Sebastian Sveen - Compositor

The Rookies 2024 Submission:

Project 01 - HISTORIC WAR

Goal:

I aimed to improve my matte painting and day-for-night techniques, inspired by Bob Ross's approach to adding detail efficiently. This was my first serious matte painting attempt, and I wanted to test my ability to create a convincing day-for-night shot.

Planning:

Inspired by a Napoleon trailer shot, I sought to enhance its theme and setting while refining the composition and colors. I focused on a tighter frame around a cannon and a ship at sea, rather than the soldiers on the fortress. I used Akershus Fortress for practical effects as they have real cannons there where I can use the size and height of the firing fuse whilst also getting something the actor can act upon.

Reference:

I heavily relied on references, especially after this project, which highlighted the importance of using references extensively. Key references included stock footage from ActionVFX for cannon fire and film references for the hazy fire ship look. I also studied how wooden ships sink and although it is not exactly reference, I used Midjourney to get the consept for the more painterly look that I was going for.

Execution:

My Maya scenes quickly grew to 3.6GB, causing frequent crashes and slow saves. This was due to the fact that I was using Kitbash3D assets that where quite heavy, even duplicating them. Switching to Arnold Standins helped reduce file sizes quite substancially and they also helped make the viewport alot lighter. Another thing I did to reduce file sizes and save myself from frequent crashes was to split the scene into separate Maya files for major groups and referenced them in a master scene, here I only setup render settings and render layers and also avoided unnecessary edits to refrences to prevent bugs. This approach improved my workflow and organization.

Working on a proper matte painting was enjoyable, especially creating the sky and moon, with the moon actually being a photo I took myself. I created a scatter node to help me distribute fires and fog around without having to use a bunch of transforms. Reflections in the water were achieved through various techniques, including mirroring, distorting, and 3D projections depending on from what the reflections came from and if it was over the horizon line or not.

I also used AI tools like Cattery's ModNet and MiDas and Photoshop's AI fill, were used for roto, creating a depth map from plate and to create a cleanplate. 

Doing most of the lighting in comp by rendering out different light groups provided flexibility in compositing, particularly for the cannon fire where I had to match both timing and color to the stock I was using.

I got the chance to play alot around with Embergen. Trying to achieve the same look as some stock footage from actionvfx and as it was from the napoleon cannon.

Possibly my favorite part of the project was filming soldier plates to use as assets. Although the end result they are barely noticable it adds something to have a few extra soldiers here and there and it was so much fun to shoot.

breakdown:

Credits:
- Responsible for all aspects except cg modeling and texturing.

Project 02 - Cryo Odyssey

This project is a Full CG short, Teaser that we did as a part of our Bachelor. The shots shown are just two picked out and is a collaboration project with Sondre Fagerborg. 

Execution:

The spaceship was originally bought from cgtrader, then organized the model, re-uv'ed, textured and rigged. 
Planet is also CG, but rendered as a still in 4k Square from 6 different lighting angles for full flexibility in comp. Then made pretty and rendered as a precomp and then placed as a card in Nuke and matched up to the low sample render from cg. This was to get consistency through the shots, and to keep the planet relativly simple throughout the sequence.

Thrusters and clouds done in Embergen exported and rendered with arnold in maya. Then made pretty in comp. Clouds where supplimented with stock again using the svn_Scatter Node that I made for the cannon shot.

Credits:

Ship asset:
- Prepped model, uv's and rigg - Sebastian Sveen with help from Sondre on UV Layout.
- Texturing and Shading - Sondre Fagerborg with help from Sebastian Sveen

Suit asset:

- Prepped model and uv's - Sebastian Sveen
- Texuring and Shading - Sondre Fagerborg
- Amazing Rigg - Charlotte Beau Vinuesa

From the picked out shot:

- Animation, Lighting and Compositing - Sebastian Sveen

Other:

- FX (thruster, clouds, steam) - Sebastian Sveen

Project 03 - Garden Robot

Production 3 project to get us into the habit of knowing the cg integration workflow. From Pre-production, Production and to Post-Production. Inspired by the Avatar 2 Teaser trailer shot.

Rendered in Arnold, using gobos for lighting. Then mostly just comp work. The comp work included: 
- Recreating a kernel from plate and using it to defocus the plate.
- Adding particles that interact with the gobo light.
- Adding in the filmed leaves.
- Adding Lens FX to make it a more cozy shot.

breakdown:

Credits:

- Responsible for all aspects except cg modeling and texturing.

Project 04 - Peaky Robot

Also from Production 3 project. Inspired by Peaky Blinders provoking the theme.

In this project I tested out using keentools for head tracking and object tracking. Then importing that into maya matching up with a photoscan. This was the first ever project where I did the whole CG integration workflow after learning the proper way to do it at Kristiania.

Credits:

- Responsible for all aspects except cg modeling and texturing.

Project 05 - Crazy pilot

This was my first proper atempt at a CG integration. This was before I knew the proper way to do it. It was also the first time I had tried to do something properly in houdini, and got to try a few splashes and rendered with Mantra.

The biggest challenge I had with this shot was tracking and that my first attempt at shooting was at night. It ended up that I had to do a few reshoots before I realized that I should lower the shutterspeed and shoot at day time for me to be able to track the shot.

Credits:

- Responsible for all aspects except cg modeling and texturing.