VFX Helper

Official trailer "A Classic Story"

2011-07-27T02:20:00.000-07:00

Announcing "A classic story" based on "Janaki"

2011-06-16T14:09:00.001-07:00

Announcing "A classic story" based on "Janaki"

New short film "JANAKI"

2011-06-16T14:03:00.001-07:00

Namaskaar,

As we all know we are making 6 short films, under the Anshdaan Filmmaking Club.

The first film of this series is going to be based on saadat hasan manto's "Janaki". And the screenplay of janaki is almost ready, we are going to make this short in mumbai, we going to shoot it very soon…

Anshdaan - New film-making community

2011-06-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

hello all,
some of the film-makers make a very nice group, they are making some short film by completely new way.
i am supporting them please support them....

thanks...
pankaj Kuma

Classes on Advance Visual effects

2010-04-26T13:11:00.000-07:00

I am giving classes on Advance Visual effects in my friend’s Institute :), let me know if anybody wants to join…

my e-mail - pankaj.multimedia@gmail.com

film making blog launched

2009-04-10T06:02:00.000-07:00

Our film making blog launched, check it out

Now we make some great project.
wordpress.com
blogspot.com

So here goes first experiment

2009-03-31T23:38:00.000-07:00

This is I done some time back on match moving
HOW I done it – match moving
1.Take this footage to boujou nad track the shot, and make the 3d camera from the tracking data(boujou did this for you).
2.import this camera into 3ds max place petronas tower image in 3d space and render it out.
Now this image have same camera movement that my original footage have
3.so then I compose both the footages together by the help of some roto and luma keying.
And result is this

Hello every one

2009-03-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hello every one

This has been long time since my last post, now on I will post daily basics

Form now I am not post only information on our blog , I am going to make this a more interacting blog, more experimental blog for VFX , now on I make some experimental stuff and share with You and hope your comment on that what is different way to do that how to different approach it and …...

So please give me your idea, suggestion anything to make this place more life full

Quantum of Solace vfx photo album

2008-12-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

Quantum of Solace marks Kevin Haug’s fifth collaboration with director Marc Forster (after Finding Neverland, Stay, Stranger than fiction, and KiteRunner). Haug also supervised the effects for three films by David Fincher: The Game, Fight Club, and Panic Room. His body of work is outstanding, and the seamless nature of the visual effects in Solace are testament to his skill and experience.

Skydiving

Before................................................Final

Sky diving and plane effects by Double Negative UK.

Before................................................Final

A wind tunnel facility called 'Bodyflight' was used to film the scene in which Bond and Camille freefall out of a DC3 plane in Bolivia. 'Bodyflight' allowed the actors to 'act' while falling instead requiring face replacement or stunt actors falling while hiding their faces. Bodyflight is the UK’s and the world’s largest skydiving wind tunnel in Bedford.

Kevin Haug reviews a take
and Lighting options were somewhat limited

The Monitoring station, recorders

--------------------------------------------
Plane Attack

Before................................................Final

Before................................................Final

Fully CG shots

Before................................................Final

Before................................................Final
Sourse : fxguide

Techniques of Wire Removal

2008-10-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

General Techniques for Wire Removal

1. Wire Removal By Painting Frame By Frame
The primary comment made about wire removal is "we'll just paint it out in post." But painting out on a per frame basis is extremely difficult when done over a series of frames, potentially causing the images to seem as if they are boiling. While a clone tool works well on a single frame, theÂ lack of frame to frame cohesion means the 'fix' boils and becomes very visible once the clip is played. Of course there are times that wires are only catching the light for a moment, Â and thus an isolated frame is still very effectively fixed by a manual painting, either by cloning or delicate painting. Cloning is much more effective, as it clones not just colour but grain or noise that is also almost always present.

2. Rig Removal By Patching Over The Top
One solution using this method is based on finding a clean frame from some other point in the clip and Â pasting it over the top of the offensive rig or wire. This works best on static cameras, and does not work on people in movement. Since the fill for the patch is static, considerations need to be made for grain and noise. Various tricks can used to solve this, including compounding or averaging several clean frames, reducing the grain/noise so it can be reintroduced at a later stage.

Another approach is to patch the wire and then use this new clip as a "reveal back to" clip in a manual painting environment, or roto the patch back in with finer attention to detail than the main patch. This has the advantage of replacing the minimum amount of the overall image but can suffer if there are other light changes that the 'patch' is not matching and tracking in terms of colour.

At its most extreme implementation, the patch approach becomes a 2D environment replacement which we discuss later.

3. Stabilise and Paint Back
One approach to solving a moving shot is to stabilize the image, fix it, and then invert the stabilization. If a wire is moving relative to the background, this approach can be very effective. Once the background is stable, the artist can paint back to a previous frame where the line or wire isn't seen. So unlike painting back to a still as in the patch version discussed previously, the artist paints back to moving clip offset in space to the foreground. This 'moving reveal' can be slightly noticeable when done at this stage but when the original camera motion is reintroduced it can seem flawless.

Problems arise with motion blur. A stablised image still has the blur contained inside that frame from any original camera movement. If this is offset in time - the foreground may have a different camera motion blur than the offset clip below at any point in time. Reveling the 'offset background' will then revel the wrong amount of blur, which can be a problem.

4. Roto Clone Tools/Source Nodes
To solve the problems in approach one (manual painting), there are faster computer-assisted approaches to cloning and painting. A common approach is to create an accurate matte of the wire or rig via rotoscoping. This matte is used to cut a hole in the iamage. To fill the hole, the same frame is slid or shifted to reaveal a part of the frame that is wire-free. In flame this is done by using source nodes, which move the matte orÂ foreground independently of each other. There are many similar approaches available in other applications.

The reason this approach works so well is that it matches motion blur or light changes since each frame draws from the same frame for the fix. It can be thought of as a dynamically updating patch approach. The disadvantage is the issue with sharp edge transitions. Since the entire wire matte region is replaced with the same scale patch, what works on camera right may not align camera left or vice versa. This means that some shots work amazingly well, but a very similar shot with different structural solid lines at a differents angle may produce very poor results.

5. Automated Tools: Matador to Furnace
Matador
This early paint product had specialized roto, paint and wire removal. Matador was originally developed by British developer Parralax, and wasÂ acquired by Avid along with Parralaxs compositing application Illusion. Available only on the SGI platform and priced around $15,000, Matador was one of the first digital rotoscoping tools which gained a wide acceptance in the film post production pipeline. Matador started as a tool made for editing still images, so many of the tools used for motion work were not well thought out. Matador provides excellent matte creation tools including b-splines, motion tracking, and a full set of painting and cloning tools, with full 16bit/channel support. Avid stopped development of Matador in the late 90's.

The original developers tried to spin it off into a new company called Blue, but that never took off. Matador had strong wire tools that allowed for median painting that would remove a wire from a frame via a brush that performed median filtering.

Commotion
Developed by Scott Squires, Â at the time an Industrial Light and Magic visual effects supervisor, Commotion was used for years at ILM before Squires formed Puffin Designs and released it to the public. Commotion, then called Flipbook, was sighted often at ILM and mistakenly referred to as the â€œsecret ILM motion version of Photoshop. Though Commotion looked very similar to Photoshop in some respects, Commotions interface and tools were designed for moving images, and was the first tool on the desktop to offer realtime ram based playback. This realtime core functionality was the foundation for all of the wire removal tools added as the product developed.

Advanced wire removal tools include raster based paint, spatial and temporal cloning, clone to center wire removal tools (which painted from the outside of the brush stoke to the center of the same brush stroke), auto-paint, unlimited bezier and natural cubic b-splines, motion blur on rotosplines, and a very fast and accurate motion tracker. Commotion quickly became the de-facto roto tool in the industry, replacing Matador in most post facilities. Commotion curves could even be exported and imported into AfterEffects. Puffin Designs was acquired by Pinnacle Systems in 2000, but sadly development has stopped on the product. All the original developers left and no new work ever been done on the product.

Most paint work done in the wire removal process is used for touching up film or video footage. This includes removing wires and rigs, removing logos, dust busting, scratch removal, etc. Clearly, roto plays a key role in solutions beyond hand painting. Roto-based approaches have the huge advantage in that they are repeatable, or able to be rendered, so a shot can be reworked without requiring starting from scratch. Roto is therefore often central to any wire removal process. In these circumstances, the roto tool must provide a procedural temporal and/or spatial cloning. Spatial cloning is a type of cloning which takes pixels from one position of the frame, and paints the source onto another position on the frame. Photoshop's rubber stamp tool is an example of spatial cloning, but it is not easily automated. Temporal cloning allows one to paint pixels from one frame in a sequence to another frame. Commotion's Super Clone tool is an example of temporal cloning.

A good wire/roto tool should provide both of these options so users can offset position and frame number together. Other cloning tools include wire removal tools which allow you to draw a line to zip out a wire. Typically, wire removal tools clone pixels from a specified value on either side of the line, then smear the outside pixels together to cover up the wire or scratch. More advanced wire removal tools will add advanced cloning techniques to the wire removal process. For example, Commotion looks at a specified number of pixels on either side of the line, flips those pixel values then cross dissolves to cover up the wire.

Furnace
One of the few companies to aggressively try and produce specific wire removal tools is The Foundry in London. Released initially as plugins for Flame, The Foundry now produces a large variety of solutions for a range of applications such as Shake and Nuke.

The Foundry's Furnace tools are based on producing a rotoscoped or animated spline path that can then have a variety of techniques deployed. The Foundry's spline defines the shape of the wire (straight or curved) and the width. It will then use one of four techniques to clone, average, clone to center or temporally remove the wire. In so doing it attempts to not remove film grain and instead just replace the wire. The techniques increase in computational complexity, and are generally agreed to be currently some of the best implementations anywhere, "best in class".

It is openly agreed - even by The Foundry, - that the tools are not one button press fixes that always work perfectly. Rather, the logic is that the wire removal tools can successfully remove a large amount of unwanted wire, but the last 20 percent will need manual or human intervention.Â As you can hear in this week's fxpodcast, nearly all professional wire removers use Furnace for this reason, and universally agree that getting the job 80% done is invaluable. However, there is a significant gap between any computer solution and an acceptable feature film final shot.

Mokey
As the task of wire removal extends to rig removal, The Foundry and companies such as Imagineer Systems also produce planar trackers. These trackers are widely used to solve wire and rig removal but are not solely aimed at these tasks. Imagineering produces a set of very impressive planar tracker solutions such as Mocha which will track a region of a shot. These regional tracking approaches allow much better "patch' style solutions since the 'patch' can now move in three dimensions and much more seamlessly blend with the original plate.

Imagineering also produces automated roto tools such as Mokey which can aid in separating an object from the background. The combination of this and rotoscoping allow the 2D and 3D environment techniques discussed next to work well. Products such as Mocha and Mokey are not wire removal tools in and of themselves but impressive and valuable tools that aid more advanced solutions which would otherwise be impractical.

7. 2D Background Replacement
Some of the most advanced solutions do not try and minimize the region of the frame which is being painted or retouched. Rather, they remove the entire background and replace it with a clean background tracked in 2D to look real. An example would be wire work done for a martial arts film. In these films extensive wire work is often required. Chinese senior VFX artist August Zhuang gave the example of a fight on wires staged in a small clearing, in front of bamboo. The complex nature of the vertical bamboo made many techniques fails and the amount of complex wires and rigs needed to be removed meant the shot was always going to be very complex. Rather than tackle the wires individually, Zhuang and his team roto-ed the actors off the background and then replaced it.

Using multiple frames from the sequence which revealed clean sections of the background, the team was able to piece together a single long panorama of the bamboo clearing. They would then track this matte painting back in to every shot, replacing the original background with a nearly identical flat 2D cyclorama without any wires. They were careful to create accurate 2D tracks and apply the correct amount of motion blur on each shot. This approach proved more effective and less time consuming than wire removing 20 individual wires one at a time.

8. 3D Environment Replacement

The logical extension of 2D set replacement is full 3D set replacement. Some productions choose to start this way and film the original plate on greenscreen, while others seek more realistic lighting by filming without greenscreen and manually rotoscoping all the key elements such as actors, and then dropping in 3D behind them. In cases where primary plate photography is not greenscreen,2D background replacement techniques such as the ones listed above can be used and the matte painting is projected or mapped over 3D geometry to allow more complex 3d spatial camera moves. 3D environment replacement has grown in popularity in large part to the advances in 3D tracking and 3D automated camera software from companies such as Pixel Farm, 2d3, Syntheyes, Realviz and 3d Equaliser.

For Die Hard 4, the elevator shaft behind Bruce Willis was extended and a virtual 3D set added to build out from the real set. The set extension had to be three dimensional to work with the complex camera moves that the team at the Orphanage was presented with. The shot works due to the quality of the wire removal on the foreground, the accuracy of the roto, and the skill of the Orphanage's 3D team in matching the lighting and textures so accurately.

In this week's podcast we speak to Aaron Rhodes, the Roto/Paint Supervisor at the Orphanage. We discuss the approaches below in terms of the real world of feature films and the Orphanage's work on Die Hard 4 in particular.

Sourse :- vfguide

2007 - 2008 Primetime Emmy Awards nominations revealed

2008-07-19T01:43:00.000-07:00

Animated shows from FOX, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon are all in contention for an Emmy this year.
Heroes, Battlestar Galactica and others are in the running for the big VFX awards.
On Sunday, September 21 at 8 pm the telecast awarding Primetime Emmys in 29 categories will be presented before a black-tie audience and televised by the ABC Television Network from the NOKIA Theatre, Los Angeles live.

