WIP : Destruction VFX shot

Hello everybody,

First of all,How are you guys? sorry for being away from simplycg.I apology. I like the new look of simplycg. I am recently working on my new VFX shot which is live action+CG and i thought to post WIP thread over CGTalk and here.

Here are the details :

I have been working on my new personal VFX project "Destruction". I thought to make LiveAction + CG shot this time. We were done the onset shooting so fast and hopefully camera tracking was done in voodoo peacefully.

This shot is little bit inspired from Transformers movie in which Hero runs with cube in his hands between the street. I am going to show empty dirty street and only one human is left in the city who is also attacked by unknown things and explosions are happening in the roads and he is running away. I am also going to put some cars, damaged building and i am going to keep most of the elements in the shot as it is. just gonna paint over damage and dirt over the buildings and smokes coming out from it.

I use Sony DCR SR100 HDD cam, i was supposed to shot at 4:9 ratio with 3.0 megapixel filter but i shot it on 16:9 widescreen with 2.0 Megapixel. My bad that's why video looks a bit blurry but it looks good on TV.

Here is the WIP test movie. I hope you will like it.

LINK :
Mov : http://www.jhjariwala.com/destruction_testsound.mov
Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=270NQE_okwk




I felt that chunks are a bit big so i scaled it down and also adjusted ground shadows and contacts to the ground. I also randomize the chunks in next movie.
Any suggestions for showing that city or street is already attacked or some mystrious things happened.

EDIT : Links updated! added mov link. BTW realvideo is in 1024x576 size.

looks great so far. one crit i'd say is that the camera doesnt really shake when the explosions happen, which i think could add to the effect. once again, what you have done now looks great. keep us updated!

thanks for reply.

Yes i agree with you. Those camera shaking was done in combustion in post. I am not sure that i will be going to add camera shaking in final footage or not. Becoz i am going to add slow action motion in between the animation. so i might have to go with Explosion Soundfx or maybe music.

Also i am currently rendering chunks with some randomize motion. I will post updates soon.

Thank you,
Jigu.

Hey jigu!

I like it bro! I think the other thing that might have helped is to have the "explosions" be one continuous stream of explosions....as if something is tearing up the pavement behind him...right now it looks like a series of landmines or something.

Also....I like the camera shake, but having a static camera position gives it away as a "special effects shot"....next time try having the camera track backwards with the shot, creating a bit of a more dynamic movement.

Excellent otherwise bro!

Hey T What's up? I've been busy with the Uttarayan (Festival of kites aka MakarSankrati)

Thanks for reply. Yeah i also thought for that before. But i wanted to have mines explosion in the footage. Camera shacking was done in post with combustion. I agree it looks unnatural i better have to go with 3ds max to have better control over curves. Yeah maybe i could have shot the sequense on the bike so it could have nice dolly effect of camera. But i am not much expereinced with Tracking and just to avoid problems with tracking i thought to keep the camera steady and hopefully tracking was done really nice with voodoo just in one click

I did some changes to explosions and also added little smoke with chunks.

I also removed those ppl from the footage. As i am going to show that only one man left there in the city. Also thinking to show dirty look, like crowded cars maybe i better have to go for Auto rickshaw or bikes and maybe few cars (according to here's situation but i will think what could be much better..) . Also there will be some fire/smoke here and there and coming out from the building, broken/destructed road near to camera.

Here is the image update shows damage paintover to the building. I will post video soon which shows removed ppl and these damaged buildings as well as explosions.



Comments and Crits are welcome.



Thanks and Regards,
Jignesh

Here is an update. I am done with fragements and smoke and also with color correction. Also i added slowmo intentionally.

Link : http://www.jhjariwala.com/destruct1_divx.avi (1.65MB,Divx Codec)

I should now start working on environment details.

I tried two different style of color correction :

let me know what do u think guys? i liked first one. Second one is referenced from Transformers movie.

i like the bottom one the best, gives a nice cold effect to it rather than being warm all the way across. actually reminds me of alot of the scenes in there might be blood where the majority of the scene was cold but there were sharp parts of very warm colors.

examples:

Ridestowe : I also like the second one as much inspired from transformers. though i welcome changes in color corrections.

Here it was power cutoff for whole day. Just got my pc on. I worked on environments parts. Here is small update on foreground part. Just added some rocks,tires, crashed car, some destructed road etc. Also i am going to add smoke coming from car or maybe some fire on that one and also on that bin/trash near to actor.

Hey that's pretty cool

I'd suggest blurring the car/rocks on the left a bit to match them better with the environment...but it looks like you nailed the lighting!

This is looking pretty cool! I like the harsh yellowish color correction, but wish there was someway for you to retain the building's profile in the background. Blown out that much, it really give it away as being video.

I agree with Tyson about blurring the car and debris to fit in a little better, and maybe also blur the dumpster shadow. Also, the building damage seems to have turned kind of reddish, looks more like a bruise that building damage. You may want to try and get that back to being dark grays.

Can't wait to see your next video version!

Hey thanks guys. been busy in marriages..but i m finished with environment parts.

@Hype : Yes, you are right. That was way to bad exposure in the background. so i also took picture with lower exposure at that time and it pretty fits to the scene.

Here is the update(with corrected exposure for buildings) shows the environments without any color correction and post production. I am rendering all layers now and will post video soon.
C&c are welcomed.

Once again thanks for support guys!

not really a fan of the fire particles, the smoke off of them doesnt seem to have any shadowing on it and it looks too light. but like tyson was saying i'd give a bit of blur to all the cg elements to make it match up to the live-action shot a bit more.

Thanks for reply. I agree with u ridestowe...(btw can i call u ridey? ) There are few things missing like fire glows, foreground smoke etc. Also i am not sure about background building smoke, I might not keep it in final version. yeah blurring i will do in post as i will have everything in different layers. I welcome more suggestions to make environment more appealing. Keep em coming.

EDIT : I also just felt that fire on road near the burned car is covering shadow edge. and those foreground rocks aren't getting attention. so i think i might need to break the fire a bit in pieces. maybe i will keep it more on left to the screen.

haha yeah you can call me ridey

Hi guys,

Here is the final shot : http://www.jhjariwala.com/destruction_h264.mov (15MB)

I also poste it on my site http://www.jhjariwala.com and
CGTalk : http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread. ... ost4926395

As Tyson said before that continuous stream will look more believable then these kind of mines explosions. well i am going to change it that way i guess i will be done with this by end of this week.

Hey man...yea I think that would help it to flow nicer.

Also see if you can get the chunks that explode out to bounce a little before they stop maybe? Right now just having them stop on landing looks a bit weird.