May, 2012: Morph!

[martin68]

Metamorphosis, transformation, evolution or rapid aging. Shape-shifting is broad concept that is seeing a lot of play currently with characters like the Incredible Hulk or TV beasties on Grimm.
Could be a CG to CG change, Photographed plate to CG change or any combination therein.
The Challenge can be a Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde, pupa to butterfly, vampires or werewolves, a robot mode shift, or anything you mind can envision. Be creative!!! A great concept will be as important as the execution of that concept.
Pick a concept and document your process. This is an educational endeavor, so share thought process, artistic hurdles, and what lessons you learned during this experience.
The Goal; Create a character or object that changes in a rapid progression. Any 3d and 2d packages are allowed. If you plan it out right, you can even morph two different photographed plates together (emphasis on expert digital compositing).
Demonstrate how you achieved the morph. If your project involves photographed elements show a break down or before and after. This Challenge can involve many artistic disciples, Modeling Animation, Rendering and Compositing, so keep it simple enough to execute within the time limits. Quick and cool
You have until July 31st to morph your project into new creative realities. In life, change is inevitable; purposeful change is empowering!

[obiwandk]

wow nice i am learning Houdini, so i am certainly gonna follow this.

[VFXMike]

What are the rules? I am the lead compositor on Grimm. A) am I disqualified because you mentioned my work? And b) I'm guessing I can't use any of that work here right?

[martin68]

The work must be you own original endeavor! You may site and discuss techniques for Grimm, but you need to do all the work or specific to this contest. So if it's a plate to cg handoff, Cast, light, shoot, match-move, model, animate, light and comp final. Collaboration is encouraged! This is your change to be on-set. No room to complain about why they shot it "that way" because it's all you forethought thru to final execution.
It can be low end cell phone plate to IMAX plate is you have access, Please just integrate to shot format! Have FUN! Looking forward!

CG - CG also encouraged. Be original!

MH

[ErnestoMM]

responses very good! )

[martin68]

Would love to see your contribution Ernesto!

[martin68]

I have Siggraph 2012 tickets (August 4 -9th) to be awarded for your amazing work. Now you can show off your work at Siggraph!

[Schloemo]

I saw this challenge a little while back and it happened to coincide with a personal project I had been planning to beef up my reel. I'm a light/comp artist, recent graduate, and I've been trying to develop my skills mainly in cg to live action integration.

My concept here is a fantasy iphone app called bonsai. The general idea is I load this app, give it some water, and eventually my standard iphone begins to spawn a cg bonsai stylized in an "apple-esque" way (glossy, clean, futuristic, sterile, etc). At this point the app is no longer constrained by a 2D screen and begins to grow and morph in front of our eyes, becoming a real entity.

I shot the live action footage with my canon 550d, tracked in boujou, 3d in maya, rendered with vray, comp'd in nuke, edited in premiere. My challenges for this project were convincing screen replacements (all screens will be designed in nuke), solid 3d tracks, and realistic image based lighting. I've completed the intensive integration shots and I'm pretty pleased with the results. I still have some shots to complete to show the app's interface and how I interact with it, but the meat of the project is done.

Here are some before/after screens. These are straight out of nuke, I'll be color grading when I edit everything together so I'm sure the look will change a bit. The rest of the shots I need to finish should be quick ones, so I'll have the final piece up in a week or so. Any comments are very much appreciated.

[Schloemo]

I just read the sticky from a couple years back and I see we're supposed to make a wip thread for our entries. I've gone ahead and done that with a small update, hopefully I'm doing this right...

http://forums.cgchannel.com/showthre...ed=1#post22017

[Schloemo]

Final piece: https://vimeo.com/45710497

I would have loved to do some sound design for this but that's pretty far out of my element so I just threw a backing track over it. If you take a look at my reel on my vimeo page you can see a comp breakdown of the last shot if interested.

I'd love to hear any thoughts or questions you might have, as well as provide any more breakdowns or explanations of anything.