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Series

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA "He That Believeth In Me" -- Sci Fi Channel -- Universal Media Studios in association with R & D TV
Gary Hutzel, Visual Effects Supervisor
Michael Gibson, Visual Effects Producer
David Takemura, Visual Effects Coordinator
Doug Drexler, CGI Supervisor
Kyle Toucher, CG Artist
Sean Jackson, CG Artist
Pierre Drolet, CG Modeler
Aurore de Blois, Senior Compositor
Derek Ledbetter, Compositor

HEROES -- "Four Months Ago" -- NBC -- Universal Media Studios in association with Tail Wind Productions
Eric Grenaudier, Visual Effects Supervisor
Mark Spatny, Visual Effects Producer
Gary D’Amico, Special Effects Supervisor
Mike Enriquez, Lead CGI Artist
Michael Cook, Lead CGI Artist
Diego Galtieri, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Ryan Wieber, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Chris Martin, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Daniel Kumiega, Lead CGI Animator

HUMAN BODY: PUSHING THE LIMITS -- "Strength" -- Discovery Channel -- Dangerous Films Ltd. in association with Discovery Channel
Tim Goodchild, Visual Effects Supervisor
Louise Hussey, Visual Effects Producer
Mike Tucker, Special Effects Supervisor
Nick Kool, Lead Model Maker
Hayden Jones, CGI Supervisor
Mark Pascoe, Lead CGI Artist
Angela Noble, Lead CGI Artist
Peter Tyler, Visual Effects Cameraman

JERICHO -- "Patriots And Tyrants" -- CBS -- CBS Paramount Television M
Andrew Orloff, Visual Effects Supervisor
Blythe Dalton, Visual Effects Producer
John Stirber, Special Effects Supervisor
Chris Jones, Compositing Supervisor
Michael Cliett, CGI Supervisor
Lane Jolly, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Johnathan R. Banta, Lead Matte Artist
Josh Hooker, Lead CGI Artist

STARGATE ATLANTIS -- "Adrift" -- Sci Fi Channel -- Pegasus III
Mark Savela, Visual Effects Supervisor
Shannon Gurney, Visual Effects Coordinator
Erica Henderson, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Jason Gross, CGI Supervisor
Jamie Yukio Kawano, Lead CGI Artist
Michael Lowes, Lead CGI Artist
Giles Hancock, Lead Matte Artist
Jeremy Kehler, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Daniel Osaki, Lead Model Maker

TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES -- "Pilot" -- FOX -- C2 Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Television
James Lima, Visual Effects Supervisor
Chris Zapara, CG Supervisor
Lane Jolly, Compositing Supervisor
Steve Graves, 3D Modeler/Animator
Rick Schick, Compositor
Jeff West, Compositor
Bradley Mullennix, Modeler

Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special

COMANCHE MOON -- "Part 1" -- CBS -- The Firm/Sony Pictures Television/CBS Paramount
Scott Ramsey, Visual Effects Supervisor
Randy Moore, Special Effects Supervisor
Chris Martin, Visual Effects Compositor
Megan Omi, Visual Effects Compositor
Richard Sachar, Visual Effects Compositor
Ragui Hanna, Visual Effects Compositor
Daniel Kumiega, Visual Effects Animator
Cedric Tomacruz, Matte Painter
Kristin Johnson, Matte Painter

THE COMPANY -- "Part 2" -- TNT -- Scott Free/John Callery Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television
Viktor Muller, Visual Effects Supervisor
Vit Komrzy, Visual Effects Producer
Jan Vseticek, Visual Effects Coordinator
Miro Gal, Lead Digital Compositor
Peter Nemec, Lead Digital Compositor
Jiri Stamfest, Lead Digital Matte Painter
Jaroslav Matys, Lead 3D Digital Artist

JOHN ADAMS -- "Join Or Die" -- HBO -- Playtone in association with HBO Films
Erik Henry, Visual Effects Supervisor
Jeff Goldman, Visual Effects Supervisor
Paul Graff, Visual Effects Supervisor
Steve Kullback, Visual Effects Producer
Christina Graff, Visual Effects Producer
David Van Dyke, Visual Effects Producer
Robert Stromberg, Visual Effects Designer
Edwardo Mendez, Compositing Supervisor
Ken Gorrell, Special Effects Coordinator

LIFE AFTER PEOPLE -- History Channel -- Flight 33 Productions for History Television Network Productions, A&E Television Networks
Matt Drummond, Visual Effects Supervisor
Max Ivins, Visual Effects Supervisor
Steffen Schlachtenhaufen, Visual Effects Producer
Melinka Thompson-Godoy, Visual Effects Producer
Andrea D’Amico, Visual Effects Producer
Danny Kim, Matte Painter/Compositor
Dave Morton, Lead Visual Effects Artist
Jim May, Digital Artist
Casey Benn, Digital Artist

TIN MAN -- "Part 1" -- Sci Fi Channel -- RHI Ent.
Lee Wilson, Visual Effects Supervisor
Lisa Sepp-Wilson, Visual Effects Producer
Sébastien Bergeron, Digital Effects Supervisor
Todd Liddiard, Lead Visual Effecs Compositor
Philippe Thibault, Lead Visual Effects Compositor
Les Quinn, CGI Supervisor
Mike Goddard, Lead CGI Artist
Ken Lee, Lead CGI Artist
Andrew Domachowski, Lead CGI Artist

For a complete list of Emmy nominees, go to http://cdn.emmys.tv/media/releases/2008/rel-pte60-mainjuly17.php#noms

VES releases white-paper on VFX

2008-07-19T01:33:00.000-07:00

The Visual Effects Society (VES) has published its first ever white paper, entitled "The State of Visual Effects in the Entertainment Industry."
The paper, drawn from inputs from numerous sources including a VES think-tank discussion, the VES Executive Committee and others, examines existing conditions within the VFX industry and how these issues affect the entertainment business on a macro scale, from workflow to the interaction of personnel within various departments. The white-paper also assesses the extraordinary impact that the digital revolution has caused.
"The VES is the foremost knowledge-base in the world concerning VFX and we feel that we have a unique perspective as to how the work of visual artists and technologists intersect to have a huge impact on the business model bottom line," said VES Executive Director Eric Roth. "We are very excited to publish this first paper, which will serve as a foundation for future white papers delving into significant issues which face not only our craft, but the entertainment industry as a whole," Roth added.
For the white paper: http://www.visualeffectssociety.com/documents/VES_StateofVFX_3.pdf

Chris Edwards Pre Viz guide book

2008-07-06T02:25:00.000-07:00

Here is Chris Edwards Pre Viz guide book to the process of pre-viz.

Get reference -- any reference.

Get assets. This includes buying assets but also building a library. By buying modeling libraries, you don't have to build everything from scratch.

Pay attention to scale. Once a shot is handed off, the vfx house will need accurate measurements.

Get accurate lens settings and camera settings. Try and use only lenses that could be used on the real shoot.

Block it out first without animation. Do a series of static compositions in the same scene file. Get feedback and rough it out some more. Make sure you block with posed figures - as it will affect framing. "Sweeten the blocking and really work on the plan before you put the love it" Don't cheat until you have to, but rather keep based in reality. Don't allow the camera to move through the floor or wall..."go as far as you can, and only then push it"

Next, with still compositions work out the timing and how the characters are moving through the frame. They need to be posed before you frame up. The timings need to be realistic...in fact "the timing needs to be dead on or pretty close"

Maintain an edit and watch your work in context. Take a step back and think about what is needed.

Don't underestimate the power of basic lighting and colour choices but limit your work to eight basic lights so that you can maintain realtime lighting.

Art direction should be included as much as you can.

Add canned effects, and don't underestimate how powerful cards can be in 3Dfor doing good pre-viz. "Use pre-viz as a template for final, maintain the edit and swap in high res assets. This should free you up to focus on the artistry of the detail"

Notes:

Use real world dimensions as much as possible

Use tricks like shadow cards

No skinning to keep it fast

Use moving cards not particles for smoke, dust water (planes moving and rotating)

Set up multiple cameras on the one animation

Survival Tips

Be prepared for anything

Always present best idea first

Don't push your director too hard: they need things to be their ideas

Present their way first AND your way. Know your client and know their style. Rent all their student films, watch anything they have done -- the earlier the better

Naming conventions are important, especially as you hand off work.

Level of detail: save the heavy asset for the final and only build what you think you'll need

Rig the same way every time so your library has maximum re-usability.

Save and categorize everything to be able to find your personal assets.

Don't use proprietary tools. Use Maya and Motion Builder

Use hardware rendering

Capture high at high res over render and scale down

Use ReelSmart motion plugin for motion blue in After Effects

Care about cheated depth of field

source:fxguide.com

Interview with VCL Creative Director Pankaj Khandpur

2008-06-18T09:07:00.000-07:00

Animation in films is taking baby steps with each movie that gets released and many predict that YRF-Disney‘s Roadside Romeo, slated for a late October release, will be the litmus test for animation films in India.
Visual Computing Labs (VCL), a division of TATA ELXSI, located in Mumbai has seen most of the work for Jugal Hansraj‘s magnum opus happening within the confines of it‘s formal yet cosy studio floor. Presiding over the team is the Creative Director of VCL, Pakaj Khandpur.
Stalwart Khandpur is amongst the most well known and respected professionals in the business, in the animation, VFX and gaming industry; in Bollywood and also in Hollywood.

In an exclusive interview Khandpur talks with passion about his director Jugal Hansraj, the current trends in VFX, the importance of good training and his moorings on the realities of the Indian Animation.

What new projects is VCL handling?
We have started work on the second film, after Romeo, which is also a Yashraj-Disney film. It doesn’t have a name yet… it is untitled. The script is ready and preproduction has started.

So what is the movie about?
(laughs) Buy a movie ticket and see it 18 months from now.

So it is the second movie coming from the Yashraj-Disney stable?
Yes.

Which stage is Roadside Romeo in?
About 95 per cent of the animation is done and we are in shot finalling and lighting, Right now and about 15 per cent of the movie is completely ready, on film. We have seen it, we have presented it. It’s been liked a lot. It’s looking very good and we are very pleased with the quality we are getting in terma of the quality of animation, the quality of look and feel, lighting. We believe that this [Roadside Romeo] will be fairly close to an international specification as opposed to what we say ‘this is good for India’. I think this will be good for the rest of the world as well.

You have worked with many Bollywood directors. How has your experience of working with Jugal Hansraj been, given the fact that this is his debut as a director?
Jugal is an incredible person. I disagree completely with the idea that because you’ve never directed a film, you can’t direct one. We all started somewhere, isn’t it? We all started from not knowing what we were doing, to beginning to know what we are doing. The thing about Jugal is that he has two very admirable qualities that have helped Romeo a great deal. Number one, he has passion beyond what I expected anybody to have. He has written the script;in fact, he has lived, eaten, drunk that script. So he knows when something works for him and how well he works for him. He knows the story and the performances inside out. He has directed the performance of the voice stars brilliantly.

The second incredible thing about him is that he has the patience – because as you know animation requires a huge amount of patience – far more than any of us do. In animation there is a huge leap of imagination that you have to have between the time you actually start seeing the basic work till the final render. That period could be more than a year! You therefore have to fill in the gaps a lot. You are looking at a character and saying that this looks nice as a playblast but what will it look like with lighting, what will the mood be when the lighting, texture, fur, backgrounds come in… none of which you are seeing but you are expected to react to it. It’s like shooting a film with the lights turned off and telling the director, “Don’t worry, when the lights come on it will look great.” The director can see vaguely, barely what he needs to see, but he has to imagine a lot of things. And that is an incredible [quality]. In fact, that is something that I would tell all potential directors of animation films.

To come back to your question, I think it’s an asset that he has never directed a film before. The fact that he has never directed helps; if he had, especially a live action film – you’d be spoilt. In a live action film when you are shooting a scene, when actors do the shot and they get it right, you know it’s done. There is nothing more for your imagination to see. In this instance [animation movies], not only are you imagining the whole film and how it works - because you are also not seeing scenes in order – but you are also expected to imagine within the scenes.

Is TATA ELXSI also working with UTV?
We have been working with UTV in other areas for many years. Personally, I have been involved with UTV in the past. The UTV and UTV Spotboy logo has been done by us. We are talking to them about animation as well.

About features as well?
Yes.

So can we expect UTV and Visual Computing Labs joining hands together?
Right now we are working as we are with other clients in delivering animation production [to them].

Which trends do you see in VFX?
It’s very good to see that the bar is being raised every year, and it is being raised not proportionalely but logarithmically which means every year the amount of use of VFX goes up manifold. That’s an incredible thing to see. We are thrilled that our work is getting more exciting and challenging every year. We are forced to learn new things, be more innovative in what we do. What else could you wish for? Filmmakers are beginning to understand and use the power of VFX. It is an incredible time to be in this business.

Where does India stand in the global VFX scenario?
It’s a fairly simplistic question but there is no simple answer. Hollywood is a benchmark because they have pushed the curve a great deal. They have the resources, the money-power, the software skills, the artist skills and they have all of these by a factor of 300 or 400 more than what India does. When you have that high level of capability in all areas, your filmmakers want to push the bar. India is a micro-ecosystem. Studios like TATA ELXSI are already doing work for international projects. We have worked for projects like last year’s Spirerman 3, Ghost Rider and Lions for Lambs, Iron Man this year. In fact, we have credits on these films. We have done bits of Indiana Jones.

Now, are we doing that level of work? No. We don’t have the resources, the capability and the skills in adequate numbers to be able to do it. Once we have the skills, there is no reason why we won’t be able to do it. Right now you can do it [work which meets international standards] in pockets and you can do it in very limited quantities. For example, we are doing some fairly cutting-edge work for Indian feature films. But our output is limited by the number of artists with the high-level of skill sets that we require. As we go forward and more and more artists and willing to enter the field and take the trouble to learn and grow as artists, there is no reason why you won’t get to the same [international] spot.

What have been VCL’s recent Indian projects?
Joodha Akbar, Taare Zameen Par, Aaja Nachle, Tara Rum Pum, Rang De Basanti, Gandhi My Father, Dhoom 2, in the past one-and-half-years.

TATA ELXSI has made foray into gaming. What are the developments on that front?
It’s early days in the gaming business. We have some interesting work going on right now. It seems to be gaining definite and quick traction. Our teams are in Bangalore (console gaming) and Pune (mobile gaming). VCL Mumbai handles the art. Though we are setting up smaller skeleton units for art in each of these units for specific work, but when it becomes large scale work we [Mumbai] will still take care of the game cinematics and art.

We also remember that our pedigree as a company is that we are a software engineering company. We have almost 3,000 software engineers. So a large part of our capability is indeed delivering an end-to-end solution to the client which is from writing the algorithms for the engine all the way through to the final art and geometry that is required to make a game.

How much does VCL contribute to TATA ELXSI in terms of financials?
The turnover of TATA ELXSI is more than Rs 400 crore for the last financial year. At this moment, VCL contributes around 5-10 per cent of the total revenues. We are hoping that VCL will be the fastest growing part of TATA ELXSI.

IP creation or service providing: where do you see most of the revenues coming from?
Right now there are no revenues in IP creation. Animation is nascent, it’s a baby business. There have been one successful animated film (Hanuman). The others, I understand, have not done as well as they could have. So there is no animation industry, so to speak. We are hoping that this will change. As professionals we are hoping that our own [Indian] market recognises animation as an industry, as a genre and appreciate it and pay good money to see it. That’s the ultimate goal, isn’t it? But you have to start somewhere.

A film like Roadside Romeo will be a watershed film, it’ll be a milestone. The reason why it’ll be a milestone is that it will be India’s first mainstream Bollywood film. It is not a mythological. All the animated features that we have spoken about and seen are mythologicals; because it’s a safe bet. Generally I think you are more forgiving as an audience when you see a mythological because you are seeing your beloved gods and characters performing. So you are kind of forgiving about the quality standards, as the subject is so dear to your heart. It’s a safe subject, people assume that a mythological will receover its money.

