Current status

Hi everybody and merry upcoming Christmas,
So, not so much on the blog lately. With the visuals done, there hasn't been too much to comment on. Right now there's still a hunt on for just the right sound designer/musician to do the scoring. And there's also a lot of work in creating different lengths of the shorts to either go to festivals or to run on the web. SO bear with me and I'll et you know as soon as this finally lifts off the ground. In the meantime, if you're curious, this is Mailman with a temp soundtrack (RJD2, which is fun, but too expensive to buy the rights to unfortunately): (if you have trouble seeing this, you can go out to http://blip.tv/file/1437241 to see this and the others)

Opening credits redo

So the original idea for the opening credits (a long opening with voiceover to explain the concept) was a bit too much. It was overload with a narrator describing things as well as all the visuals. And who wants a long opening? Nobody! So it's been shortened to a fast 20 second shot that will only have music to get these rolling. In case you're wondering, here's the timed animatic that's the blueprint for the cutout animation (that part is staying):

Sound design and visual effects finished!

It's finally come to this! After a blaze of sound effects work, the visuals and sound are a lock. I know quite a few of you are really itching to see how they turned out, but now I need to be a little careful about putting them out on the web in full form before trying to get distribution. There's still a bit of work prior to the finish line - opening credits and music, but the hard part is done. I'll put up sections that really shine here over the next week so you can see. And everyone who was involved will still get a dvd once this is all locked up, no worries about this. I just need to focus on getting it out into the world here in the next month or so. Alright, back to work..

Opening credit design

Opening credits are under full steam. Click below for a very rough version of the aesthetic. It may seem at odds with the actual footage, but that's the only realistic way to heap more ideas into the credit footage without a considerable amount of shooting and cg work. It's a bit too speedy right now, but it should smooth out just fine..

Intro to Chamber 2 of Surveyors

A minor cg addition to the transition to chamber 2 while sound work continues:

ID Card falling

Hi everyone.. while I've been off the cg for a bit working on different opening credit ideas, I've come back to one of the last cg effects that's needed. A shot looking down from the elevator as Chris drops his ID badge down the shaft. Here's the first pass at it (minus the foreground image of Chris' hand on the elevator railing). It isn't too pretty, but can only get better.. It's pretty tough to create these fully cg shots since there's no real part of the image that can help sell the illusion.

Towards the end of the road

Well, the posts here are going to slow down a bit since the shorts are getting ready for music. It's going to take a little time to research different styles and get the composer lined up, but with several major festivals having entrance deadlines coming up by the end of the year, boxworld is finally coming to a close. And don't worry, while I may hold off on posting final versions in a public forum like this (due to festival rules), everyone who worked on it will be getting a final copy. I will be continuing to post here, but at a slower pace and mostly sound design issues..

Surveyors' ending

All four shorts are getting to the very end. The last detail work is coming down to the ending of Surveyors and the current state is below. The issues are coming down to:
1. The green screen removal of the main elevator landing. This has been the trickiest green screen shot of the entire project. A lot of small reflections and green overflow onto the white shirts has made this very difficult. This latest version looks much better and it should improve a bit more with the next version.
2. Looking down cg shot. The shot of them looking down is just in its first pass to start to get a sense of how it will look. A lot of problems now, but with a better foreground hand, better lighting on the boxes, a few ropes and the id card spiraling down, it should improve considerably.
3. The last pullback. The wide panorama is just a simple rendering of boxes. Once detail is photoshopped in and other elevators are added in, the proper scale should be established.

Surveyors' ending shot - v1

Here's the first rough version of the final pullback that ends Surveyors. With Chris and Hayley talking on the elevator platform, Chris says his final line and then there's this major pullback to see his elevator as well as others going up and down in a huge cavern. It might be hard to see in this compressed version, but there are three elements that need to get combined. The first is the closeup live action footage of them talking. Then there's the image of their bodies and the elevator that needs to get merged in with the closeup (difficult since the reference photo for them standing there doesn't match the best take of them talking - their positions have shifted). And then the fully cg background cavern. Fortunately, the shot favors a massive unzoom rather than a dolly back which means that only one high quality render of the cavern is necessary rather than repeated passes from a flythrough perspective. As final touches, other elevators will get composited in as well as the closing box effect that finishes the shot.

The Thieves Trap complete

And here's how the whole trap sequence plays out. While the beginning and end of the trap use heavy cg, it turned out well to use a bit of live action in the middle to ground the shots geographically. Also, while the shot of the construction worker sliding down in the background wan't really necessary, it does provide a good way to shift the focus away from the trap and back to the guys struggling to hold the line.

