This was an early freelance project I did after graduating from school. I wanted to share this project as it shows some cool techniques. This face morphing effect is basically the precursor to Snapchat lenses, before you could just point a phone at your face. I was satisfied with matchmoving approach that allowed me to morph the performer's face into a Devil and the overall final look. Just felt that the grade didn't turn out so great.

The Process

First, I took some photos of the performer's head; I then shaped a base mesh with clean topology to match the images in Maya; I used PFtrack to matchmove the mesh that I had created, onto the performer's face, then I created a basic face rig in Maya to animate the facial expressions to perfectly match up with the performance. After I painted the tracking markers off the performers' faces with Nuke, I projected the plate into the UV space of the base mesh, then took the projected face texture into the distorted Devil mesh and comped it on top of the container. Finally, I rendered and comped some Zbrush sculpted horns into the shot and did my best to make them feel integrated with the shot.

Responsible for

• Matchmoving
• Compositing
• Maya face rig
• Modeling
• VFX Editorial
• Delivered 38 shots

A proof of concept.

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Nuke UV Projection

Matchmove setup in Maya

Marker Removal

Render pass showing the shadows