VFX Compositing

My name is Tanja Schaurhofer, I am 27 years old and I am from a town near Vienna in Austria. I fell in love with 3D animation and visual effects during my bachelor degree in media technology where I first got introduced to it.

Enough about me - lets start the with my first demo reel!

Space Scene

I really wanted to create a space scene for my student demo reel because I think you can get very creative and try out and practice different skills in Nuke. Originally, I had a reference that I wanted to stick to, but I decided to change it in the end and make it the way I wanted.

Layout

My plan was to have a spaceship flying through the scene and in order to create some depth in the image I also decided to integrate meteoroids. For this I started with the layout in Nuke and placed spheres, which become the planets later on, as placeholders and then used Maya to place the meteoroids and to animate the spaceship. I also added a slight camera movement directly in Nuke. I exported the camera, and the planets separately and then imported them into Maya to continue with the rest of the layout.

I downloaded the spaceship and the meteoroids from CG Trader. The meteoroids were placed in the scene using the Maya Mesh Tool. This allowed me to make sure that everything was randomly distributed. I was also able to randomize the rotation and size of the meteoroids. To finish the last step from my layout, I animated the spaceship so that it flies through the entire scene.

To be able to edit it more effectively in Nuke, I rendered everything with the necessary AOVs and split the spaceship and the meteoroids on different render layers.

Creating the Scene

After rendering, I started creating the scene in Nuke. To do this, I created stars using the particle system. I used this system because it gave me good control over the size and the number of stars. I also added fog to make the scene more interesting. I achieved this by using a noise node and edited it until I achieved the right effect.

Then I started with the planets. For this I used textures from "Solar System Scope". Because I was aiming for a bluish look, I graded everything in a blue shade. I placed a small sphere in the background that will later serve as the light source. To make it more interesting, I added a ring to the large planet as well as a glow which is caused by the light. The small planet in the background serves to fill the scene a little and still make it look interesting. Furthermore, I added the meteoroids and the spaceship to the scene and adjusted the colours to make it blend in well with the existing scene. Last but not least, I edited the sphere that was added at the beginning to resemble a light source.

Post Effects

After everything was put together and everything was harmonious in colour, I added a few post effects.

To achieve a cool effect, I placed a lens flare over half of the image. To make it look as believable as possible, I animated it as it must not be visible when the spaceship is in front of the light source. Furthermore, a grain was integrated to make the whole video look more authentic. Finally, at the end I also added a vignette to put the focus on the center of the image.

Actor Replacement

So, to practice doing greenscreen shots and a lot of color grading, I wanted to do an actor replacement for my demo reel. For this project, I replaced a person from the plate with my own greenscreen shot. To find a cool and interesting plate, I searched on Pexels for several videos and ended up choosing the plate from “Kindel Media”.

After studying the plate and writing down notes on everything that needed to be accomplished, I was ready to start the project.

Greenscreen

Firstly, I needed the greenscreen footage of myself to integrate it afterwards. Therefore, I filmed the footage in the school’s greenscreen room. The shooting was a little bit challenging because the light situation in the plate was hard to replicate but I tried my best to come as close as possible. Big thanks to Lisa-Marie Balog for helping me out with that.

Afterwards, the keying was done with different approaches. The edges were done with the IBK keyer and the use of a staking method to get a better result on the edges, whereby the standard keyer was used for the core.

It was difficult to get a good key on some parts especially where my chin lies over the hood of my sweater. To solve this problem, I recovered a few pixels from the greenscreen footage with the help of a Roto and enhanced and improved it with the help of an Edge Extend.

Paint Out Plate

The paint out of the person I wanted to replace, was done relatively easy. Since the person sits in front of a dark background, I had a good reference which I could use. My next step was tracking the whole footage to then match-move the clean patch to the original plate. This also worked quite well because the plate doesn't have much movement.

Integrating and Color Grading the Greenscreen Footage

The integration of the green screen footage into the original plate worked well. I only had to adjust it with a few "transform nodes" to achieve the right size and position. The colour grading was very challenging. After "despilling" my footage, the green screen plate was rather neutral in colour towards bluish. However, it needed to be very orange and saturated. I split the grading into different parts because it worked better that way.

I also added a slight flicker to the bottom half of the sweater to try and imitate the light from the fire.