Now, here comes along a film like Roadside Romeo which has nothing to do with mythology. It’s a proper Bollywood masala-formula film. It has a hero, heroine and a villain. It has a boy-meets-girl and a boy-loses-girl. It has six songs. So its following a typical Bollywood formula, right? In fact, it’s spoofing the Bollywood formula. The beauty of the thing is that it’s built to international specifications and quality levels. So you are seeing good international quality animation product but you can connect with it. As an Indian audience you can connect with it. Now, the success or failure of Roadside Romeo will be a very good indicator of where the animation industry is going. So we are praying, indeed, that films like Roadside Romeo do well at the box office. In our business like any other business, nothing succeeds like success. So even if you are a brilliant film but if it’s not successful, you haven’t [really] achieved what you had set out to achieve. Hence, it is important that we are a box office success, so that there is a future for this industry.

In the case of outsourcing, why are companies in the business? Because we realise that IP in India is not adequate yet to build the kind of organisation that you want with the people that you require. It’s not enough to fund you and to keep you going. And it is not going to be. If you ask me as a personal conviction, change will happen. But the objective is that you outsource, get the stability you need and then start doing IP when you are ready to do IP. See, all of us can jump in and say ‘let me start doing my own film’. It takes a lot to do your own film; it’s not easy to do it. It requires huge skill sets and huge amount of revenues to do it well. If you are doing, then do it well. But for that you have to spend a lot of money, get the skill sets, spend a lot of time and have lots of patience. So while you are doing all of these things, you have to outsource. And in the mean time, the scenario is that you will have IP that will work, maybe some crossover might work… we don’t know. Once you see that there is an industry that can be sustainable… that’s the whole key. There is no point in you and I doing business if you are operating in an industry in which there is no future.

When it comes to VFX, what do you see as the emerging trends globally?
The use of more and more technology that is being kicked into projects. For example motion-capture is a big deal. I predict that you will see a lot more of motion capture, and not only in animation. I am talking VFX, about CGI done using motion-capture. Beowulf is a recent film in which the CGI has been done completely by motion-capture. That’s one trend.

We’re going to see a lot of high-technology being kicked into VFX. Yet the traditional artistic skills will still be required in CGI… even if it’s digital you need great talent to be able to pull it off. So, are we getting there [international standards]? Yes, we are. We are using exactly the same technology as the West is using. In fact, we as a company, are writing some of the tools that the West is using. We are providing pipeline tools to one of the top three animation companies and the number one VFX company in the US. So when you say that we are using the tools, we are actually creating them, on one level.

Is India more technically sound than the West?
Let me give you a parallel… the Indian software engineer is very well respected. So if you noticed, it is the technology in engineering skills that is going out first, whether outsource or off-shore or even near-shore. Like we do some work in Japan - what we call near shore – we have set up our own centre but not at the clients’ location but in our own location in Tokyo. So, definitely the Indian mind is considered very analytical and mathematical… it’s a proven record since the late 1970’s. Hence the first thing that gets required and wanted is engineering and technology services. We are doing it in gaming.

You might ask me why is creativity not following? The reason is simple. The logic applied is– I am not necessarily agreeing with it – that when you talk creativity and aesthetics you are talking about cultural sensibilities. You are talking about designing something for an American audience but by an Indian designer. How easy is that to bridge? I don’t know. But that is definitely a thought in the minds of North American costumers. We have been involved and have designed every single part of Roadside Romeo, right from the the visualization to pre production. Would an American company get us to do that? I doubt it. Why? Because they will say how do you understand what American culture is? But that line is blurring, it’s a matter of time before one of our projects are seen and people say that ‘these guys are like us’. OK the language is different. But it’s just a matter of modifying the attitudes. What’s the big deal in doing that?

What do you see as their pros and cons of Indian animators?
The Indian animator is very good. Indian animator is also completely indisciplined. That’s a pro and a con straightaway. Our power of expression is brilliant, our animation capability in my opinion is as good as the rest of the world. I think a little bit of mentoring and guidance and, I think, our animators will be as good as anyone in the world. It’s only a matter of time. What’s holding us back is the fact that there are not many animation projects. Now if you don’t have enough animation projects, where do you learn, where do you grow? Who do you bounce off ideas against, who do you mentor under? It’s only when you do enough of them, is when you start growing and doing better things.

There is a certain discipline that is required to deliver animation in a reasonable time. That is the key. Unfortunately, our productivity levels are not really good. Considering the kind of animation we do, we can certainly do better than that. Artists in India need to understand that it is a profession and in a profession it is not just enough to have the power of expression and the talent. Disciplining the talent is as important. Sometimes there is a question mark about Indian deliveries, timeliness. You hear less problems about Indian quality but more about Indian timeliness. It is important to fix both.

What are the projects VCL is working on right now?
There is the untitled project with Disney which will have animals and will be a Bollywood masala film. When it comes to VFX, we are working on about five projects right now including God Tussi Great Ho, Drona, Bachna Aye Haseeno and Rab ne Bana di Jodi. It terms of Bollywood we are expecting a big project by July end for which we are co-bidding with the Hollywood company.

The level of HR inflow into the industry is often criticised. Comments.
We have as a country not invested time in training. We have not invested in helping students to grow and become good artists. If you are talking about training schools that do operate in India.. those are not training but vocational schools, those are schools that teach you how to use the tools. And they do their job. What are the aesthetic and artistic skills that you have inculcated in your artists, is the question mark. So just because you can do a great walk-cycle, it means nothing. But doing a walk-cycle with attitude that gives you a certain storytelling is the key to the whole thing. Who teaches you that? Nobody does. We still don’t have, it might have changed, any institution that does this kind of training. What investment have any of us made in the proper sort of training? So why are we complaining? You’ll be stuck with this: low productivity, lack of professional attitude, lack of discipline, lack of adequate aesthetics and creativity. You don’t think when you work… you press buttons. That’s the sad reality. When you are saying that artists enter the business with the intention of making money, well they’ll exit also equally quickly. Because earning money is an end product to what you do, it’s not the reason why you do what you do.

Can you elucidate on your concept of training?
I believe in this concept of the right sort of training. I believe in vocational training certainly but it is only the base level you can start with. After that, there is a hell lot that you have to learn. We take artists who have either worked for a year of or have done vocational training. We have a school of VCL, so to speak, we take 20 artists every three months and we work with them on the floor. After the first month or two they are actually mentored by actual departments. They have very rigorous schedules. We have had three batches, and all 60 are with the company.

Recently a batch of 20 students and artists from here were sent to the University of Southern California for a workshop that we designed, which the University of Southern California executed for us. It was academic training, it was understanding your role in the history of CGI. We did the history of animation, how VFX was done before digital technology came in. At the same time we they had exposure to cutting-edge technology: what is stereoscopy, they actually spent two days at a motion-capture lab there. We did a cross-pollination of artists, through which the animator was studying visual effects. This was done so that the artist knows his universe. It is unfortunate that many artists have blinkers on. They do not realise that the fine degree of specialisation will make one very dependent on everybody else.

I have to convince my artists that what they are doing is the finest and the most noblest thing that they could ever do.

What are the challenges while dealing with technology?
We are the first studio in the country that started with massive, which is a crowd multiplication algorithm and has an artificial intelligence component. In fact, we are using the world’s fourth fastest CPU, with 4,000 CPUs, based in Computational Research Laboratories for rendering Romeo.

What are you your hopes and aspirations from Roadside Romeo?
I just hope that we go where we want to. If we can all contribute be it training, be it evangelist, be it pushing the curve with every project. In VFX we have reached a place where we try and do things that we have already done. And if you look at our track record we do a maximum of a dozen films every year as we try to do the best job possible. So, with Roadside Romeo I was very clear with what I wanted. I told the team, I told myself, I told everybody that when we see this film projected… no one should say ‘this is good for India, yaar’. Any audience should see and not wonder where it was made. What is good for India should also be good for the world. So that’s why it‘s so critical that the film should work.

My advice to anyone who wants to make an animated film in India: don’t do it (laughs). It’s very difficult. It takes the mickey out of you. If you are doing it above a certain level to maintain the desired quality, it becomes very difficult. No excuses, remember, in whatever we do.

Sourse animationxpress.com

What are Aspect Ratios

2008-05-04T21:39:00.000-07:00

The term Aspect Ratio refers to the width of a picture (or screen) in relation to its height. Ratios are expressed in the form "width x height". For example, a 4x3 ratio means the picture is 4 units wide by 3 units high. Alternatively a colon may be used (e.g. 4:3 or 16:9) or a ratio to the number 1 (e.g. 1.33:1 or 1.78:1).

Note that the actual physical size of the picture is irrelevant — aspect ratio refers only to the relationship between width and height.
The three most common aspect ratios are shown below. There are many variations in addition to these but most video and film production uses one of these formats.

4:3 standard
The 4:3 ratio for standard television has been in use since television's origins and many computer monitors use the same aspect ratio. 4:3 is the aspect ratio defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a standard after the advent of optical sound-on-film. By having TV match this aspect ratio, films previously photographed on film could be satisfactorily viewed on TV in the early days of the medium (i.e. the 1940s and the 1950s). When cinema attendance dropped, Hollywood created widescreen aspect ratios (such as the 1.85:1 ratio mentioned earlier) in order to differentiate their industry from the TV.

16:9 standard
16:9 (generally named as: "Sixteen-by-Nine" or "Sixteen-to-Nine") is the international standard format of HDTV as used in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, and the United States, as well as in Europe on HDTV and non-HD widescreen television (EDTV) PALplus. Japan's Hi-Vision originally started with a 5:3 ratio but converted when the international standards group introduced a wider ratio of 5⅓ to 3 (=16:9), invented by Kerns H. Powers in 1984. The 1.78:1 aspect ratio was the compromise between the 35 mm US and UK widescreen standard (1.85:1) and the 35 mm European widescreen standard (1.66:1). Many digital video cameras have the capability to record in 16:9. Anamorphic DVD transfers store the information vertically stretched in a 4:3 aspect ratio; if the TV can handle an anamorphic image, it will horizontally decompress the signal to 16:9. If not, the DVD player can reduce scan lines and add letterboxing before sending the image to the TV. Wider ratios such as 1.85:1 and 2.40:1 are accommodated within the 16:9 DVD frame by additional black bars within the image itself. The European Union and Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina have instituted the 16:9 Action Plan, just to accelerate the development of the advanced television services in 16:9 aspect ratio, both in PAL and also in HDTV. The Community fund for the 16:9 Action Plan amounted to €228 million.
In Europe 16:9 is used in the U.K. (Almost all Mainchannels are in 16:9), France (especially NRJ12and NRJ Hits), Germany (ARD and ZDF and partly some other private channeles as RTL Television or Pro7), Switzerland (TSI and SSR; now is available free-to-air anywhere in HDTV the Hi-Def channel HD Suisse), Italy (through mainly the Satellite broadcasting platform SKY Italia - in fact from march of 2008 SKY Italia will pass all of its channel of Cinema category in 16:9, changing the utility of relative channel SKY Cinema 16:9 - and sometimes Rai Sport Satellite), Greece (SKAI[1], not SKY), and in other countries.

21x9 (Cinemascope)
A very wide screen format used for theatrical release movies.

Converting Between Aspect Ratios
The problem of converting pictures between different formats has plagued film and television companies for years. Conversions almost always involve compromise and often annoy the end user, the film director, or both.

For example, if we take the 29x9 image above and convert it to a narrower format, we will have to lose quite a large part of the picture. The blue lines show where the picture will be cropped at 16x9, and the red lines show a 4x3 version.

Audio Interview - visual effects guru John Knoll

2008-05-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

Oscar-winning visual effects guru John Knoll (Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Speed Racer) shares the secrets of his career with Luxology president Brad Peebler in a special podcast

Download (Right Click - Save As)

The Industrial Light & Magic vfx supervisor talks about how he leveraged his interests and hobbies into his his goal to be one of the most sought-after artists in his field. Knoll also talks about how he and his brother developed Photoshop and about using his CG mastery in movies as wide-ranging as Willow, The Abyss and Star Wars: Episode I, II and III.

Since Knoll is interviewed by Peebler, he also chats about Luxology’s modo software, which was initially used in as a hobby project and is now slated for a role in an upcoming ILM film. “There are some really wonderful innovations and a lot of thought has gone into workflow,” notes Knoll.

VFX helper’s orkut community launched

2008-04-29T22:37:00.000-07:00

This community is for all the reader of vfxhelper.com.
and all the people who is VFX or want to go in it.
We discuss here all the aspect of Visual effect.

You can also advise what you need in vfxhelper.com

So join this informative community and ask for information and tutorial which you want.

To view the 'VFX Helper' community page, visit:
link

After Effects Tip : Curves Quick Reference Guide

2008-04-22T23:27:00.000-07:00

This guide shows you how to use Curves similar to the way you use Levels, but keep in mind that Curves’ real strength lays in the fact that you can add multiple points to each curve. Amongst other things, this allows you to make corrections to one part of an image’s dynamic range without affecting another. Keep in mind also that unlike Levels, lowering the equivalent of Output White and Output Black in Curves changes the gamma.

After Effects Tip : Levels Quick Reference Guide

2008-04-22T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is a quick reference guide that I can use in conjunction with Levels to make things clearer.
so please go ahead and use if yourself, you may find yourself using Levels a lot more from now on. Have fun.

Imagineer Systems Launches Dynamic, Modular, Collaborative VFX Architecture at NAB 2008

2008-04-22T23:07:00.000-07:00

Imagineer Systems (www.imagineersystems.com), creators of next-generation VFX tools, today announced the arrival of mogul. Conceived through customer dialogue and designed and developed by Imagineer Systems, mogul is an entirely new open, collaborative VFX architecture supporting a suite of tightly integrated, modular VFX systems and applications.

mogul is the industry's first collaborative VFX architecture to provide an open platform that unites common design facility talents, such as editing, compositing, 3D design and modelling, and empowers designers in a new VFX workflow that more closely fits the way artists work. Additionally, mogul enables powerful new collaboration capabilities critical in today's deadline-intensive, and fiscally demanding business climate and offers an innovative new subscription-based pricing model, ensuring mogul is accessible, viable and affordable for facilities of any size or budget.

Modular, integrated cross-platform VFX desktop applications that seamlessly plug into the mogul architecture will include rotoscoping, 2D and 3D tracking, paint, and node-based compositing -- all built on mogul's powerful new 3D engine.

mogul is an open architecture, and provides a path for all users -- of Imagineer Systems current products, as well as those from discreet, Avid, Quantel, and many others -- to embrace a tightly integrated, collaborative, inclusive and highly effective visual effects workflow.

mogul Availability

The mogul architecture is complete and is making its industry debut at NAB 2008. mogul systems and applications modules will become available through a phased roll-out, with quarterly developments and subsequent announcements planned throughout 2008.

mogul/review, the disk-based playback and review system, is available immediately. mogul/serve and mogul/browse will be available for shipment in the third quarter 2008.

