The Start of Something New

A new school year, brings new projects. This is the start of my breakdown blog for Technical Direction/Compositing or Tech Comp for short.

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The Assignment

For our first assignment, the goal is to composite a CG object into a photographed or filmed scene. For the background plate, strong and varied shadows are required and the CG object must take up at least 25% of the frame. The idea in this project is to learn how to composite CG shadows with shadows from the plate.

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The Concept

Cast Away is a movie that I have not seen but know much about. When coming up with a round object to use, what better character is there other than Wilson? As for a background plate, I am still scouting out possible locations.

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The Model

This model was found on TurboSquid and was created by Rocket Sales Studio. The model was created in 3Ds Max back in 2013. Click here to visit the page for more information. I choose used the FBX. For a free model, this wasn't too terrible of a mesh to fix up. There are holes in the mesh that did not connect and the UVs are interesting...

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The Refinements

The fixes were fairly easy to fix. I selected 3 nearby vertices and used the merge tool to bring them together. When projecting UVs, the model was created in a way that each strip's face could be easily selected.

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The Next Steps

After the first class, I have much better idea of the goals of the project. For now, I will be focused on making a simple texture (probably made in Substance Painter) and finding a location to shoot my background plate.