As we head into out last week into development, I finalized the flower placement and sent that off to Xander to finish texturing and Emma finished the particles on the flower. Hannah comped that in and finished color grading and rotoing.
One of the comments we got from Monica, the 3D supervisor at Powerhouse VFX, was that the flower itself looked like it was in the correct place and she liked the rotation and if we had time, then to have the stem bend with the movement of the hand.
Originally I mistook that as the stem becoming one with the vine, which was the first pass of using the bend node.
This was a previsualization of what it may look like with the vine together.
I grouped points and used that with the bend node, it would not stretch the correct way and not select that specific part. So to try to aid the bend node I deleted the stem part out and later merged it back together, however this caused a weird gap between the two. Later I found out the issue was the vellum that was placed on the flower. So between the Emmas particles falling off, geometry being crushed, constraints not working, and lack of time, we all decided to scrap the vellum on the flower to have a smooth transition to the finish line. As soon as it was scrapped I was able to group the points on the flower stem and smoothly bend it with no gap.
This is what it looked like without the vellum and with the correct bend.
After revising the flower, I was able to correct hand this off to Emma for particles and Xander for texturing, who had a much more efficient time working without the vellum.
Finally, I was tasked with the end credit thanking everyone involved and the title slate! I used the vines that I used from the arm by freezing the curve, modifying it, and rendering only the leaves with a simple shader so it is not too distracting. Then I composited it all together in After Effects.
If we had more time I think part of our wishlist would have been to add on the original shot 1 and 2 and added more particle effects in the environment and the skin. Originally we had more skin details that we did not get to.
This was the final cut along with the music for the credits!
I am so thankful I had the pleasure of working with these talented people as we finish up the quarter. It was an amazing and educational experience on the pipeline and workflow and the feedback our team and class got from the mentors were very valuable and I appreciated every part of it.
Once again I am plugging their websites here:
Hannah Trujillo: Compositor
Emma Schaberg: Modeler/ Lighter
Xander Shou: 3D Generalist
James Kislenko: Outsourcing Rigger
Thank you to our SCAD Faculty, being our Chair of the Department for approving the class and Bridget Gaynor for being our supervising professor and being a great professor that encourages us to do our best each class.
Lastly, thank you again to our mentors, Ed Mendez, Nick Dauphinais, and Monica Manalo-Hosenball, for taking the time to have this class and meet with us. The feedback that we got each week really helped us push our project further and learn from it.