Madeleine Boyce

My Goal:

This personal piece was created as part of an effort to increase the amount of photoreal work I have in my portfolio. I wanted the setting of the shot to be as ordinary as possible but still be visually interesting, which is why I settled on my own kitchen table with morning light. 

 

Anticipated Challenges:

 

• The video had to be shot on an iPhone, which I knew was going to contribute to the difficulty of combining the VFX but I consider it a good practice at working with less than ideal resources.

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• The morning light was very animated, getting this nicely on my asset would be difficult, it also posed expensive rendering issues as each frame may need to be rendered as opposed to a single frame.

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• I was working within a free version of all of the software I used, limiting the tools I had access to and were used to using in a professional setting. 

Results:

I believe I successfully created a simple demonstration of my ability to light and comp within the context of photoreal work, and am particularly happy with how I was able to overcome the anticipated challenges of the shot. Once the colourspacing and compatibility between my Houdini and nuke files were set up, being iPhone footage became less of an issue. I would have liked to apply proper distortion to my CG to match the backplate, however the limitations of the free software ended up being the most challenging aspect. But, as the only CG element is intentionally not within a largely distorted zone, this was manageable. I used an app to create my own accurate HDRI of the kitchen environment so this was a great foundation for my lighting and building on that with extra lights really made it fit within the space. To have the animated sunlight I used the backplate to create a gobo of the actual light pattern and first tried to add this within Houdini onto my asset. However, I eventually decided it would be less expensive and allow for more control to create this same effect with Nuke's 3D projections. I had collected a lot more references of the light and used that to make it as close as possible, particularly with replicated the shadows and reflections of the bowl. If I were to do the projection again I would have probably found a reference that closer matches my intended asset, to have one bowl be glossy and the other matte did make it harder to translate, although I think having not a perfect reference was also great practice in interpretation.