Introduction:
For my final blog post, I’ll be talking about the final post-production tasks I had to complete, which included adding effects, replacing scenes with After Effects compositions, colour correction, and syncing the audio to my animation. Lastly, I’ll be evaluating this project overall.
This Week’s Task:
As it’s my final week to complete my animation, I spent all my remaining time on post-production tasks, beginning with compositing all my rendered scenes together.
Compositing All Scenes Together In Premiere Pro:
I began by creating and setting up my Premiere Pro project, importing all my scenes and sorting them out into Folders, helping me to locate my scenes.
Editing Individual Scenes:
After compositing my scenes together, I adjusted the duration of each clip so that It matched the FPS rate I used in Maya, which was 30fps. The scenes seemed to last longer than they should, hence why i needed to make these changes.
Colour Correction:
As mentioned before in my previous post, I needed to colour correct many of the scenes due to the software issue I had when trying to render my scenes via remote access. The scenes that needed colour correction were rendered in Maya 2018 instead of Maya 2022. I managed to fix the colours using the Lumetri Colour settings in Premiere Pro. The common problem I noticed was that all of these scenes that appeared too dark needed their exposure increased.
I couldn’t use this method for all of my scenes, unfortunately. For the scenes that involved my character, I still wanted to maintain the colour shown on my character’s face, but brighten up the background because the environment wasn’t visible.
Therefore, I went on youtube and browsed for a tutorial video that could teach me how to brighten up the background without affecting the subject. Fortunately for me, I was able to find one.
To do this effect, I first had to create an adjustment layer and place it on top of the scene I want to edit.
Next, I had to create a mask over my character’s face, making sure I feathered it quite a lot so it fades in nicely and we won’t be able to see the mask’s outline. I also had to tick the “Inverted” box so that the effect applies to the background, instead of the character’s face. Lastly, I pressed the “Play” button so that the mask tracks the character’s face throughout all frames.
Once I finished tracking my scene, I went back into the Lumetri Colour settings and adjusted the colours, increasing the exposure.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the effect seemed to work perfectly.
Replacing Individual Scenes With After Effects Composition:
In order for me to achieve the CCTV footage effect, i had to replace the CCTV footage scenes with After Effects Compositions as I needed a variety of effects to achieve this look. To help me achieve the look I want, I searched for a tutorial video on Youtube.
I began by creating a Pre-composition using my PNG sequence. I then applied a number of effects to the composition, creating that sort of footage effecr.
Next, I created a composition, consisting of black solids and an adjustment layer. I added the “Noise” and “Mosaic” effects onto the black solids to create moving verticle lines consisting of noise.
Afterward, I applied the Curves effect to the adjustment layer to make the verticle lines stand out more.
Once the appearance of the CCTV footage was complete, it was time to add in the time and text. As i was too short on time to experiment with effects, i found a Youtube video that showed me how to do this.
I created the time by using the “Timecode” effect. However, I needed to find a way to hide the last two digitals as the “Timecode” effect consisted of eight numbers altogether. Therefore, I created an adjustment layer and placed a Mask on top of the final two numbers.
Once I had the timecode sorted, all I had to do is add text to the top of the scene, saying “CAM 01”, making the CCTV footage look more realistic.
Additional Effects:
I wanted to create a glitch transition for when the animations go from normal footage to CCTV footage. Therefore, i found a quick tutorial video on Youtube that taught me how to do so quickly.
I began by creating an adjustment later with a duration of eight frames.
I added the “Wave Warp” effect to the adjustment layer, which automatically gave the scene that glitch look.
After I had finished all post-production visual tasks, it was time for me to gather all the audio and SFX. I got all my audio from Youtube as they provide a lot of royalty-free sound effects. To download these MP3s, I found a Youtube converter website that allowed me to download these videos by copying and pasting their URL.
Browsing For SFX:
Once I downloaded all audio assets, I imported them into Premiere Pro and sorted them out into their folders.
Syncing Audio SFX To Animation:
My last task was to sync the audio to the animation which didn’t take long at all. I began by adding in the sound effects first, followed by the ambiance audio. For a few scenes, I had to add keyframes to the audio clip, as I needed to increase/decrease the sound depending on whats going on in the scene. For instance, if my character is walking away from the camera, the volume of the footsteps would decrease.
Final Animation:
Evaluation:
My Overall Thoughts:
Overall, I’m more than pleased with the results of this animation as this was an assignment I was quite intimated by at first because I’ve never created a 3D animation project before. Halfway through the journey, I realised that my eyes were bigger than my belly, and that I chose a narrative that was a bit too much for me. However, I managed to pull through and complete all essential tasks.
Another reason why I’m proud of this animation was that, during the animation stage, my Epilepsy condition would occur a lot more often, which caused me to take more regular breaks, and on some occasions, caused me to stop working for the day. With that said, I managed to tackle this problem by forming a steady workflow that worked for me.
What Did I Do Well?
I’m quite proud of the various camera animations I implemented into this animation. When re-watching this animation, it actually felt somewhat similar to the paranormal activity films.
What Don’t I Like:
One thing I didn’t like was how a few of my renders turned out. In many of the scenes, there was too much noise and fireflies roaming about which ruined the look. Furthermore, in a few scenes, the colour seemed a bit off compared to other scenes based within the same environment. However, this was mainly due to errors I experienced when attempting to render my animation via remote access.
How Could I Improve This?
I could improve my rendering quality by conducting more research on how to render more efficiently. There are plenty of videos on Youtube that teaches you what render settings are best. Besides from Youtube, I could always ask my fellow course colleagues or lecturers for advice and suggestions.
Another improvement I would make to my animation would be based on the feedback I receive from friends and colleagues. As I plan to share this animation with people, asking them to provide feedback. Depending on what they say, I’ll take everything into account and improve my animation from there.
What Would I Do If I Had Additional Time:
The first thing I would have done if I had additional time, would be to animate and render the final scenes of my story as I personally liked how it would have ended and believe it would have had an impact on the audience.
I would have liked to clean up my character animations as I had to rush them due to the deadline getting closer and closer. I would also like to of had the time to re-render a few more scenes, making sure there are no off-looking frames, nor any inconsistent colours.
What Are My Plans:
I definitely plan to re-visit this animation after finishing this course as I have unfinished business with it. I would like to finish off the original ending for this animation first. However, I need to remember at the end of the day, this was just practiced for the Final year project, meaning all the losses I faced during this assignment, I had to take as lessons and learn from them, hoping to not experience them when doing my FMP.