Author: Minghan Lyu

Progress Report on Personal Project 02

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 1st May 2024
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This post is about 1: more fluid details and tweaking of renderer settings. 2: confirmation of final storyboards. 3: filming of the artwork and preliminary editing (including sound)

In terms of fluid detail, I continued to tweak the emissive source density, fluid viscosity, and surface tension of the water body; I still don’t actually have specific tunneling parameters at this point, but the tweaks to these nodes are permanent, and I can import them directly for use in a new model.

And I added two data saving nodes after solving, so I don’t need to ask the computer to recalculate every time, which saves a lot of time!

After I learnt about the KARMA renderer, I did an initial render of the scene, I added a darker EXR sky file to the background to for the dimness of the tunnel. Then I thought the result was still good at this point! But I realised later that I was too happy too soon, and every time I solved one problem, two new ones popped up!

Doesn’t the right side look good! Actually, the big trouble is yet to come!

What comes next is the most important thing, imagine if you had to blend a Houdini render with a formal scene?

1: Use the Karma renderer to render the parts of the body of water and mask out the tunnels, as it’s very cumbersome and ineffective to deal with in NUKE.
2: Export the water as a separate ABC file then import it into Maya for rendering
3: Direct rendering, not shooting the real scene later, using green screen to shoot the characters and composite them into the CG scene.

After thinking about it and trying it out, the only possible ways to handle it were 1 and 3, but at this point I had already finished drawing the storyboards as well as preparing for the shoot, so I ruled 3 out.
But there is a big problem in option 1, if I exclude the wall of the tunnel from the rendering, with the same time I have to not show the water behind the wall?

The most likely solution I tried was to split the water (blood), the wall and the emission source into three different Geo’s with different render numbers for them, but it still failed!

Then I asked Alwin (so reliable!) , he didn’t know either at first, but he started out by saying that Houdini’s default Mantra renderer could separate the two layers and render them very quickly, which I found out it could be done, but by this time I had already prepared the render in Karma and Alwin was happy to help, so he called to a friend of his from a VFX company and he finally found a solution with it! (It’s really hard to solve, you can’t even find examples in the official answer site)

Here’s what it looks like when it’s all settled, it’s so convenient! And you only need to add one node and write a command!

Here are the solutions

I also completed all the shoots this time and here are some images from the shoot. And since I needed to make a model of the tunnel exactly like the scene, I shot an extra video for 3D tracking.

I have to say that the Canon 6D MARK II performs really well in dark environments, and there is no excessive noise at all.

This video below is my initial edited work, and it’s already just under a minute long

Advanced & Experimental

Progress Report on Personal Project 01

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 1st May 2024
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Basic Information of this project

Project name: Blood Flood

Purpose: The work uses exaggeration and association to present a series of states of human beings after taking drugs, and the purpose of the work is to exhort human beings not to take drugs.

Critical Thinking: Reflection on contemporary human and some national policy attitudes towards drug use by people of all ages; reflection on the place of “opioids” and “secondary drugs” in society and their relationship to human society.

The name of this project is Blood Flood, a short public service film, or advert, about drug rehabilitation. At the beginning when I decided on the theme, I was going to create 4 short stories to express the theme, but Klaus said it would be too long and the audience wouldn’t know the point you are trying to make, so I shortened the story to one clip, here is the storyboard of my initial design.

Since I’m going to create this project through Houdini’s fluids, I’ve collected a lot of related tutorials as well as effect videos. My favourite is the following one

I think the water works well in this clip

In terms of workflow, I still use Figma for integration, including my mind map, part of my workflow, and some reference images. And this time I will also record some of the difficulties I encountered in the project in Figma, so that my work will be completely based on this software, which will have a great effect on the speed of work!

Here’s some of my progress in Figma so far (5.1)

Here are some reference images I found in the pre-production for the visual effects

Those four images are the most important reference images for me when I create a body of water in the later stages of the process

In making it, I first tested the particle simulation using the nodes on the Houdini tool rack, and added some 3D model to test the buoyancy (although it wasn’t used later)

Next, after testing, I attempted to make a 3D model of the tunnel myself (at this point I hadn’t decided on the details of the shot, so I made a small tunnel to test the fluid first)

Next, I imported the model into Houdini and added it as a collision body and converted it to a smaller model (which makes the calculations faster), then I added the emission source at the end of the tunnel

But I had problems with the water getting squeezed by the container (tunnel) and thus flowing out of the model, I have since upgraded my tunnel model

After updating my tunnel model the water flowed properly, I omitted a lot of parameters on this side, in fact I spent a lot of time on tweaking them, all parameters need to be adjusted one by one. For example, the particle emission density and the gravity (if gravity is not added to the x-axis, it is difficult for the water to flow from the back into the tunnel).