Tips for After Effects

2008-04-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

Disable Thumbnails in Project Panel

Thought I’d start sharing some tips that have helped me become a better and more productive After Effects user.

Today’s tip is one way to speed up your workflow. In Preferences (Preferences > Display) switch on “Disable Thumbnails in Project Panel”. This prevents AE from updating the thumbnail image at the top of the Project Panel each time you select an item in the panel. This is especially useful when dealing with big images. If you need to preview an image just double click it.

Tools for Rotoscoping

2008-02-04T03:29:00.000-08:00

After Effects
After Effects was the first tool to bring professional compositing motion graphics and effects functionality to the desktop. After Effects was originally developed by CoSA, then aquired by Aldus, which in turn was aquired by Adobe. After Effects had very limited rotoscoping tools in earlier versions, with only one rotospline and no paint tools, but this is slowly changing. Version 4 added multiple rotosplines for cutting mattes, version 5 added vector paint, and version 6.5 has added cloning tools and tracker advancements (we still haven't tested these improvements). It is still lacking b-splines as well as the realtime roto performance found in more advanced roto tools like Commotion. Tip: Red Giant software offers a Commotion to AE roto import plugin

Flint/Flame/Inferno/Fire/Smoke
Discreet’s Advanced System, which include Flint, Flame, Inferno, Fire, and Smoke, run on SGI workstations and range in price from $60,000 to over $500,000. These products offer a complete post-production solution, including very powerful and fast rotoscoping tools. The painting and cloning tools are top notch, with excellent brushes and advanced features including brushed based warping. The rotosplining functionality is excellent, though not quite up to par with Commotion due to a lack of b-splines and the inability to play spline over a moving image in realtime. Tracking is very fast and very accurate. Many facilities using Discreet’s advanced systems offset roto work to Macs and PCs running Commotion, Shake or Combustion.

Combustion
In 1997, Discreet aquired Paint and Effect from Denim Software. Paint offered a vector based painting and cloning system for Mac and PC, while Effect offered compositing capabilities. Discreet re-designed the interfaces to make the applications more Discreet like, and merged the two applications into Combustion. Along the way, they also replaced some of the core functionality like Keying, Color Correction, and Tracking with the same tool set found in Discreet’s Advanced Systems. Combustion 2.0 added additional Advanced Systems features, including the same rotosplines found in Flame. Combustion 3.0 took the product even further with an edit operator, flash output and much more, most significantly a flow diagram UI feature that many users feel more comfortable working with. Combustion roto spline files can be opened directly in the larger Inferno/flame/flint products.

Curious gFx Pro
gFx is a relatively new product for the Mac OSX. Unlike other paint programs it is designed around a stong user interface that fully embraces moving footage, as such it can import, composite, track, or stablise footage easily. The spline shapes can not yet be exported and the product does not fully import Photoshop files and maintain their structure, but this is planned for an upcoming release. the product does have specialist wire removal tools and a very friendly and interactive user interface. One of Curious's founders is the man behind Parrallax, and it shows in some of the depth of tools already available, 16bit raster paint with an excellent brush engine, and b-spline rotosplines with an excellent transform points UI, motion blur on splines, grouping splines, selective edge feathering (ie. advanced gradient), and more.

Digital Fusion
Digital Fusion started in Sydney and moved to Toronto, Canada. At one stage a version of Fusion was provided with Alias 3D - but today Eyeone has gained one of the strongest postions in NT/Windows desktop compositing solutions. Eyeon has two main products Digital Fusion and DFX +.
Digital Fusion 4 is eyeon’s flagship product and marks the ninth major release of this powerful compositor. DFX+ 4 is the 8-bit expandable version of eyeon’s image processing software, Digital Fusion. DFX+ is based on the architecture of DF4 and offers a number of significant enhancements to its predecessor, DFX, including the flexible flow, superior character generation, PSD import into separate layers for animation, and more.
Since Shake's move away from NT/Windows DF has provided a powerful cost effective solution.

Shake
Shake has 3 options for Roto, Quickpaint, Quickshape, and Rotoshape. Quickpaint is a procedural paint package inside Shake. You can paint frame by frame and then view in realtime or paint with interpolation. As all the paint elements can be animated over time it is a reasonable roto tool. Quickshape is a basic roto tool, somewhat now completely over shadowed by Rotoshape. Rotoshape allows variable edge softness and logical operations between roto shapes. The rotos in Rotoshapes are classic spline shapes with complex parent child relationships - and velocity based motion blur. For complex rotoscoping this gives very accurate results. Both Rotoshape and quickpaint can use shakes 2D trackers. It is worth noting that given Shake is a node workflow model it is possible to paint or roto through a track or image transform.

PhotoshopThe most ubiquitous graphics application in the world was probably the first digital rotoscoping tool to be used in film and video post production. Though Photoshop was initially intended for still images, it can work with motion by importing frames one at a time or importing filmstrip files from video applications. Photoshop’s brush engine is the benchmark everyone else strives for, and gives excellent control when using pressure sensitive Wacom tablets. The biggest drawback is a lack of a realtime preview of sequential frames. You will not know how well your cloning is working out until you play back your clip in realtime at full resolution. After painting numerous frames in Photoshop, the sequence must be brought back into an editing or compositing application such as Final Cut Pro to see realtime playback. This is a painfully slow way of working. And since it isn’t intended for video, it lacks travelling matte capabilities and motion tracking.

Other older products:

Commotion
Developed by Industrial Light and Magic Visual Effects Superviser Scott Squires, Commotion was used for years at ILM before Scott formed Puffin Designs and released it to the public. Commotion, then called Flipbook, was often sighted at ILM and mistakenly referred to as the “secret ILM motion version of Photoshop”. Though Commotion looked very similar to Photoshop in some respects, Commotion’s interface and tools were designed for moving images, and was the first tool on the desktop to offer realtime ram based playback. This realtime core functionality was the foundation for all of the roto tools added as the product developed. Advanced roto tools include raster based paint, spatial and temporal cloning, wire removal tools, auto-paint, unlimited bezier and natural cubic b-splines, motion blur on rotosplines, and a very fast and accurate motion tracker. Commotion quickly became the de-facto roto tool in the industry, replacing Matador in most post facilities. Puffin Designs was aquired by Pinnacle Systems in 2000, but sadly development has stopped on the product, most if not all the original developers has long since left and no new work has really been done on the product in the last 3 years. Importantly Commotion curves can be exported and imported into AfterEffects, see AE above.

Matador
Matador was originally developed by Brittish developer Parralax, and acquired by Avid along with Parralax’ compositing application Illusion. Available only on the SGI platform and priced around $15,000, Matador was one of the first digital rotoscoping tools which gained a wide acceptance in the film post production pipeline. Matador started as a tool made for editing still images, so many of the tools used for motion work were not well thought out. Matador provides excellent matte creation tools including b-splines, motion tracking, and a full set of painting and cloning tools, with full 16bit/channel support. Avid stopped development of Matador in the late 90’s. The original developers tried to spin it off into a new company called “Blue”, but that never took off.
There are new Roto tools that have now been incorporated into Softimage XSI compositor in V.4, but these are not Matador - as many people believe.

Aura
Newtek is mostly known for their 3D application Lightwave. Aura was a stand-alone paint application designed for film and video. It hasn’t become widely accepted in the industry, and mostly used by Lightwave users to finesse 3D renders. Some advanced features include a 16bit/channel paint engine, and auto-paint. Newtek has now stopped supporting the program and as of June 2003 with Lightwave 3D 7.5 - Newtek offers DFX+ at no additional cost.

Roto DV
Originally developed as a product named “Roto” by a failed start-up company called Post Digital, Roto DV was aquired by Radius, which later turned it’s name into Digital Origin, and then was aquired by Media100. Though it was called Roto, it actually didn’t have very sophisticated roto tools, and the ones that were actually pretty cool never made it into the shipping product. Media100 has no information on their website about this product, so we assume it is no longer developed or supported.

Sourse - fxguide.com

Techniques of rotoscoping

2008-02-04T03:16:00.000-08:00

Analog Rotoscoping for Visual Effects
While the technique is useful for animation, rotoscoping eventually became an important tool for visual effects in general. From the 1940s through the 1960s, U.B. Iwerks, a well-known animator, turned to effects work, where he pioneered the use of the rotoscope on films such as Alfred Hitchcock's “The Birds” (1963).

Rotoscoping in visual effects was used primarily to make holdout mattes. "You frequently want to composite different elements into the same shot to create that shot," explained Tom Bertino, who was head of Industrial Light & Magic’s rotoscoping department from 1987-93. "By using the tracing to create black mattes, you can hold out certain elements."

For example, Bertino imagines a scene of an explosion behind two people on-screen, where the explosion is added after the fact. "You could print the explosion over the frame. But you'd also cover up the people," he said. "You'd need to isolate them with the rotoscope." To make a traditional holdout matte, a rotoscope artist would trace the figures that had to be isolated onto an animation cel. The outline traced onto the cel then would be filled in with black paint, so that it would block the appropriate section of the frame. "You create a solid black matte," Bertino said. This black matte then could "hold out" the part of the explosion image where the two people would appear, so that when the two images were printed together, the people would appear to be in front of the explosion.

Rotoscoping also could be used to stabilize a shaky film image. To do stabilization, each film frame was rotoscoped onto an alignment chart. A comparison of the charts allowed changes in position to be tracked from frame to frame. Using this information, an optical copy of the film could be made, with the printer offsetting the shifts in each frame's movement.

Bertino said people underestimate the difficulty of rotoscoping during the photochemical era: "It was a painstaking process. There were so many moving parts to the rotoscope camera, and so many places for things to get out of hand." Rather than being a refuge for the unskilled artist, he added, rotoscoping was a demanding craft. "The rotoscoper had to be a skilled animator to make the line follow through. That's actually something that plagued some early uses of the rotoscope as a special effects tool -- without actual animators to handle it, it could get jittery."

Good rotoscope artists were very precise about their work. "It was so exacting," Bertino said. "It's almost like -- I don't know if you’ve ever seen those incredibly detailed Chinese tapestries that they made in the monasteries generations ago. They finally stopped making them because the artisans would go blind. I'm surprised that more rotoscopers didn't go that route."

Jack Mongovan, a paint and rotoscope supervisor at ILM, began his career in traditional rotoscoping and has been working in the field for 19 years. He remembers working in rooms that were completely dark except for the light coming out of the projector. The rotoscope artists were at the mercy of the painters who would later fill in their outlines, and who could with a few stray brushstrokes outside the outline make the image suddenly jittery. "I would never go back to traditional for anything," Mongovan said.

Digital rotoscoping for Visual Effects
Today, rotoscoping is done in the computer, using programs such as Shake, FFI and Pinnacle Commotion. The shift to computer-based rotoscoping began in the early 1990s with a software called Colorburst, an image editing tool like Photoshop, that later evolved into Matador. "When computers became prodigiously viable around here, right after the 'Terminator 2'/'Jurassic Park' era, we realized that the computer had great capabilities for this," Bertino said. "It obviously became much simpler."

Mongovan said that today, one rotoscope artist can do the same amount of work that eight used to do, and in one quarter of the time. This is often because in traditional rotoscoping, each frame had to be drawn individually. The computer, on the other hand, can use the previous frame as a basis, which means most of the drawing may already be done.

Rotoscoping software works using splines, which are a series of points connected by a line or curve. These splines are adjusted from frame to frame, so that they continue to conform to whatever shape the artist is tracing. Because rotoscoping software includes the tools to paint an image, rotoscope artists now find themselves doing a lot of paint work as well. "Rotoscoping is becoming the lesser part of what we do," Mongovan said. "We do so much more painting." Painting might mean taking someone out of a shot, or replacing a sky, or painting out the tennis balls used as visual effects tracking markers.

Some skills remain necessary, including a sense of what is important. "One of the hardest things for people to do in our department is to realize that they're looking at a very zoomed-up plate," Mongovan said. Also, he pointed out, a movie audience will see an image for only 1/24th of a second, too short a time to register flaws that may torture the artists. More important is consistency. "I tell people, 'You can paint that first frame wrong, just keep it wrong it all the way through.'"

That kind of understanding is key, Bertino agreed. "The secret to good rotoscoping has always been -- regardless of what it's used for -- an educated eye and good judgment as to what to include and what to leave out," he said. "Most people think the rotoscope is very literal -- you trace what's there, and that's it. It's possible to put too much detail and confuse matters. You need to have that sense for judicious editing. That hasn't changed at all. And not everybody's got that."

Source – fxguide | All material is copywriter@ fxguide.com|

History of rotoscoping

2008-02-04T02:26:00.000-08:00

Rotoscoping is the process of manually altering film or video footage one frame at a time. The frames can be painted on arbitrarily to create custom animated effects like lightning or light-sabres, or traced to create realistic traditional style animation or to produce hold-out mattes for compositing elements in a scene.

As a VFX artist, you are primarily creating motion graphics or visual effects. Without a thorough knowledge of rotoscoping and how it fits into the modern digital pipeline, you are limiting just how far you can take an effect or design.

The art of rotoscoping changed considerably with the introduction of digital tools such as Commotion, Digital Fusion (DF), Shake, Combustion (C3) and After Effects (AE). With a thorough knowledge of rotoscoping, digital artists can create better live-action or CG composites as well as amazing visual effects. Various rotoscoping techniques are covered below, including matte creation, effects painting, paint touchup, digital cloning, and motion tracking as well as a brief history of the craft.

Historical overview of rotoscoping

Fleischer Studios
A true pioneer of animation, Max Fleischer produced the Popeye and Betty Boop animated series, as well as the animated features “Gulliver’s Travels” and "Mr. Bug Goes to Town." With his brother Dave, he founded the Fleischer Studios in the early 1920’s, which offered a less sentimental animated vision of the world than the rival Disney studio. Perhaps most importantly, Fleischer invented the rotoscope, a device that changed the look of animation forever.

Born in Vienna Austria in 1883, Max Fleischer immigrated with his family to America at the age of four. His artistic skills were quickly recognized, and instead of attending public high school he opted for the Art Students League in New York. While attending school he landed his first job at the Brooklyn Daily News, where he worked as an assistant in the cartoon department. Within a few years, he was a full-time staff artist with his own comic strip. He then moved on to Popular Science Monthly, which sparked a life-long fascination with machinery and inventions. While working at this magazine, Fleischer began working on his plans to create the rotoscope.

