Rotoscoping

What is Rotoscoping?

Rotoscoping is an tracing technique in which roto artist trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films.The rotoscoping technique was invented by Max Fleischer, who used it in his series "Out of the Inkwell" in 1915.

Why we use Rotoscoping?

In the visual effects industry we use rotoscoping technique for creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

Traditional Rotoscoping Tips

1. There is no such thing as a perfect matte. rotoscoping is an art form that takes into account the background image, the movement of the object, and the new elements to be composited in the background.
2. Try to start your shape at its most complex point in time, where it will need the most control points.
3. Break a complex shape into multiple simple shapes. If you are rotoscoping a humanoid form and an arm becomes visible, consider rotoscoping the arm as its own element, rather than adding extra points on the body that will serve no purpose when the arm is obscured.
4. Imagine you are the animator who created the shot. What would your dope sheet look like? No matter the medium, whether CG, live action or otherwise, most movements are rarely linear. They normally move in arcs; they normally accelerate in and out of stopped positions. Try and understand the mechanics behind how things are moving in your shot. This will help you to minimize keyframes.
5. Watch and study the shot before you start working. Where are the changes in directions? These will normally have keyframes. Where are the starts and stops? Are there camera moves that can be stabilized to make your work easier?
6. Don’t be afraid to trash your work and start over. Beginning roto artists often make the mistake of trying to fix a flawed approach by adding more and more keyframes. Experienced roto artists learn to quickly identify an inferior approach and are unashamed to trash their work and start over, often many, many times. It is very difficult to get a good matte without a conscious effort to keep the keyframes to a minimum.

Retopology

Retopology means remeshing of polygons according to the Production pipeline. Retopology is highly crucial for gaming, since 3d mesh is lower resize and helps in saving polygon count to support meshes in Gaming engine.Now these days the need for re-meshing arises because since now CG society loves to sculpt models digitally which are massive and ultra realistic and thus needs extra polygons. The software’s like Maya and Max are still not that much sufficient to with-stand with such a massive polygons. Software’s like Max with Graphite modeling tools and Maya with from 2014 onwards equipped with NEX-tools.Mudbox and zbrush, 3D coat and Top gun now fully supporting topology reconstruction to achieve the challenges of Next gen Gaming.

Retopology also offers an artist to work intuitively without worrying about the technical mesh and Later on can construct according to animation friendly loops and divisions to have neat and clean mesh. Retopology also reduces the chances of file crash and system instability since no more extra polygonal details are required to build mesh and one can achieve higher freedom and stability till the end stage of productions.

Introduction to UV unwrapping

The uv’s are two dimensional texture co-ordinates that reside with vertex components.Uvs are essential for applying the texture data on polygonal objects  which is otherwise not possible to apply or wrap texture on objects. Uvs are essential for Gaming also because the gaming engines are yet not technologically advanced to adapt the total geometry details mechanisims.These engines are also allowed to use certain restricted polygons, which are further upgraded or enhanced in shading with the help of realistic texture details ,which could be possible only if we do Uvs work on Models.The uvs are such an essential supportive structure to C.G industries that without UV work flow we can’t achieve the light baking process in games which is a life savior and computationally very less expensive .The other maps which are used widely in industries are :

1.Diffuse maps

2.Normal maps

3.Specular Maps

4.Occlusion Maps

5.Bump Maps

6.Height field Maps

7.Dissplacement Maps

8.Subsurface Scattering Maps

All the map workflow requires a nice uv layouts to provide realistic details to scene and objects.

Uvs are placed along with vertex and uvs are opened or viewed on 2D texture Space which have different names in different Softwares.

Uvs are created with projection techniques which are further ,if required use unfold mapping techniques ,Pelt Mapping, Peal mapping and Uv Unfolding which runs on an algorithm to calculate the uv spread either on basis of edge distance or Face area.

VIDEO EDITING

What is video editing?

The removal of unwanted footage, or parts of video, the isolation of desired footage, and the arrangement of footage in time to synthesize a new piece of footage.

The term video editing can refer to:

Linear video editing, using video tape Linear video editing is a video editing post-production process of selecting, arranging and modifying images and sound in a predetermined, ordered sequence. Regardless of whether it was captured by a video camera, tapeless camcorder, or recorded in a television studio on a video tape recorder (VTR) the content must be accessed sequentially. For the most part video editing software has replaced linear editing.

