We had another compositing project last term. Whilst the technical side of things were very successful, the animation suffered. It left me content with the idea that my interests, and skills really do lie more with the technical side of things. Although its really satisfying to produce an animation that works and looks great, I just cant seem to do it as quickly or easily as others on the course do. I can pose the model, create some really strong poses and silhouettes for the camera. However when it comes to linking things together and getting it smoother, thats where I struggle.

The camera tracking was really successful for this project, mainly, I think, because of the location and contents of the shot. There were lots of trees at multiple distances from the camera. This provided Boujou with lots of large tracking points the calculate the cameras position in every frame. The success of the camera tracking really helped to make it feel as though the raptor was there in the shot.

Unfortunately, the camera that we used just wasnt good enough quality for the project. The final video had compression artefacts and the low quality lense meant the footage was grainy and blurred. This meant that when I came to composite the raptor into the scene, I really struggled to make the crisp CG render look as though it were as blurred, grainy and unclear as the original footage. I added several different blur types as well as a grain. Sadly, what I couldnt see in the playback in after effects, was that the grain I added actually changed every frame, causing it to appear animated and making the raptor appear slightly sparkly.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/ejBS3uusgqY]

I used the Dino Rig for this project, which I got from Creative Crash: www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/dinorig