COVID Film: Lollapalooza Pyrotechnics

Posted on by Thor

Last night I felt I had finished this shot in After Effects, and retired to eat dinner and relax. However when I woke up this morning I felt I could do better with the flames. This site offers me a chance to compare scenes I am working on to previous scenes by scrolling back over the last weeks work. I really likes the flames I produced with the Pearl harbor scenes, so I went back to that scene and wrote down all the settings used in the flames. There are dozens of setting so I wrote them all down on a slip of paper.

I then returned to this scene and started using those settings across the board. Some settings like the brightness had to be adjusted because these flames are so much more intense.  I am much more pleased with the results today. Part of me wants to use these shapes to hand animate the flames in Callipeg and use these textures inside, but the violent shapes do stand on their own. I have to weigh weather the subtle refinements would be noticed. For now I am accepting what I have with the fractal and displacement tools that I have.

COVID Film: Vote Fire

Posted on by Thor

The fire in the Vote scene was surprisingly easy to animate. I thought this would take several days, but I had it finished before lunch. In the previous version of the shot I simply added a black and white depth map to the shot and that offered the illusion of depth.

My approach this time was to only apply a depth map the the people standing in the forest. They were then rendered and imported into After Effects with a green screen background. The forest, I broke apart into multiple layers. Furthest from the camera was the background and then three different layers of trees. There are distant trees, mid ground trees and then two foreground trees. There are also two painted layers of smoke.

All these layers were stacked in 3D space like dominos with the background furthest from the camera. The amount of movement in the depth map of the people gave me a hint on how much to move the camera. I just needed to keep everyone’s feet in the same place on the ground. That subtle camera move from left to right, offered the needed parallax effect.

For the fire I imported the painting I had done of the flames. I found a free displacement and fractal noise fire effect online from RocketStock, and imported it into my After Effects presets. I simply applied that fractal noise to my flames and with a series of adjustments had some convincing flames.

I went back into several previous scenes and used this new effect multiple times. It is most convincing with small flames. I also stated using it behind other animations I had done to add more break away flames at the tops of the fires. Most fires now consist of multiple animation layers to add chaos. None of the fires are perfect but this is the style I am looking for.

The painted smoke was animated using pins and then I created a fractal noise smoke effects which I layered on top. The opacity of the added smoke was dialed way down. This shot which passed as “good enough” now feels exceptional. With all these effects shots being refined that is how I am feeling about the film as a whole.

COVID Film: Sturgis on Fire

Posted on by Thor

This scene seemed stiff with the painted fire dangling behind the moving motorcycles. I animated the flames on Thanksgiving and I am so thankful that I did. It is now one of my favorite scenes in the film.I am glad I put in the solid day to make all the flames happen.

I had a front tire blow out at 70 miles per hour as I was driving  on the highway after I dropped Pam off at the Sanford airport. Putting a spare tire on in the rain, while rush hour traffic roared by was harrowing, but it helped inspire the flaming front tire in this scene.

This is the most levels I have had to animate in a single shot. The flaming tire itself has 7 layers. The foreground bike has 6 layers including the flames. All the layers for each bike were linked to a null which is what I moved to animate the forward movement. Flames on each bike had to be created separately since each bike moves at a different speed.

I learned to use color coding to keep all the bike elements separate. Overall there are 25 layers to make this work.

Up until this point all the flames in scenes burned upward. In this case I had to figure out how to get the flames to blow back in the breeze. Expressions I had used in other scenes needed to be flipped to make the effects orient correctly.

The final results might not be photo real, but they blend well with the overall look of the film.

COVID Film: Fifth Horseman Flames

Posted on by Thor

This is the fifth shot in a row of flames in the animated short. It follows the Pearl Harbor scene where a bomb drops and a large explosion is heard.By now animating displaced flames has become a bit second nature. In each scene the flames are subtly different because there are so many variables to the glow effects and the level of displacement I choose for each scene.

In this scene the flames are brighter and bigger than i n the previous scenes since I wanted to match the way the painting looked. I discovered I could layer the flames. I made two duplicates of the fire. One was scaled up a bit and put behind the main body of fire. I changed the hue of this fire to be more orange and I reduced the brightness. Then I scaled down a fire and made it super bright. This became the core of the fire.

I used the painting I did of smoke and animated it expanding using pins in After Effects. I then decided to add another layer of fractal noise smoke and animated it on top of that smoke. This added a nice subtle moving texture which brought the smoke to life.

I tried adding sparks using the particle world effect but they moved too quickly and I didn’t like the look. I returned to the splatters that I have used in so many other shots.

As a final touch I animated the statue of the former president tipping backwards. The guys pulling the rope are out of the field of view in the final cut, so I didn’t bother animating them.

COVID Film: Animating Restaurant Flames

Posted on by Thor

After figuring out how to animate the flames in the Pearl Harbor scene, this scene became a breeze to do. The flames still could use more chaos to the shape they form but since it is only seen for less than a second, I think this works. If I learn some new trick to deform the flames I can return to refine the scene some more.

This morning I added the smoke to the scene. Surprisingly smoke it rather easy to animate with a fractal noise layer with a soft light blend mode. I am thinking I can animate the rising shape of the smoke with hand drawn animation and use that as a matte for this effect. I might do that in a future scene. In this scene I simply let the smoke fill the upper half of the room.

There are quite a few scenes where this style of smoke will do the trick, so I should be able to animate several scenes a day.

