Quick post with a suggestion to maybe throw your hat into the ring with one of the various different challenges that CG websites often run.

Challenge city. Population you.

At the top of the pile you have ones like the current “Secret Agent” challenge over at CGTalk. This is a pretty high-end comp and the prizes reflect that. I mean, if you are entering to win a Boxx workstation, a copy of Maya and Houdini Master, Intuos 4 etc etc, you better be ready to bring your A-game!

VFXTalk used to run challenges but they seemed to have dried up, although I noticed that Alejandro Villabón over at Green Soda has started up some challenges. No prizes, but we should be looking at sharpening our skills.

Me? I am looking at submitting some work for the latest lighting challenge over at CGTalk. Again, there are no prizes, but that’s not really the reason to enter these kinds of things. The main attraction for me is that there is usually a focus (in this case lighting), you are provided with the scene or base elements (like the green screen for the Green Soda challenge) and you are given a time limit. For me, having the time limit and restrictions is great because like so many of us, I get started on some ideas I have, run out of steam and shelve the project. If there is a simple challenge with a deadline, there is more chance I will actual finalise something.

So, look around and enter some challenges to . . . errrr, challenge yourself!

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!

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.

8mins 52secs, 33meg Quicktime 840×526 h.264 mov

SKYDOME!!!  Yeah boyeeee!  Okay, this is a pretty basic tutorial, I admit it, but it is a bloody useful one, especially if you don’t know Maya.  Did you also notice how many comma’s I used in the last sentence.  That is Very Bad Grammar if English is not your native language.  Luckily you are here to talk about visual effects and not English (although I did teach English in Japan for a year, shhhhh, don’t tell them about my grammar).

Anyway, this technique is certainly no secret.  I originally found this on a website somewhere, but they didn’t really explain it too well and didn’t even have screenshots so I had no idea what the hell they were talking about.  On Animalia the compositors had to make their own skydomes quite a few times as they often weren’t provided for us.  We sometimes got them on moving camera shots (and most of the bloody shots were moving!) but there was also a library of regular matte paintings, mostly painted by Dudley Birch.  Luckily, a few of the compositors I work with were also Maya guys, so they showed me how to operate Maya on at least a basic level to pull in shots, strip geometry and make a skydome, so thanks to John Kitching and Rodriogo Guimaraes for the info.

I mentioned in my last post that a lot of compositors come from non-3D backgrounds.  Being a 2D medium, compositors often come from working with Photoshop or editing software such as Avid and Final Cut Pro.  As such, a lot of compositors might not have a full appreciation of the 3D pipeline.

As I suggested, my opinion is that whatever your job in the pipeline, it is a good idea to have at least cursory knowledge of the skills that bookend your position.  That way you will be able to communicated effectively with your workmates and be more efficient.

Sometimes, depending on the production, you may find yourself needing particular minor things done and you need them done quickly, not when someone finally has a chance to get to them.  The following are reasonably basic skills that can really help out a compositor:

Import match-moved camera data.

At some point, if 3D is being integrated into live action, a Match Move artist (using something like PFTrack or Boujou) will have produced a final locked-off match move solve and camera setup that is being used by the 3D guys.  Knowing how to, at the very least, set projects and open files in Maya is something that everyone in VFX should know.

Even if you are not going to do an entire 3D project, things like cards with textures (eg buildings, animations of people etc) can be easily inserted and rendered out.  Of course, with applications like Nuke and After Effects you have the ability to import 3D scenes and objects, but it is always handy to know how to do it in Maya.  Plus, you have a lot more control in a dedicated 3D application if you have to do something more advanced.

Skydome

Once you have that camera data imported, make sure that you know how to choose and look through the approved camera for that shot.  Making a basic skydome is pretty basic stuff.  On ‘Animalia’ (a children’s animated TV show), we made a *tonne* of skydomes ourself if backgrounds weren’t made or if it was decided during dailies that a new sky would be needed.  The lighters and renderers had their plates completely full, so bothering them to do something so basic would be a waste or their time.

