NOT MY BLOG!

This is not my blog anymore! I moved a while back! New link: http://jvspad.com/

Battlefield 3

I finally got a chance this morning to try out the Battlefield 3 beta and it is everything I have been hoping for since Battlefield 2. The weapons are amazing, the game play is fast paced but still requires tactics, and the game is just amazingly beautiful.

I started out on the american team of Metro, attacking into the city. It is the only playable map at the moment and I suspect that it will be the only one available till the game comes out. I first decided to try out the recon class. I found the default weapon, the MK11, to be versatile and fun to play with for the first part of the game. We started in a park of some kind. I followed the water on the right in a attempt to get around the side of the main battle happening in the center of the field. Once I saw a good position I did not run into it like I would in other games. I crawled from cover to cover to get into a good position to not be seen. I found and area on the side of a rock and next to a tree that game myself excellent cover and started to pick off targets of opportunity, not firing unless I knew I could hit them.

The action of crawling into cover and slowly moving as to not be seen is something I I like to do in large airsoft games. That is the closet to actual war I have been in. I felt based on my experiences as a big FPS shooter fan and an airsoft junky that this was the closest I have been able to use cover to conceal and protect myself in a game.

As I played I entered an underground metro system that had a ton of thru holes for people to take you out. It was a dangerous place to attack however it was balanced in a way that there where so many ways to get to the objective that once the enemies spread themselves thin you could push thru. Really smart level design.

After the metro you push into a station then onward to a large structure where you can shoot building to building. This was a good level to chose to the beta and alpha because it was liner and it gave a tinny taste of the long and close range and the open and CQB combat.

The game did have somethings that I was not super keen on that may still be addressed before the game comes out. One thing I loved about Bad Company two was the ability to pull out your knife and use it easily with one key. In BF3 however you must first switch the weapon then use the knife, just like in BF2. Although this is more true to the real world it took some getting used to in this game. It is much easier and faster to pull your side arm. Another thing that I found confusing was the "flare" from players. Occasionally a player will have some kind of sheen or flare that reviles there position. I don't know the reasoning or the cause for this. At first I thought it was a sheen and thought it was great because it meant that you gained an advantage by paying attention to the shadows and light just like in the real world. However as I played I saw the same thing in the subway away from the light. I think this reviled my position as a sniper early in the game even though I had crawled into cover and did not take a shot.

Over all I do love this game and it is living up to its hype! I cannot wait for October!

Done With finals and New job!

So it has been a while since I have updated my blog! Almost two months, I will not drop the ball on this again! So I am finished with school for 6 months and have started at Comcast. It is a fun job! I find myself doing a ton of programming and a bit of graphics work. We are developing some new cool training content! And the view is breath taking.

I finished finals and was pretty happy with the results. I wished I had combined my projects like others did however I was happy with my compositing and semi happy with character animation two. You can see these on Vimeo.

I will try to get some pics of my new job here at comcast!

Later

Crunch Time

I am in full production and no sleep mode. On wendsday I went and shot some footage for shot two and I learned a little something about interlacing footage. It is really hard to track with PFtrack. The reason being is that there are no solid points to track. I attempted to De interlace the footage and that helped a bit however I could not get a good track because of the motion blur it added during a critical camera move. To try to fix it I manually added user points however I was unable to track the footage. I will need to re-shot it this week.

To make up for lost time I pushed on assets. I was able to do a quick render and comp for shot 3. It still needs some work but it is getting there.

I also started work on the spaceship that will be hovering over the city. That and re-shotting the footage will be main focus this week. I hope to have all the CG assets done by Saturday and the footage done by monday night so that I can start rendering and comping my shots.

Shot 3 Test from James Spadafora on Vimeo.

I Have made some progress on Character animation as well. I used the OPSIPA script to create a control rig for my orc. It is robust and a time savor. Normally to create to joy stick controls seen on most rigs now a days you need to set driven keys on blend shapes at different locations on a control curve, which can take a while. The script preps your blend shape to create an intermediary to preserve your original network then provides a GUI for mapping your blend shapes to your control curve. It was also easy to create my own connection inside the hyper shade for the mouth open, which is controlled by joints instead of blends. I used the GUI I made to do a quick lipsync test.

Learning greenscreen hard way......

So this week I tackled the green screen shoot. I learned the hard way that it is super important to get the best plate you can to get the best comp. Here is the original footage:

GreenScreenTest from James Spadafora on Vimeo.

I started with primatte first since that is what we used in class. I really like the step by step process of the toggle however when I moved thru the steps I realized that I was having a real issue with here head. There was all kinds of dark noise close to here hair values. Because of this I was battles to keep the dark wisps of hair while trying to eliminate the noise. This comp did not come out at all. The only way I would be able to easily remove the noise was to re-shoot the shot. I gave the rotopaint a try to draw out a garbage matte however I would need to go in with a tablet every frame and draw it out . I decided jest to re shoot first thing next week or friday becase there was another issue with the footage I will get to later. here was the primatte test:




Next I gave the IBK keyer a try which I did not get to far in because I found that it is a strong keyer if you have a clean BG plate. Pulling a key from IBK would be jest as much work at Primatte with a less intuitive interface. Also I had all the same issues I had with Primatte with the noise around the head.


