Jack Shelbourn Films: Final project, Escape Pod... Work flow & Update

This week I have managed to get a huge chunk of my film project done.

Firstly I have finished most of the ‘pod’ scenes. This includes compositing the hologram, lights, space scene and the holo screens.

This also involves a lot of the roto brush tool being used, along with track mattes and a lot of pre comps.

This weekend I have also finished all of the location, or ‘dream’, scenes. This has involved more rotoscoping with the roto brush, as well as blurs and turbulent displacements.

Lastly I have finished a very complicated and time consuming space scene for the beginning of the film, made entirely within After Effects. This includes using maps of planets and terrain, combined with the CC Sphere plug-in to create the planets, fractal noise to create a nebula and the stars, lens flares and CC Particle world to create an explosion.

I also made a 3D looking space station from a single 2D outline image, separated into sections using ‘auto trace’ and then the bevel and emboss layer style.

I developed an, at first glance, complicated work flow for the pod scenes. However this workflow allowed me to simply work and organise many layers, at times reaching into the thousands within all the sub compositions.

One main aid within the work flow was to render what I had done as a half resolution MGEG2 video. This allowed me to review first thing in the morning my work and would have saved me days in the future rectifying minor mistakes that are easily missed when working frame by frame.

This process has allowed me to refine my techniques and workflow so that each scene is completed quicker and with better quality.

Basic work flow:

At the very bottom of the workflow are the simple 2 comps each containing the holo screens at their basic forms. This is set out as; left screen and right screen.

Above this is a comp with the two combined and spaced together how they intend to be spaced within the pod itself. This is where certain 3D elements are introduced, such as scan grids and planes.

Within these two compositions all animation for the screens was created and key framed. This was done to keep the screens all in one place. This makes the animations and screens easily transferable within compositions and other scenes. As well as keeping things tidy.

The next level is the pod composition itself. This contains the main keyed out footage, along with any rotoscoped footage, lights, lens flares and the hologram. This comp is where frames are watched and then selected, then matched within the holoscreen comps and then animated with key frames.

Above these individual shot comps was the overall scene comp. This is where, in the case of outside shots, camera shake was added, as well as colour correction and letterboxing.

This combination of sub comps leading to a final comp was also used in the ‘dream’ and ‘space’ scenes.

Each scene, where necessary had the ‘collapse transformations’ switch ticked to keep and 3D and information that rendered past the comps boundaries.

This was used extensively in the space scene. With lower layers of the space station and planets etc, leading to a comp filled with these items and placed within 3D space, with a final comp containing these with a static nebula and stars. The comp containing the 3D aspects was then animated via its position. Due to setting it up in this nature the composition acted as a camera, flying through 3D space.

Here are example screen shots of this work flow...

Pod Scene;

Right screen: