Oh The Troubles We Have

And the frustrations starts to sink in...

One word...

Troubleshooting!

Well it sure has been a while since my last post; but I do promise I will surely make up for that. For the reason is I am taking my second Compositing & Scene Finishing class! This is all very exciting for me because I have thought about countless times in becoming a Matte Painter since my Traditional Art heavily influences my actions for the future. Though, before I could reach the fun portion of the month (i.e. Matte Painting), I had to undergo several other projects. Yet, only one really stood out among the rest, which was the Trouble Shooting Project; the reason this project stood out to me was because I was able to be an individual and create something within my imagination as long as it was comped together correctly and looked like they correlated with each other.

Here let me explain:

(Below you will see a track of a girl looking up and to the side of the screen. No expression and no exaggerated movement. This was filmed for us to track and roto the face and movement of the girl to place in our final scene. I started with setting up my scene and inserting the video; after this I used roto to select the specific pieces of her face that I needed for the next step. Once finished I was able to track and place the geometry on top to see if any of my markers jump. This track was not needed for the final, but it was a quick exercise to show us what we would have to undergo in order to collect the right data to insert into Nuke.)

(Next below this video you'll see another video. This is my final Render from Nuke and my final project for the Trouble Shooting Project. Since we were not able to drag our own tracks within Nuke, our teacher gave us a pre-made track with all of the armor geometry placed upon the girls motion track. This made it a lot easier for us to start applying what we have learned so far in this class and create a beautiful piece once finished. My intention was to create a desert soldier scene; which I believe I was able to achieve. I learned about so many things during this project; several Nodes were brought to my attention when the Lab Instructors had to help me get my sun positioned correctly. Though with success comes struggle. The biggest struggle was actually getting things to look like they go together. The background and soldier just would not comp together correctly; yet as you can see in my end result I was able to figure it out once I was able to step away from the computer and take a breather. With that breather I was able to sit back down and figure things out; and in the end the struggle was worth it as you can see.)

Nothing is easy and I've learned that here at Full Sail and it never fails to surprise me when going into new projects every month. In the end I'm usually happy with what I've accomplished! Everything takes time, and with time will come experience, and with experience will come an amazing finished piece that will inspire others and get peoples attention!