Second part of Thieves trap, pt. 2

Revised. It's getting there..

Second part of Thieves trap

After the first section, there's a quick flyby past the thieves and then up to this last part that shows a platform being pulled out to cause an avalanche. This is still pretty rough - the lighting doesn't show the pulleys and ropes as well as they should be seen and the teetering wall of boxes isn't so obvious with the camera still moving. There's really no need for there to be too much in-depth cg for this sequence since it'll be the thieves themselves that sell it, but showing the basic mechanics is pretty necessary at this spot.

first part of the Thieves' trap

Here's a first look at the first of three cg shots that show the trap the Thieves are getting into. This is the trickiest part of all the shorts because it's full computer generated imagery without the benefit of any live action to keep it grounded in reality. But it's coming together well and moves quickly enough that there's not too much time to question whether those are real boxes or not.

Thieves chasm progress

Thieves is coming along nicely with just three last effects shots to be done. Here's a nice one that turned out well. I start it with the original footage to show how much is practical..

Mailman rounding third base

Not too much to say here except that Mailman has gotten a lot of small tweaks and is almost there.

Thieves chasm continues

The thieves chasm ran into trouble a few months ago during development because the software kept crashing due to the number of boxes involved. I considered simplifying the shot, but wasn't happy with the other flythroughs, so I've gone back to the original shot, but now will need to render different sections of the shot in separate passes and then stitch them together. Should work.. in theory. Here's a screen capture from the first set of boxes that surround the opening in the cliff. That's only a small fraction of the total size of the chasm area..

Rendering remotely..

I haven't posted in awhile and this clip isn't all that spectacular - just a bunch of boxes falling in a black void. But it is the first render using a machine that's five states away. it becomes very handy to start adding new machines to handle the pixel pushing and they no longer need to be right at the same desk. Only the very beginning on this shot will be used to create an instant feeling of an avalanche. The useable part is so short, I let the animation continue longer where you can see that it's not all that many. It'll get merged in with the live action soon..

Starting into the opening titles

 

No video on this yet, just a basic layout to start focusing in on what will be most effective as an opening. The idea right now is to use a large field of boxes that have the main BoxWorld text as recessed holes that will read as black text due to the dark shadows. Then boxes will slowly recess revealing the episode name. The camera will move in and disappear into one of the letters and go right into the short. Next steps are the finalize the font sizing and layout, then move to a low resolution fly-through to see it in motion and see how well it works.

Back in the saddle

Hi all,
The time has flown by without a posting in a number of weeks. Between paying work, taxes and a real estate venture, it's been a packed April so far, but the storm is over and posting should resume in the next day or two. Hope all is well with everyone out there!

Elevator action

Here's how the elevator sequence is looking. There are still issues that need to be resolved - the green cast and breaking apart of the opening shot and then the plastic feel of the start of the elevator, but it's getting closer..

Surveyors almost done

Happy Easter, all! There hasn't been much activity on the blog recently because the nature of the latest work isn't so interesting on a day to day level. It's been mostly color correcting and minor graphic touchups as shown in the stills below. Some of the spots that didn't have boxes got them added in and in certain shots, the set ended and it was possible to see the lights of the set. Those each got their small touchups.

The last shot is interesting because as a wide view, it was feeling very stagnant at such a removed distance from the characters. To inject some life in it, I first filtered shadows into the boxes that surround the surveyors so that the eye is drawn in towards them (it was too difficult to get this type of lighting on the set during shooting with the equipment we had), then I zoomed the camera back even further and added fake boxes around the left, right and top sides so that we can slowly zoom in towards them. It's not a very noticeable effect, but it does breathe life into this shot. The final detail was to create some depth by means of some slightly out of focus foreground boxes that move past the background at a slightly different perspective. That should fool the eye into not realizing too quickly that we're essentially just moving in towards a flat image..

And so, Surveyors is about 80% done at this point. Just need to rework the end elevator sequence and a nice cg shot to introduce moving into the second chamber..

Also, if you haven't been to the blog lately, you might want to take a look at two blog entries back where the latest trailer is posted (or click here). It incorporates a lot of the new footage and starts to get to the right vibe. It isn't the final trailer by any means. I'm starting to envision the next one as being even a little bit more offbeat and intriguing..

(click the photos for a larger view)



(no audio on this video, by the way..)

