Final Piece

Link to the final piece - https://youtu.be/qd0Kv8O-bT4


Conclusion - 

the focus for this project was to create a realistic 3D piece, and by applying the new skills learnt and knowledge gained there is a sense of belief that, that was achieved and that the goal has been reached. Knowing this project would deliver a lot of problems because of the new software needed to learn, it would have been more convenient to do some actual tests and learn the software before the project started instead on learning mid-way through the project, this would of saved time throughout the project, another situation where improvement was needed was  showing the actual ability of what’s needed within this project, even though there was a push for the amount of work that was needed, it would been better if planning was done properly at the beginning of the project in terms of ability wise and not trying to force working towards the end. Although after completing this project, the outcome has been great, with a lot of ups and downs, in terms of learning a lot more software and techniques, and then being able to apply this to my own project. This has really helped especially with what is intended for a possible career path.

Editing, Grading and Colour Correction

To grade the final piece i used after effects and within after a plug in called 'finesse'. because i have used this grading plug in before i felt very comfortable using it again for this piece. i feel it gives a nice professional look to the piece when used correctly. after experimenting with grading i decided that only a little push was needed because i didn't want to over power the shot with grading, overall i think that it turned quite nicely and it adds a nice touch the piece.

For editing i used after effects, what i needed to do for editing purpose was connect the piece to beginning of the shot so that there is a nice back story for the scene.

Opening Shot

Because i felt this piece needed a little story to introduce the shot, i decided to have a black screen and have audio play the story, at the start i had a friend read out a police call to say that -

We got a 17 38

Police car stolen

1 officer in pursuit

Backup is required

When this was done it was just the matter of adding sound effects to the piece to make to story connect, things such as police horns, car crash effects. all these effects would build up the story for the scene, with this in now i felt that the shot was complete and now had a meaning behind the actual animation piece. 

The sounds were provided by - Soundbible.com

Compositing

After the render was done i collected the images from zync and now it was time to composite.

Because most of i project is 3d this meant that there wasn't a lot of comping to do, the main thing i focused on was to add effects such as dust and flares just to make it look like it is an actual crash.

Here is the node graph for scene, as you can there wasn't really much to do.

The first thing added to the shot was a firefly remover plug in, i found when i rendered that there was fireflies on my shot, these were little white pixels floating around. to get rid of this the plug in was used from 'http://muellerstefan.de/firefly-removal/'. this allowed me  to work with certain aspects to get rid of the fireflies.

Pretty much after that was about making it look good, for this i used a simple colour correct just to bring out the shot, and by selecting the whites and blacks to integrate the colours much better.

After this was done, it was time to write out and time to edit.

Troubleshooting.........Part 2

Sooo, just when i was ready to render my final scene i had to do a couple of test renders to make sure everything was ready, i was doing this and i was feeling good about what was being produced.

But then all of a sudden an hour before i was ready to start the main render Vray caused me many problems. The problem i faced was that when it came to around 5-6ish in the after noon Vray would suddenly stop working, every time i would render past this time a major error would come up saying that a certain image location file has lost connection with the administrator.
This really messed me up in terms not allowing me to render at all, and because this was so close to when i wanted render and also knowing that the deadline was two weeks away this dropped my confidence in this project. After speaking to there students about this problem, this situation has come up before. it seems like towards the evening Vray just didn't want to work. it was the same problem every time and something to do with the image error, after doing some research and looking at forums to do with the situation and what seems to be the problem is that when the file location for the render image being saved has lost connection to its server. because whoever is the administrator, when they log off, the file location is no longer there. so this wasn't good for me, because what i wanted to do for the render was to leave it over the weekend to get it done, but due to this problem i had to do something different to get this piece rendered.

The only situation i could think of at the time was to change the renderer and render over the weekend on my laptop. This did mean changing all of the materials in the scene and then aplying all the materials back on to everything. This would be a very long task but it was the only situation i could do within the time i had. 

Introducing Zync

Another problem that was faced after all the materials were changed was that my laptop wasn't powerful enough and it would take over an hour to render, this wouldn't cut it for the final render because there was too many frames to do. To sort this problem out was to send it to a render farm. The render farm i sent it was called 'Zync', this was recommended by a popular 3D magazine, soi i knew this was legit. 