Early animated films were crude, jerky and difficult to look at. They were not very popular and were only tolerated because they were a curiosity. Max Fleischer aimed to change this by inventing a device that would allow them to project live action film onto the glass of an animation stand. The animators could then place paper on the animation stand and trace the live action footage one frame at a time. This device, named a Rotoscope, was patented by Max Fleischer in 1917.

In a 1920 New York Times interview, Fleischer said, "An artist, for example, will simply sit down and, with a certain character in mind, draw the figures that are to make it animated. If he wants an arm to move, he will draw the figure several times with the arm in the positions necessary to give it motion on the screen. The probability is that the resulting movement will be mechanical, unnatural, because the whole position of his figure's body would not correspond to that which a human body would take in the same motion. With only the aid of his imagination, an artist cannot, as a rule, get the perspective and related motions of reality."

The rotoscope, though, allowed animators to work from a filmed image, which gave them the guidance they needed to create more graceful and realistic movement on screen. "It was beautiful to watch, rather than very annoying to watch," Fleischer said.

The first cartoons created by the Fleischers using the Rotoscope were the Koko the Clown series, and then went on to utilize it in Betty Boop and Popeye. Though they used rotoscoping to create the main characters, they continued to rely on traditional rubber hose style animation in their cartoons. The Fleischers pioneered other traditional animation priniciples in their studio which changed the face of modern animation, right up to today. Most animators at the time would use the technique of “Straight Ahead Action”. Animators would simply start drawing their sequences at the beginning and straight ahead to the end. The Fleischers used another technique called “Pose to Pose” animation, in which the animators would produce main extreme poses, or keyframes, then fill in the in-betweens. The difference was that the Fleischers would have assistants draw the in-betweens while the lead animators moved on to create more keyframes. Though at the time this eventually led to labor problems and striking workers at Fleischer Studios, the practice is still used today by traditional cel animation companies, and has been translated into the automatic “tweening” processes found in computer based animation tools.

Disney
During the 1930s, the Fleischers found themselves in an on-going competition with another animator -- Walt Disney. The Fleischers and Disney constantly raced one another to each new milestone in animation -- first sound cartoon, first color cartoon, and first feature. But according to Max Fleischer’s son, Richard Fleischer, Max and Dave often came in second, largely because the studio behind them, Paramount, didn't offer the support they needed.

Walt Disney also turned to rotoscoping, for “Snow White”. At the time, Fleischer considered suing Disney for patent violation, but in doing preliminary research, his attorneys discovered that before Fleischer's patent, a company in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., had created a device similar to the rotoscope. The company, Bosworth, Defresnes and Felton, had never patented it, so Fleischer actually was entitled to sue, but he evidently lost interest in pursuing the Disney case after hearing about the earlier machine.

The movements of Snow White herself were acted out by a high school student named Marjorie Belcher, later known as dancer Marge Champion. Initially, Disney intended to use Belcher's movements as a guide for the dancing in the cartoon, but soon he opted to use it more extensively. This was partly because the animators otherwise used themselves and their own facial expressions as the basis for their characters' faces, Disney explained. "The artists looking at themselves in a mirror sometimes were not so successful, because they were bad actors and would do things in a stiff way," he wrote.

Nevertheless, some of the Disney animators looked down on the idea of rotoscoping. One of them, Don Graham, derided the technique as a "crutch" for artists who lacked the skill to do their work on their own. Another, Grim Natwick, said that even when the artists used the device, they used it only as the basis for their work, adding heavy elaboration and even changing the proportions of the original filmed figures. "We went beyond rotoscope," he said.

But rival animator Walter Lantz criticized the look of the rotoscoped work in "Snow White." In press materials for his own project, "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp," Lantz declared he would use the rotoscope only for timing because of what he saw as its limitations, especially in Disney's film. "This literal system resulted in two faults -- a jittering movement that contrasted with the fluidity of the animals, and the fact that the human characters were too accurate to be seen beside the caricatures," he said.

Yet rotoscoping did help the artists on "Snow White" maintain a consistency that might otherwise have been impossible. On earlier animated shorts, each character was done by a single animator; as a result, the characters had a unity of style. Because "Snow White" was so extensive, however, more than one artist had to work on each character. Working from live-action footage offered them the best way to create a cohesive look.
Sourse - fxguide|All material is copywriter@ fxguide.com|

Some of the tips while filming for VFX

2007-12-20T11:03:00.000-08:00

Using Yellow Markers on Green :- On green screen - use yellow markers and separate the components separately for tracking and keying.Note that if you use the green channel only, the markers are easily keyed and you avoid time consuming marker removal. The red channel provides a great high contrast image for tracking.
Marker Placement for 3D Tracks:- If you are filming a greenscreen, it is important to not just have markers on the same flat greenscreen background, markers need to be at different distances from the camera for a good 3D solution.
Keep the Greenscreen in Focus When it Makes Sense:- For compositors, this is a pretty obvious tip. Sure, there are times when this isn't a steadfast rule and the lens choice requires a soft-focus background. But we mention it here because you might be surprised how many times this isn't simply basic procedure on set. It never hurts to mention it on a technical call, especially if you're not going to be on set for the supervision. The first time you get back some footage with all the tracking marks way out of focus and you don't need it that way, you'll remember to mention this.

Art of Keying A to Z (part 2)

2007-12-16T22:16:00.000-08:00

1997

Keylight was developed by CFC but it was extended and marketed globally by the Foundry in London. Keylight was originally written by Wolfgang Lempp, who is now the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Filmlight. Keylight was written initially as a Cineon plugin, and has been coded by Bruno Nicoletti at the Foundry since 1997.

Within a year of Apple buying Nothing Real, Keylight became standard in Shake. However, the development is independent of the work done at the Foundry - they are completely two separate development efforts now. The Floating point version developed by the Foundry can be used as a plugin to Shake 3.

Around this time Quantel released the Additive keyer for the Henry. This was a major advance for the Henry community.

1998

In December 98, two years after Pettigrew set out to write a completely new keyer for discreet, the Modular Keyer (MK) was added in inferno 3. According to Pettigrew, the MK was based on three aims: it needed to be fast to compute - "as machines back then were still pretty slow", it had to have direct response of the solution, and be extremely precise.

The first of Pettigrew's new generation of keyers was a 3D keyer which was packaged inside the MK. The keyer showed graphically for the first time the actual 3D histogram and allowed for direct manipulation of the 3 dimensional point cloud solution. The Modular Keyer itself is a baby version of the batch module and allows multilayered keying and masking inside a single layer of the comp. Coupled with the primary key, the program allows for additional patches to be added independently to the solution. The 3D keyer is still a remarkable keyer, but some users were intimidated by the sheer detail of the user interface and the module suffered as it polarized users into those who couldn't get into it and those who swore by it.

The MK also included the new Colour Warper node which, in addition to colour correcting, had yet another keyer for doing secondary grading. This keyer with its much simpler user interface and very precise knife-like accuracy - especially at low chroma levels - would be released separately as the Diamond Keyer. It was incorporated into a range of discreet products including Combustion 4.

Another small but significant plugin keyer is Zbig. It was developed at Berlin's Center for New Visual Design (CFB) and is an advanced chroma-key compositing plugin avaliable for use with programs such as Digital Fusion and Illusion. Zbig includes tools such as intelligent spill replacement, shadow adjustment, colour correction and many others that help create convincing and 'invisible' composites.

Its original author Zbig Rybczynski is an extremely successful film maker. His work in film and video has earned him 3 MTv Music Video Awards, three American Video Awards, three Monitor Awards for Best Director, the 1986 Billboard Music Video Award for Most Innovative Video, and many others. After working at the CFB between 1994-2001 on compositing and motion control, in 2001 he moved back to Los Angeles and became a member of Ultimatte's and iMatte's creative teams.

Zbig is currently continuing his filmmaking career

2000

In 2000, keying miniDV footage became a real problem. The reduced chroma bandwidth of 4:2:0 or 4:1:1 means that most traditional keyers produce a 'boiling' flickering edge when keying miniDV footage. Ben Syverson -- having just bought a PowerComputing Mac clone with 640x480, full motion video input, an educational copy of Adobe After Effects, and Metrowerks CodeWarrior -- was really fascinated to know why a "difference matte" wouldn't work for removing a foreground object from any background. In the years to come this would lead to producing a range of dv keyers.

He started with cracking open the Adobe After Effects 3.1 SDK, and hacking around with the "Checkout" code example. "I believe (the code) is still in the current SDK," explains Syverson. "After a few tortuous nights trying to figure out how to access two images in the same code block, I figured it out, and I wrote DeltaMatte, which was a simple difference keyer. DeltaMatte (and difference matting in general) quickly proved relatively useless for real keying, so I started researching other keyers and what made them tick. I downloaded the demo of Ultimatte and was very impressed".

After many experiments (including some logic-based keyers), he had produced IndyMatte which was fairly similar to Ultimatte. Syverson wrote a few other tools (a filter designed to help with sky replacements, a color matching tool, etc), and released it to the world as The Matte Pack, under his company, Kaleidafex. He put an ad in the Mighty Joe Young issue of Cinefex, and signed an agent and representative but he never made a single sale.

2001

In late 2001, Syverson started working on dvMatte, a sort of hacked version of IndyMatte that would blur the image before it was keyed. This helped out a lot for DV footage, "so I approached Alex Lindsay (of dvGarage) about including it in The Composite Toolkit, a disk I knew they were working on," says Syverson. "I told them they could have it for free, but they insisted on paying me for it! In August 2002, a couple days before my birthday, the Composite Toolkit was released, and people started using dvmatte", he explains proudly.

2003

In 2003, it became apparent to Syverson that simply blurring the key was not sufficient. The resulting matte was too soft and not detailed enough. "I thought about the problem, and I realized that you could approach the matte as a two-pass process; base matte and detail matte. You could constrain the base matte so that it just filled in the interior, and rely on the detail matte for the edges. The best way I could see to add detail was to pull it from the luma channel, which is relatively pristine. I added the resulting mattes together, and voila, dvmatte pro. I think Alex Lindsay of dvGarage.com first reaction was "Holy shit!" We released the day after my birthday, on August 9th, 2003." After that came dvmatte pro 1.5 for Final Cut Pro, and then After Effects with simplified controls, light wrap, and some color correction tools.

From 1999 until the now famous 'NAB toxik intervention' of 2002, Pettigrew worked in the toxik project at the then-named Discreet. "Working on tools was painful as the the tools had no foundation to work on," says Pettigrew. During this frustrating period he developed his ideas on a new one button fast keyer. Returning to the flame team in July of 2002, Pettigrew started work on his final keyer for discreet - the Master Keyer - shown only months later at the 2003 discreet user group at NAB in Las Vegas. The Master Keyer was released in late 2003 and in 2004 it was shown integrated into the Batch module - just as Pettigrew was leaving the company. Pettigrew left and joined the Apple Pro Applications division and while his work there is confidential, he is working on core research which should be available for all Pro apps in the future.

2004

Master Keyer was added in inferno 5.5/flame 8.5 in early 2004. This keyer is a response to the simplicity of keyers such as Primatte and the perception that the 3D keyer in the Modular Keyer was too complex. The Master Keyer introduced a few major advances, first was that unlike the 3D Keyer - patches are intergrated into the primary solution and not band-aids, second that the program will suggest which parameters at any pixel on the screen are most likely to contribute to adjusting the key - and in order of recommendation.. (these include the Range A to E parameters), and finally it performs a very complex andremarkably good foreground colour correction to balance the foreground into the scene.

2005

After going back to the drawing board, the new Toxik is released. A great achievement, Toxik has as one of its central points a floating point/HDR pipeline. All the previous user interface models for keying were designed to key values from 0 to 1 or to work within hue spectrums of video. So the first problem is that the user can pick values that cannot be represented by these models. In addition, explains Toxik product manager Chris Vienneau, "the value in HDR files often times spike dramatically especially when you have images of the sun so pulling keys with soft edges is difficult with mixed light scenes. This is also a problem with the traditional edge filters which can cause banding because the sampling is done by averaging so if you are averaging from 50000 to 0.4 you will not get the gradation you expect".

Other than that the benefit of having the extra information available within a Cineon file (mid-dynamic range) is especially useful for green-screen footage as there are several f-stops available in a scan. With the Photo Lab tool, points out Vienneau, " several keyers and some matte combining tools you can pull several different keys with different exposures and combine them together to make a final key. Traditionally this would have been done by rescanning the image or applying different luts on import. This can be problematic if the scanner (a mechanical process) is off on the second or third pass".

Looking to the future, companies such as the Foundry are developing new technologies, Furnace plugins for apps such as Flame and Shake offer a range of new matte extraction tools based on colour, edges and in some cases movement optical flow tracking.

Another company advancing these techniques is imagineer. The Mokey product uses plane tracking techniques to provide object mattes. Interestingly, its sister product Monet - provides as part of its tracking placement tools, the ability to key off and under reflections on glass, by comparing a range of frames, the program isolates reflections and area lighting/shading allowing keying under shadows and highlights. These techniques are not yet refined but they show promise and are generally moving away from defining matte based on what could be called traditional methods.

The Motion version of Primatte is written for the GPU just like dvmatte. The difference is that dvmatte is usable on DV, HD and HDV footage. The Motion version of Primatte is only usable for uncompressed video or film footage, which renders it useless; no one is doing high-end film compositing in Motion. "I also highly doubt they're doing the full Primatte process, which involves a complex 3D shape in RGB space. I think the accelerated Primatte is mostly intended as a proof of concept, and perhaps even to attract developers. If that's the case, it worked for me, because seeing our "competition" running so quickly definitely kicked my ass into gear" says Syverson.

dvMatte Blast is written directly for the GPU using FxPlug and runs hundreds of times faster than the CPU version. "It's fun and gratifying work to see that kind of an improvement," says Syverson. "HDV has a slightly different chroma arrangement than DV-NTSC, but otherwise, it's like 'big DV'. We treat it exactly the same."

According to Syverson "The SDK of the FxPlug architecture is wonderful. The Motion team should be commended for exposing this functionality when every other product clings to a CPU-only model. Motion gets written off as a toy, but with a full curve editor, accelerated 16bit and 32bit floating point support, nest-able layers, and a GPU-oriented SDK, it's far more powerful for raw compositing than Adobe's current offering."

Whats Next ?

Keying is such a vital area of visual effects, research continues to both improve the quality of the key and easy of use of the module.While it is not strictly keying in the greenscreen sense - there are a host of new matte generating tools that extract mattes via a range of different technologies.
Even as we go to press (online) new keyers are being tested and will be launched very shortly, (NDA on the details- but check back and we'll post updates very soon).

