Aliens Disembark

I modelled a quick interior and set of doors for this shot but I think it works pretty well when its edited in. Gergo did the clones which we shot against greenscreen to avoid too much rotoscoping.

Dropship animations

Edward did some dropship animations for the opening scenes here's some images

Dropship passes hotel sign

So I showed earlier the hotel scene I was working on and now I can show you the finished rendered scene. When I say finished it still needs a bit of colour correction and some optical flares added in for "ping my lens" awesomeness but as a render its finished.

This one was a nightmare to render, my computer hates final gather and as such it shut off ecvery 10 frames so this was not a lot of fun.

More monster please

It was after Florian suggested that we add another shot with a monster that I thought Pawel was going to faint. The first shot had taken countless hours to put together but more significantly over 60 hours to render! Pawel took it on board though and created this fantastic shot.

Battle sequence

Here is an edited sequence back from Gergo, it's composited together and it looks pretty slick. With the right sound effects its going to work very well.

Final Dropship Landing

"So here it is the final shot of the dropship landing. We replaced the original model with my better more detailed variation and projection mapped the matte painting to adjust the lighting etc. As you can see it has a lot more dimension to it than the previs clip. A great shot that has now been colour corrected by Gergo and a few optical flares thrown in for effect. after the vid is James B's great breakdown of his process for this scene."




Dropship Crash Scene

This scene is 6.02 seconds long. It is where the dropship finally arrives on the
post apocalyptic earth of its enemy counterparts. The alien dropship crashes
into two cars along a darkened street. This scene has been worked directed
by James Berkley and also been worked on by James Stothard. Together we
have put in countless number of hours and communication to try and get this
scene as good as possible to fit into the already high standard of work that
we set ourselves.

This scene contains many elements of work from James Berkley and James S
that I will list here:

I started by researching techniques I could use to make this scene. I spent
nearly 3 days researching, learning and practicing different techniques to
create the desired effect. I looked at using ncloths to create the crash
simulation; I also looked at maya dynamics for this. After numerous tests and
setting up the scene, I decided to use maya dynamics for the animation.

I created a fully CG scene in maya including buildings and cars, I made
lighting and animation. However after discussion with the group we decided
that it didn’t look realistic enough to fit into the rest of the film and the best
option was to create a matte painting and layer the animation on top.

The scene started off with the film director, James S vision of an aerial view
of the dropship crashing down a road. With discussion we figured
It was best to create something a bit more ambitious. We decided on a still
camera view with the cars flying towards it. I started by making the matte
painting that includes over 50 layers to create an apocalyptic street that has
the correct perspective. The matte painting took a couple of days to
complete. I used techniques such as vanishing point, earsing strategically,
blending shades, burn tool, paint tool, blur tool, lasso tool, marquee tool,
overlapping, clone stamp tool colour correction and levels, just to name a
few.

After a bit of colour correction I got this:

The next step was to do the animation. I had done many many test using
maya dynamics and finally found something that worked. I then had to hand
animate the other car coming nearer to the camera because I had problems
with rigid body interpolations.

The next step was to texture the cars. I made a conscious decision to have
the underneath of the car come towards the camera to make it look more real
and show off the textures. It was important to sell the realism of the scene. I
began by creating the car shaders. I did this by connecting various different
shaders together with a layered shader or layer texture node. Each shader
had different specialized attributes for example cars paint is shinier than the
rust of metal etc. I had to add fracture nodes to the bump attributes in
shaders and also whilst playing with the spec colour and reflectivity of the
phong or blinn shader. I used ramps to get the correct colour.

After talking to James S, it was best to make the cars look dirty. I then
created even more shaders to add the dirt. Initially I thought about using
masks to create this effect, as I would have control over where the mud or
dirt was on the car. However I was not sure how to create this effect so I
connected two already made shaders through the transparency of the layered
shader node. This looks good enough but I didn’t have control where the mud
fell on the car. This is what I got:

At this stage, I had the matte painting, the maya dynamics and the animation
complete. I now set up a rendercam and through that camera I projected the
matte plane so I could line up the perspective. For the time being I worked
through this camera to make sure it was all aligned and looked good.

I was now waiting upon the newly built and textured dropship from James S
to integrate into the animation.

Once I got this file I simply hand animated the new ship over the old ship and
made it invisible. The scene was nearly complete. James S camera mapped
the matte painting in maya so we could integrate lighting off the matte
painting. In other words, by camera mapping the matte painting it meant I
could light the scene properly and light would be affected by the matte
painting around it.

It was now ready for final touches before rendering. I rendered in 720hd at
1280 x 720. The rendering process took 4:33hrs.

I had previously rendered some lower quality versions and added my own
postproduction effects in After Effects. I added a camera shake and motion
blur to sell the shot even more. Once the final version finished rendering I
sent two copies to Gergo for edit and post. I sent him a plain version with no
effects and another version with my added postproduction effects.