The only problem about the online render farm was that it was small business that had money to put into rendering, because i was a student i had to be careful with how much i could do because of the budget i am on. Thankfully because Zync is ran by google they offered a 300 dollar free trial, at first this seemed like this would cover my rendering, but it didn't, i had to pay 70 pounds on top to get atleast 140 frames, this was enough close to what my animation is for my set fmp, but i couldnt afford to do more frames because of the money. After using the 'Zync' calculator i found out that if i was to render my whole animation through 'Zync' it would of cost £3,500 for the animation.

With the outcome of the renders i was happy with what i produced but i needed to somehow get some more renders of the animation, it was tight especially with the time we had left. with this in mind i had to lower the samples on everything which means that the shot would be nosier but it would be needed just so i could hand in something for the deadline, but for the degree show i could aim to get the animation rendered.

Lighting

Lighting

The first thing to do for the lighting was to look at reference at cars whilst they were in the dark, after looking at the reference, the next step was to create the illusion of a night time scene with the lighting within Vray. By downloading IES files, which is real life lighting data, these have been used in a certain way to recreate a real-life street for the lighting which includes street lamps and just ambient lighting. With the  street done, the next thing that needed to be lit was the actual car itself, the first part of the car to light up would be the headlights at the front, by doing this an actual model of the  car headlight was modelled and then the correct materials were applied using real life reference and then Photometric lighting for the headlights, the same technique was applied the brake lights at the back, the challenging lighting for the car was the blue lights on top of the roof of a police car. 

Link to research on lighting on the car at night - 

https://uk.pinterest.com/0433ajaychander/lighting/


After a lot of research on the actual light bulbs used for the lights, it was then just a matter of making them look like they are bouncing the right amount of light around in the scene, so this meant looking at actual police cars in patrol and taking reference with how things are lit up wherever the blue hits. 

Road

Road

The next step after sorting out the rendering issue was to create a road for my car to be over, this would produce the shadows and lighting bouncing from the car, also this would help a lot in terms of realism for the piece. The technique used for the road was photogrammetry, this is the same technique used on the person for the driver. By taking a fair number of photos of a chosen road, these would be converted into a 3D mesh using ‘Re-Make’, this would create the 3D generated road with the textures from the pictures and make it into a usable mesh, with this now in the scene I could place it in the scene and with this in the scene it really made the scene much more realistic. 

Troubleshooting

Arnold to Vray

One of the main problems that was encountered with this project was rendering time. Because this piece is focused on everything being 3D, it would be a heavy render time, so once the car was in a position for lighting test, it was time to do some tests to look at the outcome of the car with lighting. The noticeable problem for rendering was when it came to the actual timing of a frame render, one frame would take up to 2hrs to half only half a frame, this would mean that my project could possibly take up to eight days’ render, so of course this was a problem that needed to be sorted out. Therefore, my first solution to getting around this problem was to look at the texture files, this was a problem because every map that was in my scene was 4k, and because the main texture software used was quixe, when exporting the material/textures it would give you 5 separate maps which would include a diffuse, normal, specular, reflectance at normal and a roughness map. Overall in the scene there was around 40 textures which had 5 separate maps each, so overall there was about over 200 maps which were at 4k. To fix this problem the maps would need to be takes into photoshop and changed to 2K. after re applying all the new maps to the right shaders, there was an assurance of this working, but when it came to rendering again it still took a long time to render but not as long as it did before, but this still wasn’t acceptable for rendering time. Another solution to sorting this out would be, to go through different renders that accessible and try to render a frame using the standard shaders as this would help find the quickest way to find out my results. The renderers used for this were Arnold, Renderman and Vray. In the end the fastest renderer was Vray, so this was good news and bad news, the good news was that this would cut down a lot of rendering time, and the bad news would mean going through all the shaders and change them all to Vray so that they were able to render. After doing some research on the reason for the rendering problems, the conclusion for Arnold not being great for interior rendering is because it is a brute force renderer, this means when it comes to rendering the samples within an interior space, the areas not needed, it treats the scene equally, so this would take longer especially for shadows, unlike Arnold, Vray has something called adaptive sampling so when it comes to interior rendering it will give priority to certain areas which is needed for rendering and not waste time on spreading samples through the scene, especially when it comes to shadows.

