cinematography Car scene
- Thread starter gebo
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All comments are welcome.
It's a very nice little creation. Stabilisation is nice and I like the slightly fuzzy trees in the far background.
How did you create this?
Did you use a steadicam for this shot? or was the camera attached to a chaser car? looks really good
The blown out sky gives it a dreamy feel for me. I don't know if that's what the OP was going for.
Yes it's all CG. I didn't mention that because I wanted to see if peolple noticed it. The intention was not to fool anyone but to see if it looked real enough although it's not ready yet. The forest terrain will have grass, bushes and rocks. Right now it's too clean.
But my questions remain valid: I'm aproaching this as if it was real, the car behaviour, the lighting, the fog etc.
The grading I imagine for the movie is the one in this test.
The camera is moving in a perfect straight line, so maybe it's too stable to look real? What do you think?
I thought of making a second car on a paralell road and attach the virtual camera to it. That way I would introduce some shaking due to the suspensions reacting to the road irregularities. I coud also add random movement to the camera but I guess it wouldn't be so real.
My goal with this is not to make a full CG movie, but some parts will be. For the car scene the camera will start low like you see in the clip and then slowly start rising more and more until you can see the car from the top and a large portion of the road to indicate that the driver is going on a very long road in the middle of "nowhere" and is still far from it's destination. The camera will rise until it shows something like a satellite photo view... CG is good for these kind of "impossible" camera movements.
Take care. The fine details will either perfect, or spoil the reality.
Things to think about, but don't take this as an attack on the shot, it already looks good:
- Use photographic reference.
- Although the reflections on the car look awesome, I'd dial it down a bit.
-The picture car could go 0.5-1.0mph faster than the camera car, and the camera could pan a tiny bit to hold the composition.
-Both 'drivers' are not 'perfect' on their accelerator, so there could be a small amount of acceleration and deceleration going on all the time.
- Consider color bleed & reflection hotspots from the car to the street.
-As the camera moves past each FG tree, it would emerge into the sunlight and the local bounce that would slightly flash the entire shot.
- The color of the sky reflection (on the car) implies 'sunset', but the shadow direction doesn't.
- I'm certain that you already saw the 'pop' in the tree (about a second in).
- The FG trees could use some of that key light to give them more 'shape' (they are currently in silhouette).
- I'm a fan of less saturation when creating a CG environment. It's my magic bullet for fixing troublesome shots.
I really shouldn't be giving you any notes, because you're already on the right track (and it shows). Just don't do too much with it, and you'll be good.
Things to think about, but don't take this as an attack on the shot, it already looks good:
- Use photographic reference.
- Although the reflections on the car look awesome, I'd dial it down a bit.
-The picture car could go 0.5-1.0mph faster than the camera car, and the camera could pan a tiny bit to hold the composition.
-Both 'drivers' are not 'perfect' on their accelerator, so there could be a small amount of acceleration and deceleration going on all the time.
- Consider color bleed & reflection hotspots from the car to the street.
-As the camera moves past each FG tree, it would emerge into the sunlight and the local bounce that would slightly flash the entire shot.
- The color of the sky reflection (on the car) implies 'sunset', but the shadow direction doesn't.
- I'm certain that you already saw the 'pop' in the tree (about a second in).
- The FG trees could use some of that key light to give them more 'shape' (they are currently in silhouette).
- I'm a fan of less saturation when creating a CG environment. It's my magic bullet for fixing troublesome shots.
I really shouldn't be giving you any notes, because you're already on the right track (and it shows). Just don't do too much with it, and you'll be good.
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The car's actual driving looks fake, and not everything seems to be in proportion - almost as if shot by a tilt/shift lens.
The camera is way too smooth IMO, although I'm not sure if it's that it's too smooth or if it's too perfectly aligned with the car - it's almost like the camera's mounted to the car itself on a really long, invisible arm, and also on the new 'MoVi' so it's really smooth.. Also I find it almost looks as if the car is floating on top of the road, despite the fact that it's wheels are turning. I can't quite put my finger on why..
All in all, a good job, but those few things made me wonder if it was all done in the computer as soon as I watched it.
The camera is way too smooth IMO, although I'm not sure if it's that it's too smooth or if it's too perfectly aligned with the car - it's almost like the camera's mounted to the car itself on a really long, invisible arm, and also on the new 'MoVi' so it's really smooth.. Also I find it almost looks as if the car is floating on top of the road, despite the fact that it's wheels are turning. I can't quite put my finger on why..
All in all, a good job, but those few things made me wonder if it was all done in the computer as soon as I watched it.
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I dont think the camera is too smooth, I've done car shots where I've recorded from another carwhile holding a glidecam, so that could be an explanation for the smoothness. Also, there are rigs out there that can duplicate this smoothness.
