Archive for May, 2009

Thoughts: A new job and new experiences await!

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

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Life is funny.  Things are going one way and then ZING!  Off you go in another direction.  That onomatopoeia was meant to represent me changing direction slightly.  

 

On Sunday my car had major problems leading me to crash at my sisters house for a few days (hence the lack of an update) and it looked bad . . . very bad.  As soon as you have engine problems on a car with 235,000 km’s you start to think in mid 4 figure amounts.  I had had an interview the previous Friday and I was stressing a little about a possible move with a massive car expense and not much sleep was coming my way.

 

 

I iz a happy cat!

I iz a happy cat!

As it turns out, it was a relatively minor problem with the car (considering what I thought could go wrong), I was offered the job at a decent wage doing cool stuff in a great new city and I will be teaming up with one of my very good friends from Animalia again!

 

Soooo to cut a medium length story slightly longer: I will be starting with compositing and VFX on children’s animated television show with Ettamogah Entertainment down in Melbourne in mid-June.  I am really looking forward to it as I will get a chance to get my hands on some new-ish (for me) software for some production experience.  While I have used Maya and After Effects for personal projects, I am chuffed to get down and dirty with them with the possibility of some suh-weet houdini action as well.  All this is good for you, dear readers, as there will be a broader range of tips coming your way!

 

And, in a great twist, I will be working with my good mate Rodrigo Guimaraes again!  Rodrigo and I started on the same day together back on Animalia and we (and the other compers) had a blast hanging out together on the project, so it is with a glad heart that I will see my Brazilian mate again.

 

Throw into the mix a move to Melbourne, a very funky city and things are looking very exciting indeed.

Tips: Using RGB mattes in CG compositing pt2 – the video!

Sunday, May 17th, 2009

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16mins 38secs, 54meg Quicktime mp4 mov

 

I finally got my desktop fired up and grabbed this video I made last year for class.  I have a 50meg version of this I will try and get up soon if 80meg is too big.  I have used Simon Reeves’ excellent breakdown on his website www.bankaffairs.com.  Check it out for some very clear examples of using RBG passes for compositing in CSI Please note that all images are copyright Simon Reeves and are to be used for education purposes only.  Check out Simon’s main site at www.simonreeves.com.

 

Note: for clarity (and my own workflow), I have reordered the channels of the RBG passes before feeding them into nodes.  You don’t have to do this in Shake.  In the node being masked you can choose which channel you want to use as the mask.

 

Images (c) Simon Reeves

Images (c) Simon Reeves

Review: Star Trek – Sci-Fi done right!!

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

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I was going to post a video tutorial tonight but a lack of time and watching the latest Star Trek movie led to a review post so I will put the video up on Sunday.

 

 

Green alien babes *do* figure in this movie

Green alien babes *do* figure in this movie (c) Paramount Pictures

Firstly, let me say my knowledge of Star Trek is pretty much limited to whatever comedy shows have mentioned in their piss-takes.  I know the main characters catchphrases as I am a child of pop-culture but other than that I don’t really know anything about the story or characters.  Frankly, I kind of wanted to keep it that way as I feel that once you start actively watching Star Trek, you are branded for life.  I may have lost a few readers there, but come back!  I love the latest movie!  I know some Trek fans might hate it, but something like this is what a franchise needs to keep things fresh and moving in new directions.

 

 

This is Sci-Fi done right.  Actually, this is blockbuster movie done right.  Given the recent drought of decent entertainment, I give Star Trek the double thumbs up.  I was interested in the characters, the dialogue was good, there were a few in-jokes, the catchphrases were there and the plot skipped along.  All around, good stuff.

 

 

Its no Falcon, but itll do!

It's no Falcon, but it'll do! (c) Paramount Pictures

From a Visual FX perspective I found the movie pretty much faultless.  If you are a matte painter or set designer, Star Trek delivers in spades.  I haven’t seen a decent Sci-Fi movie for quite a long time and Trek delivered some great environments.  Earth was suitably futuristic without being ridiculous and had some great city scenes.  

 


The star ships were excellent and thankfully had more of that “used Universe” feel with banged up edges and grime.  The lack of grime in Star Trek always bothered me.

 

 

 

Lucky I packed those brown snow pants

Lucky I packed those brown snow pants - (c) Paramount Pictures

Personal highlights included the nice matte paintings/set extension in all the Iowa scenes and the snowbeast vs Kirk fight on whatever the glacier planet was (I am sure I will be corrected on this by someone ;)

 

 

Compositing was uniformly excellent.  I admit I was trying to find faults but really, nothing stood out at all.  The integration of set extensions was seamless and the comping in front of full 3D environments looked very natural.

 

An overlooked area in a lot of Sci-Fi movies is all the interfaces for the computer gear and the guys who did the work on the movie did a fantastic job.  Not too over the top, but suitably cool looking.

 

Finally, a nice fan image by Tobias Richter.  A shout out to Tobias as he was a major influence in me getting into computer graphics.  I recall as a young teenager looking through the gallery pages in Amiga Format magazine and seeing Tobias’s amazing 3D images and wanting to do the same thing myself:

 

 

Tobias Richter - ex-Amiga legend

Tobias Richter - ex-Amiga legend

 

@@UPDATE:  Daniel Broadway notes that the ice planet was called Delta Vega . . . that was quicker than I expected.  Also, check out Dan’s awesome spec trailer for Star Trek on his blog over at http://danielbroadway.blogspot.com/

 

 

Michael Bay doesnt own the rights to anamorphic lens flares (c) Daniel Broadway

Michael Bay doesn't own the rights to anamorphic lens flares (c) Daniel Broadway

Cool App: VFX Desktop

Sunday, May 10th, 2009

Just passing on a link to a a great looking piece of software currently in development by Arvid Björn in Sweden.  From Björn’s website at http://vfxdesktop.wordpress.com :

 

Copyright Arvid Björn

“I call it the vfxDesktop, its main purpose is help anyone working with images and especially image sequences to get a good overview, to be able to play and scrub their clips, and also to make basic editing to watch a sequence of clips together. The other big purpose is to serve as a springboard to help importing these clips into other applications, such as Shake, Nuke, Boujou, After Effects among others. So overview, preview editing and importing.”

 

I have to say that if this (a) continues in development and becomes a fully fledged piece of software and (b) gets past the Autodesk lawyers then this will be a seriously helpful addition to your VFX arsenal.  Right now to do this kind of stuff you have to fire up fcheck which is, how do you say, “adequate” or your compositing app which is more than a little overkill when you want to quickly check multiple clips and frames and do quick edits and then import them.

 

I like the fact that the app is focusing on the GUI in terms of usability.  After using a Flame for a tiny bit (a really tiny bit) I really like the way it handles viewing and organising clips that you are going to work with.