Pandemic Film: Waning Immunity

Posted on by Thor

This is the depth map for Waning Immunity, a shot that lasts just about a second in the film.Light objects in the foreground are the bodies of several fallen knights. The dragon is breathing fire at the standing knight whose shield is melting. I am describing this since you cant see the painting and most detail except depth is lost in a depth map.

The camera pivots from the dragon’s open jaws to the melting shield. I have been dialing up the parallax in recent shots and I am amazed at how the musculature in the shoulders rotates with the camera move. The problem is that adding more parallax boosts the render time which leaves me sitting on my hands waiting to see the result. I am trying to find the balance between time invested in renders versus finishing the film on time. I have 12 days before I need to turn in a final edit for a screening at Orlando International Fringe Festival,  3rd Annual Film as Visual Art screening on May 19, 2023 at 6PM at the Shakes outdoor courtyard. The screening is free and this will be the world premiere for this 2.5D animated short.

 

Pandemic Film: Queens Depth

Posted on by Thor

This is the depth map I created for the shot of Queen Elizabeth in the pandemic film. 13 days of production remain. I am now averaging 10 shots a day and I should finish with some extra time to refine some shots. In the above depth map I have not yet added detail to the mid and far depth layers.

Since I had a debilitating Premiere Pro crash in which most of the auto saves were lost, I now back up the file onto an online storage site for safety twice a day. I no longer trust Adobe products to maintain safe back ups on their own. For painting, I have abandoned Photoshop for doing my painting, and it looks like I will have to find another software for the next time I edit a film.

I didn’t bother blurring the harsh line under the queen’s chin, but in the final render with the painting, it really isn’t noticeable. I kind of wish there was a way to generate a depth map for the background and combine that with the portrait mode for the face. I could probably accomplish it with some green screens to comp together several different animated renders. I will try it on a future shot. Since the shot is less than a second long, I can get away with some imperfections as I continue to learn the nuances of creating and using depth maps.

I have managed to have two days where the files were not lost by clearing the cache and saving over the same file repeatedly. I no longer can save iterations of the file with with the date. Every morning I open the program I have some dread that the program might have erased the previous days work.

Pandemic Film: Black Lives Matter

Posted on by Thor

I am deep into production now, having finished 13 shots yesterday.I had to stop because I was getting blurry eyed and though I might punch a wrong button and experience another Premiere Pro crash. This morning I am starting off with a shot of BLM in Washington D.C. That is the D.C. Mayor  Murial Bowser on the balcony looking down the street at the White House.

I debated weather I needed to actually put a depth map on this shot because this is a fast pan that lasts just a second and 22 frames. I did notice the depth when working on the shot in After Effects, but with the pan added in Premiere Pro that illusion of depth is very subtle. I doubt it will be noticed. All his is part of the learning curve, if time gets tight, I know where corners could be cut, but I always want to go for the best possible solution. Some shots at the end will likely be re-done to improve the production value.

I tried to send musician Andy Matchett the latest edit of the project, but the render froze. The project is huge now and a simple render is another technical hurdle I will need to conquer. I tried just shooting a video of the program and sending that via WeTransfer but that also didn’t go through. We may need to Zoom so I can share the progress.

Pandemic Film: Depth

Posted on by Thor

Rendering is the most painful aspect of creating a film.I tried to render the fill length of the film twice tonight but both renders froze about one third of the way into the process. Anyway above is a single shot broken into it’s two components. The original painting and a depth map. When these two are combined in After Effects a 2.5 dimensional image results with parallax. Since most of the shots in this film are less than a second long the depth maps are often enough to give some depth and a feeling of motion.

I am doing some hand drawn animation but for instance with this shot I don’t think it will be necessary to animate the tails. I have about 16 days to finish work on the fist edit. I managed to complete 12 shots today and at that pace I should easily finish on time and then I will go back to refine some shots and add animation where it is needed.

I had one full day where production stopped because Premiere Pro was erasing past saved versions of the edit. It made no sense to continue if each days work would disappear into the digital ether. After having cleared the cache, I am now only working on one file and not renaming it each day. Something about saving a “file as” caused the program to glitch out. Online research found that this has been a know problem with Adobe Premiere Pro since 2017 and they still have not resolved the issue. I am limping by with the edit I have rather that get another video editing program since I am too far into the process. All files are being backed up to an online service no so the program can not overwrite them or erase them. I am spending far too much time trying to resolve technical issues that are outside my control.

Oh, for any guys out there, COVID damages your sperm.

Pandemic Film: The Queen and COVID

Posted on by Thor

Working on a quick shot of the queen for the COVID film.This shot uses the portrait mode of VoluMax Pro 7 to add some dimensional to her portrait. I also added a few masks to help make the throne and statue more dimensional. It all worked fine and the shot was added to my Premiere Pro timeline.

A problem arose at the end of the workday where the edit I was working on reverted back to a version from two days ago. All files I had added for the last two days disappeared from Premiere Pro and I had to re-add them at the end of the day. In all I had to re-add 12 shots, and I was blurry eyed before I went to bed. I checked the playback to be sure everything worked and re-saved the project. Then I closed it down for the night.

The next morning all my changes were once again lost. This is the type of infuriating issue that can drive a person insane. If I had more hair I would be tearing it out. I searched forums for anyone having a similar problem and it seems this is a known issue and had been happening for years. From all my reading I didn’t see a solution.

I managed to find a version of the film in the auto saved files. I simply opened the file with the largest file size. I am disheartened to work on it more until I figure out what he  issue is so it doesn’t happen again. Pam advised me to save the file on my desktop. When I did that all the auto saved files also moved to the desktop.

I am maybe a third of the way into the project and need to move forward. Unfortunately I suspect that before the end of the day my work may again be lost. Adobe has certainly managed to loose my confidence. Should there be an expert in file management out there, I certainly need some help.

Pandemic Film: Flaming Baby

Posted on by Thor

I have several shots of flaming babies in the film. This is probably the most extreme close up in the film. For some reason this image seems to upset COVID minimizers the most. Some folks think I should be panting cure kittens instead of documenting mass infection. When I do paint a cure baby then feathers fly.

Since the CG mesh in the program is for an adult male, it took quite a bit of work to wrestle it into the shape of this baby’s face. It still isn’t perfect but it is good enough for this shot which lasts for about a second. I pumped up the levels for parallax bug the face got too distorted to be believable. I had to relax the setting to get the effect I wanted.

I added depth maps for the flames as well but that effect isn’t noticeable. What I should do is find a program which will morph the flames over time so I can have some control over their movement. I’ll have to do some research along that line today. I could also hand animate the flames, but considering how many things burst into flames in this film, that would become too much work. I need to finish production by May 11. 2023.

Pandemic Film: Depth Map

Posted on by Thor

This is the depth map for the shot called Stealth Wave. Anything close to the camera is light and anything far away get darker. The large grey mass towering over the figure is a wave. The metal I-beam structures on the beach are for stopping armored vehicles.

The process of creating the 2.5D shot is incredibly simple. I import the jpg of the painting into Photoshop. A script was used in the actions menu to create the grey scale depth map. I just push a butting and it is automatically generated. I use this technique for most of the simpler shots which don’t have complicated camera moves.

The main disadvantage of this technique is that there is often one spot which gets distorted when the camera moves. In that case I have to go back and create a mask to kill the distortion.

I had a major setback 2 days ago and had to re-edit 18 shots back into the Premiere pro final timeline. Since I had just recently done all the shots, It was a quick process to re-create them. Yesterday work progresses without a hitch and the shots are looking better than I imagined they could.

I can’t see the 3d effect in real time, so I just look at the first frame and the last frame and then imagine the movement between them. I then do a render of the scene and I am getting better at judging how much parallax to ass before the shot breaks down.

With a shot like this stealth wave, little can go wrong since there are three clear shapes, a foreground, mid ground and background.

Pandemic Film: Hazmat Hamlet

Posted on by Thor

When the camera moves in this scene, the persons face does seem three dimensional. For all the extra effort however the effect is so subtle it will likely go unnoticed. I am wondering if applying the 3D rig to the skull would have worked. I will try that in a future scene. The hazmat suit was done using smart objects to get some dimension in the shot. The skull and hand are closest to the camera and therefor lightest then the closest areas of the suit were blocked in.

The shot is less than a second (26 frames) so I will not go back to refine it any more. I finished 8 shots yesterday, so my pace has picked up. At that pace, I should finish the film in 28 days.

Pandemic Film: Portrait Mode

Posted on by Thor

A shot early on in the film has this woman in the foreground of an operating room that is flooding with water. Other nurses and doctors are in the background up to their chins in water. a mother screams as she clutches her child. The shot is less than a second ling, but I have reworked the scene multiple times. Now that the woman’s head appears three dimensional, I am having a debate about how much I should turn her head as the camera moves.

Another creepy aspect of the VoluMax Pro Portrait program is that I can have the woman look directly at the camera as her head turns. Not many will ever notice this subtle detail. With this scene I separated this woman on her own layer and comped in the animation later using a green screen. It is the first and so far the only time I have used a green screen. The nose and lips though visible in the digital mesh do not render. They might exist three dimensional but my painted mask camouflages them, so I didn’t bother touching up any more.

I executed this portrait effect in another shot that is from the waste up and I found it wasn’t worth the effort. The painting already had enough information so the digital element was just overkill.I am learning I can let many things go and keep tweaking things that will stand out visually.

The film has been accepted to be shown at the Orlando International Fringe Festival, so I need to finish the edit and animation by May 11, 2023. I am about 1/8th of the way done as of today. Thankfully the shot counts are rising as I get used to the process.

Pandemic Film: Disney Landscape

Posted on by admin

This was the first painting I did at the start of the pandemic. Some were rather upset seeing the image and wanted to tar and feather me and run me out of town. That is when I knew I was onto something and the pandemic paintings became a daily habit.

During the lock down getting a pandemic themed painting done every day was easy. The news was changing fast and the absurdity of the response or lack of response was was ample inspiration for insane painting themes.

Taking these hundreds of images and assembling them into a film seems like a vacation. I still have ideas I want to paint but they have to be set aside so I have time to edit and animate the film. After three years many of the images I already painted apply over and over again. Humans keep blindly making the same mistakes and choose willful ignorance to fuel their bliss.