Collaborative

Progress on Cooperation Project 03

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 1st May 2024
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This post documents the progress of individual and, in part, team projects from 16 February to 29 February.

Post Summary (Personal):
1: Boss character design (including costumes)
2: BOSS weapon design
3: BOSS’s accessory design
4: Skill effects design (part of)

Post Summary (Personal):
1: Design of main character attack animation (COMBO1)
2: Integration of characters and models in the UNITY engine.
3: Scripting and implementation of the lock-on function
4: Scripting of COMBO

PART I: PERSONAL

After the group meeting in this fortnight, my task is also determined, I am responsible for designing all the things of BOSS, but the first thing I have to complete is the production of the model as well as the rendering of the effect, which sounds simple, but in fact, it also needs to work in collaboration with more than one software, the following is the production process, I will be batch by batch for the step by step introduction.

Firstly, is about the character design.

1. The above pictures are my reference for making the BOSS, which comes from the game Elden Ring. Our BOSS is a female mage. In the shoulder design, I plan to add the elements in Figure 3 and 4, of course, we will replace the material with bones, and the characters will be Asian.

2. The first step of making the boss was to use the Character Designer to make a female model, and by using the adjustment function in this software, I combined some male features, such as a little double chin and bigger shoulders, and these adjustments would make her look bigger.

3. Next I exported the character model as an fbx model, imported it into MD, and resized the model.

4. The next thing I do first is the innermost layer of the robe, which I make very long to show the layers of the garment.

5. Then I adjusted the physical properties of the fabric, I adjusted the inner fabric to have a more leathery texture.

6. Next I made the second layer of fabric, which is a half-hung cloak, and in positioning, I used a needle tool to hold part of the cloak in place, otherwise it really kept falling off.

7. Make long scarves to hang on your clothes.

8. Freeze the lower garment and add a needle tool to continue fixing loose parts.

10.

Collaborative

Progress on Cooperation Project 02

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 1st March 2024
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This post documents the progress of individual and, in part, team projects from 1 February to 15 February.

Post Summary (Personal):
1: The design of the protagonist’s weapon
2: Design of the main character’s body jewellery

Post Summary (Team):
1: Main character model design
2: UNITY engine’s script for the basic movement logic of the protagonist.
3：Engine for the implementation of the boss skills
4: Basic movements of the protagonist (standing and dodging)

PART I: PERSONAL

The task assigned to me by the group this fortnight was to complete the design of the protagonist’s weapon, including a high-precision model, as well as to create an accessory for the protagonist to wear around his neck. Through my research, I found that a gourd-like kettle was popular in Loulan in ancient times, and later on, this kind of item was also used in a lot of modern TV dramas as well as film and TV productions, so I used the shape of the gourd in the design of the necklace.

Production Process:
1: First of all, use C4D’s solid fabric simulation to create a chain, so that the chain can absolutely fit on the character’s body, and there will be no bugs!
2: Import the model into ZB, then sculpt the gourd shape and add details
3: Combine the model with the chain and add bulging physical details at the joints

Next up was the sword section, after discussing it in our two group meetings we decided to have the protagonist use a greatsword as his weapon, our first few versions were a tanged sword as well as a fighting sword, but because of our theme of Loulan, both of these weapons were eliminated. So I started to investigate the information and I found out that in ancient Loulan there were a lot of legends about bones as well as relics, so I added some eye patterns on the hilt as well as a shattering effect.

Production process:
1: Create the basic model of the knife in C4D and adjust the scale with the character model.
2: Import into ZB, carve the knife parts in ZB and reduce the surface.
3：After the sculpture is finished, send the low face model to the animation team, and prepare the high face model to replace the animation model.

PART II: GAME DESIGN GROUP

Firstly, there was the UNITY prep work, where my group completed the basic scripting of the game and designed the dynamic scripting and basic logic for character attacks. Then they finished the character’s hook lock animation. For the boss design, they finished the script for the particle tracking of the magic attacks.