Non-linear editing system (NLE), using computers with video editing software
A non-linear editing system (NLE) is a video (NLVE) or audio editing (NLAE) digital audio workstation (DAW) system that performs non-destructive editing on source material. The name is in contrast to 20th century methods of linear video editing and film editing.

Offline editing
Offline editing is part of the post-production process of filmmaking and television production in which raw footage is copied and edited, without affecting the camera original film stock or video tape. Once the project has been completely offline edited, the original media will be assembled in the online editing stage.

Online editing
Online editing is a post-production linear video editing process that is performed in the final stage of a video production. It occurs after offline editing. For the most part online editing has been replaced byvideo editing software that operate on non-linear editing systems (NLE). High-end postproduction companies still use with NLE the Offline-Online Editing workflow

Creating and Rendering Sparks

This session demonstrates sparks from a collision, as well as from a pulsing (expression driven) emitter. Starting from scratch we generate the required elements to produce the effect: volume emitter, particles, fields, animation, expressions, Collision Events, particle shader and utility nodes. Sparks are a fairly common, yet simple, effect that can be effectively created using Maya dynamics.  For rendering we utilize the Tube software render type as the final output, yet we also discuss how sparks can be rendered using the MultiStreak hardware render type.

                                   

The following example uses hardware particles to create spark from a circular cutting saw and examines how they can be integrated with a scene.

Create a ground plane and an emitter.  Sparks will generally streak as they move through Space and will exhibit several other properties in terms of lifespan and colour. Set the emitter to be directional, so that sparks can fly off in the direction of the cutting saw’s rotation and Set the direction to be  1.0 in Y. It will be far easier and more intuitive to have the emission occur in a single direction and just rotate the emitter than to control the sparks’ direction Through the direction attribute.  Set the rate to 300, speed to 15.0 and change the particle type To streak, clicking the Current Render Type button so that you can start changing the look of The sparks.  Several particle attributes will need to be changed in order for the sparks to look like the real thing:

Spark shape Lifespan Colour

Spark shape will be combination of the render attributes scaled by the speed of the particles, so it is important to get the movement right first. Rotate the emitter so that the particles are being emitted at a 45 degree slant to the ground plane and add a gravity field a low magnitude but no attenuation so that the particle want to return to the ground. Once the speed is correct, set the TALE SIZE and LINE WIDTH attributes so that the sparks being to take shape. Because the tails extends backward from the spark position, you will need to change the min/max distance for the emitter so that the spark tails appear from the emitter and not before it.

MATCHMOVING

What is Match moving?

In cinematography, match moving is a cinematic technique that allows the insertion of computer graphics into live-action footage with correct position, scale, orientation, and motion relative to the photographed objects in the shot. The term is used loosely to describe several different methods of extracting camera motion information from a motion picture. Sometimes referred to as motion tracking or camera solving, match moving is related to rotoscoping and photogrammetry

2D vs. 3D

Match moving has two forms. Some compositing programs, such as Shake, Adobe After Effects, and Discreet Combustion, include two-dimensional motion tracking capabilities. Two dimensional match moving only tracks features in two-dimensional space, without any concern to camera movement or distortion. It can be used to add motion blur or image stabilization effects to footage. This technique is sufficient to create realistic effects when the original footage does not include major changes in camera perspective.

Three-dimensional match moving tools make it possible to extrapolate three-dimensional information from two-dimensional photography. These tools allow users to derive camera movement and other relative motion from arbitrary footage. The tracking information can be transferred to computer graphics software and used to animate virtual cameras and simulated objects. Programs capable of 3D match moving include:

Automatic vs. interactive tracking

There are two methods by which motion information can be extracted from an image. Interactive tracking, sometimes referred to as "supervised tracking", relies on the user to follow features through a scene. Automatic tracking relies on computer algorithms to identify and track features through a shot. The tracked points movements are then used to calculate a "solution". This solution is composed of all the camera's information such as the motion, focal length, and lens distortion.

The advantage of automatic tracking is that the computer can create many points faster than a human can. A large number of points can be analyzed with statistics to determine the most reliable data. The disadvantage of automatic tracking is that, depending on the algorithm, the computer can be easily confused as it tracks objects through the scene. Automatic tracking methods are particularly ineffective in shots involving fast camera motion such as that seen with hand-held camera work and in shots with repetitive subject matter like small tiles or any sort of regular pattern where one area is not very distinct. This tracking method also suffers when a shot contains a large amount of motion blur, making the small details it needs harder to distinguish.

