Phew, finally we can stop holding our breaths as the Avengers hit the big screens all around the world!
Over the last weekend a huge number of my friends (and colleagues) went to watch the film. Afterwards they either excitedly talked about it, or commented on social networks how awesome it was. It was hard work not to read comments that came close to being spoilers when they spring up in front of you on your Facebook update. :)
Having to work over the weekends did not allow me the luxury to watch the film, plus I'll be going an a week-long tour end of this week. So I'll be wishing really hard that the movie will still be showing when I return from my trip.
In the mean time, here's a good article from fxguide.com. Behind the scenes vfx crew like visual effects supervisor Janek Sirrs, previs supervisor Nick Markel (The Third Floor) and Jeff White (ILM) share about their experiences and process of creating and sustaining the epic visuals that show up so casually in the film.
So I'll have to content myself with reading this in the mean time, and listening to this Fxguide podcast. In this fxPodcast, Jeff White from ILM talks about the digital New York that was created in the film, and Hulk.
One of my friends on Google Plus pointed me to this page. I thought it was really worth blogging on this. It really reminds us that VFX is a massive collaboration of effort, resources and skills in many areas. All these come together to create the films filled with seamless and amazingly believable shots that we as movie-goers are so used to seeing in the films today.
I think these breakdown clips (though often very enjoyable to watch) are proudly showing and reminding us of the hard work of the men and women working behind the scenes to bring those effects to life on the big screen.
It is very common, for example, for objects that were shot on set to be painstakingly removed only to be replaced by a cg version of the exact same thing that looks... almost the same. Of course, these kinds of decisions are based on technical, aesthetic, and sometimes client requirements. However, all these are transparent to the viewers.
The clips below are only a gateway, giving us a tiny glimpse into the complex and painstaking workflow involved in just a few VFX shots from their respective films.
Lets take a moment to marvel at the artistic and technical breakthroughs, as well as to appreciate the ingenuity, time and effort of the artists and technical directors behind those shots.
Wrath of the Titans
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (part 1)
Transformers: Dark of the Moon (part 2)
X-Men: First Class
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part1)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part2)
Prince of Persia and the Sands of Time
Clash of the Titans
Alice in Wonderland
2012
Robin Hood
The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage o the Dawn Treader
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Fast & Furious 4
Wolfman
Tron Legacy
Look beyond the awesome and appreciate the sweat and tears.
I have heard a lot of people that are not from the VFX industry asking in astonishment "Don't you guys have dedicated software and plug-ins to generate the effects at the click of a button?"
Yes we do have dedicated, proprietary software and plug-ins to generate effects and help the workflow efficiently. Generating effects that work at the click of a button? No. It never happens like that. Each shot is simply too complex. Sometimes clients cannot even settle on a look they want until the very last moment, so many things are usually in a constant state of change.
One of the inside jokes shared by my circle of colleagues is the existence of the mythical "make awesome" button in our software.
It simply does not exist.
Like the original post says: "Sharing is caring. If you enjoyed the post share this with your friends and colleagues".
Realflow Milk Pour 20120402 from Patrick Woo on Vimeo.
I started with a partially filled volume (of milk). While letting it fall to fill the shape of the invisible glass, I introduced another fluid into the mix (chocolate/coffee stuff). These are meshed as 2 separate objects, and then imported into Maya to be lit and rendered.
This time I had a better set-up for lighting and shaders. I also brought up the motion-blur factor from 1.0 to 2.6.
I had a friend asking if I could help achieve the effect of milk pouring into a container. Here's my initial test of milk pouring into a glass that's hidden so we can see the milk. I did this in Realflow 2012.
I was helping a friend out with his project. It is a TV commercial for promoting the Singapore's Formula1 2012. We handed over to the client beginning of February 2012.
It has begun airing on TV channels. My colleague spotted it on sports pay-TV channels. The video is also featured on the F1 Singapore official website:
The page might get updated at the end of the year so I've decided to do a screen capture of the page.
The project ended looking pretty close to their storyboards, but the animation was quite different from the brief my friend first received.
We spent a lot of time testing and refining a certain technique only to be discarded in favour of a very much simpler and computationally cheap method which can easily be achieved.
I even wrote a PyMel script to set-up any polygonal object to enable lines to grow and join at every edge and thus tracing out the wireframe shape of the final object.
But I believe nothing is ever wasted, that I've learnt something new throughout this whole process.