Some good points there. Thanks for the input. The "pop" tree is caused by a change in material in the middle of the animation. i thought it was taking too long to render so changed some settings and resumed rendering, that's why the leaves changed colour.
The lighting is done with HDRI, so the reflections and overall lighting should match the shadows.
The camera moves independently and it's moving at a slighty different speed than the car.
You're right about the floating car. I haven't figured out yet what's causing this. The wheels are touching the road (there are about 3cm of the wheel below the road) and when I render images from a close distance everything is fine. Rendering at a greater distance like you see in this clip causes this weird floating effect still don't know why...
Creating the scene took about 2 hours and rendering took 10 hours at 960x540 24 fps with relatively low quality settings, motion blur is enabled shutter is 1/48.
Here's a draft of the camera movement I have imagined, tell me what you think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0h_9POiJ7I
The color of the sky reflection (on the car) implies 'sunset', but the shadow direction doesn't.
I'm responding to the color of the reflection & spec. It looks very much like sunset in terms of color temp.
Pardon my questions:
Did you shoot a color chart & neutralize your HDR footage first? Did you do any grading on the final renders?
HDR - You might consider multi-streaming the render and mixing it all back together in the comp.
If 'realistic' is your goal, please remember that image based lighting (although awesome) isn't 'real'. In fact, everything in VFX is an approximated simulation: HDR footage is a limited sample of the available light available on location, the surface shader is an approximation of how light might be absorbed/reflected, Ray bounces are limited so the render times are viable.
As a result, you'll want to control the layers yourself so you can dial it in to the one thing the software doesn't have, an eye.
Compared to the final grade, most final comps in feature films come out of VFX shops looking more 'realistic'. Then, it gets hammered around in the D.I. where it falls apart before the surrounding shots in the cut.
You probably already know all this stuff, but it may be informative for other readers.
Thomas
I'm responding to the color of the reflection & spec. It looks very much like sunset in terms of color temp.
Pardon my questions:
Did you shoot a color chart & neutralize your HDR footage first? Did you do any grading on the final renders?
HDR - You might consider multi-streaming the render and mixing it all back together in the comp.
If 'realistic' is your goal, please remember that image based lighting (although awesome) isn't 'real'. In fact, everything in VFX is an approximated simulation: HDR footage is a limited sample of the available light available on location, the surface shader is an approximation of how light might be absorbed/reflected, Ray bounces are limited so the render times are viable.
As a result, you'll want to control the layers yourself so you can dial it in to the one thing the software doesn't have, an eye.
Compared to the final grade, most final comps in feature films come out of VFX shops looking more 'realistic'. Then, it gets hammered around in the D.I. where it falls apart before the surrounding shots in the cut.
You probably already know all this stuff, but it may be informative for other readers.
Thomas
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Haha, tricky tricky!
I agree with the previous comment, about it almost looking like it was shot with a tilt-shift lens. Nevertheless, I will admit that I believed it to be real footage. Nice work!
I think the camera movement is nice, as well.
Do you plan to integrate this with real footage? Cuz that would be pretty awesome (though I'm sure incredibly difficult).
I agree with the previous comment, about it almost looking like it was shot with a tilt-shift lens. Nevertheless, I will admit that I believed it to be real footage. Nice work!
I think the camera movement is nice, as well.
Do you plan to integrate this with real footage? Cuz that would be pretty awesome (though I'm sure incredibly difficult).
I agree with everything you said. In VFX it's all about creating an illusion by tricking the mind. It's cheating all the time, lol. Sometimes something unreal is perceived as more real than reality.
For the final shot I'll be using separate render elements and compositing in post. The first test I posted here was color graded and the tilt shift effect some have commented was introduced in post (not proud of it and won't use it in the final shot that's for sure).
As for your other question, no I didn't neutralize the HDR. For now I'm only trying to get a rough scene that I can later work on to make the final version. I don't want to get too deep in this because I simply haven't got the time. I want to get this short film done and learn from it. The cg sequences won't last more than a few seconds each and will only be used for things that I can't shoot in real life.
I explained the tilt shift in the previous sentence.
No I won't be integrating this shot with real footage, it will be full CG. What I have still to do is finish the landscape with bushes/grass/rocks etc.
Here's another quick test (done overnight just to keep the pc busy
)This test has some obvious problems but I decided to post it anyway: the headlights light dispersion is not correct, it spreads too much to the sides, it's too close to the car, etc. There are no rear lights yet.
This is not graded, I only added a zdepth pass for some environmental fog (tinted blue). I have to reduce the bump map intensity on the road, it's way too much right now.
This scene will be at late afternoon/dusk when there is still some light but no sun.
The flicker you see is caused by very low render settings.
What do you think about the camera movement on this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiYY96B7EuY&feature=youtu.be
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Camera motion looks fine, could be taken for a helicopter shot, or a rig on a big truck, also idk if you mentioned already this Cinema 4D?