Green or Blue?
The age old question is should one shoot against blue or green screen. Many factors influence the decision, the most obvious being what colours are represented in the foreground subject. For a while prior to the Vision 2 stocks - the film stock itself was grainier in the blue channel, and hence green screen grew in popularity. One urban myth is that human skin contains a lot more green than blue and so blue screen should be better, in fact this is only true of blond hair - which is often better shot against blue - but human skin while not equally balanced in its green and blue components - easily keys from either blue or green screen.

Ten years ago blue screen was popular due to ILMs widely known preference for Blue screen - but in reality ILM had special custom tools tuned to blue screens - unfortunately just using a screen the same colour as ILM did not result in Star Wars quality composites for those who tried to copy ILM !!

In today's terms when using a colour difference keyer it is ideal to use as pure a green or blue colour as possible. For other keyers the secret lies in having an even screen - without great colour or luminance variation. Some of the best keys are drawn from red screens (often used in the old days for model work), a very narrow red part of the spectrum could be produced with special red fluro lights - enabling very accurate keys on minitures such as space ships.

The State of the Art

Zmatte

The standalone Zbig Software was available on the market since 1998 as a chroma key/compositing program and as a plug-in for many standard programs, (Fusion, Illusion and others)
A unique feature of Zbig Software is the automatic and dynamic application of background color reflections onto the composed foreground, resulting in an extremely convincing composition.

Ultra Keyer

Fusion keyer

- Five modes of spill suppression to eliminate difficult reflection halos.
- Animated garbage mattes for isolating rigging and set elements.
- Adjustable edge gamma and fringe color correction.
- Matte thresholding for semi-transparent region replacement.
- Matte blur, gamma, and contrast control for post key processing of the matte.
- Advanced color selection includes a more varied range than traditional "select" and "soften" style keyers

Keylight

The keyer is effectively a colour difference keyer, so it works better on primary colour, and according to the Foundry's Bruno Nicoletti "to work well it needs a high primary saturation" in the keying background. Keylight's strength comes from the algorithm that allow the spill removal to become an intrinsic part of the process. Recently, it has been upgraded to a full float implementation on Shake, but this is only currently as a plugin. The version shipping with Shake 4 now respects Float and no longer clamps to 16 bit. Even with Keylight's great foreground colour correct, in a floating pipeline in Shake, it is often only used for key or matte generation and not for the key & comp of the foreground and background. The work of CFC in pioneering their compositing pipeline caused them to get a technical achievement award in 1996. Keylight anecdotally is thought to be best on transparent items such as sheer fabric - glass ware and say soft hair. There is now Linux & Burn support for Keylight. When using the Keylight controls fg bias work best with near neutral colours. Nicoletti has also written a great new 64 bit version of Keylight for Discreet (A M&E) products which also has improvements to the matte processing and colour correction tools.

dvMatte and dvMatte Blast

Plugins for programs such as Final Cut Pro and Motion, these keyers are from dvGarage, which has worked hard to make formats such as Mini-dv be viable for keying work. While these keyers will work great on normal footage, it is their ability to key compressed 4:2:0 and 4:1:1 footage that significantly advanced the art of keying. DvBlast also is one of the first programs to achieve extremely fast HD keying using the GPU power of the G5 Apple real time tool box.

Primatte

Primatte today runs on a wide variety of OS - LINUX, OSX, NT IRIX etc. Primatte is one of the most widely available plugin keyers, from Flame, Smoke to Fusion, Shake, Quantel, AE, Photoshop, Nuke and others. When using Primatte's controls the fgbias effect the f/g colour & Matte opacity, the key controls are the shadow gain, mid gain and highlight gain.

For a full discussion of Primatte listen to our fxpodcast with Scott Gross of IMAGICA Corporation of America by clicking the links at the top of this page. Scott has been involved with Primatte from the beginning and he explains not only the keyer's approach but much of its history.

Ultimatte

Ultimatte, Primatte and Keylight all share the same problem in Flame - the lack of being able to use them inside Action. It is useful to think of the Ultimatte process as a mixing process, not a keying process. This makes it possible to matte with shadows, hair, water etc. An Ultimatte uses the intensity and purity of the blue signal as a function to determine how much blending to perform between the foreground and background images. Another useful feature of the Ultimatte is the previously mentioned blue spill removal. Other circuits deal with glare, uneven or dirty blue backings, etc. Modern units from the Model V on up can independently adjust the color of the background and foreground plates. An Ultimatte used to have many knobs on its front panel, but the new digital units use a display screen and multifunction controls. The Current Model is the "9" and there are also models for High Definition work.

Flame RGB/RGBCYMK "old school keyers"

There is a set of keyers in Flame in what used to be the Old keyer - which ironically is where the Master Keyer was added to. These keyers are simple and often not very useful. They are linear in the sense that they have no 3D aspects - such as Lum key or a simple green or blue screen keyer. To get good keys with the RGBCYMK keyer it was often required to have multiple layers in action each contributing a bit and being individually masked.

Difference Keyer

For many years Flame had a desktop difference keyer which was not particularly popular, with the addition of the Modular keyer it became accessible from inside Action - but the use of it breaks the GUI paradigm, since you to use it you import images directly into the modular keyer which is inside action - from the desktop -skipping the whole main action menu and layers system. This step is so odd many flame artists don't even know they can do it.

Modular Keyer / 3D keyer

This was the first keyer to visualize the 3D colour space and explicitly show the keying cloud and patches. As such it is both a very powerful keyer and a more complex UI than any other keyer. This complexity was increased by providing the 3D keyer inside a 'babybatch' user interface of the modular keyer. The Modular keyer itself allows for multiple keys - layers, masked off foreground colour corrections and rotos - all in one packaged up action layer. The Modular Keyer is about the most powerful keyer due to its direct access to just about every aspect and some cool tools in the 3D keyer that does interactive variation analysis (labeled noise) - and the on screen ability to quickly interactively adjust the marginal areas of a key. Unlike the Master Keyer it is not a single button click solution. Its reputation is handling keys that are not actually green or blue screens, such as keying skies off HDCAM or keying people off grass, etc.

The MK is not included in Smoke or Flint.. an extremely odd shortsighted marketing decision from Autodesk M&E.

Diamond Keyer/Colour Warper - Combustion, Toxik, FFI

The Colour Warper includes a keyer to allow for secondary colour grading. As it is vital to isolating a particular shade of say yellow during a colour correction - the Colour Warper has a keyer. This keyer has been repackaged as the Diamond keyer in Combustion 4. The reason it is called the Diamond Keyer is the sharp diamond shape of the defining key in the UI. Its name is not a PR or marketing expression it is a reflection of this UI, and the UI is a very accurate representation of the underlying algorithm. It could just as easily been called the knife keyer - as the sharp peak of the key defining shape allows for very precise keying especially in low chroma areas. By comparison the 3D Keyer is a puffy cloud and not razor sharp near the grey scale center line of the 3D cube.

Master Keyer

Relatively recently the Master Keyer was added to FFIS. This keyer is a response to the simplicity of keyers such as Primatte and the perception that the 3D keyer in the Modular Keyer was too complex. as a result the Master Keyer - while brilliant - has been dumbed down enormously. The clearest indication of this is the fact that the primary heads on adjustments are called Range A, Range B, etc to RangeE. No where in the primary manual were these controls explained or examples of their use given- heck they are not even mentioned.

It also has some great edge controls for adjusting the luminance of the edge or the blending of the edge - if the luminance of the green screen miss-matched the comp. The Master Keyer uses a 3D colour cube solution just like the 3D keyer - but you'd never know that from the UI! The Range controls are adjusting the key in various axis around the key point in 3 dimensions - on various planar slices through the 3D cube. There are 3D Quicktimes of the exact operation of each on fxguide.com. It is perhaps not overstating it to say that the Master Keyer is the keyer almost everyone goes to first. If it works, they stay there and only on extremely hard keys do most people move on to the Modular Keyer.

source

all the content in this post is from fxpodcast.com| All rights reserved @fxpodcast.com|

Art of Keying A to Z (part 1)

2007-12-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

BC - (Before Computers)
Keying and matting have a long history. Visual Effects most core technique is compositing - since the dawn of film making itself, we have wanted and needed to extract parts of one scene and place them convincingly in another. In it's earliest form, it involved photographic processes such as simple multiple exposures onto the same piece of film. Very manual techniques such as hand painting opaque liquid around objects directly onto film (the precursor to digital rotoscoping) were employed but were insanely laborious and nigh-impossible to execute with any realism.

More ingenious photographic and optical minds got to work on how to do this kind of automatically using photochemical processes. The pioneers worked out that film chemistry provided them with some emulsion layers that could be chemically isolated by colour, so if they shot a subject against a specific coloured background they could generate their matte shapes almost automatically. The most successful colour turned out to be blue so that became the most popular background for shots to be matted.

Surprisingly the basic principles of combining images onto photographic film, "optical compositing", are very similar to digital compositing. Let's say we want to put object "A" into background "B".

1. A cutout shape is made for the "A" object that is to be extracted ... basically a black matte with a window in it. This isolates our "A" object.

Negative film is blank until it receives light - but once it does receive it, it builds up until it is fully exposed so you can't just double expose our "A" object into the "B" background. We need to make an unexposed black hole to burn it into.

2. A direct inverse of the "A" matte is made .. a "holdout matte" which is a window with a black shape in it.

3. This holdout matte is physically sandwiched with the "B" film element and rephotographed onto a new negative giving us a black unexposed hole the exact shape of the "A" object.

4. New film is then rewound, our â€œA" element is physically sandwiched with itâ€™s â€œA" matte shape and double-exposed into the hole left from step 3. Voila, the elements are combined.

Even though we donâ€™t need to see this happening in digital compositing, the same principles really are being applied behind the scenes. Just like a negative, a digital file with no information is â€œblack" like unexposed film. Once a pixel has values it has been exposed and they build until it is white. In other words, you still have to make a hole in your â€œB" background to add the â€œA" foreground to. Rather than being done photochemically itâ€™s now done mathematically of course.

This of course deals only with the most basic requirements of compositing - nuts and bolts. The real juice is in achieving a realistic composite. If we want our audience to believe that our composite really was all exposed on the same piece of film at the same time we have to to deal with a whole range of other issues such as edge quality, colour fringing, motion artifacts, colour and contrast balancing and grain matching.

For instance if you shoot a red-brown haired subject against a blue background the softer fringe of their hair will pass through magenta colour on the way to the blue. Composite this over a green leafy background and the hair fringe will look wrong.
Likewise, the soft blurred edge of a moving object should reveal back to blend with the detail in the new background plate, not just a blue blurry smudge of the bluescreen background.

Early digital keyers had no tools to deal with these issues and required operators to devise complex workaround techniques to achieve good results.

Digital keying
We have chosen to tell the story of modern digital keyers, but in many respects all keyers today owe an enormous debt to the chemical and optical keyer pioneers from the years before digital keying.

One company that made the move from analogue to digital keying is Ultimatte. Petro Vlahos, a Hollywood special effects pioneer who developed the color-difference blue screen process for the Motion Picture Research Council, founded Ultimatte Corporation, of Chatsworth, California, in 1976. Ultimatte was the original hardware realtime keyer but they also later developed into company offering software plugin keying. Ultimatte was revolutionary. Fast - accurate and the backbone of news and on air keying for many many years.

The original idea of the Ultimatte algorithm was originally derived from the optical processing of film using the blue-screen process. It was very simple because the inventor's concept was based on simple operations (for equations: see below), which can be achieved using the chemical and optical characteristics of film processing. Although the latest equations seem to be much more complex, they have really just modified the basic equation by adding some offsets, increasing the conditional branches and by multiplying some coefficients.

i) if (R < G) E = B - G

ii) if (R > G) E = R - B

Ultimatte was the first company to apply the algorithm to a real-time analog video device. The constraints of the analog architecture and real-time processing in the 70's limited any improvements of the composite algorithm itself. By using the older, simple algorithm, they had to overcome real-world compositing problems using some tiny tricks. Whenever they invented their tricks, they got patents on them. These tricks are so intricate that a competitor can spend hundreds of hours figuring out how they work, only to find that they are nothing but a trick to make the original algorithm work better in particular case or type of shot.

The numerical manipulation capabilities of today's silicon now allows the industry to come up with much more sophisticated image processing capabilities than the early realtime analog solutions.

1992 - 1994
Primatte was originally developed by IMAGICA Corp. (Tokyo) in 1992. The basic algorithm utilized in Primatte was originally presented at the 8th NICOGRAPH Conference and the 23rd Imaging Technology Conference and a U.S. patent was granted in 1994. It uses a scheme not unlike the 3D keyer of the Modular Keyer - which uses not only colour but luminance information. The color component has three primary attributes: Hue, Saturation, and Luminance. The mixture of Hue and Saturation is called Chromaticity - Chromaticity sees no difference between light red and dark red since there is no luminance component. A pure chroma keyer is keying on this basis and hence is not very powerful.

As the world of colour is a three dimensional world (r g and b axis of a colour cube), Primatte aimed to build a key cloud effectively that would therefore be better at keying colours that aren't just perfect green or blue screens. The key shape is actually a 128 faceted polyhedron. To avoid sharp keys, a lot of math is needed to calculate softness. In a real world keying situation, a hair has its own blue component and that of the blue screen behind it, but both are combined in a pixel on the edge of a key. Primatte aims to isolate the target colour and that of the background to produce a soft "cloud" shape in the 3D cube colour space that spans the two colours. This gradated three dimensional soft cloud defines the key at that edge, in that part of the 3D colour space. What this means is that Primatte is better for non perfect blue and green screens and screens with wilder variation in the "key" colour or what you or I might call a "badly lit blue screen".

1995
In 1995, Ultimatte's first software product was awarded an Oscar. When Ultimatte first made a plugin version of its world famous keyer it was immediately adopted but for a while the initial GUI made it difficult to learn and limited its wide scale adoption. Ultimatte expanded the logic of keying with the addition of its Advantedge product . This interesting addition provided a chance for the compositor to add a clean plate of the background blue/green screen as an additional input. Ultimatte would then effectively difference matted out the imperfections in the green screen.

Discreet's Flame original keyers were written by Andre LeBlanc, who was one of the original gang of four who wrote Flame - and who shared in the 1998 Sci-tech Oscar (awarded to Gary Tregaskis for the primary design; and to Dominique Boisvert, Phillippe Panzini along with LeBlanc). These keyers were 2D implementations based on such things as luminance keying or simple chroma keying. Arriving in 1995 just as Andre LeBlanc was leaving discreet to open a nightclub in Montreal was Daniel Pettigrew. While initially assigned to just improve the shrink, blur and erode functions in these base keyers, - Pettigrew would soon have a dramatic and profound impact on Discreet's keying technology.

