What I have learnt from COP

Overall this has been a really great module for me personally. This has been the first time in the three years of COP that I have really felt positive about the module. I have been excited about it throughout, especially the practical side. I have loved being able to create a short film and using it for a survey has been really useful for the project and helpful to my own personal skill development.

I am really looking forward to pushing my CG and visual effect skills in extended practice and I think it will be leaps and bounds better due to the things I've learnt from my research in this module.

Survey Results

I shared the survey on all my social media accounts throughout the last week to try get as many responses as possible. I'm really happy that I got 49 responses overall. The general consensus is that the version without visual effects works better, however less people found the VFX version immersive than they did told the story better. 
This shows how while the visual effects may show you what you need to see better, it takes less effort from the viewer, therefore potentially immersing them less.

With the film being very suspenseful, the responses are more based around the way the difference in visual effects changes the mystery. While this is still useful evidence, I was hoping for more of a comparison of the use of visual effects rather than how to keep up suspense. I could have avoided this and potentially got some more relevant results if my film wasn't as suspenseful.

Eran Dinur's Filmmakers Guide to VFX

I just recently found this book online and requested it into the library. Thankfully they did buy it in and it is really interesting. The book is a very technical book on many processes used within the VFX industry, however there is a lot of theory as well. As this is the most recent in-depth book I've been able to find, I finally have some research about TV rather than just Hollywood film.
Some of the key quotes I have used so far are:

“Visual effects are like magic tricks - the magic only works when the trick is hidden. It is of course the responsibility of the VFX team to create the perfect magic, but it is also the responsibility of the filmmaker not to overindulge in the use of this magic.”

"Television is now on par with movies in terms of quality of content (some say even better, at least in the USA). And as far as visual quality goes, the gap between TV and film has narrowed down considerably. Most home TVs are now HD resolution (or higher), and the same digital cameras are now used to shoot TV and cinema. The level of complexity and the quantity of visual effects in TV programs has increased significantly, with TV series such as HBO’s Game of Thrones pushing the quality bar ever higher."

Published the Survey

After finishing all the visual effects, I can now publish my survey to see what people think. The questions I have asked are:

Which version do you think told the story better? And why? 

Which version immersed you more in the film? And why? 

What was your initial feeling/reaction upon seeing the dinosaur in the version with visual effects?

What was your initial feeling/reaction upon seeing the point of view of the dinosaur in the version without visual effects?

And finally, if there were two similar films in the cinema, one marketed as having prominent visual effects and the other without any at all, which would you be more likely to see? 

These questions should all yield the most relevant and helpful results. I have specifically asked about story and immersion seperately because it is an important distinction. The storytelling is about communication and immersion is about the delivery of that. 
I am excited to read the results and really don't know what to expect.

Compositing

This is my favourite stage of the process. It is always very satisfying to put everything together in the end. The HDRI maps made this a much easier process. Most of what I had to do was colour correct the dinosaur to fit the footage. Upon importing the render, most of the shadows were way too dark so had to be levelled out with the correct exposure. 

I have read a few different sources talking about the blending of CG elements through camera characteristics. So I kept in mind matching; motion blur, sharpness, grain, lens distortion, lens flare and chromatic aberration.

"When we see, onscreen, an impossible event happening in ‘photorealistic’ CGI, we are invited into the fantasy that it has actually been recorded photographically, and thus has taken place in the real world. This performance of ‘photographicness’ (simulated motion blur, camera movement and so on) is as much a part of the illusory strategy as is the simulation of flesh and form on computer generated bodies." - Dan North, Performing Illusion

The main things I added were a very slight blur to de-sharpen the render, very subtle grain (the footage wasn't very grainy anyway) and motion blur (which rendered out of maya anyway)

What went well
I think that next time I do something like this, I will make sure to have more involvement with the ground interaction. I think this lack of presence has caused the effects to suffer a bit. I am proud of what I managed to do however and have got some good experience and practice.

Animating the Dinosaur

Despite it not being the model I would have liked, I am proud of the animation I managed to achieve. I tried to make sure I was including enough weight to the dinosaur to make it feel real. It had to feel like it was really stomping along in the woods. We tried to add curving motion in the tail, but due to issues in the model, this wasn't possible without it breaking. I think the up, down and side to side movement works well enough to have some form of visual interest in the tail however. 

There were some issues with moving the chest as well. If I moved the arms or neck, the chest would warp and break in unnatural ways. I tuned back any movement that caused this error to at least still have some movement of that area of it's body. 

These kinds of issues could have been avoided if we had spent more time searching for a model and rigging. I managed to work around these issues, but they were troublesome. I have significantly increased my confidence in maya animation through doing this. 

Also, using 360 degree HDRI images made lighting so much easier and more accurate. These consisted of many high dynamic range images stitched together in a spherical fashion. Since I don't have a 360 camera, I had to do this my camera just taking a picture every 45 degrees or so, and on different tilts. This, and the stitching process, were rather painstaking, however they yield the best results. 

Creature Rig

The original plan was to get the 3D creature from Dan which he is already creating for his COP. However, he informed me that he wished to take more time in planning and developing his creature and so it would be better for me to use a creature rig from online instead. This would let me at least get the survey out for the sake of my COP, but once his creature is finished, at his own pace, I can replace the temporary one.

While this was a shame since I was looking forward to the intergration of a creature specifically designed for the environment, I completely understand the reasons, and I don't want to hinder Dan's process and rush a creature from him. 

So I went searching for a good model to use from SketchFab.com. I found it a challenge to find a model that looked good and detailed, which was rigged for animation and didn't cost anything (since this is only a temporary placeholder creature). In the end, I came across this model...

https://sketchfab.com/models/d98b4f7dcf6d40b8b1f0b5523b3f551a

which was really nicely textured and could fit the story and environment. The problem here was that it wasn't rigged for animation, the model is meant for 3D printing. So I asked Dan to rig it. I didn't want him to take up too much of him time so as long as I can make it move in a somewhat realistic fashion, I'll be happy. It's only a temp version anyhow.