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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Any VFX people interested in a little collaboration ?

Dominik Muench

Dominik Muench

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Hi Guys,


I'm looking for someone with VFX experience who is interested in collaborating with me on a small but ambitious fashion short film project shot on Epic in late January.
The project will be shot in Australia but I'm happy to send the files anywhere to whoever is keen to get some great, artistic glamour shots in their portfolio.
All in all there would be around 5 VFX shots necessary, which I'd assume for someone with reasonable After Effects experience wouldn't take more than 2-3 days to compose.

For more infos please get in touch with me directly with an idea of your rates or expectations of compensation.

cheers and merry x-mas :)
 
Hey Brett,

sure can, Im after a few effects shots along these lines:

- In a few scenes the model would need to have animated fairy wings on her back.
- In one scene the model would need to have pitch black eyes like you sometimes see in horror movies...you know with no white in the eyeball at all.
- For two shots I would need an animated thick black liquid crawl up the models arm.
 
Can you descibe the movement you plan for both the model and the camera during the scenes with the wings and the black liquid?
 
Hey Peter

I'll be using a motorised slider for the VFX shots with the wings so there will be consistent slow camera movement, I know this probably wont make things easier, I can easily fix tracking markers on the model though which will be slowly walking away in one shot and towards the camera in another. as for the shots with the liquid, the camera will be locked off and the model will be sitting on the ground, so no body movement there.
 
Dominik Muench said:
Hey Brett,

sure can, Im after a few effects shots along these lines:

- In a few scenes the model would need to have animated fairy wings on her back.
- In one scene the model would need to have pitch black eyes like you sometimes see in horror movies...you know with no white in the eyeball at all.
- For two shots I would need an animated thick black liquid crawl up the models arm.
Click to expand...

Yes definitely try to get to get those black eye lenses. Doing the same in post will never give you as good results as you then need to replace the real eyes with something posted and to get some what the right reflections in there demands a "fill" that is built up from 3D tracked balls with reflection maps then mask that into the eyes. It's all quite time consuming and even if the time is spent it will not look even half as good as if you use black eye lenses.

We have some very nicely rigged bird wings that we used for a couple of projects, not as fairy wings but for CG birds and also as "wings of flame".
Se referencelinks bellow:

About 17s into this spot: https://vimeo.com/47160151
And the bird in this one (the bird was not supposed to look real more like a cartoon one) so look more into the rigging of the wings etc: https://vimeo.com/28346369

For the black liquid stuff I would actually do a combo of real black liquid in reverse and then extend it with CG. To make the CG part any spectacular you would need:
- Reflection maps.
- Tracking dots.
- and preferably a depth que.

I would actually use 2 synced up RED's to get a 2 camera track of the models body/movement. Then you got soft body tracking which is very nice. Liquids are always hard to create in CG, the less fluid it is the easer it is to make. So I would go for a "tar" like fluid that is far more easy to make than something that behaves like water. We did a music video for the sweidsh band "KENT" about 13 years back (Kent is still a famous swedish rock band, but they are probably unheard of outside sweden). Any way it was a long time ago and computers where a bit slower back then and liquid simulators where practically unheard of so with that in mind I think we did a good job as we had about 3 days to complete the VFX work for it. I guess it's this kindof liquid you are looking for but that creaps up and around bodies in motion.

Here is the Kent video... :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfcLWW-87XE

Do not know what to say about my little 2d tracking trick in that video... back then that was some really cool shit. I wish it was just as easy to impress nowadays LOL.

As other mentioned I think you would need a VFX supervisor. And to commit to something like this we would need to know a bit more, clips lengths, story boards, look refs etc. If not using such things then usually one or the other or both will be unsatisfied in the end. Director thought he would get more, VFX people thinking they got more to chew than what was possible, blaming the on set crew etc, etc. So being over specific is not a bad thing when it comes to efx work.

