ANI1105 RoBoTCity: November 2012

Improving Film Quality

The programs I use to the improve film quality is Adobe Premiere and After Effects. The Premiere will be the main program for editing the films, and the After Effects will be the editing the quality.

This is what the adobe premiere looks like.

I been given three video clips from my Tudor, and I will have to cut the films short to make a simple video.

By using the tool called replace with After Effects Composition it will automatically take me to after effects, and it is link together so Premiere gets auto updates from After Effects.

The main tool I will be using on After Effects will be wrap stabilizer to change shaking hand-held shots to nice smooth shots.

I will be using Colour Corrections to change quality to make it into a good film quality. So I use equalizer tool to change colours.

Here's the boat travel original. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9nbS0BaK3jQ (Video)

Here's the edited boat travel verison. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2SqpDFMxLEA (Video)

Here's own other films using this method. This is my clip from Summer of when I first met my puppy for the second time, and he likes playing alot and attacking shoes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h__zQfoV0cc (Video)

This is my music clip of a Apache Helicopter flying over Norfolk Broads. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zXOOnJxF4KU (Video)

Adobe Photoshop is the best common program I use to help with my time, and doing projects. This photo was taken by my tudor, and he let me and group to use it as a tutorial material.

This is the program, and I will be exploring the main tools of editing a photo.

This is the Curve tool, and it is for to change the levels of lighting by using graphs.

Exposure Tool it is to change the lighting quality.

I used the Threshold tool to change the sky, and I used the magic wand tool to highlight the sky and make it as a different layer.

Levels tool is another familiar tool of brightness and contrast, but it helps with the photo colour.

The Hue/Saturation Tool is use for to change the levels amount of colour. I had made this photo into a sunset scenery.

Here's some my own examples of experimentation with Adobe Photoshop

I made this photo to be a post apocalyptic post sign.

I was playing around with layers, in which I put mixture of colour with black and white layers together.

I was making this photo as armed civilian invasion.

RAW TO QUALITY

Week ago, I had taking photos at North Greenwich by using a SLR camera. Now I will be experimenting RAW photos to a good quality by using Adobe Bridge which is like the same as Windows Explorer but more advance search engine.

This is the Adobe Bridge and it can examine the details of the files, and it can detect what type of files such as RAW, JPEG, other.

When I first open a raw file it will automatically open the Camera Raw 7.0 program to edit only raw photo files. This is a photo of a boat parked next to a tower at River Thames.

This is what it looks like when I finish edit it the photo using the editing tools such as details to change sharpening, and colour tool. Also to change different amount of colour temperatures, and changing brightness and contrast.

Here's my own Raw photos to Good quality photos.

RAW

QUALITY

RAW

QUALITY

RAW

QUALITY

RAW

QUALITY

The method of taking RAW photos is new to me even I had to study photography 4 years, for now on I will use this method to help me with future projects.

Adobe After Effects

I been learning about how to make animation on After Effects. This is an animation of a ball bounced over the cube or a domino, however the ball came from Toom Boom Studio, I used the keying effects to get rid of the balls background.

Puppet and 3D effects

I been learning how to use puppet tool to make moving images by layers and using mark tool to pin and add the puppet effects to move king kong. However the resource belongs to my tudor.

That I move king kong right to left and up to down.

This is a 3D view, and I had moved the layers into foreground and background separately. I also added a lighting effects by deploying a light tool to move around the layers.

This is the final animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_h5JlegeSv0 (Video)

Here's my own animation videos, and these videos were for part of the Nigeria project that I been making for.

This is the title sequence I made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qRwol5uDWBM (Video)

This is the village I made using stroke effects and set it up into 3D effects to have the row of houses in foreground and background. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AwMqY_2iK7k (Video)

Lifecycle

I also been experimenting lifecycle technique by adding different layers and pre-compose to repeat the order of layers in circles. The resources is from my tudor.

