Project-focused. Learn how to approach a shot, not just an individual tool
Each exercise is based around a single clip, and covers the different skills you need to approach a shot. This means that we can be moving around several different tools in the course of a single exercise, instead of just focusing on one area eg. rotoscoping. You will learn how these tools support and work with each other to create the finished composite.
01 – Introduction
Getting started and how to work with the supplied project files.
02 – Skin / Setting the Table
Getting to know the footage. Identifying the problems and explaining some of the terms we will be using during the course.
03 – Skin / Starting Fruity
The final introductory exercise. We think about skin in a more abstract way using fruit to look at skin textures. We discuss the influence of lighting and lens choices, and take a high level look at what we can do to smooth these textures out, whilst maintaining the core essence.
04 – Skin / The Dark Temptation of Filters
There are many filters that make the promise of perfect skin. In this two-part exercise, we breakdown the basic ways these filters achieve their results. We then identify the best ones to use in different workflows. Our aim here is to avoid over-filtered, plasticky skin and create a natural-looking final image. We look through grain management and how to interrupt the regrain process to get the look we want.
05 – Skin / Painting and Cloning
The most important part of this exercise is how we find shortcuts to the time-intensive process of Paint. This is a large four-part tutorial, where we work through different paint tools to find ones most suitable for each task. We look at motion tracking both for paint and rotoscoping, and how we shape the workflow to make best use of our time. We continue the exercise with methods of avoiding repeating textures when cloning bad skin. Finally, we look at some compositing tricks to bring back in lost details and add sharpness.
06 – Making the Most of Patches
This is a three-part exercise that looks at efficient use of patches in digital beauty to clean up skin and hair. We look at the challenges a moving head provides. A crucial part of this exercise is how to remain flexible when things go wrong. How a blended approach is often necessary to get the shot finished.
07 – Beauty Work Using Color Correction
A lot of beauty work can be achieved with good color work. We explore different techniques to remove problem areas in the skin, using strong keying and fast roto work. Once smoothed, we add depth back in to the face to create our classy look, taking care not to push things too far.
08 – Reshaping
We are interested in body reshaping in this exercise. There is not one way to do this, so we look at some various ones. Most of the work is done in the Morph node, with some diversions to Pin Warp. Workflow and structure are very important to body reshaping. What happens when we push the changes too far?
09 – Fixing Common Hair Problems
Hair has the ability to throw up some tricky issues. In this three-part exercise we take a blended approach to adding in extra hair and removing unwanted flyaways. Hair moves in interesting ways that must be taken into account when motion tracking. We have to use many tools to ultimately solve the problems including keying, paint, matchmoving and color correction.
10 – Teeth
Sometimes teeth offer only a small problem to solve. Not in this exercise where we are removing braces from teeth. This project is heavily Paint-focused and gives us a lot of opportunities to use tools in ways we haven’t tried up to now. In addition to digital paint work, we do some rotoscoping and motion tracking; always trying to recycle as much information as we can between nodes.
11 – De-aging with Digital Beauty
This is the culmination of the previous exercises. We put into practice many of the same techniques we have been working with up to this point. And as each shot is different and requires a thoughtful approach, we expand and evolve the ideas and strategies. The ultimate aim of this shot is to shave at least 15 years off our actress. Over the course of four parts, we do just that, using tracking, roto, paint, color correction, more paint, warping and even more roto. Our approach is methodical and structured. Our goal is to finish the shot as efficiently as possible.
ABOUT THE TRAINER
Ben Brownlee has worked in production and post-production in various roles since 1999. He has been involved in a wide variety of films, television and TV commercial projects in that time. As a trainer, he has worked with some of the leading broadcasters and post-houses, providing bespoke courses across the globe.
He has also developed courses for Lynda.com and fxphd.com.
DOWNLOAD SIZES
Tutorials, Footage & Projects Total : 7.41 GB
Downloads available either as a large single file, or as smaller, split archives.
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