Day 11-14

Day 11 and 12- I spent these 2 days trying to composite the water splash for shot 1. After the final composite i brought the video over to After Effects I had to track the video since the video was moving. I had to choose the right stock footage for the splash. After bringing in the footage I had to time it correctly to the point where the driller comes out from the water. I chose the right footages for the splash. Translated a few footages masked them, reduced their opacity and fitted them in. 1 problem i faced was that the footage of the water was too fast. Due to this the water was very blur.

Day 13 and 14 - On day 13 I helped Chermaine with the rotoscoping for shot 3. It wasn't easy rotoing the building as it was behind trees. The roto had alot of problems because one mistake we did was to render all the buildings in one pass. Due to this we had alot of problems rotoing all the buildings. We spent alot of time doing the roto for shot 3.

After that i went on to work on the explosions for the babyship. I had to time the explosions correctly so that they will explode upon impact. I used stock footage for the explosion. I had to chose a few footages for the explosion since there were 4 missiles. I brought the explosions to after effects to track them. After adding them in i had to translate and rotate alot of values to match the original video. Mask out the explosions to make sure the edges cant be seen.

Day 7-10

Day 7 and 8 - I was absent on day 7 and 8.

Day 9

On day 9 i started working on the animation of the planes and missiles which were started by my group members. These animations were for shot 3. In the shot the planes were to fly behind the esplanade and fire the missiles which are targeted at the small mothership.
I had to continue working on the ep curves to make sure the planes were to launch their missiles and turn off at different timings. It wasn't easy animating the missiles. I had to duplicate the missiles and set key frames to their visibility. Turn them on exactly at the point of their launch.

Day 10

I had to work on the emitters again since there were some problems with them. Initially we only decided to have smoke, but then we decided to add in the fire which will make it more realistic. I had Guan Hua to help me with creating the fire trail. I added glow to the particles to make it more better. After seeing the animation and particles Mr Pang our supervisor helped me with the animation again. I had to see reference videos of how the planes would launch their missiles. It was difficult to find videos from ground level of planes launching missiles. Most of the videos i found were taken in the air beside the plane launching the missiles. Another thing i had to take note was what kind of missiles were they. After much tweaking of the missiles' particles and the animation of both the planes and missiles i finally rendered them out.

Day 4 and 5

Day 4

On the 4th day few of us went to film the shots to link up the story. After this went came back and continued with our work. I went on to match move and track the 3rd shot. It was quite difficult to track the buildings as they were high raised and the coordinate system will no be right. So due to this i had to track lower points. It wasnt easy to match move and track shot 3. After this i went on to texture the mothership. The huge mothership which will be in the 2nd shot, flying across the whole city scape. It was not easy to texture the model as it was a very complexed model. Jian Hunt helped me with the match moving for shot 3.

Day 5

After the 2nd and 3rd shot was tracked we starting placing in all the models. Guan Hua modeled 3 different buildings which are to be composited in the 2nd shot. I continued on with the texturing of the mothership. I still faced alot of problems texturing the model. I had to delete faces, duplicate them and modify the model. After texturing i added bump to it. After texturing the model i went on the add it to the tracked video. I wanted the ship to be huge and covering the whole city.

 After that i went on to add in the buildings modeled by Guan hua.

We have to start rendering by next week. Alot of elements to add in and alot of compositing left to do.

Day 1 to 3

Day 1

We sat down to discuss our genre for the short film. Initially we wanted to do a short film but then we went for more of a trailer theme. We also decided to continue the idea from our previous studio project. The idea was that the aliens were invading earth. We went to find more reference on the net. We followed a few movies like Skyline, Battle Los Angeles, Transformers and District 9. After approving the idea from Mr Pang our supervisor we went on to create images of how our shots will turn out. We decided to photoshop the pictures out instead of drawing them. These were how our images looked like.

 

Day 2

After getting our images approved we went out to shoot. We went over to esplanade by the bay to shoot. Our idea for the first shot was that aliens will be coming out from the water. We also shot our 3rd shot beside esplanade. The idea was that f-16 planes were to shoot down an alien ship.Then we went over to the pinnacle at duxton to shoot our 2nd shot. We needed the view of the cityscape, so for this we went up all the way to the 50th floor. We managed to take alot of shots up there.

Day 3

For today we started testing out our shots. Me and Darren went to the net to find models of mother ships. We managed to find 1 which looked roughly like the 1 in District 9.

We will start our texturing tomorrow. After that i went on to try out the matching moving for the 2nd shot. The problem we faced was interlacing. We are still trying to figure out how to fix the problem. I managed to match move the 2nd shot and tried adding cg reference models in it.