This is the finish animation. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xQ4YKbV33Z0 (Video)

Blender

I used 3D animation program Blender before, back in my second year of sixth form. However it will be interesting to come back to it, because is has option to set Maya controls on Blender which became very useful to me. Also I know some industries use it such as storyboard artist of Spiderman 2 used it for animatics to demonstrate the storyboard, and my old tudor from sixth form did mention it was also used for Avatar but I can't to seem find the info about it or maybe it was kept secret.

What I like about Blender its little bit more easy than Maya, and the render settings is good because there's is an option to render animation rather than putting as a collection of photo's.

This is the working space of Blender, and it is interesting, that Blender left a cube because all objects are mostly evolved from cubes. The camera, and sun were also provide it as well.

I'm going to study a tutorial from cookie blender of using the wave modifier. First I will get a plane.

Second I go edit mode, and subdividing the objects to get a dense.

Third, I go back to object mode, add modifier, and add wave.

Fourth, this is what it looks like when the plane becomes wavy.

Fifth, playing around with the Wave Modifier settings such as frame coordinates to set wave from crazy to calm.

Sixth, as I remember from Maya about experimenting the bouncing ball, and but now from the tutorial it will explain what happens when the ball make an impact into liquid. Using the wave modifier settings I select start position object to the sphere, when I move the ball the wave impact follows the prediction of landing.

Seventh, I have increase the narrowness, but the problem is the wave becomes more flat sharp. Therefore I have to use subdivision surface modifier to make it nice, and then smooth it again from object tools.

Eighth, I will be adding textures to the plane to make it as water colour.

Ninth, the problem with the texture, is that the wave does not follow, so I have to back to modifier and turn texture to object, but it will be very small texture inside the sphere. Therefore I would need to set empty mesh to fix the problem. As result the empty becomes as new object to get the waves following.

Tenth, then I go to materiel s and give colours for sphere and plane.

The Render Image.

The Render Animation. However I like to make my own style of a ball dropped and floating then sank. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0yJnLMZvIbo (Video)

Camera

Photography is the most important art for every digital media such as the use of lighting, and compositions to make good films and animations.

I will be studying about the use of SLR Camera as the input, and how we can bring the output. The input would be obviously be a SLR Camera, and it is professional not to use pre-filter effects. However I will be also learning how to use SLR for filming for to use Premiere, and using After Effects.

Why we have Canon camera's because it has more ISO settings, and gets more advance than previous early 21th century. We also have 35mm Full Frame for our Canon compare to Sony, and Panasonic.

In some films such as Iron Man 2, they use Canon 5D Mark II to do the shots, and some films uses 1080 x 1920 Canon 5D settings for to make good HD films.

The type of work place that people work using Canon 5D are Director of Photography, Film Production, and Illustration.

Key Terms of Photography for Output

RAW is unedited
Shutter Speed is the more higher the more accurate of our photographs
Aperture is change the aperature and the DSLR will calculate the shutter speed needed.
ISO
Focal Length is the actual lens themselves
White Balance
Frame Weight
Contrast
Sharpness
Lenses
Sensor

Aperture. ISO, and Shutter Speed are the most important basic photographic principles to make good 3D and photographs.

Adobe Photoshop

Alpha Channel
Colour Adjustment
Hue
Saturation
Britghtness
Vibrance
Tonal Adjustments
Gamma Exposure
Contrast
Brightness

We also understanding that camera in animation is not about lens and making composition, and it is more about of how we can integrate into 3D and use it on Maya. The film back is a sensor the Canon Sensor Size 14.9 x 22 3mm is for to use for integration.

Light source is important, the sun is most sharped and number one source, and if a cloud interfers the sun, it diffuses the lighting. There is HDR image for 3D lighting, which is matching the photo's with the same amount level of lighting and colour in order to stitch.It is familiar to 123D Catch program to use the same method.

When taking photographs of 3D object, always take a note of the distance to the object.

Depth of Field