The advantage of interactive tracking is that a human user can follow features through an entire scene and will not be confused by features that are not rigid. A human user can also determine where features are in a shot that suffers from motion blur; it is extremely difficult for an automatic tracker to correctly find features with high amounts of motion blur. The disadvantage of interactive tracking is that the user will inevitably introduce small errors as they follow objects through the scene, which can lead to what is called "drift".

Professional-level motion tracking is usually achieved using a combination of interactive and automatic techniques. An artist can remove points that are clearly anomalous and use "tracking mattes" to block confusing information out of the automatic tracking process. Tracking mattes are also employed to cover areas of the shot which contain moving elements such as an actor or a spinning ceiling fan.

GRAPHIC DESIGN

What is graphic design and its contents?

Graphic design is the art of communication, stylizing, and problem-solving through the use of type and image. The field is also often erroneously referred to as Visual Communication  due to overlapping skills involved. Graphic designers use various methods to create and combine words, symbols, and images to create a visual representation of ideas and messages. A graphic designer may use a combination of typography, visual Arts  and page layout techniques to produce a final result. Graphic design often refers to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

Common uses of graphic design include identity (logos and branding), publications (magazines, newspapers and books), print advertisements, posters, billboards, website graphics and elements, signs and product packaging. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as images, shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of graphic design, especially when using pre-existing materials or diverse elements.

Visual arts design

Before any graphic elements may be applied to a design, the graphic elements must be originated by means of visual art skills. These graphics are often (but not always) developed by a graphic designer. Visual arts include works which are primarily visual  in nature using anything from traditional media , to photography or digital art . Graphic design principles may be applied to each graphic art element individually as well as to the final composition.

Typography

Typography is the art, craft and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques. The arrangement of type is the selection of typefaces, point size, tracking (the space between all characters used), kerning (the space between two specific characters), and leading (line spacing).

Typography is performed by typesetters, compositors, typographers, graphic artists, art directors, and clerical workers. Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users.

Page layout

The page layout aspect of graphic design deals with the arrangement of elements (content) on a page, such as image placement, and text layout and style. Beginning from early illuminated  pages in hand-copied books of the middle Ages and proceeding down to intricate modern magazine and catalogue layouts, structured page design has long been a consideration in printed material. With print media, elements usually consist of type (text),images (pictures), and occasionally place-holder graphics for elements that are not printed with ink such as die/laser cutting, foil stamping or blind embossing.

LIGHTNING

So here we goes with the most demanding C.G element that is the “Lighting” .Light is the word whenever it is called upon we think striking thundering and emergence of new  world, A beginning of new age or a new Era, Well all of these amazing words and thoughts works similarly the way we do or Introduce Lighting in C.G .

Lighting in its simplest form can be described as an energy that simulates illuminations and brightness. Lighting is studied over centuries by scientist and all of them provided a valuable theory and knowledge to our society. Some of the legends includes Albert Einstein for his valuable theory and research named

“Theory of Relativity” E = MC^2.

All these great theories are a gift to the modern society and we are now depend and not shy to say habitual or precisely addicted to its usage in almost living or non living aspects. We just can’t imagine a world without light it seems dark which just a useless world .We believes so each and every entity is sustaining itself because of Lights.

Now just imagine a world, world of adventure, world of magic and imaginations where life is judged because of fragrance of colors .The world which is recognized by the importance of its colors. The world which begins with the dawn of light and attract or gather audience because secretly It’s the light which is running behind all the magic’s and illusions.

Light in C.G is a science which is extracted because of the hard works of great and talented people of Computer graphics industry. In C.G the light is realistically defined and adheres all the principles of real light world.

In C.G there are various lighting and rendering plug inns and engines that support lighting like

Mental Ray a plug-in developed in Germany by N-Vida Group.

V –Ray A plug-in Developed by Chaos –Group.

Render man developed by Pixar

Arnold, Brazil……etc …etc,

Lighting is achieved in so many platforms and genres like Films Production, Architecture Visualizations, Games and Baking we generally use same principles to govern lighting. Now we do each and every thing solely with light it’s completely un-imaginable to work except lightings. So lighting is the soul of C.G industry and still people are findings ways to extract best combinations of Lighting and colors. The word light has also arise from color theory and artist always find best possibilities to relate artistic color combinations but all this is possible with accurate light and camera aesthetics.

