‘Freefall’ FX Shot Breakdown
This is the first time Tony Diaz worked in Blender, but the result looks pretty good!
Hey there! My name is Tony Diaz, I am a filmmaker based out of LA.
I’ve been a Blender lurker for about a year now, but never really dove into the program, mainly because I’ve never had a project to use it on. A few months back, I booked a micro budget music video that was action heavy and figured it’d be a good playground to learn Blender.
So I just finished my first shot on it and I’m pretty happy with it. I made this short breakdown to get the cast and crew amped, but figured you guys would get a kick out of it too. Apologies for my poor Russian, I used google translate ;)
I can’t thank this community enough. Everything I learned from motion tracking to cycles to hair I got from tutorials made by users. So again, thanks you all.
When I wrap post I’ll send post the video and breakdowns. So much more to come!
Is there a different link. That link is in Germany not available :(
Wish I could see it!
Trying to get one up on Vimeo, but they’re being punks about the copyright on the music. Vimeo is the worst…
if you need Epic Music check this music out, the email is in the describition. if you write him you can use his music :)
http://www.youtube.com/user/DreammakerSoundtrack
Hi Tony!
Nice breakdown and compositing. I don’t see Russian though as all signs in clip are in Mongolian, which way too defferent. Common is that Cyrillic used :)
Thanks!
And, yes, thank you for the correction on the Mongolian – I’m pretty absent minded at times ;)
Congrats! Very, very impressive! And the hair simulation idea just works like a charm. How do you render it? I think 2.5 hours per frame is too much.
Thanks! I was rendering on my GPU (NVidia 580 modded for my mac by MacVidCards). I wanted it very clean, so I could add the correct noise profile (to match my Sony a7s at 3200 ISO) in after effects. Pretty sure I was in the 3000 pass range, and I also had a giant cube over the whole scene to render volumetric scattering (or was it absorption?). It was just a touch of it, but it definitely kicked up my render time.
If there’s one thing I wish I could find more clear info on, it’s tips to speed up render time. I’m in the middle of some smoke simulations for guns and bullets, and while they look awesome, they take forever to render…
Wait a second. Are you saying that you rendered it at 3000 samples??? (I’m not native English speaker so maybe I missed that point).
I think that the only way to improve the render time in that scene is… investing in hardware. At my studio we have a GTX 590 (like two 580 working together) that works very well, imagine having two 580 working together at the same frame. We also have a GTX Titan Black which is a bit better than the 590, but have much more memory. If you’re gonna buy a new one, I recommend you the GTX Titan Z: two Titan Black in one card… Dude, that’s gonna be our next purchase :D
Yeah, 3000!
Instead of buying more hardware, I’ve started learning how to set up network rendering. At my work, we have a bunch of iMacs (some with the NVidia cards for CUDA) and am planning on turning them into my render farm on the weekends :)
That’s awesome! if only you had like 1 other person it probably wouldn’t take 3 weeks. work on modelling and tracking at the same time
I feel like most of the time was spent getting up the learning curve. If I had to do this all over, it’d probably take a week or less. Aside from rendering, the most time consuming part was rotoscoping the actress!
Wow, great job! I love your idea of making your own hair; it was very effective.
Thanks! I knew pretty quickly that rotoscoping the hair wouldn’t look good, especially since it should be backlit given the 3D hospital sign behind her. Gotta say hair was the quickest and easiest part of the whole shot!
wow, that is really cool! I have also found that having a specific goal helps guide and push what I learn. Can’t wait to see more.
Thanks! Projects and deadlines are some of the best teachers…
the work you did looks great! Keep up the good work.
But lets not pretend it looks like real life;)
To be honest i think so many people are used to seeing cg clips like this in films they actually think its what live action looks like.
Looking at the latest Hobbit film in the cinema it looks so badly green screened i can’t watch the thing, would love it if they spent the money on location shots instead.
It one of the reasons the original star wars films worked so well and the newer ones didn’t, the location shots gave a sense of reality to the thing…..any way better stop going on…..
I think that the user never pretended that it was real life. Please dont demoralize somebody who is trying to show their work but your comment does just that.
I understand your point about using real shots but I dont think this was the right time for it.
No worries! I do appreciate your comments though. I have a thick skin so his comments don’t discourage me, but I can also see how they could discourage an artist.
I don’t mind criticism, but I do prefer specific notes for specific things to fix.
It does start off by saying something like..”instead of spending thousands of dollars on a crew and flying them…” etc etc in effect claiming this is an equivalent to or alternative too a live action shot in a city, so I am comparing the final visuals to what it could have been.
Lets just clarify, the shot looks great! It just does not look real.
I am allowed to say this.
I’m wondering if a lot of younger people are so used to seeing green screen shots in films they actually think that is what real looks like?
cheers
Thanks, it was a labor of love to learn Blender!
Any specific notes on the shot? Having someone else’s critical eye is important for me because I know how easy it is to get tunnel vision on a project…
Having very little experience with this process on my side, a few questions arise: Wouldnt it be easier to do this in a greenscreen studio (maybe build the rail) and just swap out the background? Or, if not in a studio, maybe hang up some greenscreens in the background of the shot? What was your motivation to do it like this? :)
Simple: time and money ;)
Renting studio space isn’t cheap, easily a few hundred dollars, plus rentals on equipment. And you usually need insurance or a hefty deposit, which I didn’t have the money for, given its a micro budget project. On paid gigs, sure, it’d be great.
The other issue with a studio shoot is it’d add an additional day to our shoot, or at the very least a large company move tacked on to the beginning or end of a night shoot. With everyone working for free, I wouldn’t ask them to do that.
As for greenscreen on set, that would’ve added at least an hour to an already tight schedule. We had two nights to shoot the location, and this shot was the only shot that didn’t take place in our main location (an underground parking lot). Our plan was to get this shot first, then live for the rest of the two nights in the parking lot (where we were aiming for 30 setups a night, which is a LOT).
If we had to set up a greenscreen, that entails building a frame (prob a 20×20), getting the wrinkles out, standing it up and sand bagging it so the wind doesn’t take it down, then light it. With setup and teardown, that’s an hour, and that’s a conservative estimate.
Time is the enemy on any shoot, and especially on night shoots, because people will start to gas out around 2am. The trade off made sense to me: save time during filming and spend it all during post.
Since I am doing the post work, all it costs me is my time and a little patience, which I have in spades ;)
wow i didnt expect an answers this long. thanks for this. your tradeoff makes sense of course. i initially just thought that rotoscoping the whole thing appeared very tedious. but it seems it’s the lesser evil :).
Hi Tony – As you’re in LA, we’d love to have you present on your project at the LA.Blend Blender users group. Let me know if you’d be interested.
Sure! How can I get in touch with y’all?
Ping me an email at stirling_nospam at live.com or you can subscribe to our listserv here: SoCalBlender.org. I help run the Westside meetings and we look forward to meeting you