3DSteaming up Shakespeare

citizen

I've got a new project to drag my attention from all the other stuff I should be working on. I'm currently playing Ferdinand in a production of The Tempest, which is being presented in a steampunk style. The idea has been put forward to present the portion of Act 4 Scene 1 where the gods Ceres, Iris and Juno are conjured by Prospero as a projection, one idea in particular was to present them as a special effect of the gods forming from smoke.

Which is what I'm attempting to do using Blender 2.5. The effect is essentially going to have the face coalesce from smoke, a video of the actor performing the part will be projected onto the face with a textured spotlight, and then fade out with the face blown away in the wind.

Still early days, it'll be interesting to see if I can pull it together in time, given that the production starts from the first week in April.

Short Video Test.

citizen

Rendered another video test.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbZ5B1SSbDE

Coolhand

unusual project, be interested to see how this turns out. Studied The Tempest for my GCSE's, though i prefered Forbidden Planet;) break a leg bud.

citizen

Coolhand wrote: »

unusual project, be interested to see how this turns out. Studied The Tempest for my GCSE's, though i prefered Forbidden Planet;) break a leg bud.

Thanks . Though I was in Treasure Island last Summer and very nearly did break a leg, took it a bit too literally. Got away with a few torn ligaments in my foot; finished the run though. Suffer for your art luvvie and all that .

IRML

your second video is much better, you need to have the smoke moving away from the face as if the face is the source, not forming into the face like the first, I would say you are going in the right direction but it needs to be more whispy, it's a bit blobby at the moment

interesting project

citizen

IRML wrote: »

your second video is much better, you need to have the smoke moving away from the face as if the face is the source, not forming into the face like the first,

I agree, the original idea was that the face would form from a column of smoke, but I prefer this later style.

IRML wrote: »

I would say you are going in the right direction but it needs to be more whispy, it's a bit blobby at the moment

I was hoping that some motion blur would maybe reduce that, which is what I'm going to try next. I'm thinking I'll need to look at a different technique for doing this though, at the moment it's entirely created with volumetric particles, and I'm pushing toward half a million in total just for this short. Perhaps much of the face could be a mesh/texture effect? I'm going to try and get the smoke simulation to play nice with point density particles too, but it's pretty hard. I'll give that a try though.

Thanks.

citizen

Added turbulence and dropped the particle size.

IRML

I would be thinking fluid sim for something like this, doesn't blender come with one?

citizen

IRML wrote: »

I would be thinking fluid sim for something like this, doesn't blender come with one?

It has a smoke sim, but it doesn't seem to have the level of control I need. There's a full fluid sim built in, which I tried but similarly didn't give particularly stellar results. Having said that I don't really know how to use it, so it may be worth revisiting.

I did pull this together mixing smoke and point density particles. The problem is that the smoke sim drowns out the face, and I can't get enough resolution to produce the face purely with smoke. Anything much over a res of 94 unfortunately crashes blender.

citizen

Played around with the smoke sim settings, and generation. Upped the particle size and life on the system forming the face. Much better effect I think, and it renders in half the time too.

I've also tested projecting a still image on to the face using a spotlight. It'll be the same technique when using a video.

Melak

I have no idea how blenders particle system works, but I think it would help if you made the particles form trails instead of instantly dispersing into random directions - which is giving you the noisy blob-ish look.

citizen

I'm using the particles as a source for point density data, and using that to generate a volume. So it's a proper light scattering volumetric simulation, but the downside is that you can't (or at least if you can I have no idea how and it seems to be undocumented) render particles as anything other than points. I'm currently rendering out a version using the smoke sim for the trail, I'm also doing it at the full resolution the final render will be at to give an idea of how long to it'll take to render the final piece. Taking about 1 minute 20 seconds per frame at HD resolution.

citizen

Another test. Still needs work. Still a bit blocky, though now using a smoke simulation for the trail. It's probably because I'm using the particles from before as a generator for the smoke, I'll try dialling that down.

citizen

A much improved test. Smoke simulation for the trail, point density data generated from both a mesh and particles for the face. Dynamics are generated using a moving turbulence field and a wind field.

Some obvious errors, the smoke is disappearing off the side of the domain, I think the Turbulence needs to dropped down a bit as it's too heavy, likewise the smoke is moving to quickly, and the face is to ill defined I think.

IRML

yeah that's what I'm talking about, nice one

just needs refining really

citizen

IRML wrote: »

yeah that's what I'm talking about, nice one

just needs refining really

Cheers. Thanks for your input, it's helped set me on the right track .