The term lighting is the base and backbone for amazing composition because rendering and final compositing is also derived from intelligent lighting techniques.

MOTION GRAPHICS

What is Motion Graphics?

Motion graphics are graphics that use video footage and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects

Types of Motion Graphics

a.Kinetic typography

b.Info graphics

c.Movie titles

d.Presentations

How to plan your project

The essential elements of motion graphics are text, images and graphics. Music, audio

narration, and video elements can be added if needed to enhance the message.

During the planning stage, the following questions should be addressed:

a. Who is your target audience?

b. What pictures or images do you plan to include? Do new images or photos need to be produced?

c. Do you plan to use existing audio or video footage, or do you need new footage recorded?

d. What graphic elements are needed?

e. Is there programmatic information that can be included as a visual, such as linking people to a Web site for further information?

f.  Do you need to develop messaging or content, and if so, how long will it take to clear, including HHS clearance, if necessary?

g. How will you promote the motion graphic?


Create different shapes from shape layer

Use shapes layers as creative tools to obtain a rich typographic animation effect using simple manipulations.


Animation with Graphs editor

the graph editor to see how helpful it is and how making some tweaks on the curves will help us get the more desirable motion.

PHTOSHOP CC (CREATIVE CLOUDS)

Here we discussed how to master digital photography and apply the hottest and most cutting-edge Photoshop techniques with new CC (Creative Cloud) Feature.

According to the session, participants will learn how to control the viewer’s experience by directing the viewer’s eye through by adjusting tone, color, and sharpness.  Other topics include learning how to produce images that would be impossible in a traditional darkroom, such as, how to slow down water without slow shutter speeds, reduce or eliminate environmental mist, changing background colors by filtering the subject’s light, creative light painting and streak photos with a difference, shooting techniques that ensure accurate color and skin tones, how to combine two less-than-ideal shots to produce an acceptable result, hand-held extreme panoramas, a two-shot process for making flash look natural, simulating sunrise or sunset light, and more.

In this seminar we discuss the new feature of PHOTOSHOP CC, it has great features and tools to create those jaw-dropping effects you’re looking for. You just need to learn how to use them.

Photoshop  CC (Creative Cloud ) New Feature

 Smart Sharpen

Rich textures, crisp edges, and distinct details. All-new Smart Sharpen is the most advanced sharpening technology available today. It analyzes images to maximize clarity and minimize noise and halos, and it lets you fine-tune for high-quality, natural-looking results.

Intelligent up sampling

Enlarge a low-res image so it looks great in print, or start with a larger image and blow it up to poster or billboard size. New up sampling  preserves detail and sharpness without introducing noise.

Editable rounded rectangles

One of your most requested features is here. Now you can resize shapes, edit them, and re-edit them — before or after they're created. Even edit individual corner radiuses in rounded rectangles. If a shape is bound for the web, export CSS data from the file to save time.

Camera Shake Reduction

Save shots you thought were lost due to camera motion. Whether your blur was caused by slow shutter speed or a long focal length, Camera Shake Reduction analyzes its trajectory and helps restore sharpness.

Expanded Smart Object support

Apply Blur Gallery and liquify effects nondestructively thanks to Smart Object support. Your original file stays intact as you add blur effects or push, pull, pucker, or bloat the image or video. Edit or remove the effects at any time — even after saving your file.

Multi-shape and path selection

Get more done in fewer clicks by selecting multiple paths, shapes, and vector masks at once. Even in multilayered documents with lots of paths, you can easily target the path (and any layer) you want right on canvas using a new filter mode.

  

 Improved 3D painting

Live previews are now up to 100x faster and more responsive when you paint on 3D objects and texture maps. With the powerful Photoshop painting engine, you can make any 3D model look terrific.

  

Improved type styles

You spend hours getting text to look just right. Type styles let you save your formatting as a preset that you can then apply with just a click. You can even define type styles to use across all your Photoshop documents.

Copying of CSS attributes

When you hand-code a web design, you can't always get elements like rounded corners and colors to match your original. Now, let Photoshop generate CSS code for specific design elements, and simply copy and paste the code into your web editor to get the results you want.

POLYPAINTING

We want to share what is the importance of ZBrush software in Gaming and Production Studio.

