Gory Effects on a Budget in CINEMA 4D and NUKE

Pluralsight

Course Summary

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Course Description

In this series of tutorials, we will go through the process of texturing, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, and compositing a CG model of guts onto a live-action plate of a zombie. The best part is, we're doing it on a budget. We know that some of you out there have some fun footage lying around that you'd like to turn into a gory VFX shot. However, there are a lot of challenges that come with using footage that was not originally shot in the best circumstances. You might not have access to some of the tools that a big studio would use and that is okay, because we are going to go through the steps of how to get around those issues. We begin in CINEMA 4D with bringing in the live action plate to get an idea of how the model should move to match the footage. We then go through the process of using deformers to get realistic movements for the soft parts of the model. After setting up our render to get all the passes we need for our composite, we move to NUKE where we set up our read nodes with all the pieces we will need to create the shot. We then use a series of RotoPaint nodes to remove unwanted things in our shot as well as create blood on the ground behind the zombie. We use a unique color correction method for utilizing our shadow pass that gets us a perfect match to the color and tint of the live action shadows. By the end of this course, you will not only be equipped to create a zombie limb replacement from start to finish but you will also have picked up lots of useful tips and techniques for turning your budget shot into a finished piece. Software required: CINEMA 4D R14, NUKE 7.0v8.

Course Description

In this series of tutorials, we will go through the process of texturing, rigging, animating, lighting, rendering, and compositing a CG model of guts onto a live-action plate of a zombie. The best part is, we're doing it on a budget. We know that some of you out there have some fun footage lying around that you'd like to turn into a gory VFX shot. However, there are a lot of challenges that come with using footage that was not originally shot in the best circumstances. You might not have access to some of the tools that a big studio would use and that is okay, because we are going to go through the steps of how to get around those issues. We begin in CINEMA 4D with bringing in the live action plate to get an idea of how the model should move to match the footage. We then go through the process of using deformers to get realistic movements for the soft parts of the model. After setting up our render to get all the passes we need for our composite, we move to NUKE where we set up our read nodes with all the pieces we will need to create the shot. We then use a series of RotoPaint nodes to remove unwanted things in our shot as well as create blood on the ground behind the zombie. We use a unique color correction method for utilizing our shadow pass that gets us a perfect match to the color and tint of the live action shadows. By the end of this course, you will not only be equipped to create a zombie limb replacement from start to finish but you will also have picked up lots of useful tips and techniques for turning your budget shot into a finished piece. Software required: CINEMA 4D R14, NUKE 7.0v8.

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Course Syllabus

Introduction and Project Overview
- 1m 35s

—Introduction and Project Overview 1m 35s

Gory Effects on a Budget in CINEMA 4D and NUKE
- 3h 35m

—Creating the Background Plate and a Calibrated Camera in CINEMA 4D 9m 1s
—Procedural Texture Creation 12m 47s
—Finishing the Texturing 7m 54s
—Matching the Carcass Animation to the Body Movements 14m 17s
—Using an Ffd to Make the Guts Slide 12m 57s
—Perfecting the Use of Ffd to Make the Heart Slide 11m 56s
—Using a Bend Deformer to Make the Lower Spine Bones Move 12m 11s
—Adding Jiggle Deformers 11m 49s
—Lighting Using the Sky 4m 26s
—Creating the Ground Plane and Its Texture 12m 31s
—Pinning the Textures and Adding Compositing Tags 9m 55s
—Rendering the Guts 9m 44s
—Bringing in and Setting up the Rendered Frames in NUKE 3m 14s
—Using a Rotopaint Node to Cover the Poster Board 6m 23s
—Tracking the Shot for the Rotopaint Transformation 3m 34s
—Using the Clean Plate and Creating a Rotoscope for the Legs of the Zombie 8m 38s
—Transforming the Clean Plate with the Tracking Data 2m 50s
—Merging the Guts 5m 47s
—Adding the Shadow with Color Correction 12m 1s
—Adding Blood on the Ground 9m 37s
—Continuing to Paint the Blood 12m 30s
—Merging Rotopaints for Blood Highlights 6m 47s
—Animating the Blood to Match the Zombie Movement 8m 11s
—Blurring and Color Correction 6m 35s