Surveyors revised edit

Hi all - I've been off the radar for a few weeks mostly due to moving back from Montreal. It's a bit of a pain to move all the machinery around, but it doesn't happen too often. Now that it's back up, I'm digging into the last major issue which is the Surveyors short. Below is the latest edit which is looking reasonably good (except some uneveness at the end). This is the footage straight from the camera. Each shot has since then been color corrected and filtered - that version is coming in another day or two after a bit more cleanup.

New BoxWorld Preview

Finally, this is updated to include all the effects work that has happened over the last few months. As the project nears completion, it's time to get refined material out for people to see..

Elevator platform

Shifting gears, I decided to go back and finally try to cleanly remove the green screen from the elevator platform shot once and for all. This shot has eluded me on several prior attempts and the screenshot below shows why:

It was our first greenscreen setup and as you can see, the screen isn't so well illuminated. It runs from very dark green to white at the highlight. And then the green gets heavily reflected in the boxes and the packing tape, and also tints the white clothes of the actors. A fine chain that hangs across the opening doesn't help either. Below is the current state of the removal. There were about thirty different color keys applied to it over seven different layers. In general, on difficult removal shots like this, the troublesome areas get separated onto unique layers to then solve the problems of each area rather than try to apply an effect to the entire shot. There was also a bit of rotoscoping to handle some fine detail near the clothes, but it still needs a bit more work. The surveyor's shirt breaks up once he steps aboard and that will need a bit of rotoscoping to clean up. As much green tinting was removed as possible, but too much color correction changes all the other colors. This is one shot that is just going to pass scrutiny.. barely.. luckily, the shots that follow on the elevator are fantastic.

Thieves Well - current edit

And then here's the first minute and a half strung together. There's still a bit of graphic touchup to make the shots fit together nicer, but it's getting there:

Thieves Well - shot fixed

Well, once again, it's not perfect especially over repeated viewings, but it should do the job just fine. There are four layers behind the live action and then three in front to create different planes. Of course, by adding in more planes, the perspective would be more correct, though it would introduce more shifting into the shot..

Thieves Well - failed attempt

In case anyone's curious, here's the first pass at the motion fly through of the shot in the previous posting. I knew that there was going to be trouble merging the flat shot with full 3d, but the question was how jarring would it be. As you can see below, rather jarring. But solvable.. this version below uses a background, the live footage, the a foreground. A new version is rendering right now that separates the foreground into two independent layers. That should (hopefully) solve that strange midground shifting. It'll never be perfect, but once it gets reasonably close, I can add in the foreground wires and lights which should take the emphasis off.

Thieves Well - shot in progress

No video on this one just yet, but soon. If you click on the image below, it'll come up larger and show the original footage set into the center and then a fake 3d environment of boxes laid in around it. Since this shot will track forward and then sink down to the box they're hauling up, it gets really tricky to match the geometry. The easiest way was to create haphazard piles of boxes that purposefully don't match the perspective of the live action boxes since there's no way to keep them perfectly aligned. As it is now, it's possible to look closely and see what's fake and what's not. That difference should be minimalized with the addition of foreground wires and lights that layer smoothly across both and take the emphasis off any seams. Later today, the shot gets rendered into motion to see how well it moves..

Thieves Well - Continued..

Here's the edit now at one minute with several more effects shots (below). In the next post, I need to get the sound mixed better so that the distance shots feel more correct with the varying levels of echo. Also, I need to add in footage of a glove pointing in the looking down shot. Other than that, the next shot is the one that brings it into focus, a medium long shot that clearly shows all of the geography together (and breaks out of the current ping ponging between close and long shots).

Final Thieves' Well

Of all the four Boxworld shorts, the ending of the Thieves segment is the most complicated since a majority of the set is cg and it requires a complicated interplay between real and fake objects. I've decided to make a concentrated push on this section and get it to a fully working first stage in the next week. For the next several posts, you'll be seeing the same scene get progressively longer as more shots get added in. Right now, here are the opening three:

The glowing red light was added in to create continuity between the second shot where the voltimeter is clearly seen and the third shot where it's in the shadow, but I wanted to establish it's relative position. And the red light does it easily. And below is a rough version of the view down the well to the treasury chest that they're going to start hauling up:

First steps on the Thieves' well

This isn't the most elegant cg move, but I post this for the interest of whoever wants to see how these matchmoves start and get refined. I've added the first couple of boxes to the bottom edge of the well to see how well they match the perspective of the live action shot. Turned out surprisingly well considering it was done by eye looking back and forth between a reference photo and the 3d enivronment. Now it's a question of matching the lighting closer, removing the gaps between some of the fake boxes that appear to slightly float and also rework the right side to be more of a dark confusion of boxes and packing materials. Once a whole lot of extra power cords get layered over the entire scene, it should mask the edge of the seam much better..