The last Keyer I used was Keylight. I liked this keyer because I was able to pull a usable key quicker then with primatte. the sliders where a lot more useful and intuitive then the sampling method that IBK and Primatte use. This is by far my favored keyer. I still had all the same issues with the noise and hair however I was able to find a good balance using the black point slider.




There where a few good things that happened in the shoot. My lighing turned out exactly how I imagined it in my mind. I may defuse the red rim a bit but over all I was happy. That intermediate lighting class really paid off. I did not get any spill because I worked far from the screen however this caused the issue with the noise because I was getting the dark areas of the screen which made the noise. To fix this I will drop the intensity of the Keno flows pointing at the screen and work closer. Another issue I had was tracking. The points I put on the screen where to few. as soon as the ladder was out of the shot PFtrack did not has the data it needed to solve the camera. I think I will need to put more points ether on the wall or in the scene to get a good track witch will be important for bringing the scene in and do the set replace.

Week 4 Update

I have head a busy week! One of my major projects has been

rebuilding my computer. I had to make a few trips to micro center but it is done! I also put a Crosshair self contained liquid CPU cooler so I am over clocked to 3.30. Out of the spar parts from my old build I was also able to put together a lower powered system.

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU K 875 @ 2.93

GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz
Memory: 6144MB RAM
Hard Drive: 2 TB
Video Card: Radeon HD 6800 Series
Monitor: Acer 21.5 Widescreen
Sound Card: Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones: Logitech pimpnessKeyboard: LogiTech G15 (Old blue version)Mouse: LogiTech G5
Mouse Surface: Allsop
Operating System: Windows 7 GAMER™ + Fedora 15
Motherboard: Gigabyte

Another project I have been working on is my orc for character animation 2. I have finished modeling and have moved on to rigging. I have completed the tweak rig and have started the blend shapes. I should have him talking by the end of next week!

The last project I have been working heavily on is compositing. I hope I will be shooting the video for the first two shots next week. I have completed the story boards and have experimented with 3d Camera tracking using Pf track.

The story boards will be for a trailer for a fictional alien abduction movie called
"Invasion". I took inspiration from the camera work in Clover field (not the best movie) and movies like Independence Day and District 9. The cinematography will be done like a handy cam and the trailer will be as high action as possible. There will be quick cuts between shots to keep up the action with text in between to mix it up. I plan to shot the shots by next week Homework permitting so that I can start cleaning the plates ASAP.

The first shot in my trailer will be of a large spaceship hovering above the city. It will be sucking people up with its anti Gravity beam. To acheve this shot I will need to track the Camera, use Maya to create the ship and particles, then comp it into a clean plate and use a matte to convey the people and ship behind buildings. Also I will need to use heavy color correction and depth maps to get the atmosphere where the ship is. Also small effects like small fires and smoke added to the buildings in the distance can be added to add to the distraction.









The Second shot will be of fighter jets flying above and Ally where our protagonist is standing.
To do this shot it will need a lot of the same work to the first shot. The camera will need to be tracked and a matte for the buildings made. Elements like distance ploms of smoke over the building will also be added. The challenge with this shot will be the fast moving camera and the high action movement of the protagonist combined with the 3d assets.


The last shot will be of the antagonist inside the ship. She will be looking around saying "Where the hell are we?" This shot will need set extension so a green screen is in order. Since the entire thing is handy cam trackers will need to be placed on the green screen to hold the set in place. as the protagonist moved into it.




A Lot of my shots are going to need a ton of tracking. To get ready for it I tracked a clip and comped in some fighters from my CGI final done so long ago. I used PF track to get a camera solve into Maya. I then used the camera and movie clip to plan out the movement of the fighters. Once I did that I rendered out the fighters and fire on separate passes and brought the images into Nuke. Then I created a matte to obscure the fighters behind trees and rocks then matched the White and blacks with the grade node. I then eye matched the saturation, added grain, and then glint for fun to the flames. The hardest part was matching the bad quality of the video. I had to use some blurs and grain to make it look more degraded like the footage. You can see the end result below.

Viper in Forest from James Spadafora on Vimeo.

Orc Head WIP

Made a ton of progress on my Orc head this week. Based off the last crit I payed more attention to the bone structure in the upper areas by the eyes and that made a ton of difference. I also rounded out the area around the eyes more. Also a major change was the jaw. It was made much larger to support the teeth. Also the shape was rounded out a lot more. Eyes, ears, and the teeth where also added.