FMP – Particle Test & Motion Graphics

This week, I worked on creating the disappearing effect in C4D and encountered numerous problems that took several days to resolve. During my experiments, I faced a challenge in changing the color of the box as it disappeared. Based on a tutorial I followed, the effect was supposed to start when the field touched the box, selecting polygons for the transition. However, even though I followed the steps exactly, it didn’t work. I sought help by posting on a Korean C4D forum, but I couldn’t find a proper solution. Through trial and error, adjusting various options and settings in each effector and layer, I finally achieved the desired result. To ensure the scene works cleanly and avoids unexpected errors, I may need to reconstruct the setup in a new file. Although it will take time, it should be faster than the first attempt and will result in a cleaner, more organized scene file.

A second issue arose in the rendering stage. In Redshift IPR within C4D, the color change worked perfectly. However, when I rendered the sequence using the render queue or picture viewer, the color transition didn’t appear. This was confusing since I also used Redshift for rendering. Unlike Arnold in Maya, which I am more familiar with, Redshift in C4D requires additional settings, and I am still learning its system. As the rendering time is quite long (and I can’t even render on my laptop due to memory limitations), I created a test render sequence. Based on this, I’ll finalize the render settings and effects, then apply the motion capture data to the character before rendering the final sequence. This is expected to be completed around the last week of November. To streamline the process, I’m considering splitting each element into separate mattes to reduce effort during revisions.

For scene 2, I created a simple post animation in After Effects. Initially, I planned to use the 3D file created in Nuke, but the FBX file couldn’t be imported into AE. Even after converting it to a .ma file in Maya, it didn’t work as expected. Instead, I re-tracked the 3D camera in AE, and fortunately, I achieved a similar result to Nuke thanks to the clear patterns on the pavement and other background objects. Using the camera tracking data, I added a 3D plane and replaced it with post compositions. I created three variations of the post: one with only text, one with a single picture, and one with two pictures. The design was inspired by Twitter (X), and I downloaded icons for the post tabs. This is a mock test animation, and I’ll replace the text and images with references from Twitter.

For screen replacement, I recorded the screen on my phone while typing a hashtag on Twitter (X) and adjusted the timing in AE to match the footage. Since the footage was filmed first, I had to reposition some elements in the screen recording to align with the movement of the fingers. Afterward, I created a screen reflection, as mentioned in previous posts. To match the surroundings, I downloaded scan data of Piccadilly Circus.

For scene 3, I modeled a simple window and frame in Maya during the matchmoving process. After unwrapping the UV, I created scrolling animations in After Effects. To optimize the workflow, I first created the animation using placeholders and then replaced each composition with different videos. I used about 60 random videos downloaded from Envato Elements. Although I wanted each post to feature unique videos, the time and resource constraints meant I had to duplicate some clips. Since the animation used so many videos, rendering the textures took a long time. I used a render farm for the 3D render, but when I checked the output, some frames were skipped, and some sequences didn’t render properly. I had to render the sequence manually on my laptop, which took a long time, but I managed to get the full sequence.

There isn’t much time left, and the ongoing problems are making me nervous and anxious. I hope I can finish this project successfully.