Grand Finale!

As it usually happens with Visual FX, two weeks later my work is magically done and the band has already uploaded the video to their Myspace site as well as Youtube

It works!

So after weeks of setting up the roto masks and the actual network for the clips that will be appearing on each screen, i finally got a chance to test ride it and it works like a beaute! As you can see (on the screen cap) i have 6 different file-in nodes for each of the different clips that will be playing on each TV set (i had previously exported the individual clips to be no larger than 300Mb so as to not kill the flow). I have individual scale and move2D controls for each clip (and move3D nodes where needed) i also hooked the Multilayer node to a grain and defocus nodes so as to have control over the apparent resolution of the clips playing on the screens.



I exported this rig as an independent script and will just import it to all my other scrips and switch the clips around so it doesn't get repetitive.

Here is a link to a sample clip i uploaded earlier to my webspace. CLICK HERE NOTE: Ignore the first two black frames that appear at the very start of the clip, PLEASE BE PATIENT its a 14mb clip so it may take a bit to load.

Stage 1 and 2 Done!

Finally done with the tedious first and second stages of the project, which would be all the articulate rotoscoping on all the limbs of the actor that crossed any of the 6 screens at any given time. Now, some 2000 roto frames later and after having set up the clip place holders for each of the TV's i can noe go in and actually choose which clips i want in what TVs.

Concerning the tracking needed on 3 or 4 of the shots, that is like 95% done. I have exported all of the tracking data for the trackings that were successful and will import those as the tracking data on the Matchmove nodes for the last stage. Shot 1 and 9 would be the tricky tracking shots and they are all set up for the clips to be inserted and fine-tuned. The only set back this whole time was the amount of frame-by-frame roto work needed on some shots and some difficult tracking situations in one or two of the clips.

MOving on to stage 3, i will now go back to the previously rigged scripts in Shake and starg going through the different clips i exported last week to go in each of the screens. Let the creative part of the project finally kick in, no more slave work!



Snapshot of the roto network for a single shot

insertion clips

Got together with director Carlos Cruz and editor Rodrigo Zozaya over the weekend and finally got from them 25 gigs worth of material to be inserted and tracked onto the different marked televisions in the shot. A specific shot was specifically set aside for "the money shot" but the rest is basically coming down to sifting through thousands of frames of the band playing to see what clips fit the different shots.

It begins

all frames concerning any VFX work have now been separated into 9 different shots. Each shot is no less than 50 frames and no more than 200. I will begin tracking and exporting the tracking info on apple Shake this week to prepare for the television image replacement that will take place as soon as i receive the clips from our editor. My work is cut out from here on out.

Cue Audio...

The song for the video, "Enemigo" is available on the band's Myspace profile.

VFX Stills

These are a couple of frames to show the televisions with the markers that need to be tracked and the black screens replaced with video clips of the band rocking out.

Picture Lock - Frames delivered to VFX dept.

Finally after a long 2 weeks with no news, i finally met with video director Carlos Cruz, Editor Rodrigo Zozaya, Producer Jaime Tapias to talk about the final cut of the video and have the frames delivered in Targa format to star working on the tracks and stabilization.

After reviewing all 4,500 frames i determined there were at least 9 shots that would need compositing and tracking. Though most of th shots consist of televisions being tracked and video composited on top (video of the band playing) the director was still uncertain about the video they want on the actual televisions, so we determined the best option would be to start tracking the t.v's and saving the tracking data to later apply to the matchmove node (in shake) to track in the video later.

Some still frames of the FX shots will be uploaded as soon as Bloggr works out some bugs with their image upload script.