cebas Visual Technology welcomes OMNIBUS JAPAN and their VFX insights on popular film series, 'The Next Generation - Patlabor Shuto Kessen', with thinkingParticles 6!
Omnibus: "Mobile Police Patlabor" is a blockbuster Japanese animation series. In 2014, our live-action film project called, "The Next Generation -Patlabor" was launched. It is divided into thirteen episodes separated into seven parts, to be released in 2014 and 2015. A final film "The Next Generation -Patlabor- Shuto kessen" released in May 2015. The story evolves around this remnants of terrorists in "Patlabor 2: The Movie" engineers a crisis in Tokyo again with a state-of-the-art optical camouflage attack helicopter named, "Gray ghost". The director was Mamoru Oshii and the VFX was done by Omnibus Japan.
Cebas: And if you are in Japan - this is one of the much-awaited feature film of the year 2015!
Thank you Omnibus for taking the time to do the cebas Interview.
Taking part in this interview is the vfx team from Omnibus Japan:
CG supervisor: Junji Munekata
Look development artist: Seiichi Sega
Technical director: Yuya Torii
CG scene artist (freelancer): Shunya Ando
Cebas: We heard that Omnibus used thinkingParticles 6 for destruction VFX on the set for the film: THE NEXT GENERATION Patlabor - Shuto kessen - please tell us more!
Torii (Technical Director): Hai! We used thinkingParticles 6 for optical camouflage system of the attack helicopter ‘Gray ghost’. I was the Technical Director of the movie and created the setup for the optical camouflage. Sega was our Development Artist for this project. His role was to modify my setup, the assign materials, and render it as well as use the composite render passes on Nuke.
cebas: Please elaborate on the optical camouflage system?
Sega: The vfx scene for the optical camouflage system comprised of many layers of flat display panels that were arranged onto the 3D ‘body’ of ‘Gray ghost’ and environment tuned to to displays.
Torii: Here, we would like to show cebas readers our startup sequence when the camouflage system is turned on. You will see that each panel will not start at the same time nor was it completely random. Those panels started activating from front of Gray ghost. It was the director's order.
Using thinkingParticles procedural vfx, we rule-based the vfx on timing and the animation area controlled by the double-decker mesh. When panel ‘particles’ is inside of first mesh, the startup sequence would start and when the particles strikes the second mesh, this would activate towards camera projection mapping. It was fun to see the vfx all enacting the outcomes we wanted!
Before I made the setup system, I’d discussed with Munekata, our CG supervisor, about animation of startup, timing switching and showing vfx noise.
So we had to find a powerful tool that can control position of particles as well as the timing of materials. We felt that thinkingParticles was the best choice. Eventually, tP did do a great job. With tP, we are able to control material timing with delay using this amazing tool: the timer node. We used this ‘material time node’ for controlling startup sequence textures and run the vfx.
Also all the 3D panels were generated as ‘particles’ and replaced by ‘instance shapes’. Those node structures can certainly seem very complex and menacing, but I managed them as I wanted them to act, with approximately 10 types of nodes and that was all that was needed for this complex VFX! I found thinkingParticles a truly versatile system. And those TD-Tools were exceptionally useful. For example, when an artist had to change parameters, they could always change parameters directly from the host environment roll out menu and they didn't need to keep opening tP node windows, so tP was quite well-integrated and this made vfx production so much more executable.
Sega: Yes, I found Torii’s thinkingParticles setup system very versatile. For changing material timing, we used collision invisible mesh between particles. It was fast and easy to get things where you needed them to be, right from the start, as it was procedural and like the mesh collision was pretty much a matter of timing control and linking start position.
cebas: What was the most fun or rewarding part of this project for you?
Sega: What I like about film animation is how every artist is unique and can be as creative as they wish to be. In the case for Shuto Kessen, Torii and myself had a brilliant idea... the look of the optical camouflage was created with camera projection mapping. When we projected background image as panel object, we also added a small overlap.
Torii: Our first idea for the camera mapping overlap was to first project and then move the UV. But we found that the UV could not be moved from thinkingParticles so we decided to change the approach. So, the second idea was to do so before camera projection, that is move all panels randomly and store the projection. And then panels were moved back to correct position. We did it at each frames. The result came out to be very natural looking!
cebas: Tell us more about Shuto Kessen’s destruction sequence with thinkingParticles?
Torii: In the climax scene, Gray ghost was attacked and finally destroyed. Our studio used thinkingParticles for the vfx. We found tP in 3ds Max script a breeze and a great vfx help! So, this was extremely useful in complex vfx setups as our studio improvised our own special Script for switching setups between the two scenes: the ‘optical camouflage setup’ and the ‘destruction setup’, since the two would not show the best vfx as one setup.
Ando (CG Scene Artist): I created this versatile impact system. It was used in the film on the scene of the fight with AV-98 "Ingram" and the Gray ghost. This system help calculate shots of tracer bullets and the impact at ground would kickoff emitter of debris and emitter for FumeFX. This impact system was converted to a tP BlackBox and we could re-used it for another scene. I find this is the strong point of thinkingParticles. FumeFX and tP combination was super compatible as well ! thinkingParticles would automatically pick up scene colors for the FumeFX smoke colors,the vfx was very natural and realistic!
cebas: In your view, what is your wish for cebas software to achieve that it is not currently doing for you?
Ando: I am using the new node "Value to Value" of thinkingParticles 6 on current work, actually! This V-to-V helps reduce the cumbersome need for controlling by keyframes as the thinkingParticles node makes for a more procedural setup. My wish for the future of tP is an even more dynamic fluid system!
Torii: For me, my big wish is that I would like to see current value, when MMB clicks on a node. It should be good for debugging. I would like to use Maya version of tP.
cebas: We will do our best! Thank you so much Torii, Sega and Ando for all your helpful insights!
About The Next Generation -Patlabor- Shuto kessen
http://patlabor-nextgeneration.com/
Script and director: Mamoru Oshii
Original: Head gear
Production company: Tohokushinsha film
VFX: Omnibu Japan
Distributed: Shochiku
About Omnibus Japan
Headquartered in Japan, Omnibus is a post production and VFX company for commercial film, film, TV program and manage content creation from production, authoring, duplication and all of service for movies.