IRML

I haven't seen it for a while so I can't remember it exactly, but I think the first harry potter movie has a smokey face right at the end, it might serve as reference for you

IRML

here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSsLZ_epF_Q&fmt=18#t=2m30s

not sure if that's helpful or not, but it does no harm to have extra refs

citizen

IRML wrote: »

here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSsLZ_epF_Q&fmt=18#t=2m30s

not sure if that's helpful or not, but it does no harm to have extra refs

That's great man, thanks! Gives me some ideas actually...

citizen

Latest test render. I've used a completely different technique here, renders much faster. The head is composed of a separate mesh with a volume material applied; but when appearing and disappearing this is hidden and created with point density particles. At the moment the volume material head is too dark, so it's very noticeable when the switch is made. There needs to be more movement of the head, I'd guess a sort of floating motion would look good, rather than static as now. I might look into changing how long it takes to appear and disappear, less time to disappear, more to appear.

The background is a couple of simple cloud textures overlaid and animated, the curves need to be edited as the animation shouldn't speed up and slow down at the beginning and end. Also it's way too fast, so I'll slow it right down.

Apart from that this is pretty close to the final set-up I think.

Coolhand

big improvements since i last saw it, the only part that i dont like is the very beginning when the particles spawn... Particles are not my thing, but being sneaky, perhaps you could make it fade in more or hide it with a flash or lens flare or something, after a few frames once it gets going it looks great.

citizen

Do you mean right at the very beginning when the smoke starts but before the face appears? Smoke in blender has to be emitted by particle systems, the particles aren't actually being rendered, but the smoke being generated by them is, and that's what you're seeing. Perhaps I could have the smoke column move out of the background, so that it's already formed when it makes it's appearance. Would also give the appearance of the gods coming out of storm clouds.

Coolhand

yeah thats the same thing. its just they dont look convincing when they first 'spawn' and before the wind effects take hold, because they just look like blobs or something. All kinds of ways to fix it i'm sure, i have used particles before and if you can get the effect going off camera and then fade it in or bring it in somehow i'm sure that will fix it.

how about combining the appearance with some on stage lighting effects? if thats possible.

citizen

I'm giving fading the smoke intensity up over the first second a try, also messed with the volume material and background. I'm going to render it out while I sort out the roast and all the paper work I've been putting off today.

The other possibility could be forming the face before the smoke, because I can use more particles and effects for that portion to make the particle spawn less obvious, then hide the smoke generation behind the face.

Not sure it's going to be possible to have much in the way of stage lighting. The setup is ditching the stage for more of a Shakespearean round. The projection is going to played to the "back" of the round, but most of the lights are going to be set up pointing away from it. The tracking lights might be able to be used, but I doubt there'll be enough time to rehearse it. This is the first time we've tried to mix live action with projection, so it's all a learning process, and given that the first production is in a little over a months time I think it would be best to keep the live element and recorded interaction to a minimum. I definitely want to ramp it up more in the future though.

citizen

Getting there. Might try a test with the face forming first.

citizen

Just got the video to be projected and it's a little (a lot) rough. My request of as little movement as possible and a stead cam, has been converted into a hand held camera and actors moving all over the shot...

IRML

is it possible for you to upload a bit of the footage?

depending on how things are moving I don't think it's the end of the world, things can be tracked etc

citizen

IRML wrote: »

is it possible for you to upload a bit of the footage?

depending on how things are moving I don't think it's the end of the world, things can be tracked etc

Yeah I'll try tomorrow. I'm looking into video tracking, Cinelerra which I have can do it, but the clips need a fair bit of cleaning up besides that. The major problem is the amount of work and the shortness of time.

IRML

I don't think it needs a complicated 3D track or anything, that's why I wanted to see it, I think you could probably do a 2D track on certain elements and have enough to do what you want

Coolhand

even if he stabilised it, if the movements are quick you might get interlacing or blurring artifacts though... Could be a lot of work for something which will always look glitchy.

citizen

Coolhand wrote: »

even if he stabilised it, if the movements are quick you might get interlacing or blurring artifacts though... Could be a lot of work for something which will always look glitchy.

The camera jitter isn't to bad, but for some reason everyone must have been standing up when the video was taken, so at some points they're adjusting their stance and shuffling over to the other side of the frame in a relatively short space of time. There's also a fair bit of head shaking and movement that I couldn't correct for.

I've thought about it and projecting on to geometry of the face might have been too ambitious anyway, given the time and equipment at our disposal. I might project on to a half sphere, that way the movement won't matter as much, and I could possibly work it into the effect, like the "soul" of the god is floating over the surface of the face, might look more ethereal.

I'm going to cut down the clips into individual passages and discard the miss-takes hopefully today, I'll try and upload some clips then.