Created in Maya and After Effects, with music and stock footage courtesy of Andrew Kramer of Videocopilot.net (used with permission, in accordance with the VC license agreement).
Licensed Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0
Characters and title are the intellectual property of Jim Butcher, and their use here in no way represents a challenge to Mr. Butcher’s ownership thereof.
Actors’ names represent a hypothetical cast for this movie and do not indicate any endorsement of or association with this video or producer.
After Effects CS4 and Windows Vista 64-bit do not get along well. Although my newish computer renders my projects over 60 times faster than my old one did, the interface has always been somewhat sluggish. My most recent project made significant use of the Vector Paint effect, which served to highlight the problem. The paint tool was very hesitant, and it crashed frequently. Quite a bit of hunting around on various support forums revealed a solution: Run After Effects in XP compatibility mode. My interface is now very responsive, and Vector Paint works flawlessly.
So there you go. I haven’t yet encountered any drawbacks, but I’ll post an update if I do.
So I spent a couple of weeks learning that rigging is hard, and another few days learning that animating an improperly rigged model is equally hard. Nevertheless, I have finished a very clunky-looking walk cycle. Also, the texturing has been complete for a while now, although I haven’t had time for an update. So here’s the texturing job and a playblast of the walk cycle:
The team consisted of me, Alexis Tomashosky, Anyul Garza, and Ruth Mentzer. Breakdowns by shot follow:
Shot 1, Liftoff: Matte painting constructed in Adobe Photoshop CS4 by Bryan Ray using elements provided by NASA (the launch pad), and cgtextures.com (several sky photographs). The shuttle was modeled in Autodesk Maya (versions 2008 – 2010) by Ruth Mentzer and textured with Maya and Photoshop by Bryan. Animation, fluid simulation, particle effects in Maya and compositing in The Foundry Nuke by Bryan.
Shot 2, Leaving the Earth: Earth texture provided by NASA. Earth and stars modeled and textured in Maya by Bryan. Cruise ship modeled in Maya by Ruth and textured (so to speak—really just simple materials) in Maya by Bryan. Animation and atmosphere effect by Alexis Tomashosky in Maya. Composited in Nuke by Alexis. Greenscreen footage keyed by Anyul Garza and Alexis in Nuke and Adobe After Effects. Shuttle as above.
Shot 3, the Lobby: Lobby modeled in Maya by Ruth and Alexis. Textured and lit in same by Alexis. Keying in After Effects and 3d tracking in PFTrack by Anyul. Map element by Bryan. Alexis composited in Nuke.
Shot 4, the Map: Modeling, texturing, lighting, fluid effects and animation in Maya by Bryan.
Shot 5, Orbiting Jupiter: Jupiter and stars modeled and textured in Maya by Bryan. Animation and engine effects in Maya by Bryan. Composited in Nuke by Bryan. Cruise ship as above.
Shot 6, Cabin: Room modeled and textured by Alexis and Bryan in Maya. Greenscreen footage keyed in After Effects by Anyul. Matte painting created in Maya by Bryan. Hologram animated in Maya and After Effects (+ Video Copilot’s Twitch plug-in) by Bryan and composited in Nuke.
Shot 7, Dining: Keying in After Effects and 3d tracking in PFTrack by Anyul. Modeling in Maya by Bryan and Ruth. Texturing and lighting in Maya and compositing in Nuke by Ruth.
Shot 8, Sun Deck: Sun model, texture, and fluid simulation in Maya by Bryan. Deck modeled and textured in Maya by Ruth. Keying in After Effects and tracking in PFTrack by Anyul. Rotoscoping in After Effects and Nuke by Ruth and Anyul. Compositing in Nuke by Ruth.
Shot 9, Freefall Room: Keying in After Effects by Anyul. Modeling in Maya by Alexis. Lighting in Maya by Alexis, Anyul, and instructor Ognian Bozikov. Compositing by Anyul in Nuke. Flying rig by Daniel Mentzer.
Shot 10, Logo: Mars and stars modeled and textured in Maya by Bryan Ray. Animation and compositing in Nuke by Anyul. Logo created in Adobe Illustrator by Bryan. Additional compositing in After Effects by Bryan. Cruise ship as above.
Screen talent: Alexis, Bryan, Kat Michels, Todd Judd, Vince Chowdhury, Tasha Muhammad, and Marcus Porter.
Music: “Jupiter” from The Planets Suite composed by Gustav Holst and mutilated in Adobe Soundbooth and Premiere by Bryan. Voice over by Jessica Ray and recorded in Soundbooth by Bryan. Sound effects from an unknown library that’s been kicking around on one of my hard drives for years. Audio mastering by Anyul and Bryan
Editing by Ruth and Bryan in After Effects and Premiere. Special technical support by instructor Ognian Bozikov.
Thanks to the Art Institute of Colorado for the use of a Panasonic HVX200 camera, greenscreen stage, video studio, portable greenscreen kit, and the 60+ Macintosh computers we used for rendering on the weekends.
This is the shot I turned in for Advanced Compositing. It still needs quite a bit of work, including swapping the flying robot for two or three walking humanoid ones, major work on the shadows, changing out the background buildings for a futuristic cityscape, and a little tweaking of this and that.
The footage was generously provided by Colin Cooper and Rob Petersen in exchange for my work on the VFX. Hopefully once I get this shot in the can, all the rest of the shots they need will be comparatively easier. At the very least, I won’t have to do any more modeling at that point.
This Rube Goldberg device was built entirely within Maya and animated using only expressions and Maya’s dynamics features. The focus of the project was on simulations within Maya, so I left the materials and lighting quite simplified. The music was made using loops from the Bill Laswell Collection in Sony Acid Pro, and the sound effects were drawn from a variety of royalty-free libraries.
Not really, of course. This is my Color Correction & Keying final. Thanks go to my wife for once again generously agreeing to take part in the shot.
I used Nuke for both the keying and compositing, the video was shot with a Panasonic HVX200, and the backplate with a Canon Rebel XT. Thanks to Ian Morrell for the use of his portable greenscreen.