We were all fortunate enough to have a workshop with a CG Generalist at Union in VFX – Dom Maidlow. Dom introduced himself and what eh does in the industry to give us an idea of what the programme 3D Equaliser can do and what it is used for.
What does a runner do? :
- Try everything
- Learn from professionals
- Help make your showreel
- Be a YES man
Roles to ascend in career :
- Runner
- Junior match move
- Mid match move
- Senior match move
Modeling programes:
- Mud Box
- Sculpting
- ZBrush
- Maya
- FXPHD
- Unreel
- 3D Equaliser
- smart-page.net/smartnormal/
Texturing :
- Substance Painter
Showreel Portfolio :
- Make it punchy
- Show layers of animation
- Show Process
- 1.5 mins max
Making Connections :
- CGmeetup.net
In this first lession with Dom, we were asked to track these scene from the Camden Lock. This was an introduction to 3d Equaliser as we were told it was very useful to have had some practice on this programme before entering the industry. I was really excited to get started because I have always been fascinated in augmented reality (AR). Unfortunately due to difficulties with my laptop I wasn’t able to get the programme going. This was really stressful because it was so much harder to learn when you cant follow and repeat what Dom was saying. Furthermore, the session was recorded but without any sound! This made catching up very difficult and took a really long time.
So to start off I tracked points on the graffiti wall facing the camera. This was easy to track as once you heightened the contrast of the image the black and green were very strong patterns to track. I quite enjoyed finding patterns and tracking them as I was always looking for the strong parts of the video.
As you can see in this screenshot, I have increased the saturation of the film so that it is easier to find patterns and track points. This was important of spaces like on the pathway. There wasn’t as many unique patterns like the graffiti. It also helped when I changed the sizing of the red box around the point so that it had a larger surface area to track, meaning the point deviation is more likely to be on point.
Once I had finished tracking all of the red area, I had to track points on to the yellow pink and blue circled areas. This was to show the 4 different depths of field so that the programme could calculate this space. As you can see the pink are is very dark and the blue area is over exposed. This means I will have to alter the video in the attribute editor to create some clearer patterns in these areas. Too much or too little light in natural spaces are bound to occur to this tool is essential.
In the top part of the video where the building are were by far the hardest places to track as the jumped off and on screen. This was extremely frustrating as I kept making the mistake of starting a new point instead of just breaking up one singular point. I couldn’t seem to figure it out but later on I was informed by Dom that I had to make sure I moved along the timeline so that the programme new I wanted to keep the same point.
There was also a lady that walked past which was difficult to break the points and make sure that she didn’t walk past them as this would confuse the programme when tracking.
Having tracked all these different areas of the Lock, you can then calculate the different points and see the virtual 3D space of the Camden Lock area. I found this very cool! I am so impressed with the way it can work out where these points are in a literal world.
Here you can see where the camera would be in this virtual space and the red line acts as its pathway. This is useful to show the depth and distance the camera is moving as well as all those points I have tracked. As you can see, the right hand side green points are a lot closer to the camera than the right side points which is the same as the original video. This shows me that the tracking has worked which is a success!
As you can see above, there are a lot of screen and red dots which come off the picture. This means I did not end the the points and they are running off. I didn’t realise that they all had to be ended to I need to go back and correct this.
Over all, I found the lesson very interesting. Due to the technical difficulties, it was very hard to catch up. So the next session I have with Dom will be so much easier and I will learn a lot faster. I am excited to see what else we will be doing as I think this is a brilliant new programme to learn and add to my skills.