I recently sat down for a chat with Tomas Egger. Tomas is well known amongst EIAS users. He is the Technical Director at AD Studios in Brazil, he is also one of our main Beta testers. We talked about his new TV advert "Golden Cross".
How long did it take to complete project?I had exactly 15 days after filming to do the post production which included:
1) Extracting mattes of the olympic athlete.
2) Photography of all the real buildings.
3) Making the HDRI map.
4) Modelling all the buildings.
5) Tracking all the cameras from all the takes.
6) Rendering all passes (Diffuse with IBL toghter, only GI, Reflections, Sun, Specular, Masks, Depth, RPF motion Vector).
7) Compositing it all together.
8) The sound track.
How many people were involved?On the Athelete shoot: almost 20 professionals.
For the pigeon filming: 8 professionals
Building models and texturing: Orlando Sá
Pigeons and lettering animations (motion graphics): Marcio Mattos
Rotoscope artists: Marcel Tadeu, Rodrigo Violanti.
Film direction, 3d tracking, all camera extra animations, lighting, rendering, compositing: Tomas Egger
Camera assistant: Rodrigo Violanti.
Waldo Denuzo did the sound track.
What technologies did you use?1) The 3D was all EIAS.
2) Models - In this case Vector Works.
3) 3D camera tracking was done with Syntheyes
2) Textures - Photoshop
3) Panorama images - Stitcher
4) HDRI- Photomatix Pro
5) Compositing - After Effects CS3
How did you integrate EIAS into the workflow (motion capture, live footage etc)?My first step always is extract all the mattes from all the takes using After Effects Primatte Keyer, then I send on all the takes, which needed some rotoscope polishing by my rotoscope artists. (they need time to retouch them by hand, frame by frame) Then I started to do all the 3d tracking, in the meantime, Orlando built the Buildings proxys. With my 3d tracked cameras I started to place the virtual cameras in my EIAS project using Orlando’s proxys. I directed the shoot, so, I took note of all the camera lenses and distances on the days we shot. Next I did my first render with a simple composite just to see whats going on. I then started to fine tune my composition, by, for example taking off greens spills and by color correcting. I then did the 3d lighting, I lit the white proxy buildings with GI and a Sun (a spot light simulating the sun, not a parallel light). Using Stitcher and Photomatix Pro I prepared my HDRI maps, an 800x400 version for lighting the scene, and, for the RT reflections a 4000x2000 version and finally, a tone map version at 4000x2000 to be used as my background. TIP: I addapted my Chair HDRI project (EIAS 7 DVD) and added only the buildings inside. When I received the improved buildings from Orlando, I started all my render passes for all the takes.
With all CGI passes and my athelete masks ready I was ready to polish the film:
1) Color correcting everything togheter
2) Adding some hand-held motion to the takes over the 3d tracked cameras.
3) Depth Field.
4) Lens Flares.
5) Dirt.
6) Adding grain.
7) The final touch was an RPF layer which helped me to do a perfect simulation of the EIAS Motion Vector blur, but inside After Effects using the Reelsmart Motion Blur plug-in.
What EIAS technologies did you use?All of them! Image Based Lighting, PSD Layers, RPF, tons of Slaves controlled by Renderama... and so on.
What was your favourite part of the project?I love solving the Agencys brief, filming, when I do the post-production, this whole process; it gives me a lot of control of the entire process. One of the artists which makes me work like I do is Harry Harryhausen (the best stop motion animator, film director and story teller ever). http://www.rayharryhausen.com/
Interview by Ian Waters.
