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Things I Learned From Recent VFX Shots (Patreon)

Published:
2022-03-11 06:42:07
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

Not the video I thought I was going to make, but I'd already made the intro so just ran with it! I'm going to be prepping for a few shoots here the next week or two, so I might be a bit busier than usual :DFirst off- on the chance you've never seen the movie (or even if you have)- seriously, I love this friggin' scene from Rescuers Down Under. Just the amount of good decisions, mind boggling artistry, animation prowess, and incredible soundtrack always gets me pumped :P. I mentioned to a composer friend that I nostalgically missed the era of ludicrously catchy in-your-face Williams-esque soundtracks and themes, and he correctly pointed out that soundtracks today are just as competent, if not in general even more finessed and technically exemplary, and he's totally right, I just like humming the theme on the drive home from the theater- it's this little bit you get to take with you. Other Related/Referenced Tutorials:Creating a tutorial from scavenged elementsVolumetric Atmosphere StuffStir Fry Physics

Files

Things I Learned From Recent VFX Shots

Not the video I thought I was going to make, but I'd already made the intro so just ran with it! I'm going to be prepping for a few shoots here the next week or two, so I might be a bit busier than usual :D https://youtu.be/gj043f05C1U First off- on the chance you've never seen the movie (or even if you have)- seriously, I love this friggin' scene from Rescuers Down Under. Just the amount of good decisions, mind boggling artistry, animation prowess, and incredible soundtrack always gets me pumped :P. I mentioned to a composer friend that I nostalgically missed the era of ludicrously catchy in-your-face Williams-esque soundtracks and themes, and he correctly pointed out that soundtracks today are just as competent, if not in general even more finessed and technically exemplary, and he's totally right, I just like humming the theme on the drive home from the theater- it's this little bit you get to take with you. Other Related/Referenced Tutorials: Creating a tutorial from scavenged elements https://www.patreon.com/posts/making-shot-from-62446491 Volumetric Atmosphere Stuff https://www.patreon.com/posts/blender-playing-58394456 Stir Fry Physics https://www.patreon.com/posts/stir-fry-physics-45201992

Comments

Precise B-List

Hey ian, Love your work, I just subbed to the Patreon and I was wondering if you could make a video on color grading or how you do your post processing fx , Or if you already have someone can point me in the right direction, thank you.

IanHubert

Oh thanks Ali!! :D Although I guess I should go in and update it! Honestly not much has changed (it's still basically always just a touch of diffusion/diffraction/occasional film convert)- except that I do a lot *less* compositing these days, since with new GPUs path tracers can actually just deal with all the stuff I used to have to cheat in the composite (volumetrics and such).

Precise B-List

thank you I will check that out, I ask because I’ve been watching some resolve videos and really want to see your take on post effects since I like your way of teaching, it is very effective and entertaining.

Benjamin Lacey

On the curly cord front, have you tried geo-nodes on a basic rope cloth sim? Loving these teasers for Pete's episode, so excited for it!

Long Wang

Alway waiting for the new Patreon Episode, Here it is~

Babksy

thanks for this master class, I learned a lot your knowledge is so valuable and I am very grateful that you share those with us

Blake Rizzo

Love this so much!! Also so so excited to see stuff from the B I G G R E E N S C R E E N shoot!!!

Dawson Henderson

Man, I love these patreon videos. Honestly, probably the best investment I've ever made. Ian could upload any video for any amount of time and I'd watch it and be so invested and interested the entire time. And I can't wait for Pete's episode! I'm so excited!

Kai Christensen

Loved the huge variety of tidbits and doodads presented in this video. It's been wild to watch how much better your shots have become even over just the past two years -- when I saw the Dynamo Dream teaser, my first reaction was "Wow, that's some incredible CGI". These days when you share something new it's more along the lines of "Wait, that's CGI?? There's no way!" You've successfully made it past the uncanny valley on a large amount of the shots you showed here imo, super cool! Photoscans I think have helped a ton, but also lighting and attention to sensible details have improved subtly over time as well. Anyways, I'm mega excited to see the upcoming greenscreen shoot and all the fun post production that will come with it. Really appreciate all the time you put into making Patreon stuff on top of doing the actual work on Dynamo.

Paul Thureau

As much as I deeply hate crustaceans, I'm all in for the lobster motorcycle! :D All those shots are frankly fantastic, good job!

Paul Thureau

I mean, everything is possible with shape keys, it's just A LOT of work :D But I'd say you could eventually consider soft body sim for cheese strips and bits falling off

IanHubert

WAIT LOBSTER MOTORCYCLE? YOU MEAN COMBINE THEM? Paul was that the solution all along?

IanHubert

Haha!! From what I can tell you can do friggin' ANYTHING in geometry nodes... I should look into that!

IanHubert

What Paul said! EVERYTHING is possible with shape keys (they're so wildly powerful). I actually animated the cheese with shape keys a bit (I don't remember if I have the whole clip in the video, but the pizza ball flies through space then lands on a table, and I used shape keys to translate it from "asteroid mode" to "landed mode"- although yeah, while you could definitely add twist/fold warbles to the strings, having TOO much dexterity might require like a FLIP fluids sim or something- but until you get to that point, that's a PERFECT scenario for shape keys.

IanHubert

Oh whoa! Just looked em up on instagram! They look really fun! :D

IanHubert

SAME! Just a week and a half! :D

Paul Thureau

When the lobster gets tired, wheels can take over. It's like electric-fuel car hybrids, but better

IanHubert

"gets good mileage, too" he said as he wiped the diesel from the carapace, "...it's a hybrid". I love it so much.

Simon Salord

I was going to suggest the same thing. I solve a lot of modeling and animation problems with geometry nodes. You should definitely look into the subject. I'm sure you will fall in love :D

Ian Letarte

I had a bit of tutorial that speaks to the phone cord situation: https://youtu.be/dH9AJTZ7Lrs?t=130 that could help to point in the right direction. Also this video is gold. I love seeing all the crazy shots you've been working on and hearing what lessons you learned.

Kays Al-Atrakchi

"soundtracks today are just as competent, if not in general even more finessed and technically exemplary". <<--- Yeah, no. Not even close, take it from someone who knows a thing or two about the subject. ;-)

The Film Don

Seriously dude I can't thank you enough for creating such, inspiring and informative content! Even in my low times, seeing a post from you always brings me joy!

Raffo VFX

For the cables thing, just extrude a single vertex many times, select any vertex and press ctrl+H and choose "connect to new object" It will connect that point to a new empty! Repeat this to another vertex and then apply cloth simulation, pinning the external vertices to a vertex group. Great stuff anyway, super cool the noise modifier trick for faking phisics <3

IanHubert

Thanks Raffo! And that's great for single straight cables (SO useful!), but I'm trying to make it work for a spiral cable, like an old phone cord... my thought it that I might go the other way, make the phone cable a bezier curve, parent it to an empty, then parent that empty to one of the vertexes in the cloth simmed vertex chain you described? No idea if it'd work haha

Arch

One potential way to do the cable it to simulate the single string of vertices then use the skin modifier on that and use that as the target mesh for a mesh deform modifier on the cable.

Raffo VFX

Oh didnt get you wanted a spiral cable! Try this: - create 1 spiral cable mesh AND a cloth simmed vertex chain - give "mesh deform" modifier to the spiral cable - in the modifier options, choose the cloth simmed vertex chain as a deformer - give to the cloth simmed vertex chain a skin modifier (invisible to the render, just to let the mesh deform to work properly in the other mesh). - bind the mesh deform And you are ready to go :)

Maxime Gerardin

Hey Ian, I made you a little video for the phone cable thing (just noticing now somebody did the same thing haha). But anyway here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x40qPVgEVPc And I never post comments but I always enjoy watching your content like, a lot!

