New film I am working on "Just Add Water", the last scene is huge VFX wise. It originally involved some fancy camera tracking, CGI water animation, and some character animation. All of these would be my first real production use of new workflow and programs. As my excitement (and frustration) increased, the scene gradually decreased in complexity (for time and story's sake) but my realization of this didn't come until today (5 days after filming).
Several days of trying to animate and render CGI water ended in frustration and I was at my wits end to find the "solution" to the problem. I was desperately trying to find import/export settings to work with each other to successfully transfer models and animation between Cinema 4D (modelling and animation) > Maya (Realflow Export plugin) > Realflow (animating and generating water, splash, foam, mist) and then back to Maya for final rendering composite and then compositing the final footage in After Effects. Getting caught up in inconsistent settings and metric conversions and excruciatingly long simulation times, I really wanted this to work.
But it finally hit me today, it's all unnecessary.
I came up with a new simple workflow; using a few displacement maps, some positional tracking, a few water splashing assets and some photos positioned in 3D space... all in After Effects. There might need to be a 3D model, but certainly no character animation, and exporting Cinema 4D > After Effects is a breeze.
I like to think I'm a good problem solver when it comes to visualizing working through FX shots, but I just shake my head at just how long it took me to get it.
Maybe I need a break, well that's what this vacation weekend is for!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment