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.