Blur Studio Brings out Magnificence with its tP Work on League of Legends!

 

FX Supervisor - Seung Jae Lee - of Blur Studio was born in Seoul, Korea and has lived in Los Angeles the past 11 years. He recently gave cebas an exclusive interview about his brilliant work on LoL.

 

Courtesy of Blur Studio

 

cebas: It seems that League of Legends (LoL) was an important project for you and Blur Studio. Can you tell us how you were involved?


This was the first time we’ve had the privilege of collaborating with Riot Games on League of Legends. Not only a great franchise and immensely successful on a global scale, we quickly realized that LoL was an amazing opportunity for Blur - and have enjoyed a great working relationship with our Riot friends ever since. I worked as an FX Artist on the project.
The clip that we provided is from the League of Legends trailer.


cebas: Which shots/images/sequences in particular were you involved in?


I created FX for the second of the cinematic that entailed massive falling rock destruction, volumetrics and black smoke.

 

Courtesy of Blur Studio



cebas: What cebas software did you use and why?


I primarily used thinkingParticles for all rock breaking, chunks, dust and debris. Procedural setup in thinkingParticles has become the best solution for complex fx in 3ds max as well as specific situations that entail changes to either animation and/or camera.


cebas: How did you use our software to achieve the effects?


I essentially broke up the entire mass of rock pillar using volume break and shape collision. The chunks generated from the set-up were designed to emit secondary events, such as rock debris and dust.


cebas: What features in particular helped you achieve your goal and how?


volumeBreaker with shape collision was paramount in getting the FX to look and behave just right; specifically the way falling rock would randomly break apart into smaller chunks through volumeActivate and cell.
When some chunks needs more break for visual, it was easy to pick it up and break in second rule.


cebas: What was the most difficult aspect of this project and how did you solve it?


Even though tp can handle most of the fx we do on a day-to-day basis, there are sometimes interpenetrations and/or strange dynamics that can happen with smaller debris as well as bigger chunks of mass. In this case, I simply exported them as a keyframed mesh, tracked down problem frames and finessed them.


cebas: What was a step-by-step breakdown of a typical shot/image/sequence?

Starting with a rock model provided by one of our modelers, the mesh was cleaned up and optimized to minimize any issues later on. Objects were then converted to particle meshes through ObjToParticle With Shape collision, which provided realistic gravity and dynamics.


cebas: How did the cebas tools perform for you and how was the experience of working with them like?

tP is a very reliable tool for almost any type of effect we create in the studio since its procedural rule approach allows us to build a setup in one particle set. It supports numerous cool nodes which already support many functions that FX artists have come to rely on. It has become a very artist friendly tool with easier math even for someone who is not familiar with scripting/programming.

 

 

 

Courtesy of Blur Studio

  

cebas: How did it compare to other software you may have used?


I've been using Particle Flow. The reason I use thinkingParticles daily is because I can simply plug a dynamics setup or other effects rule into other groups to streamline any associated / secondary effects without copying a lot of nodes / events etc.

 

cebas: How did cebas software integrate into your production pipeline? How straightforward was it?


tP is very much an integral part of Blur’s FX pipeline. We normally cached fx elements for rendering from tp out and handed it to scene assembler before. Most of case, we baked tP out to xmesh for more flexibility.


cebas: What was the most fun or rewarding part of this project for you?


Well, for me, it’s really seeing all of the elements come together in the comp – to fully realize the final effect in all its glory.


cebas: What do you wish cebas software did that it's not currently doing for you?


In tP particularly, it would be great if Shape Collision could be more accurate with various meshes.


Also, the handling in tP of material ids could be more strict to hold original mat id from geometry.
Where there is a multiple break in a group, it would be nice if the scale of uv coordinate would retain its original value.
 

cebas: What new projects can we expect from you in the future (if you're able to tell us).


We will have to wait and see but Blur is always working on at least a few cool projects at any one time.

 

We wish you all the best and can't wait to see more of your amazing work and cool Blur projects!

Thank you to Blur Studio for their time and interest in sharing their experiences with us and all of the cebas fans :)

 

Click HERE for the full trailer.

Check out Blur's latest projects on their website.