My instructions to Gergo was to colour correct the scene so that it fits with
the rest of the film. I also told him that he could add the camera and motion
blur effect because he has more experience at post than I do. I also
suggested that smoke and fire in the background would also help sell the
apocalyptic feel of the scene. I also suggested fog or particles as an added
extra.

This scene overall has taken countless number of hours to complete, with
different techniques being learnt along the way. In hindsight I would have
added a shattered or cracked floor following the dropship as it tore through
the street, however we decided it was not necessary.

Here is a brief list of the techniques used in maya:
• Dynamic animation
• Key frame animation
• Custom Shaders
• UV mapping
• Bump mapping
• Camers/projection mapping
• Lighting
• Compositing
• Camera work
• Polygon modeling
• Ncloth dynamics

Dropship landing scene

James B has been working on this shot here of the dropship landing and hitting the car, he set up the dynamics and animated the ship as well as the matte painting. I'll be posting a write up/tutorial of his workflow later in the week. This is essentially previs the final shot is up soon. I've been working on shattering the ground to add in to this scene later. James is going to pass the shot to me to projection map the matte and relight it.

Heres a test playblast of the shattered ground I put together.

Completed monster shot 001

So Gergo has managed to go over the footage from Pawel and the compositing is done, it looks fantastic guys well done. The use of layers of smoke have really helped sell that shot.

Here's the link for those who want to check it out.



(By the way for anyone who notices the bullet holes that disappear have been corrected since posting.)

Monsterous!!!

Recieved this clip here a few days ago and it put a smile on my face. The shot has come together quite well so far. Pawel composited the shot quite well, and its certainly taking shape. A few suggestions have been made to improve the shot and of course extra stuff like the muzzle flashes will be added later.

Alien Clones Test.

I was very impressed seeing this today, Our live footage looked great but it certainly lacked a substantial feeling to alien attackers, it was very clear that it was just 3 guys in armour. This set of shots have been put together by Gergo using the research he did earlier this semester as a basis.

The majority of people who I've shown this clip to can't tell that it was put together from several takes. It looks very good. Check it out here:

Original Clones Test

When I originally spoke of this idea at the beginning of the project we all agreed how important it was for it to look like we had more alien soldiers than we had. I remembered reading on Andrew Kramer's blog back a while about a short SWAT police sequence he shot where he turned three guys in SWAT uniform into 12. He didn't do a tutorial but he briefly mentioned that he used split screen and rotoscoping.

After we talked about it Gergo very quickly began work on a test of this technique and in all fairness it took quite some time for him to rotoscope. We quickly could see where the problems would occur and this helped us form the workflow used to duplicate our soldiers in the final shots.

Here is a link to the original test shot.

Filming in the can

So we finished filming Friday, what a day. Having agreed to collect our DOP and gear from London we expected a bit of time in traffic but no one had expected it to take 5 hours. The roads were jammed across the city. Ouch. We got back to the set by 14.30 and we were losing the sun fast. So we shifted things around and ended up doing a night shoot and the results turned out even better because of it being dark.

Our cinematographer Eben Bolter was fantastic as well as his AC, AJ Golesworthy. The results they achieved with such little time were amazing and I hope we can work together again sometime.

Below are some stills from the shoot.

Shoot day

Shoot day is this friday so I'm definetly feeling the nervous energy. After a week of worrying Ive finally got the location locked down, a great abandoned factory, plenty of debris, broken windows and derelict industrial towers.

Monster animation clip

This is a video Pawel put together showing how he used pose space deformation techniques to animate realistic muscle movements in his monster.

Monster

So Pawel has been working on the monster and the wall destruction shots and they are coming together very nicely. Here's a few pics, I'll get Pawel to write a few words about his process for later.

Video clip of armour

The helmet needs some foam inserts to stop it slipping but its not looking too bad. the optical flares look pretty awesome.

Testing the costume on

This is the full costume, except I've since changed the arm and knee pads for real military ones and I should have been wearing a balaclava to hide the skin around my neck etc.

Hotel Roof model

The shot on the rooftop is going to be shot against greenscreen. The scene will be CGI and heres the rooftop ready for compositing at a later stage.

here it is a bit brighter

This is it without any fancy mental ray rendering techniques.

The Finished Costume

So now to the big reveal! The finished costume took several days to complete start to finish but  you have to agree it doesn't look too bad. The gun is a toy that I also painted up.

Costume Build part II

So this is the first helmet design fibreglassed and painted, with the fibreglass layer it became way too tight to wear so I had to redesign the whole helmet.

 Here's the new design helmet glued together.

 As you can see I've begun fibreglassing the inside of this one.

 Once its hardened I give it a base coat of black spray paint.

 Heres the previous two, the resin shrank the helmets size too much and it became way too tight.

The next stage was to fibreglass the body armour add some LED lights and spray paint it all.