A WALK IN LOCKDOWN CITY

Ankur Nanda
Feb 20, 2020
3 min read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtCyh1LQtFU

It was April 2020 where the world was suffering from coronavirus. All the cities were closed and set to lockdown. So, I came up with the idea of making a composition where all the roads are empty, so I just filled them using 3D characters and assets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2ZvDgktEW0

STORYBOARD

So, the basic idea behind this is no matter what gender you are, self-control is a must.

• The End

Then I stepped forward to record my footage. Before that I did some test and got to know about the understanding behind ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, White light. I recorded my footage with canon 650D. I am just going to add few quick points.

• More light – More noise / Less light – Less noise [ISO]

• More light – Less depth of field / Less light – More depth of field [Aperture]

• More light – More motion blur / Less light – Less motion blur [Shutter Speed]

After that I started using Maya Arnold for rendering. Also did some tests where I downloaded some assets from www.cgtrade.com website and HDRI Haven for Skydome lighting to understand ai-materials, material attributes, AOVs, depth of field, render layers, camera angles, lighting and multi-pass rendering.

I also did some test in Nuke to understand:

• Color Theory

• 2D-3D Match moving

• Camera Projection

After the footage was shot, I started my file, adjusting the project setting and script dictionary. I managed my files in a folder for less complexity. Then I worked on lens distortion to get an undistorted image sequence.

I rendered my video into .jpeg image sequence and used 3D camera for tracking and solving errors.

Then I exported the scene from 3D camera and added scanline-Render and used card for the ground.

I found tracking and solving errors interesting and experimentative. There are a lot of ways to place and adjust cards. I remain constant for the idea of video and I move my file forward to Maya. Meanwhile, I found free 3D assets from cgtrader and HDRI 360 from HDRI Haven for Skydome lighting as I did not have access to university 360 cameras because of the lockdown. Then I brought the scene from Nuke and my 3D assets into Maya and I set the basic settings including materials, textures and their positions according to the storyline.

I setup render setting, AOVs and render layers. Whereas I created geo and shadow layer individually as well as AOVs for effects.

After spending a long time on rendering layers, I brought them back into Nuke for final compositing stage. I prefer to work in a new file to make the project file less heavy, less complex and clear. I used Shuffle nodes for the AOVs effects, grading and color correction for color matching, merge layer for merging all the 3D assets with live footage. I also used backdrop for each asset so that I can adjust them individually. I cleaned the file with perfect naming for better outlook and output.