Guy Reincarnation Tests

Its important to conduct some early tests of the reincarnation effect because I have absolutely no idea how to achieve it. The reason this tests are so important is because I need to know which shots to film on location.

Once again YouTube has trimmed them from 16:9 to 4:3.


Step #1




Step #2

The final version of the tree animation

This is the final version of the tree animation which I shall be using for the submission of the installation.

How the plant is put together

Using the construction method explained in the earlier blog entry I make various branch and leaf growing animations, like these...








I also took a picture of the stick (aka cane) mentioned in the Inspirt story and removed the background from it.



Importing everything into After Effects I now reposition the animations over each other at varying positions in the timeline. So as soon as one animation finishes playing another one begins so it creates the illusion of continuous growth.

The squares in the image below represent the handles along the boundries of each invidiual animation.

How the plants grows...

The first step involves taking some pictures of some leaves and branches against a neutral coloured background.




This background could be keyed out but I've decided to manually erase it using an image editing program then saving the image as a PNG. PNG files have an alpha layer so when I import them into After Effects the background will already be transparent and this will save processing power and memory when it comes to rendering because the computer won't need to do so many calculations.

So the result is files like these...





The next step is to import the PNG of the stem or branch into After Effects then set its anchor point to be at the end of the wood in which it is intended to grow from. If you enlarge the below image you will see a cross hair at the base of the stem. This may seem contradictory but the background is almost made blue, however this is pure blue and will key very easily when the time comes.



Now I adjust the colours. At frame 0 I change the hue to make the steam appear green, this way it will look fresh as it begins growing. At frame 50 I change the hue to make the stem appear older and worn. So over the two sections it grows it will start a green shoot then gradually become



To make the stem look like its growing I return to frame 0 and change the scale to 0%, then at frame 50 I make it 100%. Now over the 2 seconds the stem will grow from nothing to its full size and since its been anchored at the base it will appear to be growing from that point.


A similiar to process is used to simulate a leaf growing only the leaf will be growing as the stem grows. To make this look plausible the leaf will also need to move as its resized, so this is a matter of adjusting its position so it appears to remain growing out of the place on the stem. The dotted line represents the leaf's moving path.



Now to add a couple more leaves growing at different intervals and the end result is this:

A Excerpt from The Mummy Returns

This is the first 9 minutes and 42 seconds of The Mummy Returns. The reason for its inclusion is because between 3:24 to 3:50 there is a sequence depicting an oasis instantaneously growing out of the desert sands. But to make things confusing once embedded YouTube counts down from 9:42 so the the sequence starts at 6:15.

Since you the YouTube video quality is terrible I won't extract that sequence form the video and reupload because that will only degrade the quality further. Therefore the reader will be required to diligently fast forward the below video to 6:15 in order to view what I'm referring to. To see the time counter the video must be playing.

The next version of the growing tree

I wasn't entirely satisfied with my first tree animation so I've continued development.

Here's some progress I've made:



I'm not entirely satisfied with it though because there are areas which aren't constantly growing for what seems too long. I also don't like the branch on the lower right because its secondary growth seems too long. This will need revision.

An attempt at the tree growing in Flash

I thought that designing the tree growing sequence in Flash would give me greater flexibility. Unfortunately Flash doesn't do the job as well as After Effects so it looks like I'll have to import the animation into Flash as a video rather than design it entirely in Flash.

The Assembled Tree

Now I Take the three "growing" animations and position them over the branch (I.e. the cane from the story) to make it appear as though new growth is sprouting from it.



I originally envisioned the growth to be denser but perhaps it works better the way it is. So the next step is to get this happening in Flash. Should be a lot quicker and easier now I know what I'm doing.

Tree Still Growing

Here's a small section of leaves sprouting...

Another Tree Grows

Here's a variation to the treegrowing sequence...

The Tree Grows for the Installation

I have began work on the tree growing sequence for the installation. There are a few kinks in it, but its a good start.