Breakdown of shot

I have prepared a final breakdown of the shot which shows all the elements and how they were composited together.



I used pre-composed shots and opacity fades to show the video elements of the project. I then added the audio to the final composition.

I chose to use a black background to display the particle and a ball replacements in the scene as this was the best way to show the effects individually. Overall I feel the video is informative and to the point.

Final Piece

Here is the final edit with audio



Overall I'm happy with the results, although the project has changed along the way I feel I have included the elements that were initially important to the piece such as movement, power and a rugby theme.

Whilst I had issues with some elements such as creating realistic super slow motion, there are other element within the scene such as colour correction and frame doctoring which I had not initially anticipated being included in the scene.

One area that I have particularly extended my skills in is particle simulation, I have learnt how to create interesting animations with a particle emitter and convincing smoke effects with the Afterburn plug-in. As well as familiarising myself with space warps such as gravity and wind.

The audio adds a final element to the scene and helps to convey the speed and power of the movements of the player.

Composition

I've been composing the elements I now have into the shot. I've found one of the hardest things to do has been to match the footage with the 3D elements, this has involved animating opacities, grain and blurring effects.



In terms of adding shadows to the piece I set up a light in 3d space, and then set the particle effects so that the shadow was placed believably. I then adjusted the cone of the spot light and blurred the shadow, as well as giving it some light transmission and opacity.

Audio track

I've been working on some audio and syncing it with my video. I have used a number of samples and layered them up to create the effect, which builds to a crescendo as the ball is kicked.



I feel the audio is representative of the market that I aimed the piece at, namely advertising, as it is very current and conveys movement through the piece well.

Particle effects

This is the particle effect within software, you can see here the different forces and attributes that went into the particle simulation. Note the one stray line of particles coming off to the bottom left, this had to be adjusted later to be more uniform

More particle effects

Having used the plug in some more I've come up with this version of the particle effects



This version has less gravity and more volume, so that it doesn't fall as quickly, more volume simply makes the cloud larger so that it fills the screen by the end of the shot.

I have also tried to mimic the colours of the rugby ball with the initial explosion, whilst keeping a smoke effect at the end of the shot [logo]

I think this will be the iteration that I use, I can then play with brightness settings and colour within after effects to see how it best fits into the scene.

Removing the ball

One problem with the shot is that the ball is still in some frames it should not be.

These are the original frames












These are the frames with the ball removed

This was achieved using colour correction and the clone stamp

Footage and playing with colour

I've decided to use the box kick as the footage for me piece, so I've been playing around with some colour correction options as well as getting a slow motion effect.

I had originally intended to use Twixtor for creating slo-mo footage, due to licencing concerns and the fact that a demonstration version of Twixtor is only available with a watermark it has become apparent this wont be possible. This threw me at first as I had planned to implement a super slo-mo style in my shot.

I then realised that a frame blend technique can produce nice results, but that the effect tends to look more "ghosted". This was fine but I needed to change the overall feel of my shot to something more stylised as realistic colours looked slightly odd alongside the effect.

I started off by using the leave colour effect and picking out a shade of green.



This effect looks nice in the context of the shot, but when coupled with my particle effects looked fairly odd.

The next effect I tried was again with leave colour, only this time I concentrated on reds and skin tones, playing with the tolerance options to just pick out the player.



I like this effect and I think it fits in with my advertising target market quite well (particularly the guiness side of things.

More particle effects

I've been trying to make the explosion relate to the colours of the rugby ball. This involves creating a gradient which relates to the colour of the particle through its lifecycle.



Again, this isn't quite what I'm looking for, the flat colour seems to have created a matte sort of effect which means the animation has lost a lot of its depth.

I need to try and add more colours to the animation in order to give more contrast between the layers of colour, I think darker colours will help to bring out the layers of particles.

Afterburn particle effects

I have been playing with the afterburn plug in and have come up with an explosion smoke effect, this uses the mental ray renderer, a particle emitter, wind and gravity forces, and a gradient determines the colour of the particles throughout their lifetime.



I really like the look of this, although I would like to play with colours and see if I can relate them to the colours within the scene. The billowing smoke effects will look dramatic and convey the impression of movement through the scene.

Footage

I have now managed to get everyone together and take the footage I needed. After a days filming there a some parts that I would consider usable.

For the location I knew I wanted the shot to look like it could have been taken on the training ground, so I picked a quiet part of a local park with a fence and some trees in the background. It was early afternoon and the sun was high so shadows would not be too much of an issue, it was also fairly cloudless so that the light was clean and bright.

I set up a number of shots involving different people being tackled and different positions for people to stand in, for example one of the tackles was filmed by throwing the ball out from behind the camera. In another we tried having the subject take a high ball to try and get a more dramatic tackle, this didn't work out but it was interesting to have the footage and consider what could be done with it.



This is a tackle that came out looking dramatic, I like the way the ball is dropped here and the impact is fairly obvious, I feel like I could work some nice particle effects in here.



A lot of the tackles didn't come out looking as I would have hoped, I decided to film some kicks too, which I could use to form part of the piece.

Here a drop kick



and here a box kick



I like both kicks but it think the second one would probably be more usable, its longer and more happens in front of the camera. There is good opportunity here to have an effect that follows the eyeline of the actor, and shadows that stretch out across the grass.

Other effects, Rugby ball

I've been playing with the ball effect further here using pBomb, this breaks the ball up into particles and fires them out in a direction denoted by the gravity in the scene. (this can be quite tricky to get right)

First I made a model of the ball and mapped it with the appropriate texture

Here was an early attempt, which didn't look quite right




Here I get more like what I was looking for, motion blur helps create the impression of speed.

Rugby ball particle effects

I've decided I'd like to use some particle effects for the ball in the shot, this is the result of a few tests I have made with particle systems and and force like wind and gravity.

This effect demonstrates a wind modifier, which is blowing the particles in a directed stream.



This effect shows a gravity effect used to pull the particles and slightly less particles, as you can see the effect is much more spread out.



Neither of these are really what I'm looking for, I'll be trying some effects with Afterburner soon

Getting my footage and deciding on plug ins

I've been having a few problems with the people I had originally planned to do my shot with, the main problem being that one of them has borken his leg, in the meantime  I've been looking at particle techniques and plug ins including FumeFX and Afterburn by Sitni Sati. one benefit to these applications is that there is a decent trial period without a watermark, so they are easily accesible.

From looking at both plug-ins I have come to the conclusion that Afterburn is perhaps best for my needs, as it specialises in volumetric effects. This style of effect tends to be better for explosions as a whole rather than  a smoke and water simulator such as FumeFX.

Here are a couple of tutorials I have been using to familiarise myself with the software:





Although these don't give me the exact effect I'm looking for they are good practice

Storyboards and technical research

Here is an initial storyboard for my shot, although elements may change this is what I think might be realistically doable within the time, if I had an unlimited budget and timescale for example it would be nice to have an over the shoulder dolly shot of the tackling player's run up, however my equipment will not allow this.

I have some friends that play rugby and I plan to shoot during one of their training sessions, I'll probably take around 5-10 different shots so that I get a good range to choose from. The camera will be static throughout.

The idea is to create a spraying particle effect which mimics the colours of the player before the tackle and should make the tackle look almost explosive. I would like to use a super slo-mo effect on this shot, so I should end up with a longer shot than the storyboard may suggest.

One way of creating a super slo-mo effect without a camera that can take many thousands of frames per second is a plug in called Twixtor, this or other similar interpolation effects may well be the way forward for my project. The video below shows a test and how well the effect is achieved.

This tutorial shows you how to take a geometric object in Max and disintegrate it into particles, if the particles are textured well and given the right trajectory and lighting properties, this could work very well as a technique  for exploding the player.




Whilst I may be able to create the effect in Max, Autodesk Composite will be used to bring these elements together using alphas and masking techniques.

Initial inspirations and examples

Sports broadcasters and advertisers increasingly use special effects shots to highlight major sporting events or advertise during idents. These shots often try to capture the spirit of competition or the solidarity of fans.

STV Football Ident from Enry on Vimeo.

These shots often contain effects which seek to emulate the movement of a player and accentuate certain aspects of their movement to dramatic effect.

Super Sunday Titles 2008/09 from Justin Bates on Vimeo.

The world of sports advertising is obviously one of the most lucrative and prized, this means that the level of spending in this sector of the market is relatively high, this can be seen in the high production values of many VFX shots used in the industry, Justin Bates is one of the most successful 3D artists/Producers in this field and much of his work is instantly recognisable to any British sports fan. His show reel displays much of this sports work together with for ident work for Sky and advertisements for companies such as Tiger Beer.

Justin Bates Visual Effects Reel 2010 from Justin Bates on Vimeo.

Rugby events are one of the most heavily advertised in britain, and as guinness was the official sponsor of the English Union Premiership from 1987-2010, as well as other rugby tournaments such as the World Cup. Over this period many different visual effects compositions were created using a strong visual style and theme.

This one was a very character based approach and is entirely 3D, perhaps not what I would aim to produce but a nice animation.



I particularly like the use of slo-mo water in this one, and the way it is used to display movement and forces.



I really like this composition and the effect created. It looks like it may use some sort of particle system to animate the characters. The effect created here to emulate and accentuate movement appeals to me.

John Hayes: Guinness - Rugby 2007 from Smile on Vimeo.

This example is slightly simpler and shorter but still effective for the time its on screen. This seems to be created using a nicely animated sequence over a sped up and saturated shot of eye movement.

Guinness Commercial from Little Ease Films on Vimeo.