1996
Pettigrew's first real contribution was the RGBCMYL keyer in 1996. This keyer was still only a "2D" keyer space algorithm but it opened the door to approaching the data manipulation from a new perspective. "There are not many papers on keying" he comments reflecting back, so much of his work was done from first principles and from directly talking to artists using the tools. The RGBCMYK keyer was added in inferno 2.0/flame 5.0.

Primatte also first appeared in 1996 and sold only one copy as a stand alone application - at which point the decision was reached to sell Primatte as a plugin to other people's applications. Scott Gross of Photron USA recalls when he first showed Primatte - Joe Latterii of ILM and Ron Brinkman - then Chief Scientist at SonyImageworks " just got it immediately - no one else ever understand it so fast - they just got it " - so perhaps it was no surprise that Ron Brinkman when forming Nothing Real and developing Shake decided to license Primatte from Photron. Apple separately develops Primatte for Shake and so complete is Apple's embrace of Primatte that the real time Primatte RT code is microcoded into silicon for use in programs such as Motion.

Apple is not alone - Quantel has also embedded the Primatte code in silicon. Primatte is being separately developed under license at many companies. Micah Sharp at Red Giant develops Primatte for use in After Effects and Combustion, and Avid Express. Digital Anarchy develops it in yet another separate development track for Photoshop. Imagineering develops yet another for use in Mokey and Monet. Eyeon develops a version for DF, but interestingly this version is in the OFX format - the new common API standard for plugins - making the Eyeon port valid for a range of systems such as Nuke that support the OFX format. All these ports use V3.0 Primatte. There are also ports being developed by Sony for XPRI and Quantel for iQ, ] but at this stage both of these are the earlier V2.0 of Primatte. This approach of licensing out Primatte development reflects the modest size of Photon. The company owned by IMAGICA, is just 3 people but they still develop directly their most profitable and successful port - the Autodesk/ Discreet Spark version of Primatte. Primatte on Autodesk equipment - unlike Keylight, runs on both Burn and Linux.

Photron was a much loved company and one widely supported by the broader community. There was no nasty rivalry amongst the keyer developers. "A client once called up to complain that the MAC address of their system was not working with Primatte", explained Gross. He investigated and discovered that the same MAC address did work with Tinder Tools licensing. At a loss as to why his competitors licensing would work and not his - he ran the Foundry to ask for advice. The Foundry to their credit agreed that there was no logical reason for this and so emailed Photon the source code to their Licensing scheme - so Photon could use this instead.

In 1996, Primatte was producing excellent results using its 128 polyhedron, but still running quite slowly,and some artists felt that they could not control or predict the response they would get when adjusting Primatte.

Primatte and Ultimatte are classified in a same concept of the color processing algorithm group according to Jim Blinn and Alvy R. Smith in their dissertation titled "Blue Screen Matting" Siggraph 1996 conference proceedings. The group was named "Separating Surface Model".

Although Ultimatte was designed on a series of experiments of analog circuit trial and error, the internal processing seems to be polyhedron processing in a color cube. In this sense, Ultimatte uses about a four or five facets polyhedron, which is nested to define the transition region. On the other hand, Primatte uses 128 faces of nested polyhedron. "That is the most significant difference" says Gross.

"The counterpart is the complexity of the shape control. Because of the flexibility, Primatte polygon sometimes forms non-smooth, bumpy shapes, which introduces too much sensitive matte extraction and causes hard-edge matte." says Primatte inventor Yaz Mishima of IMAGICA.

Sourse FXguide

Steven Spielberg To Receive Visual Effects Award

2007-11-02T11:07:00.001-07:00

Filmmaker Steven Spielberg has been chosen to receive the Visual Effects Society (VES) Lifetime Achievement Award at the 6th Annual VES Awards on Feb. 10, 2008 at the Kodak Theatre Grand Ballroom in Hollywood

The VES Board of Directors selected Spielberg for its highest honor in recognition of the contribution that his vast body of work, as both a director and producer, has made to the art and science of visual effects.

"Steven Spielberg is the first director that to comes to mind when you think of amazing visual effects due to his enormous body of creativegroundbreaking work," states Jeff Okun, Chair of the Visual Effects Society. "This award also recognizes what kind of magic can be made when a filmmaker knows how best to mine and collaborate with the talent, experience and knowledge of his VFX team."

Previous recipients of the VES Lifetime Achievement Award include George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis and Dennis Muren.

"Steven Spielberg's resume reads like a timeline of visual effects milestones," says Eric Roth, Executive Director of the Visual EffectsSociety (VES). "As a director and a producer, he is constantly pushing the boundaries of the industry and rethinking the function of visual effects in film, TV, video games and animation to find new and innovative methods of storytelling. There are very few artists who have done more to move the VFX industry forward."

The annual VES Awards show honors the most outstanding visual effects in film, television, commercials and video games. Last year's eventattracted more than 800 celebrities, visual effects and animation artists, dozens of nominees and members of the film, television and games industries.

Digital skin Grafting in compositing - Shivaji VFX making videos

2007-11-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

Digital Skin GraftingThe technique behind Super Star Rajini's European complexion in the film 'Sivaji - The Boss' (Style Song)

this is done by visual effects company "Indian Artists"

About the Film:

In this film, director Shanker wanted to change Rajini's wheatish complexion to a white European complexion. As a visual effects company (Indian Artists) this was a challenging task for Indian Artists because nobody has executed this type of concept in the world.

The Technique behind Dark skin to fair skin:

To begin with, Indian artists did an in-depth study of the European complexion. they found that white skin reflects more light and has less shadow when compared to dark skin and is translucent in some areas. Therefore a simple color correction of the hero's skin would not achieve the desired effect.

For the shoot a London based young white lady with a fresh complexion and flushed cheeks was chosen and with the help of Cinematographer Mr.K.V.Anand every single shot of the hero was repeated with her because lighting conditions change in every shot. After the final edit all the 630 hero shots and 630 girl shots were scanned in 4K resolution. Each of the 9000 scanned frames ware rotoscoped to separate the body parts (face, hands, legs etc.). The white lady's skin was mapped onto the Super Star's image using Eyeon "Digital Fusion" software. Thus the Super Star got his glowing white complexion. Thank to the "Rising Sun Research" people for providing Cine Space Plug-in to get the perfect film look

www.indianartists.co.in

Percept, Microsoft tie-up for Hanuman Returns

2007-10-25T20:55:00.001-07:00

After the success of India's 1st successful animation film Hanuman, Percept Picture Company will now extend the movie through a series of animation films, the second being Hanuman Returns, which will be presented on the Microsoft's Xbox Live service.

Percept Holdings joint managing director Shailendra Singh said, "We are excited to showcase the hugely anticipated Hanuman Returns on the Xbox Live service – a next generation platform for complete connected entertainment with an existing community of millions of users worldwide."

The announcement was made by Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division (E&D) global president Robbie Bach in the presence of Singh; Microsoft India chairman P Ravi Venkatesan; Microsoft E&D Asia Pacific and Greater China Region general manager Alan Bowman and Microsoft E&D in India country manager Mohit Anand.

Bach added, "We have just celebrated the first anniversary of Xbox 360 in the country this year and it is with a celebratory spirit that we offer our Indian consumers even more entertainment options on Xbox 360. This is not only a firm reiteration of our commitment to the Indian market but also an exciting foray into connecting our Indian consumers to a world of seven million Xbox LIVE members around the world."
Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE bring an active community and a growing catalogue of high definition games and entertainment. More than 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold across 37 countries. Xbox Live is currently available in 25 countries across the globe and India will be the 26th market to launch it.

Shah Rukh Khan upgrades VFX studio set up

2007-10-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

Actor – producer Shah Rukh Khan’s new state-of-the-art visual effects studio Redchilles.vfx has deployed unified network storage company BlueArc Corporation’s BlueArc Titan 2000 network storage system for its post production facility.

By deploying a Titan, Redchillies.vfx will be better equipped to serve this market by bringing higher production capabilities to its film and television projects and gaining the capacity to pursue international contracts.

"Our new studio is designed for unsurpassed quality and turnaround time, and BlueArc technology offers the fastest performance available. We believe the Titan is the best product on the market today, so it was a clear choice for the new Redchillies studio," said Redchillies.vfx chief operating officer Keitan Yadav.

Redchillies.vfx is a recent venture of Shah Rukh Khan, which has done visual effects for films like Chak De! India, Don, Paheli and Main Hoon Na.

Currently, BlueArc's Titan is used for Redchillies' own production film Om Shanti Om, which is scheduled to release on 9 November. 2007. "We can already see the difference in our performance," Yadav added.

To continue the company's success, BlueArc's Titan has been deployed as a critical element supporting the production quality, performance and project capabilities that Redchillies will offer at its new facility.

"India's entertainment industry is booming, and more of Hollywood and Europe's studios are scouting for production services here, as well. The new Redchillies facility brings to life my vision for a studio that can respond to the world's appetite for great entertainment," said Shah Rukh Khan.

Built to accommodate as many as 150 personnel, the new Redchillies facility required a storage system design capable of responding on-demand with seamless access to massive and complex visual content. As the Titan 2000 system can support request volume and file sizes well in excess of present Redchillies projects, Yadav's plan is to make the Titan the core of the studio's technology infrastructure and centralize workflow, reducing concern that bottlenecks or downtime might interrupt the creative process or delay production. As a result, Redchillies expects to raise the bar for staff productivity and faster project delivery in India's film and television industry.

Interview with Visual Effects Stalwart & VES Co-Chair Tim Mc Govern

2007-10-24T05:51:00.000-07:00

“I see talented Indian artists working very hard to make the best shots that they are capable of making, which is what I saw in the US when I first started out”

Tim McGovern was an early member of the VES and joined Jeff Okun as a Co-Chair for the VES Awards committee for its first five years. Besides serving numerous times as MC for Awards nomination events, Awards Show & Tell events, Tim has also been involved internationally on behalf of the VES.

He has worked in this industry for 29 years and as a visual effects supervisor for 16 years. In the last year Tim has taken some time off from visual effects to write a screenplay and has begun pitching it.

In an exclusive chat with AnimationXpress's Asmita Bharrati, Tim shares about VFX, his journey, works, VES India Tour and lots more…

(23 October 2007 12:00 pm)

Did you always want to be a VFX professional?
No, because I didn‘t know the job existed when I was young. My way to being a visual effects artist and then visual effects supervisor came by a long series of choices that I wasn‘t aware were leading me to the emergence of CG in visual digital effects and animation. I followed my nose without a road map and ended up here.

Please share how you got into VFX?
I watched a lot of visual effects films as a kid, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, Jack the Giant Killer, Jason and the Argonauts, and then as a teenager 2001, Close Encounters and Star Wars. These films influenced me greatly, but I never thought of myself as someone who might work in the film industry. I grew up in Chicago - maybe if I grew up in LA or NY I might have thought there was a possibility to do so, but none of my friends’ fathers worked on films. No one I knew had anything to do with making even a film without effects, so I didn‘t expect I ever would.

Then I went to high school and college. I learned photography and multi-exposure / pin - registered still photography and then black and white / later color darkroom work. Suddenly I was creating stills inside of a camera or under an enlarger in the darkroom that composited multiple elements together to make one very interesting image, I loved the work and the resulting images. This work inspired me to pursue work in TV and to do work that reminded me of the multi-exposure film work that I saw in commercials and Network TV Movie Opens in the late 70‘s. After a job in public TV, an independent channel and then network TV, I landed at Robert Abel and Associates in 1981. This was the most innovative group of people I had ever worked with. We were inventing the medium of Computer Generated animation and visual effects. There after a little work in commercials my first Feature Film work was on the movie TRON. In 1982, TRON premiered and I saw my first screen credit - it was exhilarating. Later I got the chance to work on a ground-breaking commercial called Sexy Robot where I worked with Randy Roberts to create the first human motion applied to a CG Character in a commercial or film. I loved the work, the long hours, and the results. From there I joined MetroLight Studios where I won an Oscar for my VFX work on Total Recall, again for convincing human motion applied to a CG character in a motion picture. In 1992 I joined seven others and formed Sony Pictures Imageworks as the founding visual effects supervisor and then a little later as its SVP of Creative and Technical Affairs. I took the eight people in just a few years and grew them to 250 working on films like So I Married an Axe Murderer, Last Action Hero, In The Line of Fire, Speed, Hideaway, Money Train, The Ghost and the Darkness, and As Good As It Gets. In 1998 after Imageworks was 300-350, I left and became an independent visual effects supervisor working directly for the director on films like Stigmata, Equilibrium, and Trapped. The later films became multi-facility and then multi-national productions. I loved working with the best people on any continent.

Which are some of your milestone works?
1990 ACADEMY AWARD "Total Recall" Special Achievement in Visual Effects
1988 CLIO "Hawaiian Punch" - US TV / Cinema Animation - Computer
1987 CLIO "Benson & Hedges Gold POWER" International TV/Cinema Best Graphics
1985 HUGO "Sexy Robot" - Chicago International Film Festival Best Special Effects
1985 MOBIUS "Sexy Robot" - US TV & Radio Commercial Best of Festival
1985 CLIO "Sexy Robot" - US TV / CINEMA Best Animation-Computer
1983 CLIO "7-Up Pacman" - International TV / Cinema Best Beverages
1983 CLIO "7-Up Pacman" - International TV / Cinema Best Graphics
1981 CLIO "NBC Sunday Night at the Movies" - US TV/Cinema Finalist

What is your dream project?
I am working on it right now and it will be worked on India.

What is your opinion on Indian vfx?
It is an emerging market and it is emerging in a huge way. The talent and the hard work is very impressive and can only be a hint of an amazing future. The most important thing for artists is that they make commitments to work and keep them. The most damaging thing that can happen is artists hopping from one job to the other everytime they think they can do better. This happens in the US and I hope it doesn‘t happen in India. The rewards for good work will follow you and there is no need to have dis-loyalty to the project unless they are being mistreated. Too much anxiousness for things to happen too quickly is the biggest potential for failure and disillusionment with Indian talent.

What is the objective of the VES India tour?
To do an assessment of the entire industry in India and figure the best way to nurture and support it to do the best possible work.

What would you like to advise the upcoming vfx artists?
Find your strengths, cultivate them, and then apply them to your work in the most effective way. Work hard and have a passion for doing the best work will only be an advantage for you over anyone else. Also always recognize the talent of those around you and praise them when their work merits it. Everyone needs encouragement and acknowledgement. Great work comes from a passionate, talented and motivated work force - be the force!

