Danger Zone

Hey Guys, I'm a big fan of Top Gun and with the sequel coming out, I think its a great time to share what I have been working on at Gnomon school of VFX, Games, and Animation. This piece gave a great opportunity to work on my Nuke skill. This was in collaboration with my brother Jason Gardner.

Breakdown

                            Pure Ref Reference Board

Carrier Deck

Putting the Aircraft Carrier together. I originally had the F-14 from a previous project, so it made the process much quicker. Using my reference deck as guide, I modeled only what would be visible.

             Deck Crew

I built one male crewman in Maya. All the clothes were done in Marvelous Designer, and textured it multiple times in Substance Painter to create the variety of people you would see on deck. All animation and rigging of the characters was handled by Mixamo.

             Pilots

Using the same male body, I made quick pilot jumpers in Marvelous and Maya. I wanted to make sure the helmets were movie accurate, so I gave it a little more care and made sure the decals were correct. Knowing my shot angle, I knew there heads would be showing the most.

Lighting Passes

              Nuke Composite

Reconciling 2D assets into 3D World

This project was a great learning experience for Nuke. I knew I wanted a moving camera in the shot, so as soon as I started I began the processes of learning Nuke's 2D integration process. The Sky was projected on a sphere and tracked using Nukes camera. I also included a breakdown of my process for getting a warm light wrap around the 3d assets using an Alpha mask.