David McSween

Don't forget to tangle the spiral as it falls, I always hated that on phone cords 🤣

IanHubert

AHH!!! That works perfectly, thank you! And I didn't know about the surface deform modifier! I gotta find out more about that! Thank you so much, Maxime! :D (okay and just googled it- that's a WILDLY powerful modifier! Thanks so much for sharing that!)

IanHubert

Yes! That's a great idea!! I had no idea the mesh deform modifier even existed- looks like it could be SO useful!

Alex Morellon

Hi guys ! quick question : I need to build a city and it will be shot from very far. no close ups. Should I use real scale or cheat the perspective ? Does it matter ? (sorry in advance for the random question, I don't know where to ask...)

IanHubert

I'm not *entirely* sure I understand the specifics of the question, but I do know that in real world "blender units" (where every square of the grid equals one meter), blender starts to give you a hard time if you model something as legitimately large as a city :D That said, if you're only ever going to see it from a distance, I'd personally say cheat it as much as possible!

Alex Morellon

It's like hundreds of kilometers big, so... ^^' I'll go for the cheat ! thanks Ian, that's exactly what I needed to know !

Dan

Shoot I saw that like two other people beat me to it but here's my version of making a phone cord. If you have a really long cord, you could convert the curve to a mesh and check keep original. Then take the highest and lowest verts on the mesh version of the curve, separate them and extrude them and then use those for a knife cut so the loop cuts on the cube align correctly with the highs and lows of the curve. https://youtu.be/beN9EbiPk9k

Kash

Hi Ian, For the DJ shot the bushes in the front look so flat I think you can add some real geometry. Also can you do a quick tutorial on your workflow in rendering with CyclesX? I get a lot of fireflies, but your renders are clean. how do you do it?

Theo

Love that you mentioned the rescuers down under, but I gotta say the true stand out scene in that movie has to be the mice sending the sos signal, and you just get to see every different mouse's radio setup and how they jump into action to pass it on

Jay Gonzalez

for that curly cable you were talking about.. have you tried modeling the curved cable and then giving it a curve modifier and then giving the curve a cloth modifier or something of that nature?

Joe Higgens

Look up importing meshs from google maps. The textures are so so. But the mesh is awesome.

Kash

Cycles X is kind of different. I have watched the one you shared. Thanks

IanHubert

Oh that's SUCH a good sequence :D

Andrew Paul

Ha! Don't let your friend gaslight you... Today's soundtracks are mumblecore background patina of drones compared to the John Williams/Alan Silvestri golden age: Raiders Lost Ark, Predator, Aliens, Back to the Future, etc. C'mon! ^_^

One of Many

Damn, you beat me to it! I had trouble getting the "Mesh Deform" modifier to work but the "Surface Deform" modifier worked out of the box for me!

Nothing Real

Thank you SO much for your content. I don't even use Blender (Houdini for me) but I find your workflows and attitudes so inspirational. You remind me why I got into 3D all those years ago. So happy to be able to offer my little bit of support. Thank you from over the pond/

Pete Burges

This is a great scene, and I'm sure they borrowed a lot of ideas from this sequence in the 'How to Train your Dragon' movies...

TK

Love the videos man, def do a new tutorial on blending + compositing the irl footage with the cgi footage!

YakovlevArt

would love an in-depth on compositing vfx. It seems like it would save time, rather than rendering a full blender scene for 15-20hrs for like 1minute of animation. Or is that normal?

Keegan Larwin

Hey dude! It entirely depends on your camera move. Parallax in your camera movement can reveal the relative scale and distance of objects. If the city is accurately scaled in the distance, it will look more realistic. But you can also push the scale above or below what it 'should' be for artistic effect. If your camera is barely moving or it's static/nodal, there will be no way for the audience to know if it's correctly scaled or not. Hope this helps one month later :)

Hairynscary

Great info from your postmortems! Appreciate it. Rescuers reference takes it way back.

Jed

Honestly thought the photoscan at the end was real, one of the best photoscan integrations I've seen