CG and Live action integration
This character eats a tree seed and transmorphs into a tree-like creature. Here, you will see animated root growth rendered in Maya using Paint Effects. Render layers were composited together and color-corrected to match the live action plate. In Nuke I used the Retime, Time Warp, and Grid Warp nodes to facilitate speed-up growth and interaction with a live action plate.
Green Screen
This is from my first professional movie experience on Canyon Road. Foreground element originally shot for nighttime and then the street background color corrected to match that shot. Here I reversed that so the foreground matched the day time shot. The camera filmed the foreground with Edge-detect which played havoc with the ears and heads on the actors in the key. I isolated those areas and removed the unnecessary color. I also used the green color channel to distort the background plate. The lightwrap added addition rain and light information for complete the shot.
Stereo Conversion
This is a classic 1968 film starring Steve McQueen as a tough no- nonsense detective from San Francisco. This scene is one of the first major Hollywood movies to involve a car chase. My first issue was deciding which scene to convert to 3D. After rendering out the scene using Photoshop, I developed a clean plate, rotoscoped the live action jump car, then composited it over the clean plate. I used a system of grades and rotos to isolate the luminance values and separate the car from the background. A side view shows the luminant distortion that creates the 3D effect in anaglyph. Also make sure to checkout my conversion of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks".
Rotoscoping and Tracking
Corner-pin shots are easy when there are corners. This 32-second shot to demonstrate how to get around this issue when they are none. First the original clip was tracked then the transform, scale, rotation was applied to a roto node. Then the roto was drawn to supply an alpha channel for the TV screen. Next Tracking information was applied to the screen element “Neal Armstrong’s famous small step”. Plus I added roto elements for reception, lines for interlacing, and a glass overlay for realism. All compositing done in Nuke.
Green Screen and 3D tracking integration
This scene involves the main character being immersed into a Facebook-style room. Live action was shot on a double-sided green screen stage using a Red camera. From there, I color-corrected and extracted a matte. Next, I 3D-tracked the action and constructed the room. The live action was then composted over the wall movement. There were over 14 shots like this in the movie. Some involved 3D tracking, some 2D, and others were more simply composited. I used Nuke throughout this process. I collaborated with another SCAD student, Kyle Gallagher, who designed the Facebook page wall plates with After Effects.
