balance. It did though. As it turns out, FumeFX works perfectly with V-Ray as long as you don’t use the V-Ray daylight system. Light from the V-Ray daylight system is almost infinitely brighter than normal lighting in 3ds max, and the only thing keeping the images from turning out simply white is the VRayPhysicalCam which dials the brightness back down again. As to why the daylight system behaves in this peculiar way, I have no idea. The problem surfaces when you wish to put a flame from FumeFX in this environment. FumeFX uses normal brightness values for its flames, and when the VRayPhysicalCam reduces the brightness by a factor of a thousand or so, the FumeFX flame is simply too weak to register in comparison and ends up invisible. I spent a day or two, looking for a solution, but didn’t find one and was left with two choices: Getting rid of the daylight system, relight the scene and scrap 30-40 shots already rendered, or render the FumeFX elements alone and composite them over the rendered shots afterwards. Being pressed for time, the compositing route was the only option if we were to finish on time. There are a fair few advantages to this, such as being able to adjust the brightness and colour of the FumeFX elements without affecting the rest of the image and being able to adjust fire and smoke separately, but it also comes at a prize as you no longer get out of the box integrated smoke shadows. The case with the V-Ray daylight system this is particularly irksome as FumeFX doesn’t even see the sun as a light source for generating shadows. My solution was to create a Direct light in the same position as the sun and using that instead, but it didn’t always yield the best results.

Having decided on a workflow, I started work and the rest of the process was fortunately pretty straight forward. I finished the FumeFX shots in a little more than a week while rendering and compositing other shots at the same time. Having finished, it was time to proceed to the final compositing.