Kitchen scene and group meeting with Amin (ANI304)

In this week, my individual schedule was making the smoke for the kitchen scene. However, I ended up reducing the size and lighten the colour of smoke, and making the fire and smoke AGAIN.  I received the scene, which Valentino and Arpit added character and lights, but somehow the scale of the scene got shrunk down so much and the dynamics get messed up if I just scale them down. So I had to make them again to fit in the scene. We still couldn't figure out why the scene has got shrunk down but it took me while to make them again. The only upside of this happening was I learned that why making visual effect is in the last stage of the post production. Because the dynamics can't be scaled up or down, and it needs to be in the exact same position to interact with props' or characters' movement.

After the group meeting with Amin, he suggested me to play with After Effect for the sake of future career. Although Nuke is now the industry standard, but for the our final film, he recommended to me to use After Effect, which is less new to me than learning Nuke. Also he suggested me to come up with many ideas for the dynamics in the film, and try as many examples i can make as my job is creating magical event.

Smoke (ANI304)

In this week, I made smoke for the kitchen scene. In the last term, i made smoke with maya fluid for the scene when we did the second pitch before the break. But for the final footage, i decided to make smoke using method called sprite.

Sprite is one of the Particle Render Type and it is commonly used for volumetric smoke, clouds and sand storms. It takes much less time to render than fluids or nDynamics because it's only mapping the images on the particle elements and the sprite images are always facing the camera. So when particle emits, it looks like the images are emitting instead of particles.

The first image shows the particle sprites are emitted and it looks the images are coming from the emitter in the rendered shot.

then I added expressions so that the size of images are randomly different and get bigger as it goes higher. Also added rotation expression so the images don't look static.

 

The images in the video shows they are emitted in different sizes and tilted in different angle. 

Then I added opacity to the particle using ramp, so it looks like emitting from in the air, not suddenly emits from certain point. Also it disappear smoothly at the top.

Then I added the colour on the particle so the images look much whiter and also removed the black edges. The first video is from the primary setting of ramp, and the second video is that i changed to white.

Then I changed noise value of the images to see how the smoke looks natural for the scene. When I rendered those images, i didn't check on the Depth Sort option of the render type. That's why the sprite images look thicker and overlapped with other images at the back and forward. 

The first footage is when i checked on the depth sort and the second footage is when i turned it off.

Then I changed the image material from lambert to blinn so that it can be looked brighter when it's under the lights in the scene. Below images are showing how it looks in the rendered shot depending on the eccentricity, specular roll off and  reflectivity of the material. When the values are too high, it reflects the light too much and eventually it makes the smoke looks unrealistic and too flat.

the final smoke in the animatic

Referencing in Maya (ANI304)

Today's lesson was about creating reference and using Dropbox for group networking.

I didn't know about referencing before, but it is very useful tool as i'm working on the scene that made from others and i don't really need the props unless their position. Before I used reference, I imported the whole scene and it took a while to load big file, and I had to lock / template the layers to avoid move or delete the props by accident. However, referencing allow me to add the dynamics without affecting the reference scene. I usually worked on the dynamics with the original scene and exported the dynamics only to comp it later or to put them in the scene later. But the reference scene isn't saved with the dynamics I made, the only thing I need to do is just save the dynamics without exporting them. It made my life much easier.

Before referencing, every props could be affected if i didn't lock/template the layers

Using referencing. I don't need to worry about affecting the original scene anymore.

Broadcast Health and Safety (ANI304)

Today, we had a lecture about technical standards for the Degree Show with Mike Dixon. 


BBC technical standards for TV programmes from Moodle
http://learn.rave.ac.uk/moodle/mod/resource/view.php?id=35623

High Definition Format

All material delivered for UK HD TV transmission must be:

1920 x 1080 px in an aspect ratio of 16:9

25 fps (50fields) interlaced* - 1080i/25

colour sub-sampled at a ratio of 4:2:2

*Interlaced video is a technique of doubling the perceived frame rate without consuming extra bandwidth.