Basically Zbrush is use for High resolution Modeling & Texturing. It is not possible to creat a photo

Realistic model  in 3DS Max or Maya without using ZBrush. In Zbrush, basic method  of Texturing

is Polypaint .

POLYPAINTING allows painting on a model's surface without first assigning a texture map. A texture map can be created at a later time, and the painted surface can be transferred to the map. Polypainting offers significant advantages compared to standard workflow.

The resolution of the texture map need not be decided in advance. This is particularly valuable if you find you need more detailing on an area than you thought you would. Instead of repainting a new, larger texture map, you can simply transfer the existing surface painting to a new, larger map, with no rework necessary.

Now it’s time to paint your model a little bit! For this step we will use PolyPainting,

which consists of painting the model’s points with color, filling the polygons between

them. The resolution of your painting will depend upon the resolution of your model. If

you have few polygons, you will have a low-resolution painting. Consider adding some

extra levels of subdivision to your model but take care to not add more levels than

necessary!

First, make sure that Draw >> Rgb is active. This tells ZBrush that you will be

painting with color, as opposed to material or color plus material. Select the body SubTool, go to the color square on the left shelf (or use one of the color selectors in the

Color Palette) and choose a base color. Then in the Color palette, click the “Fill Object”

button. This will fill all the polygons of your model with your selected base color. Your

model is now ready for PolyPainting

Pick the Standard brush (B,S,T) to start painting but first, look at the top shelf

above the canvas: you should see that Zadd is enabled. Zadd means that the brush

will sculpt, which is not what you want right now so click it to disable it. Rgb is already

active, which is what you need to paint color.

Go back to the color picker and choose a color to paint some variations or details.

But before drawing on the model, check the different settings available on the top shelf:

• The Draw Size of your brush.

• The Focal Shift of your brush, which will define how sharp or soft the stroke’s

border is.

• The Rgb Intensity which will define the opacity of your color.

This is the basic process  of starting Polypaint in ZBrush.

Thank you.

SSS ( Subsurface scattering)

In the Subsurface Scattering session, Learn to render realistic shading of character. In this session, Shavikant walks you through his process, providing the viewer with a greater understanding of how to realistic sss shading, maps & passes for production. Subsurface scattering is light passing through and diffusing within a thin translucent material. Human skin is an example of such a material as it is made up of many thin translucent layers. A Subsurface Scattering material is ideal for re-creating skin in 3D computer graphics and is why the Mantal Ray Subsurface Scattering  Fast Skin shader was specifically created. Subsurface scattering (or SSS) is a mechanism of light transport in which light penetrates the surface of a translucent object, is scattered by interacting with the material, and exits the surface at a different point. The light will generally penetrate the surface and be reflected a number of times at irregular angles inside the material, before passing back out of the material at an angle other than the angle it would have if it had been reflected directly off the surface. Subsurface scattering is important in 3D computer graphics, being necessary for the realistic rendering of materials such as marble, skin, and milk.

Fluid

In the Fluid Session, Learn to render realistic bodies of water with Maya. In this session, Shavikant walks you through his process, providing the viewer with a greater understanding of how to set up dynamic fluid simulations for production shot assets & shows how to work with the Fluid node attributes, control the simulation quality, make collisions that mimic surface wake or waves, float objects, and improve the realism of your scenes with lighting, shading ,hdri map and reflectivity.

Level of Detail (LOD)

In the LOD session, Shavikant have discussed Level of detail is a general design term for video game landscapes in which closer objects are rendered with more polygons than objects that are farther away. Generally speaking, the level of detail is dictated by the game's system requirements. Given the power of modern processors, very little degradation in the level of detail is noticeable anymore. Put too much on screen at the same time and the game can grind to a halt. This is where level of detail (LOD) models can help. By switching to lower-resolution models as the character or object moves away from the camera, you can lighten the overall polygon count on the screen without sacrificing visual quality. In this session, Shavikant Chauhan shows you how to get the best out of LOD models while keeping quality high and the frame rate solid.The total number of polygons in the lower LODs must not be greater than the polygon count of the highest LOD. For example, if you’re using four LODs and your most detailed model has a total of 5,000 polygons, the next LOD down should be around 3,000, the model after that would be 1,500, and the last one would be 500. If you have more than four LODs, the limits would have to be adjusted.