VFX in Vancouver

Monday, December 20th, 2010 @ 7:09 pm

3d, after effects, animation, compositing, maya, shake, vanarts, vancouver

My half-year reel is just a collection of all the better stuff I did in the first semester at VanArts.

Our final project was a Sweeny Todd-inspired 3-shot short that involved extensive rotoscoping, a full 3D city background replacement and even shot extension. We started filming the opening shot as high as our Cinematographer’s crane would allow, but we envisioned the shot starting above the rooftops, tracking along the roof line and then down into the street to see our actor.

To get that high up and see a whole city, the city had to be modeled, textured and lit, then a camera was animated along the roof line and down into the street to meet up with the point where the real camera move began. The actor had to be entirely rotoscoped out of the existing environment and placed in the newly-created old-London city street.

Because the real camera move begins low in the air compared to our CG buildings, the part of the shot where we would see the actor before we actually had footage of him, we needed some kind of person to be walking along the street before he really was. To accomplish this, I had to cut him out, cut him up, and re-animate a still frame of him walking down the sidewalk from the point where the camera comes out from behind the building to where it meets with the real camera. After doing this for almost a month, it never improved, and always look mechanical and bad. Not to mention I had almost a minute of footage to rotoscope already and the background replacement for one street was more than enough work for the guys doing the 3D work.