This document provides an overview of a major visual effects project. It describes the technical concept of creating a realistic composition using live action footage, 3D elements, and matte paintings. The initial idea was a post-apocalyptic scene where nature has taken over a modern city, and a person uses magic to make their paintings of nature come to life. Various production and post-production techniques are discussed, including pre-visualization, on-location shooting, matte painting, compositing, and lighting/rendering using Maya, Nuke, and After Effects. Key challenges included creating realistic animated vines and trees using Maya's Paint Effects and achieving a convincing displacement map to texture the bark.

1. Major Project
VFX REEL/BREAKDOWN
LAILA W. RAHIM
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2. Technical Concept
 To create a realistic production-quality composition
using elements from a range of live action footage
and plates, 3D renders, matte paintings, and
possibly other materials.
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3. Idea/Concept
Initial Idea
 Post-apocalyptic scene
 Concrete jungle
 Nature has taken over the modern city
 A person who lives in the city but hates it decides to “re-paint” it with nature
 VFX breakdown
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Final Concept
 A person who is bored to be stuck in the same routine, fell asleep at work
 Dreamt he had a magic brush that made the ink/painting come to life

4. Visual Style and Concept
References
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World Builder

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Kenya Hara’s
Exformation

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7. Production Technique
Summary
 Pre-production (scriptwriting, storyboarding/pre-vis)
 Production (on-location shooting, gathering stock
footage)
 Post-production (editing, mattepainting,
rotoscoping/compositing, sound design)
 Research on lighting techniques for VFX, camera
tricks to minimalize post-production work
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8. Creating the Vines
 I first experimented with C4D’s Ivy Grower plugin
with give me the following results
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10.  The result looks really nice but when I tried to do the
animation it doesn’t look as good (video below).
 I also wasn’t able to customize the paths that I
would want the ivy to grow along.
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11.  I then discovered about the Paint Effects tool in
Maya.
 I watched some tutorials on it and it seems like the
perfect tool to create my vines.
 I was able to control almost everything on the vines.
 I used the curve tool to create the paths that I
wanted the vines to grow on and attached the brush
to it.
 I was also able to control the way the growth
animates and added some turbulence for the wind
blowing effect.
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 Here are some of the test renders I did with Maya
Paint Effects

13. Grass
 I used the same method I did with the vines to
create the grass but I didn’t use the curve tool.
 I just used the Paint Effect brush to paint on the
plane that I have brought in from Nuke.
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14. Sky Tower Tree Effect
 This shot was the hardest.
 I couldn’t really figure out how to achieve the
effect with it looking realistic.
 I experimented with Nuke and After Effects by just
masking a tree bark texture over the Sky Tower
footage with a blending effect and have the
mask slowly revealing the tree bark over it.
 I got the look I wanted but the tree bark mask
animation didn’t look convincing.
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17.  I then asked for the help of my friend to model the
Sky Tower in Maya.
 I textured it and used the Paint Effects to created
an animated growing tree at the top.
 I then added some vines growing along the tree
trunk as well.
 My friend then taught me about the use of
displacement maps to displace the geometry of
the model using the texture so that it would give a
physical bark like texture. Instead of a flat look.
 Examples shown in the following pictures .
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 Without displacement map

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 With displacement map

20. Lighting/Rendering
 I first used the Mental Ray rendering engine and
just added the Physical and Sky.
 It didn’t quite give me the desired effect.
 My friend then told me about Vray.
 With Vray Sun, I was able to use the longitude and
latitude of the location of the footage I shot and it
would give me the sun’s position on that time and
date.
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22.  The problem comes in when I rendered it.
 The Paint Effects didn’t render properly.
 It took me a whole to troubleshoot it.
 I had to convert all the Paint Effects into Polygons and
apply Vray Material shaders to them.
 I then used a default leaf texture for the leaves.
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23. Footage 23

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26. Compositing
 I took some classes with the 2nd Year Visual Effects
students.
 I was able to understand more about compositing
techniques, pipeline, and workflow.
 I used the Camera Tracker node to track the
camera of all the footage needed.
 I then created 3D cards to represent the ground
plane, walls, Sky Tower, etc.
 The geos were then exported in alembic format
(.abc) and were brought into Maya.
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27.  After all the 3D assets have been rendered according
to the correct camera angle and animation from the
camera information from the .abc file, I brought
rendered images into Nuke.
 Everything was then composited together and color
corrected.
 For one of the vines scene, I added a slight debris
effect for when the vines pop out using a stock
footage.
 The ink/paint stroke effect was done in After effects by
using the alpha layer of the vines I retrieved from the
renders.
 I just applied a Brush Stroke effect on it and masked it
accordingly.
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30. Brush Stroke Effect 30

31. 31Final Comp