So if you got some sort of VFX treatment / shot discription I'm able to give you a quote for the work, if nothing else you can use for reference. As there is probably a whole lot of people out there that are willing to do the job for you, even though I would say. there is just a hand full that could do it well.
 
Bjorn nailed it.

There's actually an fxguide special on the making of a short film called 'moving day' that includes some fairy wings on live action actors, might also serve as good reference.

Björn Benckert said:
Yes definitely try to get to get those black eye lenses. Doing the same in post will never give you as good results as you then need to replace the real eyes with something posted and to get some what the right reflections in there demands a "fill" that is built up from 3D tracked balls with reflection maps then mask that into the eyes. It's all quite time consuming and even if the time is spent it will not look even half as good as if you use black eye lenses.

We have some very nicely rigged bird wings that we used for a couple of projects, not as fairy wings but for CG birds and also as "wings of flame".
Se referencelinks bellow:

About 17s into this spot: https://vimeo.com/47160151
And the bird in this one (the bird was not supposed to look real more like a cartoon one) so look more into the rigging of the wings etc: https://vimeo.com/28346369

For the black liquid stuff I would actually do a combo of real black liquid in reverse and then extend it with CG. To make the CG part any spectacular you would need:
- Reflection maps.
- Tracking dots.
- and preferably a depth que.

I would actually use 2 synced up RED's to get a 2 camera track of the models body/movement. Then you got soft body tracking which is very nice. Liquids are always hard to create in CG, the less fluid it is the easer it is to make. So I would go for a "tar" like fluid that is far more easy to make than something that behaves like water. We did a music video for the sweidsh band "KENT" about 13 years back (Kent is still a famous swedish rock band, but they are probably unheard of outside sweden). Any way it was a long time ago and computers where a bit slower back then and liquid simulators where practically unheard of so with that in mind I think we did a good job as we had about 3 days to complete the VFX work for it. I guess it's this kindof liquid you are looking for but that creaps up and around bodies in motion.

Here is the Kent video... :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfcLWW-87XE

Do not know what to say about my little 2d tracking trick in that video... back then that was some really cool shit. I wish it was just as easy to impress nowadays LOL.

As other mentioned I think you would need a VFX supervisor. And to commit to something like this we would need to know a bit more, clips lengths, story boards, look refs etc. If not using such things then usually one or the other or both will be unsatisfied in the end. Director thought he would get more, VFX people thinking they got more to chew than what was possible, blaming the on set crew etc, etc. So being over specific is not a bad thing when it comes to efx work.

So if you got some sort of VFX treatment / shot discription I'm able to give you a quote for the work, if nothing else you can use for reference. As there is probably a whole lot of people out there that are willing to do the job for you, even though I would say. there is just a hand full that could do it well.
Click to expand...
 
thanks for the advice guys, Ive never actually worked with VFX in that form before.

Bjoern: I was planing on using real liquid and adding the rest in post, I will write up a treatment with as many references I can find and get in touch with you to get an idea what im in for $$$ wise, thanks for the help :)
 
Dominik Muench said:
Bjoern: I was planing on using real liquid and adding the rest in post)
Click to expand...
i use realflow about everyday. My workflow is realflow ->emreader->modo->nukex . Digital tutors has a bunch of good real flow tutorials, give me a yell if u have questions(or just post them in this thread). On how much work this takes, think a day of work for every second of final production.
 
Dominik Muench said:
thanks for the advice guys, Ive never actually worked with VFX in that form before.

Bjoern: I was planing on using real liquid and adding the rest in post, I will write up a treatment with as many references I can find and get in touch with you to get an idea what im in for $$$ wise, thanks for the help :)
Click to expand...

Sounds great. Feel free to email me at " bjorn at syndicate dot se "
 
I'm a VFX Supe in LA and have a few days free in January. Bjorn and I are both flame based but I can also help prep for Nuke.
 
Hi Dominik,

I would love to give you guys a hand wherever I was able to. I'm more motiongraphics than 3D VFX, but I realise there is some overlap there and would be happy to lend a hand wherever that overlap is :)
 
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