Destroying the Car

Destroying the car

The next step in this project was to destroy the car as if it has been in a crash. After looking at many reference videos of how a car crashes and the state they are in after and looking at scrapyards, it was time to apply the knowledge to my own car. To do this technique, the car would have to be brought into Zbrush where the main destruction would take place. Using alphas to create the destruction on the metal helped a lot and made the car see, as if it was in a crash, to do this method each piece of the car had to be exported separately and then worked on in Zbrush then imported back into Maya so that the displacement map could be applied to the car metal piece.

Modelling/Texturing

Modelling/texturing

Using online references found after researching what cars are used in the force. After finding blueprints of the car, next step was to start modelling off the blueprints, because the car was the focus, the modelling had to be correct. Just by following the shape of the car and matching certain aspects the modelling of the car got done quick, once the basic shape of the car was done the next step was to make the interior after looking at a lot of references of interiors within BMW cars. With the information gathered, it was applied to the car and with this completed the next step was to texture it.

The texturing was done it two different software’s. the first software used was ‘MARI’ this was used for the car metal and the actual sticker pattern that is on a police car. After doing research on the actual pattern on the police car it wasn’t too difficult to do, because this was done in ‘MARI’ there was lot of control over creating the shapes that match the ones on a police car. 

After the outer shell for the car was done, it was time to work on the interior for the car. The software used for this was ‘Quixel’ this software is a part of Photoshop and allows you to in a Photoshop style but allows 3D work in there as well. This programme was extremely useful it helped so much with time and just simply getting the work done, using the materials in Quixel, these materials would be applied to the correct piece within the car and then altering the materials using masks to add certain features onto the different materials. After applying this to the individual pieces of interior it was ready, it was time to start bringing all the parts together and building the car up using the textures and applying the different maps through the shaders within Arnold Because Quixel always exported 5 separate maps so with these maps you would need to plug them into their channels within the hyper shade.

For each piece of the the interior i exported a diffuse map, normal map, reflection map, reflection at normal map and a specular colour map, this would be used to separately alter the materials to match the scene after so i could get the best outcome for the materials.


  

Recce

Recce

What made a composition idea interesting was that this piece would look more appealing if it was a night shot, this felt that this idea was the right path to go down and this would benefit the project. This would allow a lot of experimenting especially when working with night. To carry on, some recce shots were needed so an idea could be put together visually.

After taking the shots of the street i could do some quick mock ups in Photoshop to get a better build for what the potential shot could be. Using these mock ups i could then use it as a guise to create this in 3D

Sound

Once my animatic was complete i was ready to put some sound with it, the kind of atmosphere i wanted to give of was a dramatic feel, i wanted to audience to get the feeling of suspense and because with the camera shots i achieved in the pre vis you don't notice the police officer in a crash until the final moments of the piece, at this point i would like the music to have more effect for the big reveal so this would then touch the audience and make them question how this even happened. i feel the music will add a lot to this piece because it is a slowed down in time piece and will have a nice effect on the camera action when it is going around the police car.

Sound - 

Pre Vis

With some tests carried out i felt more confident with the project and prepared to move on to creating a pre vis piece which is a 3D animatic, with this i would be creating my camera animation, this will give me a lot of help when it comes to making the car, i can follow the shots from the animatic and then model only parts shown through the camera which can save me a lot of time when it comes to creating the car. how i created the animatic was just by downloading a pre made car from 'TurboSquid' and then downloading the max rigged character from the '11second club', i placed max in the driver's seat of the car and then animated the camera to look around the police officers car and see what happened during the crash whilst the car would be flipped so everything that should be on camera would be affected by the crash.

Pre Vis - Initial animatic

 - Without Sound 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X246V6hkn_w

 - With Sound 

Test - Street

For the street i had to plan on how i would composite the cg car and the street together, there are a lot of methods i could do for this technique such as placing some images and creating a matte painting of the street and then placing that large image on a sphere and put it in the background of the car, i feel that this method would be one of the easier ways of doing i dont think it would work well with the shots i have came up with my storyboard, the method i want to do for this is to create a pan and tile background, this would require less matte painting but will require more work in nuke to place the street together, for this method i would need to some pictures of the road i want to use and then stitch them together and place them in the animated camera that i will make in maya for the animation. i think with this method of doing i will have more control over the background, here is the selected road for the street, i have taken a couple of shots at different angles to see which would with the car.

