Digital Makeup With Blender

Adding CGI Scars to Live action footage with Blender.

Overview

● Series of spots for a major children’s charity in the UK.

● Showing the effects of emotional abuse as physical scars.

● Worked with 3 Angry Men (Production Company)

● December 2011 – Tracking had only just been added!

Brief

● Three different stories showing young adults as the victims of emotional abuse.

● As they're shouted at/bullied, words appear as physical scars and bruises on their skin.

● Scars needed to appear over the course of the shot – couldn't use prosthetics.

The Results

Early Tests/Look Dev

● Testing out how to build & composite the effect.

● Different trackers (syntheyes, mocha).

● Decided we liked Blender.

● Did wonders for my self esteem...

Tracking

● Tracked in Blender 2.5x● No object tracking.● Skin stretches!● Experimented with different tracking markers.

Tracking in Blender

● Tracked each marker (plus some freckles).● Linked trackers to empties to create a 2.5D

track for the skin rig and tracker removal.

Tracker Removal and Cleanup

● Use tracked empties to create “patches” for tracker removal.

● Painted out trackers on specific frames and blended from one to the next.

● Some fixing by hand for difficult frames.

Reconstruction

● Built skin mesh to match the area being deformed.

● Rigged skin mesh with armature. Bones followed tracked empties.

Reconstruction: Challenges

● Errors around edges of meshes fixed with shapekeys.

● When trackers go out of shot they must be animated by hand to distort skin correctly.

Deformation

● Skin mesh was deformed to add word scars with the displace modifier.

● Vertex weight modifiers + displace strength used to make scar appear gradually.

Rendering and Compositing

● Rendered the same scene with multiple material overrides:● Original skin, distorted.● Bruise material.● Mask layers – bruising, scar letters.● Lighting layer.● Ambient Occlusion

Comp Layers

Comp Setup

Compositing

1) Add distorted skin.

2) Add Bruising (overlay).

3) Add scar lighting/AO.

Specific Shots

Eye Shot

Extra shot showing the actresses pupil dilating.

Eye Shot

● Eye already dilated a little.● 2 Different trackers.

● Iris● Reflections

● Removed reflections and lighting from still frame.

● Projected onto geometry and deformed.● Composited reflections back in.

Arm Shot

● The simplest!● Limited movement.● No trackers going out of frame.● Rigged with auto weight paint in about 5 seconds!

Neck Shot

● Required some rotoscoping of the hand covering the neck (RotoBezier add-on).

● Shadows from hand played havoc with our tracker removal.

Hand Shot

● Actress turns over her hand as the scar begins to form, had to be animated by hand (trackers/ 2.5D rig fail)

Back Shot● Most complex scene. Multiple

scars form at different times.● Camera pans up actors back so

trackers go off screen all the time.

● Split displacement into two modifiers.

● Used Vertex Weight modifiers to add to displacement groups over time.