M.Liang blog
Muqing Liang 22013859

Month: December 2022

Categories
Maya Nuke VFX Fundamentals

Critical Reflection

Through the study of Maya and Nuke in the visual effects fundamentals this semester, I already have a certain degree of understanding of the process and methods of special effects production. At the same time, I have a certain degree of mastery of the two software Maya and Nuke. to complete some relatively complex special effects work, model building, and video compositing. Through the study of Maya, I have basically mastered the skills of model building in Maya and the design of model animation, and I can design some scene animations. At the same time, I also read a lot of literature on the special effects production industry during this semester, which further deepened my exploration and understanding of the field of special effects Through the study of Nuke this semester, I understand the basic workflow of Nuke, and I have a very good understanding of the roto tool, tracking tool, and some video synthesis methods in Nuke, and it also stimulates my very strong interest in Nuke, because I studied film and TV production before, and the mastery of Nuke will undoubtedly bring me closer to making excellent cinema, so I think Maya and Nuke learned this semester will be of great help to my future career Planning plays a very important role, and at the same time, I am going to continue to explore more complex and fantastic special effects production. In the future study, I will also further deepen my understanding and application of various special effects software, so as to lay a better foundation for future film special effects production.

Categories
Reels

Showreel

Categories
Design for Animation

Critical Report Audio-Visual Presentation

Categories
Nuke

Project Balloon Festival

The Creation Process

During the creation process of the project Balloon Festival, I used the model of the hot air balloon that I built in Maya for compositing material.

At the beginning of building the idea of the Balloon Festival project, I want to create a harmonious and beautiful picture between man and nature, and I also hope that the picture is more biased toward the fantasy world. The inspiration for the creation of this project mainly comes from fantasy film and television works such as Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

Therefore, I want to create a fantasy world like a fairy tale. First of all, the saturation and vividness of the things in it will be high to create this fantasy visual effect. At the same time, some little things in nature should be used in a very natural way and composited into the screen. So, on this basis, I first replaced the sky through the Roto node and changed it to a brighter and clearer sky background. Then I added some birds in the sky to make it more natural.

After finishing the background, I composited the hot air balloon into the project and gave it a trajectory, and I also added an elk on the uphill. After that, I added a Northrop Grumman B-2  Spirit swooped down to the screen to add some thrill to the project and then synthesized a flying dragon flying over the screen to add some fantasy to the project element.

After the composition of the object is completed, I adjust its color parameters and color grade all the objects to make them blend into the picture. In the end, I added a soundtrack to the project, which seems to be the beginning of a magical journey, so as to match the fantasy elements in the picture and the overall picture style.

Categories
Maya

Head Animation

After completing the rigging of the head, we used the blendshape tool and driven key to make controllable adjustments to different areas of the head model to complete the animation.

Categories
Nuke

Nuke Rotopaint Clean up

In this task, the cloning technique of nuke’s rotopaint and cornerpin,match-move in the tracker node was used to clean up and change some details of the image sequence to achieve our purpose.

Before

After

Categories
Design for Animation

Academic Research on Andrew, J.D., 1976. The major film theories: an introduction.

This week I conducted a very in-depth academic discussion and research on this The major film theories: an introduction.

We can think of filmmaking as a window through which we can see the world. Cinematic art is a product of the tension between representation and transformation. “Its aesthetic basis is not what the world already presents, but the aesthetic use of the things or methods of presenting the world.”(p148) Jean Millet believes that “only after overcoming the dramatic aesthetics such as constant angle and duration, can film become an independent art from theater” (Andrew, 1976, P107) And in order to create a self-sufficient work, the traditional artist always represses the real (however realistic the purpose may be)…he simply experiences again (in a new way) the patterns that shape his daily life and behavior… (p159) Movies are a bottom-up technological process, which starts from nature and integrates our thinking with nature. It enables us to rediscover the world itself that has been occupied by scientific knowledge and forgotten by us. Cinema must submit to a purely psychological world, exchanging the connections between appearances in the real world for connections of a psychological nature. The greatest difference between a film and a dream is its integrity. “Whereas a dream evokes certain fantasies and emotions” that confuse or euphoria us in our waking hours, a beautiful film dissipates the energy it exploits. It takes “natural representations, reorganizes” (p208) them in the order of mental operation, and finally evokes our emotions. It puts these representations in the right order, “giving them a final sequence that obeys only the laws of the operation of the mind”, thus excluding the chaos of reality and allowing the viewer to complete a complete experience. “The viewer indulges in the things of the imagination, lost in a world detached from the needs and wants of reality”

Bibliography

Andrew, J.D., 1976. The major film theories: an introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford.