WTF?! In 5... 4... 3...
Sebastian König writes:
The actual start of Mango-production is getting closer and closer and time is flying. Since we have an awesome script now and even some great concept-art we can really start to think about HOW we are going to make things happen, technically. I mean, camera-tracking good and fine, but how will we, for example, do the makeup? Can we afford some actual makeup arists, who will turn our actors in some jawdropping vfx characters, covered with gore, blood, bolts, cables, jelly or whatever is required?
Or can we do that all digitally?
The basic idea for digtal makeup is easy, as long as you do not think about it too long. Just have a digital double, track the head, body, limbs or whatever, apply the textures, props or clothes to that digital version of your actor and composite it over the actual footage of your actor. Here’s an example.
Sebastian is also calling for input on your workflow for projects such as this. Head over to the post (link below) and contribute!
Link
45 Comments
That's very cool ... except wouldn't it be challenging to account for expression changes and other film footage that move in front of the effects?
Could map the points on the face to bones on the double.
That is why you have mesh animation and rotoscoping.
I can't wait till the roto tools get improved, they are horrible both on the implementation side and the usability side.
They will get updated as for VFX they are unmissable.
Wow -- really impressive work :)
Cool fx! it would be cool if it all could be done digitally but, the rendering/composition time may exceed the time of actually use an make-up artist. But if Blender wants to optimize their functions to suite eg. digital make-up then do it in the virtual world, if you don't want to exceed the budget, go for the cheapest (it might be hiring make-up artists not sure at all).
to do makeup effects bot the artists and digital artists are unmissable. there is no one or the other in vfx, only together.
Yeah, but if you wanted to, say, remove someones eyeball like that dude in Boardwalk Empire, you'd have to do tracking and digital makeup. It's overkill if all you're gonna do is mess with someone's complexion slightly. This is good for adding trauma effects or maybe as an alternative to a prosthetic if it would create an issue. Or maybe you wanna go full on Davy Jones and do a facial replacement. You'd want really good tracking for that, tho, not just basic positional tracking like this.
Incredible! Looking forward to this!
This look cool, but It still easier, cheaper and faster to do it the usual way. It can open new door though.
Really???!!! Amazing. I can't believe what you can do with Blender these days.
Really nice trick; I'm curious about blurring those markers, it seems sort of a limitation for this kind of effect, especially when it somes to close up camera shots.
in reality you'd reproject a painted version of the face texture onto the mesh and warp it as necessary.
Incredible
Fu*k!
Jaw was just ripped off from my head.
Mind blowing!!!!
That would require full digital effects :P
What the holy mother of ...
That is some really awesome use of Blender and the tracking! I can see this really turning some heads in VFX world particularly in the indie world. How any indie people can't really afford the extra makeup, etc but can spend several hours tracking a face just to do some easy dirt/blood on faces. I have seen a handful of small projects that could easily utilize this who already use or are using Blender.
I'll have to toss this video around some of my friends :)
Great stuff - I'm really looking forward to Mango!
I really gotta learn how to use camera tracking and modelling a face. I could see a lot of fun stuff to do with this. Very cool!
Oh man how do you do the Virtual double
I mean that are about 3days work
If i could do smth like that i would be cool
Sebastian you have to show me how you can track this way.Because i've tried it without good results.That looking awesome.
Amazing.... simply amazing!
Hey look! It's Steve Jobs is ALIVE! Oh.... never mind...
This is so cool!
Hahahaha! Seb, you nailed it! The last effect sure is a killer! :D -Reyn
Sebastien always make us smile of his blender experiments with tracking... it so awesome!
So very clever, will use it to make my forehead smaller and hair bigger!
auhauhauhauh, amazing! really!
It looks very cool, but I feel like the amount of time that will go into doing it for each actor you need it for will outweigh the traditional makeup work. You have to put the tracking dots on, then actually model the head (or other body parts) and then make all the textures, which could get lengthy if you need different ones. There's also the additional bit where the textures are static - unless you use the new dynamic painting tools - which means you can't show the actor wipe the dirt, blood, etc. away. It would also be hard to do non-superficial stuff.
Go for the cheapest?
cheapest would be to drop open movies for more development...
As these open movies are meant to improve Blender, do as much inside Blender as possible. If it is possible to do such things in Blender, please do it!
Great tracking experiment. This itsy bitsy little instruction "Make a digital double" would take me forever to get done, though. :)
I don't see this as being used for simple makeup but rather more for creating more complex effects like Giving Sebastian Cybernetic eyes or transforming him to demonic form.
Not to undermine this great demonstration but I for Dirt or blood its easier to paste some ketchup or smear some dirt and save this technique for greater things that cannot be accomplished by traditional makeup(like a person walking around with half his head missing).
Der Typ macht mich fertig...Krasser Scheiß
In English please.
Heh. I can see where that comes from but you should stick with English and nice language. Although that probably wasn't more than a "WTF", if translated.
Very cool! )) And I saw the tutorial on tracking mimics so it's possible to track almost everything on a being.
This is nice, however doing this in a production environment is quite a bit harder. The actor's head movements were slow and he did not make any facial expressions. Tests are needed with a more expressive performance.
Of course it is. Most of the blogpost over at the mango-blog is just about these problems. Of course an actual production is far more complicated then this simple test. :)
Apologies. It was a premature comment. I had not seen the much more detailed discussion on the full blog.
Thanks everyone for your nice comments!
Of course we are not even thinking about doing ALL makeup in post. Sure enough a lipstick is easier done as real makeup. Digital makeup can make it easier though to punch a whole in the face, tear an eye out, make the face burn etc. Especially if it is complicated makeup that appears in several shots it can be easier to do it in CG, because recreating the exact same makeup/mask in real life can be much harder than simply re-using the same mask / model / texture in CG.
But doing an elaborate production level test takes far too much time, so all these tests naturally look a bit simple and silly. But still it's fun to explore these techniques.
:)
So in conclusion I totally share the opinion that the best way is to do both, analog and digital makeup to get the best of both worlds.
And no, at the moment we cannot so lip-sync with tracking (mocap), just rigid-body tracking. Though maybe with some hand-animation or constraint we can cheat a bit ;)
I did try something after viewing yours and cg cookie's video tutorials. I used some little tricks in animating some part of a virtual proesthetic to follow the eyebrows movement( not perfect, but was ok for the feeling I was looking for).
Here the link: http://vimeo.com/34504824
Impressive result ! Very interesting to create holes in a head, like in "The mummy returns" movie ! Great work !
And a great followup video (not mine)
http://vimeo.com/34504824
Come on! It's only two posts above...
lol
Did I just see a ... Zombie Jobs?
Excellent Sebastian!Excellent!