Category: Personal

The closing of the book was the hardest part of the whole project and I am still not able to ace it. This was into two main parts, one was the 3D card node and the other was the corner pin 2D.

So the 3d card node and the card node are two different things. The card node needs to be connected scene and later to the scanline render. On the other hand, 3D cared works without any scene or the scanline render. For the book to close, I had to match the speed of the book closing and then animate the 3D card to that speed.

For the fake page to stick on the real page, I had to track the markers, then later export it as 2D corner pins and there and one more corner pin to make sure that it doesn’t move. For the other side of the page, I just gave a roto to match the closing of the book.

In the end, colour the footage and gave a defocus and I used Davinci Resolve to add some background sound.   

Marauders Map.

This week I started off by making small rotos and cleaning up. There were some places where the finger was visible over the page, and I started off by fixing them. 

To make the page stick to the book I used a tracker node and then tracked the corners of the page and then later exported a corner pin node.    

The next thing I started working on was the Ink Transition. This took up a lot of time as I had to think about how to make it work. For the transition, I downloaded a video from Mixkit. I multiplied and merged the video with the page and gave it a switch, so I can animate the transition timing.

This week I completed the animation of the footsteps and the name tag. I used after effects to do the animation. I imported a frame from the plate and then I animated on that one frame. 

First, I made a footstep by using the pen tool and then gave it a roughened edge and set matte. Then I duplicated the print and then the fractal noise. Later, I made a mask layer and animated the footprint by scaling it.

For the name tag, I used a puppet position tool to move the name tag. 

This is how it looks.

I started off this week by shooting for the plate and understanding what I needed to get the final result. 

First I shot the plate with a phone in 4k, this way I didn’t have to lose time to go and book the camera (as I don’t have one of my own). This what the plate looks like:

I then put the plate in DaVinci and stabilized it. This will make the video look more smooth. I then exported it as EXR so I can work on it in Nuke. I started to find images which can be used to project on the book, like the map and the page. I have broken the page texture image into 2 pages and then used the image to place on it. To clean the image, I used the Keyer Log node to isolate the main part of the image.

Next week, I will start working on the animation of the footsteps and try to make the page close with the book.

I had a meeting with Dom and I wanted to give him an update on progress with my personal project. When I spoke to him, he said me that my idea was good, but I needed to execute it better. 

He liked the Harry Potter plan, but he didn’t like that I went with a flowery video. He told me to reshoot and make it rustier and give it more of a magical Harry Potter vibe and also suggested that I should look into the Marauders Map to give it a nice touch. 

He also told me to sketch a storyboard out so that it will be easier to work with.

I started by marking the book’s cover, so I would be able to see if the camera tracking could work. I used Photoshop to make the cover and the plate was very pixelated. I started by adding more resolution in three ways, first I used the Nerural Filters and then Artifacts Removal. The next step was to increase the Image size and after that, I moved on to high pass and then overlayed it on the image.

Following this, I started camera tracking in 3DE. I was planning to continue my tracking from home by using VMware but I can’t use the 3DE from home (I don’t know why)- so I will go to college and continue the work. 

This week, I was planning to match move the footage in 3dequalizer and start with the compositing of the footage. I had some problems with the 3dequalizer when I was using it from home and the footage wouldn’t read. I tried exporting the footage in EXR format and Tiff format, but it still couldn’t read the footage, so I moved on to the editing and colouring instead.

To edit and colour the video, I used DaVinci Resolve because this was free and the industry has started using this software for editing and colouring. I have used Premier Pro in the past and I am comfortable with it, but I wanted to challenge myself to learn something new.

I watched a few videos and learnt the software. It took some time to get used. I saw another video on how to edit faster by cheating a few of the key shortcuts.

I started off by cutting down the video and keeping only the part which was relevant to me. Next, because I shot the video by hand, I needed to add stabilizing for the footage so that the video would look smooth. After that, I slowed down the video to give it a dreamy feel. For the colour, I wanted to go with the Instax or Polaroid film hue.

Peter McKinnon (2023), 10 Tips To Get You Started with DaVinci Resolve! [Online Video]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq0AUM8Mv78&ab_channel=PeterMcKinnon [ 4th May 2023].

Justin Brown – Primal Video (2020), DaVinci Resolve – COMPLETE Tutorial for Beginners! [Online Video]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Ln33O4p4c&ab_channel=JustinBrown-PrimalVideo [ 4th May 2023].

This week, for my personal project I worked on all the shots needed to complete my project. I wanted my book cover to be like a traditional travel catalogue. I looked up places to shoot near Bedford, the town where I live, but was unable to find anything that caught my eye. With some research, I came across a tulip field, which opens for 2 weeks, once a year, and this looked like something which would work for me, even though it was a 2-hour drive from where I live. It was certainly worth the drive- these are a few shots.

All these shots are screenshots of videos I shot. For the shoot, I used a Canon 6D with Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 for wide and 50mm f1.8. for close-up. I am not happy with the quality of the shots I shot at 1080p with 60 fps. I wanted to get a better camera like 5D Mark III or even 6D Mark II, and I also wanted a gimbal these were not available to rent out till next week, and I had tickets to enter for a specific date, as this tulip field was quite in demand at the time. I got the DJI OSMO for mobile phones to take some tracking shoots, but the one they gave me was not working and I had to give it back. They didn’t have any spares to replace it, so I had to shoot the whole thing by hand.

By the looks of it, I will need to do some cleanup of the plate, there are few food tracks and people walking around. I also have to stabilize the shot so it looks more natural and smooth.

For the book shot, I used the same equipment. To track the video I used a sticky note and pasted it on the corner of the book, so I can track it in 3D equalizer.

I wanted to base my project on compositing, but I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to do. A few days ago, when I was walking to the train station, I saw a library and there were a few books on the table. Being dyslexic, I tend to try and understand images more than actual text, so the first thing I do is look at the image and I interpret the image before attempting to read the title of the book. This got me thinking: What if there were books with covers which can move and tell more about the place or emotion of the person depicted on the book cover?

Now that I’d come up with the idea, I needed a few references. I had seen something like this in the movie Harry Potter. The Daily Prophet is a wizarding newspaper based in London and it was the primary source of news for British and Irish wizards. When I was going through LinkedIn I saw a video from The Mill VFX team’s work for eBay, for their ‘Everyone Deserves Real’ campaign. This video was slightly different than what I had visualised, but I like the way it went through different screens. 

For the storyboarding, I have planned to start with a table with piles of books and then track the screen then go into the book and then a few shots in there which make it look like I have entered the scene depicted in the book followed by me coming out of the book and back to the same scene. I am planning to loop the video if I can. 

In the two references, I didn’t quite like the title of the video being shown throughout the video. I am planning to track the plate and then add the 3D title.

eBay (2023), eBay Authenticity Guarantee | Everyone Deserves Real [Online Video]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v8hL8mkfVc&ab_channel=ebay [22nd April 2023].

John Guille Agustin (2016), Harry Potter Newspaper Scene [Online Video]. Available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPtubly5siQ&ab_channel=JohnGuilleAgustin [22nd April 2023].