Pulling up the box

This is a hybrid live-action and temp cg shot of the thieves starting to pull up the treasury chest. The virtual camera gave me plenty of trouble getting a smooth tilt down off of the thieves - right now it jerks rather abruptly. It didn't seem like much could be done and this was the best result I could get out of the camera curves. Strange, usually the camera is very easy to finesse. I like the abrupt camera tilt - seems to add a good amount of energy to what is a slow developing scene. If I want to slow it later, after effects allows me to warp time with time remapping (essentially retiming a shot a la Matrix where footage slows down or speeds up).

Thieves ending - rough cut

The last major section of the initial set of BoxWorld shorts was to plan the ending of the Thieves adventure. To move forward with that is this first rough edit of the trap sequence. The next stage here will be to block out the cg elements in rough form and start to incorporate them in with the footage to get it to flow smoothly..

Main chasm matchmove

The single biggest issue with this Chasm sequence is matching the live action to the cg flythrough. Below is the first pass that turned out rather successful. We never get so close in this shot that it became too difficult to match the edges.

Thieves chasm sequence

And here's how the segment is starting to look in a cleaned up edit with temp CG. The large chasm won't be too tough to build with copying and pasting architectural pieces over and over - the tricky part is just the few boxes close to the live action footage and how well they merge. Sound design will also be a huge factor in selling the scene. With reverb and echo added later, that'll give the voices the depth they need to put the guys there..

Thieves chasm

Here's the next stage of the massive chasm that starts the third act of Thieves. From the last post, the construction has been fleshed out a bit more and the live footage has been motion tracked in with a rough mask. The end of the shot still needs to breathe a bit more...

Click To Play

Pre-viz started for Thieves

As Mailman starts to wind down, the Thieves closing segment is heavily dependent on cg environments that it's time to start developing the initial layouts. Here is the first pass at the opening flythrough of the chasm that establishes them walking out to the ledge. This isn't the easiest to see how it'll work, but tomorrow the timing gets fixed and the live action will get dropped in to see how it plays.. and it should become clearer.

Mailman with temp music

Now it's starting to come together.. here is the first three-quarters of the Mailman story with some temp music courtesy of RJD2 to check overall timing and how the effects shots are merging with the live action. The edit has trimmed about five seconds to what is here - still eliminating any dead time. There's still some touchup needed in different spots and potentially a slight recut at the beginning of the hallway to liven it up a bit..

Full mail sequence

Here is the first cut of the mail mountains effects cut together. Pretty rough, but the pieces are there. In the next iteration, the mail will be retimed, the edit slimmed down a bit and sfx flowed in.. I posted this version to show how disjointed a sequence like this will look in the early stages.

Let the mail drop..

Happy new year, everybody! Now down to the pixel pushing business..

Here's one of the tricky jobs for the end of Mailman, the stream of mail that rains down on the mailman's daughter. Too difficult to rig practically and too difficult to get Lena's voice on the set, this was left for cg post-production. It's not photoreal, but quite a bit more dynamic than real mail would have been. In order to keep moving forward, a few corners were cut, as in the mail stays rock solid and doesn't bend or crumple on impact, but these are pretty minor concessions. (final shot is at the bottom of the post)

First off is the still of the real footage.


Then a still that shows the filter work to darken the sides and draw attention to the girl.


Here's a still of the cg work environment where the umbrella and pile of mail is approximately recreated by eye and guesswork in 3d space. Up above the shot is a long trough where mail is piled up and ready to slide down using the cg physics engine. The mail is corralled in the last tube where it gets directed straight down at the umbrella. In that last tube is a "turbulence" field to blow the mail around a bit so it doesn't all land in the same place. Also a "dampening" field to slow the mail down since it picks up too much speed going down the ramp.


Then everything except the mail is turned invisible and the shot is rendered:


As a small extra touch and as an experiment in multi-stage renders. The visibility of the umbrella and pile is turned back on and a blindingly bright light is cast down from above to create this high contrast pass:


This is to create the shadows that the mail casts. Anywhere that is black will be layered in as a soft gray while the white is set to transparent. No need to go into this too deeply. It's just a way to get shadows and nothing else.

And the final shot with everything composited including fake boxes in right foreground, slightly out of focus for depth.. The shot doesn't run this long, in fact, it's only seen for a few seconds, but this is an extended sequence to pull the best movement from.


And then the sound effects should solidify it..