 I was lucky enough to sit next to a guy who had studied Maya (John Kitching) and he showed my how to make skydomes.  As a 3ds Max user, Maya was a bit of a dark art, but even I could follow his instructions.  I mean, really, half a NURBS sphere with a panorama texture placed on it.  I think a smart compositor can figure that out!  Thankfully I have been putting a lot more hours into Maya over the last 2-3 months, so it is becoming a lot more straightforward.

Particles

Ahhh particles, how I love thee  I love ‘em and they are what I really loved to work with in 3ds Max.  I have only just started transferring my skills over to Maya, and to be honest it is a bit of a struggle.  PFlow in Max is an excellent node/flow graph way to get very good results very quickly and intuitively.  Maya seems to involve a lot more coding, but also appears more robust when dealing with large numbers of particles . . . something which Max would choke on (at least until the arrival of Krakatoa).

Having said that, the first thing I will be learning in Maya particles is how to create my own smoke, fog and steam.  Why?  Because you use them all the time in compositing and while you are usually given filmed elements, sometimes you want the smoke to go just there or you want the steam to have a particular look.  Sure you might be able to achieve that with retiming, warping and tracking, but if you know how to make your own, then you’d be crazy not to.  It seems to me that for these types of elements, sprite particles will do the job.  No need for fluid simulations, just a bunch of particles mapped with smoke textures that face the camera!  Voila!  Instant custom made element.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately as I am transferring my 3ds max skills over to Maya.  I started out in 3D and got into compositing later (not the usual route for most compositors) but I am wanting to get my 3D skills up again so I have more chance of getting consistent work.

Firstly, there are differing opinions on whether to be a generalist or focus on one particular part of the computer graphic pipeline.  Really, I think it depends on the type of facility you are likely to work for.  Smaller studios are going to need you to wear more hats, whereas big studios like Industrial Light and Magic or MPC  that deal with large volume or very high end work tend to have people doing very specific things.  I don’t believe that too many people are amazing at everything.  They exist, but I ain’t one of ‘em!  I can hard-surface model and texture, as well as light and render, but character modeling?  Rigging?  No way.  I can animate at a pinch and have studied it, but it isn’t my “thing”, so to speak.  I love doing FX and dynamics, but I am nowhere near the top level

If you are working on a big project with a lot of people, chances are that if you are modeling at the beginning, you won’t be around for compositing at the end and vice versa.  As a compositor, you won’t be starting until the very last stages of the  project.

This, of course, leads to the question “So what do I do before I arrive or between projects.”

The ideal situation would have you jumping from feature film to feature film with a month or two downtime between each one, but that is unlikely to happen if you are a junior.  It’s even less likely to happen if you live somewhere like Australia where the industry just isn’t that big.

So how can you effectively give yourself a better chance to get more work?  My feeling is that if you are going to work in a pipeline you should know your job very well and the job either side of yours enough to do it as a pinch.  What do I mean by that?  I mean that as a compositor, you should focus on that first and foremost, but you should have a working knowledge of 3D lighting and rendering (and possibly FX) and maybe a bit of editing.  If you are a rigger you should be able to basically model and animate a character or object.

The way I see it the benefits are three fold:

1)  The more skills you have that are closely tied together, the more likely you will be hired for a decent period of time.  If you can light and comp your own shots, you are an asset to the team; 

 

2) The more you know about people’s jobs in the pipeline, the more effectively you can communicate.  There is nothing worse than a lighter coming up to you and saying something like “Can’t you just relight that in comp?”.  Actually, it might be a compositor saying “Can’t you just re-render those 700 frames?”;

 

3) It is very, very handy to be able to troubleshoot and whip up elements that you suddenly need when every is very, very busy.  As a compositor, being able to make your own elements or FX is very, very handy.

 

The factor in looking at the positions in your immediate scope is that, realistically, there are only so many hours in the day to keep your skills up to a production level.  At some point you have to get away from the screen and have some semblance of a life!