Then we designed a complete set of COMBO for the main character’s attack through another group meeting, we have two sets of combos for the main character’s attack, which are A-A-B as well as A-A-A-B, A stands for light attack and B stands for heavy attack, of course, different combos will be animated differently (here I need to do the special effect for the swinging of the sword as well as the soot effect for the feet). Later on, after I communicated with the animation team, we decided to make the last hit of COMBO1 (A-A-B) a jumping strike, so I need to make a downward slash effect

PART III: ANIMATION GROUP

The animation team (which is really only one person) was tasked this time with completing all the designs for the main characters as well as baking them so that they could be smoothly animated. Then she also designed the main character’s stop motion animation as well as the dodging animation (the dodging animation was supposed to be a roll, but roll is too demanding on the model and buggy, so it was changed to dodging to the left and right sides)

Incidentally, on previous discussions, we decided to remove the protagonist’s prosthetic limbs and replace them with bone armour on the arms, the reason for this change was that the prosthetic limbs would have made it difficult to create the clothes, because of the need to go for a lot of breakage effects, so it was changed to the current version, and in the later stages of the colouring process we decided to design a red (or purple) glowing effect on this piece

NUKE

NUKE 2 Weeks Learning Summary and Assignment Progress

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 23rd February 2024
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This fortnight we learnt more about compositing techniques and green screen keying.

PART I: LEARNING

The above picture is about Gizmo node, he and Keylight are different, Gizmo can solve more colour resources, and Keylight is more comprehensive.

The first thing to learn is about luminance, the core of green screen synthesis lies in the use of several nodes in the NUKE, these nodes have a unique role, each play a different speciality, I will explain in detail the special role of these nodes, they and AE’s removal of the green screen of the workflow is not the same at all, the NUKE is more powerful, but also to retain the original image of the movement NUKE is more powerful and can also retain the motion blur of the original image.

The HueColor node is an old friend from our last lesson! In the last assignment, this node worked well with the generic colours of the screen, making objects blend into the environment. And in the greenscreen workflow, it’s a piece of junk, as can be seen in the character’s hair attachment, with all the residue attached to it

In this section, we find that in the green screen processing or colour correction process, it is necessary to DENOISE the picture first, because the noise in the picture can make the solution very inaccurate, because the noise usually carries a triad of primary colours.

Reasonable use of Shuffle for channel separation and re-Merge, you can make a part of the colour transformation, and you can see the picture, ROTO plus multi-channel composite, you can make a part of the colour transformation

Using the Luminance key and adjusting the values to show different colour levels, the EdgeDetact node produces a similar effect (for this concrete wall).

A combination of the above techniques makes the sunlight in the middle of this image huge and magical!

IMPORTANT：

1: IBK stands for Image Based Keyer. It operate with a subtractive or difference methodology. It is one of the best keyers in NUKE for getting detail out of fine hair and severely motion blurred edges.

2: The chromKeyer tends to work better with more evenly lit screens that are more of a saturated color. NUKE’s CHROMA KEYER is that it takes full advantage of any GPU device you have in your system.

3: Keylight: It is a really great keyer over all and does color spill!

4: Primatte is what is called a 3D keyer. It uses a special algorithm that puts the colors into 3D color space and creates a 3d geometric shape to select colors from that space.

5: Utimatte: The advantage is you can get phenomenal keys that can get really fine detail and pull shadows and transparency from the same image.

Keylight is everything! When absorbing the green screen, you can simply set the green colour to 1, so that the system automatically absorbs all the green colour in the screen, and then process the different parts of the original screen RGBA through a Merge node, which will result in this funny image!

The IBK node is a bit more complicated, it requires manual setting of the node content and a step-by-step process to blend the character into the green and then the removal step, which is tedious but the result is ok

Then the real operation, you need to screen for three parts of the processing, so that the result is the most perfect, but also the most controllable, because many times the green screen is not pure green, green screen will also produce shadows, then we need to divide the screen into ALPHA, BG and DISPILL MATTE.

PART II: BASEMENT HOMEWORK PROCESS

Finally learned MAYA’s multi-channel rendering skills, so hard ah, asked three people to learn! But now I’ll be able to make some interesting stuff!