The most difficult part was to make the light from the tent in the background to the left looking real. This took a few different attempts but, in the end, it turned out quite well.

All in all, I feel it worked well and the green screen footage blends in with the colors of the original plate.

Bringing the Foreground back

After colour grading, I had to bring back the foreground. To do this, I made a roto for all the elements I needed at the very beginning of the project. Because I couldn't restore the fire with a roto, I used a luminance keyer. This allowed me to key the bright flames and put it back on the foreground.

Final Touches

To get the best out of the plate, several small details were integrated and edited at the end.

Since I also partially removed the smoke from the campfire during the paint-out, I had to replace it as well. Therefore, I searched for smoke footage (Pixabay) that would match the original plate. After I added the smoke, I adjusted it with transform nodes and also integrated it in terms of colour.

Afterwards, I started adding fire ambers since many were removed during the paint out as well. I achieved this by recreating the ambers with Nuke's particle system and then reintegrating them as closely as possible.

Then I worked on the glass bottle in front of me because you could see the person's movements from the original plate. For this I used an “Edge Extend” to remove the bright edge.

Finally, I brought back the grain from the original plate and added additional grain to the green screen footage. This was the hardest part of the whole project as the original plate has a lot of grain and compression. I also tried to get compression on the green screen footage as it looked "too good" compared to the original plate. I tried to use a Grade Node where I used a Noise Node as a mask to grade down a few spots and get a bit of the same look. However, I could not achieve the exact same effect.

CG Integration

Another Project that I wanted to do was an CG Integration to improve my skills with AOV reconstruction setups. It was quite the challenge finding an idea which I like and where it was possible integrating different objects. After searching for a while, I found this plate of a beach from “Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke” on Pixabay that I liked. I immediately knew, I integrate a beach house and a little boat. Later on, I also added two ships and an island.

Tracking the Plate

My first task was to track the footage to get a camera that I could then use in Maya. For this I used the "3D Camera Tracker". Because there is a lot of water in the footage, I couldn't use much for tracking, otherwise the tracking would be incorrect. After improving the tracker, I exported the camera as an FBX file to be able to import it into Maya.

Maya

The first thing I did in Maya was to import the camera I exported from Nuke so that I could build the scene. I downloaded the assets from "Kitbash" and "CG Trader". I placed the house and the boat in the scene and adjusted the size.

For the lighting I downloaded a suitable HDRI from "Polyhaven". The further lighting of the house and the boat was mainly done with area lights. To make the scene more interesting, I placed two ships in the distance.

In order to be able to work more easily in Nuke, I set up renderlayer and rendered everything individually. I rendered the house and the boat the full frame length and the two ships in the background only one frame.

Integrating everything in Nuke

The most difficult part of this project was integrating the house into the plate. At the beginning I added the complete rendered material of the house into the footage, but the tracking did not work perfectly, and the house moved a lot. To solve this problem, I tried different methods to improve the tracking. The best result was achieved with a 2D tracker. After the tracking was working, I took care of the colour grading and adjusting the shadows and reflections of the house in the water.

The integration of the boat was easier, since the boat has an animation to simulate some movement of the water, I was able to properly use the tracking from the "3D Camera Tracker". After integrating the boat, I also took care of the colour grading and the shadow.

To show even more skills and make everything more interesting, I integrated an island and two ships in the distance. For the island, I downloaded an image from Pexels and cut it out with the help of a Roto Node so that I only had the island I wanted. I also added the island and the two ships in the background using a 2D tracker as this worked without any problems. To visualise more depth, I added different strengths of Haze in front of the island and the ships. I then adjusted the colours so that the island and the ships match the colours in the video.

Final Touches

Once everything was integrated, I brought back the foreground elements so that the ship and the house disappeared behind the rocks.

The last tasks were to adjust the grain from the original footage to the 3D material. I also adapted the chromatic aberration on the 3D elements and added a halation to give it a less 3D look. I also gave the whole video a look and added a LUT.

Conclusion

All in all, I was able to test out a lot of new methods during these projects and learned a lot as a result. For now, I think it turned out quite alright but when I have time I would love to get back to those project and rework a couple of parts.

I really would like to thank everyone who has helped me get this far! I am really grateful for the help and guidance I have been given throughout my education. 

Big shout out to Calvin Gotta, Marcel Pichert and Chiara Costantino for helping me throughout my projects.