 
Here are just some of the angles i took of the street, but there is a particular part of the street i do like, as shown -

What i like about this is the angle of the image as it shows both the side road and the main road, this make the image more full and also allows me to have more fun with it in terms of matte painting and adding things in to make the street full. The lighting also catched my attention, it has a nice mix of teal and blue coming from the street lights, i can experiment with theses colours when it comes colour grading to give a nice look to my final project.

Tests - Photogrammetry

The beginning of this project i wanted to do some test on what could potentially be problems later on in the project, the main one i thought could be a problem would be photogrammetry, as this is something i have done before, the scale of using photogrammetry in this project is going to be very important as i want to create the police officer with this technique, this would prove to have some problems if not carefully planned out. 

This is why i wanted to take tests of photogrammetry just so i know if i was going to run into problems, and as i assumed i did run it to all sorts of problems with my tests as shown  - 

 These are some tests that i did of my friend, by looking at the models i could see where i would have touch up the model in zbrush, although it doesn't look like  it would be a lot of work, the lighting didn't turn out great on the actual model so i couldn't use this for my project

So i decided to try photogrammetry again but this time on another friend just so i could if i could get this lighting done correctly, but again this piece also had problems, as shown - 

Although the lighting was a bit better on this piece i didn't realise that facial hair would be a problem, this would mean a lot more working n zbrush.

With this starting to become a problem i had to turn to work online and see if i could a pre made photogrammetry piece, i managed to find a piece where the owners allowed people to use for personal projects and not for profit's sake. with this model potentially being in my final piece i do want to try photogrammetry again on my friend and see if i can get the lighting correct and if success happens with that piece i would use that for my police officer, if not i will be using this model as shown -

Again with this piece there is some problems that i would need to touch up in zbrush, but with this piece the lighting on the model is very well done and clear, if i can match this type of work with my own piece i would be very happy. 

VFX Breakdown

 After i created my storyboard the next step was to put together a vfx breakdown sheet, this would then guide me throughout the project, this would consist of elements which would be involved with my project. A lot of elements would be used for this project, so it is good to have an organised plan for what happens in the project, also explained on the vfx breakdown sheet will be the techniques i will use to create the elements for this project and also descriptions of certain things, this is so when it comes doing that particular part in the project i could look back this sheet and look at what i need to do accomplish for that part of the project.

Shot List/Storyboard

The next step for me in this project is to create a story board for my project, this would be a good guideline for me to follow when working on the shots needed for the camera animation. To help with creating the story board i looked a lot of films to do with cars and looked at how they were shot, i found this useful because i could then apply some of the camera shots to my piece. With this knowledge i then started to create a shot list of what i wanted to include in the piece, i then started to work with what was practical for me and the time we had to do this project in. After a lot of thought i then narrowed down my ideas to a point where i thought i would be comfortable to carry out the project.

Shot list -

Storyboard -

Exploring My Idea

The next step for me is to now break down my idea and create moodboards for me to get a better understanding of what I want to do. Firstly I started looking at police officer uniforms to get a better understanding of what they wear on a daily basis, because i wanted to base the person on a British police officer I had to look into what they wore compared to an american officer, If I was to confuse the officer then it would not be clear to the audience. Another part of the uniform would be to look at the things they carried on there vest, this would be important because during the crash the items would be floating in the space of the car due to the crash, after creating a moodboard for this it became clearer with that i needed to include into my scene, this also helped because i then could start modelling the small assets early on.

Moodboard of Police Uniforms -

For my scene, the car would be very important because that is where the majority of my work will take place, To keep consistency through out the project i would need to pick police car that is used in the UK, After looking at a lot of models, I found one which appealed to me for me to make in 3D, The car is a BMW E90, I preferred this model to make because it was different to the other cars, there was a lot of hatchbacks used as police cars, but when i found out that this was a saloon car i was in favour of making that type of car because i have worked on past saloon cars before so i was familiar with the techniques needed for the modelling. 

Moodboard of Police Cars -