Work with different channels of Shuffle, each Shuffle is processed only a little bit, step by step, don’t rush

Added two LightWrap nodes so that I could make my tank blend in more with the background, and I set it up with a couple of keyframes, otherwise the edges of the tank at the beginning of the video would be affected by that wall error

NUKE

NUKE Compositing and Progress of Work

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 22nd February 2024
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This week we had a refresher on multichannel compositing and put the results in the basement homework, as well as learning some new techniques such as light matching and shadow compositing in what was a very big and difficult lesson!

PART I: LEARNING

1: Do not change the distortion of the original video when solving using the Distortion node, keep a separate file and name all the videos.

3: In multi-channel compositing, don’t create multiple colour nodes to process a single image (e.g. reflections), just use merge through a single grade or other colour processing node.

4: Grade node in the whitepoint value by absorbing the colour of the screen to make that colour data to zero (that is, to absorb a more average brightness of the region, pay attention to do not let the screen change too much) use gain to absorb the colour A can make the overall picture plus colour A (that is, so that the grades of the screen fused into the background) blackppint to absorb the deepest color of the object, lift to absorb the background of the deepest color, lift to absorb the background of the deepest color of the object. blackppint picks up the darkest colour of the object, lift picks up the darker colour of the background, multiply picks up a colour in the background that you want to blend in.

5: ctrl+shift selects the average rgb value in the frame.
6: Merge (divide) is the B channel divided by the A channel rgb value of each
7: After shuffle(id) and connecting to keylight, you can select a 3d part by changing screen colour

8: It’s easy to change the colour in HueCorrect, select the one you want to change and then hold down ctrl and alt to add a dot on the yellow line.
9: Toe node is to match the original screen melanin, lift to absorb the original screen is darker, you can make the image instantly into the screen (the shadow will not be too bright or black)

10: Exposure node can be used to adjust the exposure of the screen
11: Use the Specular node to connect to the glow node and select the colour A can make the colour A produce glow

PART II: PERSONAL WORK

I tried to use C4D for rendering at first, and the two images above are what went through the OCTANE renderer, don’t they look good! But alas, after my 3 hour long gruelling struggle, I failed! Because I found that the OCTANE renderer, no matter how it is set up, cannot render the multi-channel composite EXR file correctly. Sometimes there is no RGBA image, sometimes there is no ALPHA channel, and there are not many colour channel files such as SSS as well as Metallicity in the OCTANE Renderer, and many of the channel names don’t match NUKE.

The above is an example of what I’m talking about, and it’s not hard to see that there are many channels of files missing from the image on the left, many of which are black. But this is not the most important thing, the most important thing is that if I put the left file into the scene, the scene will contain the bottom and back of the tank’s “ground”, which is not what I want, I want to have the shadow of the tank, but without the “ground”.

Despite the failure, I was able to fruitfully import the wall shattering file I made in HOUDINI for the tank firing into NUKE, yay!

I then imported the tank’s ABC file directly into the SCENE node to complete this week’s stage assignment.

Practice

3DEqualizer Learning Notes

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 12th February 2024
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This two weeks we have learnt about this powerful 3D tracking software, which unlike NUKE, allows all tracking to be customised according to the user’s needs, and has a huge advantage when it comes to tracking faces, which is used by many film and TV studios for special effects on the face as well as the body, especially Marvel

3DE Showreel

1: The mode of operation of this software is very different from other software, in the beginning you need to open the file in the menu bar by yourself, this is the first step.

2: First you need to adjust the toolbars in the view in the CONFIG interface, select some commonly used, and close some unwanted, then you need to search for VFX CAMERA DATABASE in Google, and then find the camera used to shoot this video in the website, and manually input the parameters into 3DE, so that in the post operation of lens distortion can be a more accurate data.

3: Next you need to manually create a series of tracking points and track them correctly. Of course, these points don’t always track well, and sometimes you need to go and stop them manually, and then re-track them at the right time

4: Finally you need to open the PARAMETER window, press ALT+C to open it quickly, inside it is a 3D interface generated by tracking the points, the more the number of tracking points, the more accurate this result is, of course, you need to minimise the movement of the points so that the result will be very satisfactory (and the post-production of special effects is more convenient and accurate).

The topmost screen is the degree of movement of the tracking point, the smoother the green line the better

5: The next step is to trace the portrait, we need to create a new level in the left toolbar and name it Head. Doing this will give you more order to the process and you’ll be able to make changes at a later stage

Tips: During tracking (environments as well as people) you can turn on the colour controls and lower or raise the contrast and brightness to make the places you are tracking more distinctive, so that your computer can track these points more quickly.

