G3-Final Report
Videos
Video
Making of
Proposal
Midterm report
Update #1
Update #2
Update #3
Story
Our movie starts out with two people playing Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo Gamecube, a fighting game starring Nintendo characters. Upon them selecting characters, the game characters that were picked (Mario and Samus) appear in the apartment. Mario busts through a pipe from the ground and Samus enters the stage. The two players are completely oblivious to the antics happening behind them. Eventually Samus prevails and wins the battle.
Pipeline
Scenes with CG:
Import motion capture data into maya -> Render out a given Samus shot and other CG elements -> Import greenscreen footage, maya footage, and apartment footage into premiere -> Composite footage
Scenes without CG:
Import green screen footage, apartment footage into premiere -> Composite footage
Scene with color change pants:
Import green screen footage to Premiere, segment out overalls -> export movie -> open in our OpenCV app -> export modified frames as pngs -> import image sequence to Premiere -> Composite footage
Effects (color change overalls, and plasma blast)
Both of these effects were achieved using our image processing code, which was written in C and uses OpenCV.
For the overalls effect, the overalls were segmented from greenscreen footage using Adobe Premiere and then exported. It was then loaded into our OpenCV application. A growing circle texture was created for every frame, smoothed with a gausian, and then modified with a three-dimensional Perlin noise function – x, y, and time. The RGB channel values of this texture were then used to de-saturate the footage pixels and scale the luminosity to approximate the white overalls. This sequence was then imported back to Premiere, where it was composited with the original footage and placed in the scene.
For the plasma blast, a similar circle texture was used, but the radius was kept static. The channel values were stored in a transparency map, and then used in a gradient lookup table generated in photoshop. Again, a 3-D Noise function supplied the firy turbulence. These two sequences were then combined in Premiere to achieve the final effect.
The source code (as well as the footage used) is available on the CoC server in the FinalReports/Group03 folder.
It can also be downloaded here.
Samus was modeled with Maya using polygons. For more information on the creation of this model, go here. The skeleton from the motion capture contains 21 joints.
A special thanks goes to Scott Robertson for assisting our group with obtaining motion capture.
Fireballs
The fireballs were created using the built in fire effect in maya, which can be accessed by Effects -> Create Fire. The effect was then applied to a sphere. Several parameters were tweaked to make the fire look more like fireballs. The sphere was then hidden so that it would not be displayed during rendering. Some footage was then imported into maya and the ball was animated to have a trajectory from Mario's hand to Samus's face.
Missles
First a missle was created in maya. It was then animated to have a constant spinning on its X axis. The smoke for the missle was created in after effects. First a cloud shaped mask was created, then the Radio Waves effect was applied to it such that it followed the mask. The velocity, spin, orientation, and expansion attributes were modified. A greyish color was applied to the mask, then a blur was applied to the whole thing. Then the clip of samus deploying the missles was loaded into maya. The missle model was also loaded into the scene. The frames in which the missle was actually leaving Samus's arm had to be slowed down such that the missle could cleanly leave his cannon and look natural. Keys were then set on the missles's position and visibility. Everything was then composited in using premiere.
Making of script
The two remaining main effects are changing mario's overalls from blue to white, and Samus's plasma blast at the finale. Both of these effects were achieved using our image processing code, which was written in C and uses OpenCV.
For the overalls effect, the overalls were segmented from greenscreen footage using Adobe Premiere and then exported. It was then loaded into our OpenCV application. A growing circle texture was created for every frame, smoothed with a gausian, and then modified with a three-dimensional Perlin noise function – x, y, and time. The RGB channel values of this texture were then used to de-saturate the footage pixels and scale the luminosity to approximate the white overalls. This sequence was then imported back to Premiere, where it was composited with the original footage and placed in the scene.
For the plasma blast, a similar circle texture was used, but the radius was kept static. The channel values were stored in a transparency map, and then used in a gradient lookup table generated in photoshop. Again, a 3-D Noise function supplied the firy turbulence. These two sequences were then combined in Premiere to achieve the final effect.
The 3d samus character was modeled, UV mapped, and textured in three weeks from scratch. Motion capture data was recorded for this samus model in a motion capture lab over at Georgia Tech Research Institute. The motion capture data was then loaded into Alias Motion Builder then exported to Maya. Once loaded into maya, the skeleton provided was matched up with our Samus model. After binding the skeleton to the geometry, skin weights were painted to ensure accurate deformations. The keyframes were then separated into clips using the maya's trax editor.
Team member contributions
Stephen Tyler - 3D modeling; Maya, Premiere, & After Effects guru; Compositing
Matt Winter - Pants effect and plasma blast code; Compositing in Premiere
Daniel Razza - Sound effects; team picture & poster
Group Info
Stephen Tyler
Matt Winter
Daniel Razza
Link to this Page
- DVFX 2006 Groups last edited on 28 March 2006 at 1:15 pm by r52h135.res.gatech.edu