Matte Painting - Fiat 500

Some matte paintings and concept done for the new Fiat 500.

Adaptation of literature: A Pedra do Reino

I could never imagine to work in such a beautifull project as the Tv adaptation of "Novel of the Stone Kingdom" writen by Ariano Suassuna. The author dedicated his career to the exploration and transformation of the popular Brazilian culture into a high art form.
Following this philosophy, Luiz Fernando de Carvalho decided to adapt the novel into the screen. And he fulfil all expectation.

I have to admit that I take some high concentration for any Gringo to fully understand the dialogue of the film (portuguese language). But to be short the story is as follow. Quaderna, the lead character, is a popular poet who thinks to be the fourth of a true lineage of noble Brazilians. To salve himself from dishonor he write and explain the memories of fights, political and mystical adventures.

From the direction of art by Raimundo Rodriguez to the costume design everything is visually splendid.
The opening was done at Lobo and I supervised the visual effects on the miniseries at Vetorzero.
There were in fact few things to do in the 3D part, but there were to be done as subtle as possible.
First some shot needed a CG metal bird to fly, another part was to integrate metal computer generated wings on some goodness, and finally invent some way to write fire on the air.

The first step to be done was to get the right track from the director point of view. And so this begun with the vizualisation of the shot to be done. Once again a great thing at Vetorzero and Lobo, is when you get the green light you get all the responsability for the job.
So for the wings shots example I started making some quick concept. I had some reference picture of a wing but it looked very stiff. Some studies were done until getting the right option, witch i then drew upper the footage to get a final look until begin the CG work.






The main effort had to be done in Tracking, Rendering and compositing.
The tracking can be a hard job when there aren t any preparation before and during the shooting. When you have to integrate virtual things into a footage you need to recreate the camera or/and objects movement into the computer. Without good preparation it can be a pain in the ..s job.
The Rotoscoping on any postproduction is an key factor. Actualy its one part that nobody see when its welldone. ( I ll show you some example later on in the blog). The objectiv is making mask to reveal or hide part of the images.



Here you can see how a single shot can be workexpencive. It s not about just making a wing moving. There is matchmoving the virtual camera to the real one, tracking the womans movement, modeling the wings (Danilo), Riggin the bones so that it simulate a mecanical (thiago-Guilherme) or organical mouvement when the animator (Alex and Michel) work on the shot, and shading-rendering, to simulate the light and material proprierety. So as you see lots going on. Finaly the material generated in HD will end to Bodao s hand, our compositing artist.
A shot decomposition during the process (no final composite):

Director: Luiz Fernando Carvalho

Vfx Supervisor: Fred Palacio
Postproduction: Vetorzero
Comp: Bodao, Ze, Mao
Modeling 3D: Danilo Enoki, Tracking/Roto3d: Henrique, Guga, Brotas, Roto2D: Gassan, Maping: Domingos, Vanderley, RIG: Guilherme Rizzo, Thiago, ANIM: MichelBidart, Alex, RENDER: Cleverson, Bauer, Franck, GusYamin, R&D: Zu.
Open-title: Lobo

From drawing to 3D

CHEVROLET - MAQUINA



A friend came one day and tell me.
Oh Fred if you get some time, make some crazy drawing, we get this project where a machine..blablabla... And without any restriction its what I did.
The drawing happened to work so good for the client that he decided to change what was to be a web campain into a Tv Campain.
I think that some people hated me having to build this machine in 3D, myself included (smile) ! But fact is, when you get the drawing, 3d production gets lots more easy, and the best time to make change is in the drawing, as it is a very fast process and one that can be done by one man. 3D is mostly a process of many men.


vfx supervisor: Fred Palacio
Visual Effects: Vetorzero

Virtual Crowd

As you can t always ask 1000 peoples to get on set, sometime you need to just expand the number of figuration on some shot. It s called crowd simulation and work like this.
Rebuild the set, put the guys, simulate the light condition, clean the unnecessary, make the mask of "behind objects", render and compose everything into one image ! Seems easy ?







VFX Supervisor: Cleverson Leal and Fred Palacio
Agência: JWT
Prodution: MIXER - Director: Fabio Soares
Visual Effects: Vetorzero/Lobo

Visual Effects - Vfx What is it ?

Some people ever asked you : What are you doing for living ? And then you could have the easy answer and say, I m a banker ! A psychiatrist ! A lawyer ! An actor ! But now to get complicated you say , I m working in visual effects ! And there it is. How to describe it...After 5 minutes enumerating tousend of example, you think you could say, well I go to assist people filming and tell them what to do when they film things that should be there but aren t cause you are later going to seat in front of your computer, by yourself or with a team, spend hours tracking, cuting, masking, animating, texturing, simulating, painting , rendering to make things that don t exist Real.
And then you explain why it takes so long to do just 15 second of a advertising spot...and you know what ?
People just can t understand with rational explanation. They tell you oh I know, your doing internet ?

Well ...yes. So here it is...some picture explanation of what a visual effects are.
Hope you enjoy,
Fred Palacio