6: When tracking a character’s face, you need to divide the face into several areas, especially the eyes, it’s best to track all the way around the eyes, and you’d better have more than 8 points from the forehead to the nose, so that when you add 3D items later, they’ll be more accurate (the more the better).

7: The next stage is to create the 3D object, select your OBJ file in the interface, then you need to add an F6 window (3D interface) then move and rotate the position of the object and place it in the right place, close the 3D window when you are done. Then select all the tracking points of the face, then match them to the 3D model, now your 3D model will follow the character!

Tips: When tracking very large scenes, you need to sort the tracking points (different colours) so that you can easily make the next corrections

NUKE

NUKE Multichannel Compound & Model

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 6th February 2024
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This week we’ve been learning about NUKE’s multi-channel compositing for processing EXR images, and I’ve been doing some preparation work for modelling the underground scene

PART1

The main adjustments I made were to the sports car’s reflection layer as well as the metal layer, which are the two attributes I think are the most important ones in this night image.

And in this photo there is a lot of water on the ground, which reflects the green light source on the left side of the image, so I added green to the Metallicity node to ensure realism.

I tried lowering the brightness of the sports car overall as well as some contrast, but this makes the car very dark in colour, although it would make it look like it blends in with the background nicely.

In the last step, I wanted to have the car’s lights on and add some fog in the foreground and have the light shine through the fog to create a God light, so I tried to create a God light line.

Here’s my final render, I think it still needs a lot of improvement, for example the right side of the car near the camera needs to have more shadows, and then the overall lower end of the car doesn’t feel like it matches the ground, both of which are in dire need of improvement, I’ll be addressing these in the next session.
But overall I am happy with the colour of the car.

PART II

I still want to make something that interests me, and I think this model is more difficult than a steam engine, or some industrial model, and I’ve found that out in the process of making it, there are a lot of difficulties in making caterpillar track.

Collaborative

Progress on Cooperation Project 01

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 30th January 2024
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Before I start the introduction, I want to make it clear that I found a group of people who were interested in the first week of school in January, and because the project we’re working on is very interesting, I’m actually including three weeks of progress in this posting (two weeks to be exact, because in the first week we were working on defining the worldview as well as the theme’s concept, which is complicated because we need to take into account a lot of factors, and all four of us designers want to use this project as a cornerstone for the future, so we’re all very serious about getting it done).

We are going to make a third-person perspective fighting game based on the UNITY engine, the game is based on a variety of hardcore beat ’em up games, I’ve put up 3 videos of reference games below, each of which can be viewed for just a few of the core elements (movement, gameplay, and special effects) especially the first one which is the most informative (since it’s based on the same engine).

Our game is set in the ancient Central Asian region of Loulan, and the main focus of the game is to control the protagonist, an ancient prince of Loulan, to kill a boss in order to achieve victory.

We currently have a full backstory in place, and we’ll be embodying a part of the story (maybe a weapon?) in the game as well. Maybe an enemy? Maybe a scene?) Everything will be designed with elements of Central Asia and the Loulan region in mind.

Our team is now close to completing the design of the main character, and I’ll be introducing the main character in detail in the next post, here’s some of the brainstorming we’ve been doing in FIGMA, and some of the sources of the ideas (there’s a bit of Chinese in there that we haven’t translated at the moment, but we’ll be doing so later on).

also the attack way and the special combo way

The above is the progress that our group has been discussing together in our regular twice-weekly meetings, and some of the pictures in it are sketches that we have made.

Here is some of my progress during recent weeks.

sorry, this should place above! first is to make a BIG hole

I didn’t have a suitable brush, so I made my own pair of ram’s horns

Before next week’s group presentation, I was tasked with completing the design of the accessories on the main character as well as the design of the weapons, and assisting another 3D designer with the design of the costumes and the binding of the bones.

NUKE

NUKE 3D Matchmove Homework

Post author By Minghan Lyu
Post date 22nd January 2024
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The first BLOG of the new term was a super hard NUKE assignment, this week we learnt about the MATCHMOVE technique in 3D and completed two classroom assignments!

I was sick in the first week so I didn’t come to class, so I realised in the second week of class that the first week taught a lot of important things, so I studied the first week on my own in class and completed the first week’s assignments without any problems, and here’s the first week’s assignments on display