Daz|Studio, Octane, and After Effects Muzzle Flash animation and workflow
Reisormocap
Posts: 146
Good afternoon everyone.
Here's a video that I rendered out using the Octane Plugin for Daz|Studio that uses some of our motion capture for animation. Some observations:
1. Octane fits very easily into the production workflow, although as an unbiased renderer, it gives more of a temptation to do everything "in camera" as opposed to rendering in layers and bringing it all together in compositing software.
2. It does take some pre-planning, but rendering out illumination from each light source separately gives a lot more flexibility in applying effects. The primary illumination was done using an HDR image. Illumination for the muzzle flash was done by first creating a muzzle flash prop as an OBJ file and parenting that to the rifle's muzzle. Then, this was turned into a light emitter and the frames where the shot happens were rendered out with the emitter opacity set to zero. This gave the illumination without the emitter being visible in the scene. By rendering out only those frames where a gunshot occurs and compositing those with the main footage in After Effects, I was able to create the "flash" without burning any more render time than needed.
3. Any motion blur was done in After Effects using the Re-Vision FX Reelsmart Motion Blur plugin. No suprises - it does play nicely with Octane footage.
4. Since the render was done using pathtracing, there was a lot of noise in the vehicle glass. I used Octane to render out an alpha channel of just this object and used that to composit in a layer with the noise reduced using the built-in Remove Film Grain plugin from After Effects. This beats the option of cranking up the samples and exponentially increasing the render time and preserves the detail in the rest of the image.
I've been using the Octane plugin for Daz ever since it was released - I can't imagine doing renders without it now.
If you're interested in a step-by-step tutorial going through the workflow, let me know in the comments below.
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Comments
That looks great.
Nice to see someone else who uses Daz and AE too.
How exactly did you do the muzzle flares in Daz?
I've been rendering out in layers and adding muzzle flares in AE , but I've thought about trying them inside of Daz.
Glad you liked it dinopt. The muzzle flashes themselves are added in After Effects. The illumination cast by the muzzle flash is rendered in Daz using Octane.
I plan an in-depth tutorial on how to create the muzzle flashes - I'll post the link once it's available.
That's excellent! I would love to see a workflow tutorial!
Looks brillant ...could you tell us what Gun you use in your Animation and were we can purchse it ?
I've bought most or your Mocaps ..it would helpful if we knew what props you use ..because they look great in your video
Thank you
That really looks super. especially with the combination of Octane render and AE. it really works great together,
How did you get octane render to add the light for the gunfire flare? that was really impressive.
once upon a time. Daz use to have a plugin called Particle FX that was awesome for gun fire & stuff like this .because not only was it great for muzzle flash but it also it had Shell ejection which was a great effect. when creating gun fire. . the best part it all worked right in daz. program, I made a few films using it
I wish someone could come up with a plugin like that again.
I have made a few attempt to try to replicate Particle FX for DUF. . But alas my coding is terrible at best,.
though fortunately the plugin still works daz 3 so i can make a cut scene using daz3 for those shot..its just not as real looking as Octane render, very impressive.
IMO - you'd get better results doing the "muzzle flash lighting" (on the shooter) in AE.
The muzzle flash compositing needs help and better alignment to the barrel. I love the reflection on the vehicle.
Considering the animation is mocap based, why is he so stiff? Would love to see more realism in the animation (movements), especially considering it's mocap. Why does his head stay fixed?
Camera movement is a nice touch but also stiff.
It doesn't appear that Octane was the best choice in rendering this. When I see Octane I expect a certain level of realism. I don't see it here and feel you could have achieved better results without it or with it.
I'm gonna give a go at an animated clip(s) and see if my thinking is accurate. I don't have any of the PoserMocap stuff (I don't feel the animations are life like enough when considering mocap is involved) but I have some aniblocks... Would you mind if I post the results here in this thread?
***update - DS keeps crashing on frame zero - i have one AoA distant and one AoA ambient lights, one G2 male with clothes (no hair) and a Stonemason "prop" (Props are items actors interact with. Not backgrounds/environments/etc.). One aniblock is used. A gun prop (which doesn't line up to both hands and nothing I'm doing is fixing this). Seems this should be easy for DS and my computer to handle.
I have never done an animate before, let alone in DS.
well I on the otherhand thought it was pretty awesome.
Teknostorm: Thanks for the compliment. The workflow tutorial is on hold for the time being unfortunately, as our current commitments require our attention here. Apologies for that; we'll get to it as we can.
Wavedelsh: Thanks for the compliment. The gun is the M4A1 SOPMOD from the I.C.E. Pack 3 (http://www.daz3d.com/ice-pack-three). If people are interested, I can, for future videos, make sure I list the props being used.
Ivy: Thanks for the compliment. The muzzle flash effect was done in After Effects, but the light cast by the muzzle flash was done in octane by setting the custom prop as a light emitter.
ShawnBooth: I appreciate your criticism. We're always trying to find ways to continually improve here, and feedback always helps. The video main purpose was to explore what we could do with Octane integrated into our workflow with Daz and After Effects. Believe it or not, the mocap actor's head was like that throughout the recording. Odd that you're getting errors on trying to render out an animation. I'm not sure on your method for managing the gun prop either but with one of our motions, it's manipulate the gun prop itself into it's initial position and parent it to the trigger finger hand on frame zero.
Wendy♥catz: Thanks for the compliment. Glad you liked it.
Excellent work. I'm also experimenting with this workflow and am interested in learning about Octane and also your motion blur effect. I haven't found a good motion blur plugin for AE and will look into Re-vision.
I use a similar sort of workflow. I go Blender/Hexagon -> Daz Studio -> Reality -> Luxrender -> HitFilm
and I've been pretty happy with my results so far. Right now, I'm trying to do more with mixing animation into live footage.
My biggest frustration is getting camera tracking data/camera solve into Daz now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7q4MuUTJeF0
Dkutzera, Thank you for the compliment. In case you're interested, we've used the ReelSmart Motion Blur plugin from RE:Vision Effects (www.revisionfx.com). It's worked well for us with the renders we've done with Octane.
WayOfTheSword, I do like what I see with your live/render integration. Is that what prompted you to include HitFilm into your pipeline or was it for other reasons?