Sound Quality

Sound must be recorded with appropriately placed microphones, giving minimum background noise and without peak distortion.
The audio must be free of spurious signals such as clicks, noise, hum and any analogue distortion. The audio must be reasonably continuous and smoothly mixed and edited.
Audio levels must be appropriate to the scene portrayed and dynamic range must not be excessive. They must be suitable for the whole range of domestic listening situations.
Stereo audio must be appropriately balanced and free from phase differences which cause audible cancellation in mono.
The audio must not show dynamic and/or frequency response artefacts as a result of the action of noise reduction or low bit rate coding systems.

Tolerance of out of gamut signals


In practice it is difficult to avoid generating signals slightly outside this range, and it is considered
reasonable to allow a small tolerance, which has been defined as follows under EBU Rec103:

RGB components must be between -5 % and 105% (-35 and 735mV)
therefore
Luminance (Y) must be between -1% and 103% (-7mV and 721mV)

Slight transient overshoots and undershoots may be filtered out before measuring, and an error will only be registered where the out of gamut signals total at least 1% of picture area. Many monitoring devices are designed to detect errors to this specification.


Blanking

HD images must fill the active picture area (1920 x 1080 pixels). No ‘blanking errors’ are permitted on new, up-converted, or archive material.
However a two pixel tolerance will be permitted during CG or complex overlay sequences where key signals, graphic overlays or other effects do not fully cover the background image. Where animated key signals or overlays cause moving highlights at the edge of the active image it is preferable to blank these pixels completely. A note of the timecodes and reasons for these errors should accompany the delivered programme.


Photosensitive Epilepsy (PSE)

Flickering or intermittent lights and certain types of repetitive visual patterns can cause serious problems for viewers who are prone to photosensitive epilepsy. Children & teenagers are particularly vulnerable.

All UK Television channels are subject to the Ofcom BROADCASTING CODE 2009 which states:
Section 2: Harm and Offence:
            2.12 Television broadcasters must take precautions to maintain a low level of risk to
                    viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy. Where it is not reasonably practicable
                    to follow the Ofcom guidance (see the Ofcom website), and where
                    broadcasters can demonstrate that the broadcasting of flashing lights and/or
                    patterns is editorially justified, viewers should be given an adequate verbal and
                    also, if appropriate, text warning at the start of the programme or programme
                    item.
The Ofcom guidance is at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/broadcast/guidance/813060/section22009.pdf

2.9.1 Testing for flashes and patterning

All programmes for tape delivery must be tested using the Harding Flash Pattern Analyser v2.54b on an SD down converted SDI feed. Any failure whatsoever will result in rejection of the programme, and any affected sections must be repaired and re-tested before acceptance.
Broadcasters will, at their discretion, either test the programme during the Quality Control process, or will require a relevant Harding FPA pass certificate to be delivered with the tape.

2.9.2 PSE-broadcast warnings

Verbal or on-screen text warnings at start of programme may only be used in exceptional
circumstances when:

           The relevant content is completely integral and necessary to the context of the
           programme and,
        
           Permission to use the relevant content has been cleared by the relevant broadcaster
           and documented in writing by those responsible for commissioning /editorial content.

Advance notification and planning requirements will vary by broadcaster.



Mike showed us the pokemon video clip as an epileptic example.

Brief for the ANI304 Professional Skills (ANI304)

The film I am working on is "Synaesthesia", teamed up with Valentino, Arpit, Chris, Jure and Perri. The animation will be made in the form of documentary following the narration from Alex who has Synaesthesia. My role in this film is creating visual effect using particle dynamics. There are 3 scenes that needs vfx, which are 1.Kitchen, 2.Piano, 3.Painting scene.

For the Kitchen scene, I made the steam and fire from stove in the last term. In this term, I am going to make proper fumes like steam emitting from the kettle and finish up the fire.

In the Piano scene, which is the most challenging scene but I am looking forward to finish it well at the same time. It requires rigging for piano keys and some scripting to connect the animation and particle dynamics.

In the Painting scene, it will need particle animation using texture emission. We discussed about making particle texture on 2d images or 3d objects, but haven't decided the details for the final yet.

In this unit, we are aiming for finishing the kitchen and the library scene, so I will concentrate on making fine visual effects for the final kitchen scene.