For this project we were tasked to incorporate a 3D model we built on Maya class into a composite and freely built a concept around the resources we were given.
Since the plate we were given was a shot of snowy mountains, I thought it would be a good idea to turn into a scorching volcanic scene, as it would be technically simple enough but it would also invert the aesthetic quality of the original completely.
I started out by using a luminance key to replace the sky:
After I added a volcano to the scene:
I found a free smoke effect online and added that as well:
Now I wanted to change the color of the snow to make it look like lava. However, none of the conventional methods I tried achieved the result I was after. After starting to experiment with different things I stumbled upon the dodge tool inside the RotoPaint node. I found that I could essentially burn the pixels into the color that I wanted.
I know this is far from the best method to achieve the desired result and I will continue looking into ways to do it properly.
A side effect of using an improper method like this was that my scene became almost impossible to work on as the render in the viewport was now taking ages for a single frame. To rectify this I rendered the scene and used it as a plate on a new script.
After this, I wanted to add a heat distortion tool. I found the IDistort node inside of Nuke to not provide a very realistic effect and therefore I followed this tutorial on how to create a proper heat distortion effect:
In addition to that I added the balloons and added depth of field by using the ramp and ZBlur combination Gonzalo showed in class, as well as text and a fire sound effect. This is the final result:
In conclusion, I recognize the end product is far from technically sound but it was a great exercise in adding new tools to our toolbox while also working with what we learned in class. Although my problems with rendering the file prevented me from adding more interesting things (for example balloons falling into the volcano causing an explosion) in order to create a small narrative, I am pleased that I achieved the visual theme I was aiming for.