PowerHouse FX - Week 8

This week we prioritized working on our hero shots which are shot #5 and #7. For shot #5, my task was to light and render the scar and feathers that Elise modeled and textured and Rebecca animated, and for shot #7 I went back to edit the alpha channel for the wing masking and help Payton color correcting our actress to day to night.

There were issues with tracking for shot #5, so Sam used smart vector from Nuke to create the 3D rotation effect, so I only had to render the scar in a stabilized position without the face rotation. I created multiple render layers and light groups in Maya to have as much flexibility as possible when it comes to compositing the scars and feathers with the background.

The idea of the light groups was to imitate the red bounce light that comes from the hair, here's the layer contact sheet for the render:

This is the scar blend shape animation with feather apparel:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9943a9_287158e8656d492894355fb79350437a/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

The alpha channel for shot #7 needed a lot of refinement since when I first created it we weren't sure of the scale of the wings and that it would be beneficial for color correction. Some areas were trickier than others, so the majority of the alpha had to be edited by a lot of rotoscoping.

You can find more detailed Nuke trees from week 3 and 4 in "Power House FX" blog category.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/9943a9_b959e8f26a1748b4823c08a4cef1d7b7/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

Next week, as we're getting closer to wrapping up we'll focus on more refinement and get back to work on non hero shots as well.