COVID Film: Zeros Fire displacement

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I spent the day working on the flames in this Pearl harbor scene in After Effects. After tweaking the three largest flames I discovered that I could cut more mattes with the pen tool and fore instantly cropped up in the new locations.  I kind of wish I could get the flames to lick a bit more to the right but since the scene is so short I doubt anyone will will notice how upward they are.

These fires are all created with displacement maps, mattes, and expressions for some minor animation. I am learning as I go and I might return to the scene when I learn more about how to create natural movement to the flames. I am resisting using stock flames with alpha channels that are sold online. Each scene with flames with either be hand animated or created with displacement maps like this scene.

What I learned form this scene was instantly applied to a scene that I thought might take forever. The scene is in a super crowded bar and everyone is on fire. I managed to finish most of those flames in two hours. I am gradually combining different techniques to solve the problems that are unique to each scene.

COVID Film: Winter Fest Displaced Fire

Posted on by Thor

This scene has a fractal displacement map to shape the flame and another fractal map for the inner flame detail. I am just starting to learn about how to use track maps and I used a gradient map to add transparency to the top of the flame.

I am slowly becoming better at adding glow to the flames I create. This one took three separate glow effects to get the right look. Since I have so many flames to create I should be an expert by the time this film is complete.

I made a duplicate of the flame and blurred it out underneath to add more glow. Even that wasn’t enough, so I created a yellow orange oval and blurred it out below the flame to add more light.

The shows I watch in the evening on TV all have many fire effects. Agents of Shield just featured a ghost rider whose head bursts into flames. I might not be creating effects on that scale but it is something to aspire towards.

Each fire has literally hundreds of settings that can be tweaked. This week I should have more time to tackle the problems that come up. For instance I want to find a way to break off the fire tendrils as they rise. I found a tutorial where a fractal noise could create those gaps but I haven’t been able to get it to work yet.

In the scene above, I abandoned some hand drawn animation that I had done because the shapes didn’t feel natural enough. This displacement flame feel better and I will accept it for now. As I learn more I might come back to it. That is what is happening to every fore I animated over the last few weeks, I am returning to add complexity to what was a hand drawn solution. It is the final 10% of any project that pushed it to the next level. I am there now, refining, learning and tinkering until I get it right.

COVID Film: Alpha Matte Fire Solution

Posted on by Thor

Last night I had a major breakthrough when I found out how t use track mattes in After Effects. I already had the candle flame working with hand drawn animation, and I had hand animated the flames fairing up the edges of the Constitution. However I didn’t like how the Constitution flames were painted.

I had imported every frame as a PNG into Callipeg and hand painted each in that program. However I didn’t have any way to see what the previous frame’s painting looked like, so I had to guess how to paint the next frame. Despite spending a solid day painting and repainting each frame, I wasn’t satisfied.

I decided to try and redo the animation using a displacement map to control the shape of the flames. However that shape had too many separate tendrils that animated straight upward. The shape didn’t look natural. So I used the animation I had already drawn and used it as a tracking matte. I created a fractal noise layer below it and worked out how the flame interior texture should look and move. Then I turned on the track matte on the animation layer I had drawn above it. This offered the best of both worlds. I had full control over the shape and movement of the flames and a fractal noise pattern animated upward inside offering texture and complexity, color and glow.

I suspect this solution will be used throughout the film to animate the flames. It offers control and chaos which is exactly what I need.

COVID Film: New Fire

Posted on by Thor

I animated perhaps six scenes with fire. By doing so I learned quite a bit about how fire moves but I was not quite satisfied with these initial hand drawn effects. I can control the outside shape of the fire well enough but the interior texturing was something that was a challenge with paint.

I decided to experiment with creating fire using fractal noise and displacement maps. This was my first attempt an it is indeed better than the hand drawn fore that proceeded it. I still need to figure out how to apply a gradient that will make the fire more transparent as it rises and another gradient that can make the fire slightly darker as it rises. I think this can be done with tracking mattes but I don’t know how to make that work yet. Research is needed.

I am also thinking that it will be nice to hand draw the fire shapes but use the fractal noise inside the flames as the rising texture. I am using expressions for the first time to animate the upward movement. I am hoping I can use existing animation as a matte that the fractal noise animation can show through. I don’t have all the answers yet but I am getting close.

Next week my schedule will open up and I will fill that week with research and experimentation until I have a good method of animating flames. In some cases the hand painted flames look good, so I might combine techniques to get the look I want.

Chicago Boat Tour

Posted on by Thor

On the last day of our Chicago trip, Pam and I went on a Chicago boat tour. We had our carry on luggage with us and sat in the back of the boat. I discovered that wearing a mask also helps keep my face warm in colder weather. As the passengers loaded onto the boat I sketched them. I realized that I should have been sketching the buildings first since the boat did a u-turn and took off once the passengers were loaded.

The tour was of the Chicago architecture. The only old architecture was the tiny homes attached to bride overpasses. Any one of those tiny home would make a great studio if I could get used to the sound of traffic. Several skyscrapers have a thin footprint and lean out over the river. Apparently there is a reservoir of water in the building which sloshed back and forth to stabilize the structure and keep it from falling over. No thank you.

The Chicago Tribune has sold off its huge printing press building and is moving out to the burbs. It is another sign that the news industry is in a death spiral. People don’t want news, they want rumor, innuendo and anything that supports their blindfolded denial.

After the boat tour we walled down to the Navy Pier to look around and then caught a Lyft to the airport.

Back in Orlando I found out that my film COVID Dystopia had won the award for Best Short Animation. It was quite a roller coaster of a trip. It is now 7 days since my screening and I don’t have any COVID symptoms, so it looks like basic precautions like masking, helped even in a crowded theater.