PowerHouse FX - Week 6

This week I finalized the alpha and did a quick CG Integration for shot #7, but my main focus was shot #4 and geo tracking. However, there was some issue with export the tracking data from Nuke and successfully import it into Maya. At first, we thought Maya simply doesn't take the tracked geometry because of the license of Keen Tools so that we can only work on computers in Montgomery Hall, but we a realized it works if we just do it on the same computer, without sharing it over Dropbox. Then we had another issue, once we imported the .fbx file into Maya, it didn't have any keyframes because the animation was already cached. We spent quite some time to figure out the solution and found out that if we export a .abc file with the 'Ogawa' storage format, we preserve the keyframes and additional models can be parented to our tracked geometry. Here's node graph and settings for troubleshooting:

After resolving this issue, I worked on the scar rendering and compositing for shot #4. So far, I used an image of a scar as a placeholder for faster rendering and to see how the tracking holds up. Here's a flipbook of the tracked torso for shot #4.

With the applied texture, the tracking seems to be off, due to the fact that it's not exactly her torso and the geo tracker node couldn't match the movement perfectly, which is why I manually transformed the scar to adjust the movements, which still needs refinement.

In the upcoming week, I will focus on fixing the tracking for shot #4 and start tracking shot #6. Right now, the texture may seem off, but once we get a more realistic one, it will look much better. Our shots are starting to get together slowly but steadily...