Does technology play a very important role in vfx?
It’s huge, there was a time when I was first in the business, when every company was using different computers, different operating systems, different software and needed to R&D all of their own software and hardware. Now this is much more standardized - but hardware and software technology continuously allow us to handle more and more levels of complexity and handle them with greater and higher levels of control. If someone today had to manage personally what software handles now for us - we‘d be capable of 1-10th to 1- 100th of what we are currently dealing with. It is a circular thing - more technology more capability, more control of complex operation, better visual effects.

What is your comment on the statement that most of the times vfx and CG are used as damage control measures?
This is true with some films more than others. Certainly, there are films in the US for which everything is planned, designed, pre-vizzed, and then shot according to a plan. Other times there is chaos and a lack of planning or lack of money that may lead to Damage Control issues. The words "Fix it in Post" happen on all scales of productions. Sometimes during the process there is already enough good work visible in the film to the studio or producers, that additional money is found to fix things. Sometimes if they didn‘t shoot it wrong and get something on film, the film wouldn‘t have survived the process long enough to be judged valuable enough to go on to be finished at all. Directors and Producers have a tricky job. From a post production point of view it is often easy to say, they should have done this or they should have done that. Hind sight and no knowledge of the financial and political nature of every production would make you think that those in charge are not totally knowledgeable, this is not usually the case. The words, "Live to fight another day" are often what producers and directors are thinking when they shoot things in less than ideal situations. Those who win these battles have enough other wonderful things going on in their films to warrant a visual effect bail-out. Those who never got it, majorly underestimated, or were just too blind to see it: usually don‘t get the chance to salvage their disasters. The best work comes of people making good decisions.

How do you judge the quality of vfx work?
Effects should be invisible. Whether it is the monster that emerges up out of the sea grabbing a human and going back down, or a rig removal or sky replacement. Attention to detail, camera angle and focal length, color correction, lighting direction and intensity, reflections, shadows, transparency, sharpness of edges, motion-blur and grain matching are all things that can make a visual effects shot not sell itself as real. Unless all of these details are attended to with the greatest attention - an effect can ring out as false.

What does it take to become a successful vfx supervisor?
A lot of experience in the field, knowledge of everyone‘s job on the film crew and everyone‘s job on the visual effects crew, people skills, organizational ability, extreme creative ability, communication skills, leadership, budget responsibility and the knowledge or experience to deploy your resources in the most effective way at any given moment to get the biggest effect from what you have. A VFX Supervisor must be able to decide with a producer, a director, and a $150-200K crew cost / day whether the take that was just shot will do the job later when everyone is gone and you couldn‘t possibly regroup the actors, crew, set or location to do it again - or whether you need to shoot it again. If you do shoot it again what needs to be different and with this group watching, they will know if you know what you are doing or whether you are faking it.

Does the interaction between vfx professionals from all across the world help? How?
There are many advantages of spreading out work amongst multiple vendors and countries. First of all, you always want the best people who know how to do the work you are trying to do, to do it. Sometimes a company has a specialty – i.e. great water work, wonderful character animation, incredible R&D team, huge work force or cost effectiveness on labor intensive work. Sometimes the cultural issues enhance the suitability of one group over another. Certainly, like minds always seek like minds. Sometime it is a Time zone and efficiency issue. Sometimes it is special creativity are much sought after. Also if you don‘t put all of your eggs in one basket, you can divert work that is unsuccessful with one vendor to another more suitable vendor. Load sharing and the ability to re-balance the load is a huge benefit to those who are judging the progress and results.

Is this your first visit to India?
I‘ve been to India about six times before and this trip is my third this year. I love the people and their drive!

Are you looking forward to the VES India tour?
Yes, I am very much so. I am always interested in meeting bright, talented people who have a passion for visual effects, animation and film. India is such a culturally rich country and its people are its greatest resource.

What is the picture of India that you have in mind?
I see talented Indian artists working very hard to make the best shots that they are capable of making, which is what I saw in the US when I first started out. Some things are universal, and when you see it you know that anything is possible here. Nothing can replace enthusiasm, and talent.
In 2000, N. Madhusudhanan met my very good friend George Merkert. They worked together on Aalavandan. It was a very successful experience and George introduced me to Madhu. I was immediately very impressed with him and we became good friends as well. It wasn‘t long before I was sponsoring Madhu to be the first Indian visual effects person to become a member of the VES. Madhu and I continued to talk and see each other. Then Madhu arranged a trip for me to come to India, at last I was able to see what he and my friend George already knew about India and its artists. Then through many conversations the two of us began to talk about India and the VES. When Madhu came to LA, he, Eric Roth, and I began to talk about how we could consider India for the future and it is through our conversations we are here today. Madhu has always wanted to help India reach its highest potential in visual effects. It was his idea that the VES be in India and for us to be on this trip, through his organizing abilities we are now coming. Through his efforts we have been sponsored for this trip by many generous sponsors.

Apart from VFX works and VES responsibilities, how do you spend time otherwise?
I like photography, swimming, scuba diving, sailing, backpacking, canoeing, flying in helicopters and small planes.

What are your future plans?
I have been writing a screenplay for a film for the last year and a half, I‘m on the third draft and I am very close to showing it to some very interested people. We‘ll see what happens.

sourse- animation express

Interview with VFX member: N Madhusudhanan

2007-10-20T22:50:00.001-07:00

"Association with VES will not only open up the creative communication but also encourage a lot of business opportunities!"

VFX stalwart and Visual Effects Society member N Madhusudhanan in a talk with AnimationXpress's Asmita Bharrati speaks about VES and his efforts on developing bridges between Hollywood and Indian vfx community.

(18 October 2007 9:00 pm)

Please share about your association with vfx?

It‘s a long story. I would never say it was accidental but would call it eventful! I started as a salesman selling computers, moved into multimedia and then on to visual effects. Initially, my selling abilities helped me to promote business, later I moved on to production. Recently I have further moved on to supervision. I would rate my involvement with VES as an honor. You will know the answer in the coming days! In any case, it may not be the most glamorous career but is quite an eventful one!

What kind of vfx projects have you worked on?

I have worked on a bunch of domestic films, mostly South Indian films and then on to Hollywood movies like Lord of the Rings, Storm Breaker, Click, Spiderman 3, etc.

You have won quite a few awards…

Yes, I received a National Award in 2002 for a Tamil film. I was awarded the Dr. Zakir Hussain Memorial Award in Los Angeles in 2005. While I also became the first Indian vfx producer to qualify into VES.

You been constantly taking efforts to contribute to the field in India? What is your agenda right now in this regard?

I do care for education. Workshops in small packets are not going to help unless we have a master plan to spread the education across the country. I am not criticizing the efforts taken in conducting workshops here and there but if India wants to become one of the major forces in the CG industry, there should be a ten year plan to be laid out now! We can achieve this only with the support of the Central and the state governments. I would be more interested in looking at the rural areas. It may even open up the employment opportunities! One need not to be an engineer or a scientist to ‘succeed‘ in a creative industry like ours. So, it is easy to mould the kids in the rural areas who are by nature, creative!

You have been taking a lot of steps to have interactions between the Western countries vfx experts and the Indian counterparts. Is the upcoming VES road show a step towards the same?

Yes, very much. Visual Effects Society (VES) is such a wonderful community promoted by the industry professionals. The VES India Tour in which Tim Mc Govern, Eric Roth and Peter Chiang, who are amongst global vfx stalwarts and VES members shall acquaint themselves with Indian VFX studios‘ work and interact with artists. They will also introduce the visual effects society to the gathering of artists, students and professionals in five cities including Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai. The road shows will also have Indian vfx studios giving presentations. There will also be QA sessions as the whole theme is to promote knowledge sharing and interaction.

I have initiated the VES India tour and have good and constant support from the industry... we have entrusted AnimationXpress.com with organising the tour with whom we will be working very closely with. I would also like to thank our sponsors Image, Autodesk and Pixion. We are also in talks with a couple of other supporters who will confirm soon.

This association with VES will not only open up the creative communication but will also encourage a lot of business opportunities! The Indian artists can have an access to professionals across the world at the click of a button! The Indian business house can create the visibility quite easily. VES is thriving to network the professionals across the world. One has to experience to believe it! I am very proud to be a VES member and would love to see many of my Indian colleagues in that list pretty soon.

How do you plan to make this concept more concrete?

I thought of creating something very similar to VES in India four years ago! It was really difficult in terms of reaching each and everyone; make them understand why we need this. We started FICCI VEC two years ago. As I said earlier, it needs time and energy to make it happen. I am sure we are going to be on the right path in a year or so. Fortunately I have some very good friends who are willing to support India‘s cause. One of them is my very good friend and Vice Chair of VES, Tim McGovern. He has played an important role to have VES in India end of this month. Pankaj Kedia of Autodesk should be acknowledged for his constant support! We need to have a community and nurture that without any selfish reason. That‘s the hardest part in the current competitive scenario. Trust me, everyone will have their own share as the industry is so big, no one will have to feel the heat!

What about the new community concept?

First and foremost, we are refreshing the idea of the community. I am stepping away as Chairman of FICCI VEC. FICCI, of course is trying hard to help us. Amita and Leena of FICCI surely trying to put in their efforts. Organizations like yours who are neutral to the industry can play a major role in nurturing this. The best way to go about it is, call for entries as members and pick up a board out of it and then select the chair and vice chair to run it. Also, not only include the industry professionals but also the hardware/software vendors, movie DOPs, Ad commercial creative Directors, Institutions etc and create an eco system. Bring them all together and work towards improving the standards!

What‘s your message to the next generation?

I don‘t want to talk about the technology, but, certainly would like to share certain very basic experiences as a human being! Dream is the key so as the perseverance! The later is the toughest thing in life. Only those who keep trying will fail, because of the daring attitude and never afraid of failing. Because there is a sense of eagerness to reach the goal! Believe me, failure is always temporary! History keeps reminding us that ‘those who have not failed have never succeeded in life‘! The lesson to the next generation is to keep trying and never be bothered about the failures as one day you will reach where you want to be, provided one has the right attitude. Today things are different in many ways: it‘s easier to approach studios because of the visibility on both sides. The ability to do things and the passion to achieve goals is propelling India to the limelight. Indians are always good triers and executioners. We work 24/7, not to make money but to show we can also do it! So, let‘s do it!

Source : AnimationXpress

Rhythm & Hues Shows Glimpse of Golden Compass Daemons

2007-10-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

A sneak peek this week of Rhythm & Hues' work on THE GOLDEN COMPASS (opening Dec. 7 from New Line Cinema) –- the Los Angeles-based company's most extensive in its 20-year history -- provided a glimpse of the daemons: the animal-like creatures that are manifestations of people's souls in this parallel universe where children are kidnapped by a mysterious organization. The Chris Weitz-directed fantasy is based on Phillip Pullman's award-winning HIS DARK MATERIALS trilogy

Mike Fink is the overall visual effects supervisor, with Rhythm & Hues and Rhythm & Hues India contributing 800 shots and more than 500 artists combined. Other vendors include Framestore CFC, Cinesite, Rainmaker, Tippett Studio and Digital Domain.

VFX Supervisor Bill Westenhofer, Co-VFX Supervisor Raymond Chen and Animation Director Erik de Boe lead the Rhythm & Hues team.

"Daemons are a central theme in this parallel universe," Westenhofer emphasized. "The animals follow you for life and exhibit knowledge of the person they shadow."

Westenhofer said the challenge was to make them as real and convincing as possible. Two of the most interesting daemons are Pan and the Golden Monkey. Pan belongs to the adolescent protagonist Lyra Belacqua (Dakota Blue Richards) and is able to shape-shift until Lyra reaches womanhood. Pan can be a ferret, cat or bird. The Golden Monkey belongs to the enchanting and dangerous Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman), and is a fictional variation of a spider monkey.

First and foremost was creating believable 3D characters (all keyframed) with realistic weight and motion. Contact with the real life actors also proved challenging. The tech animation team was responsible for whisker bounce, fur, mass and simulations to help sell the realism.

Maintaining consistency (including color palettes among shape-shifting daemons) was also a challenge, as were the transformations, which had to be smooth. Since these are no ordinary creatures, a special colored sheen was created to make them stand out. And the eyes of the daemons had to match the actor's they are paired with.

Dust particles in this universe are a source of intelligence, so Rhythm & Hues created fluid simulations to visualize this. Most intriguing is the way the company pulled off the death of daemons through the fiery disintegration of dust particles using this same fluid simulation.

For a key battle sequence shot on greenscreen, Massive was used to create a multitude of background daemons.

After working on THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, Rhythm & Hues has definitely streamlined the way the company handles hundreds of shots. "This is a leap forward in realistic animals," remarked de Boe.

2d compositing and 3d compositing

2007-10-19T01:07:00.003-07:00

Widely employed in film and video motion picture production, compositing is the combining of visual elements from separate sources into single images, often to create the illusion that all those elements are parts of the same scene. (For compositing in graphic design and still photography, see Photomontage.) Live-action shooting for compositing is variously called “blue screen,” “green screen,” “chroma key,” and other names. Today, most though not all compositing is achieved through digital image manipulation. Pre-digital compositing techniques, however, go back as far as the trick films of Georges Méliès in the late 19th century; and some are still in use.

All compositing involves the replacement of selected parts of an image with other material, usually, but not always, from another image. In the digital method of compositing, software commands designate a narrowly defined color as the part of an image to be replaced. Then every pixel within the designated range is replaced by the software with a pixel from another image, aligned to appear as part of the original. For example, a TV weather person is recorded in front of a plain blue or green screen, while compositing software replaces only the designated blue or green color with weather maps

Digital compositing is the process of digitally assembling multiple images to make a final image, typically for print, motion pictures or screen display. It is the evolution into the digital realm of optical film compositing.

Digital compositing systems
-Apple Shake
-Autodesk Combustion
-Autodesk Flint, Flame & Inferno
-Autodesk Smoke
-Autodesk Toxik
-Adobe After Effects
-Pinnacle Commotion
-eyeon Fusion
-D2 Nuke
-CompTime Industrial Light & Magic
-Industrial Light & Magic's proprietary Saber
-SideFX Houdini Halo (Houdini Master)
-Jahshaka

Blue/Green Screen Compositing

2007-10-19T01:07:00.002-07:00

The technology of compositing blue screen and green screen has improved to the point where you can pull a Chroma key matte off of almost anything. However, the better the original photography and set-up, the better the matte extraction and composite.

Chroma key is a technique for blending two images, in which a color (or a small color range) from one image is removed (or made transparent), revealing another image behind it. This technique is also referred to as color keying, colour-separation overlay, greenscreen, and bluescreen. It is commonly used for weather forecast broadcasts, wherein the presenter appears to be standing in front of a large map, but in the studio it is actually a large blue or green background.

Concept of Blue / Green Screen
Blue Screen was originally invented as a film technique to separate the actors and composite them over another background. But why blue? Blue may have been chosen because it is least prominent in skin tone. Skin tone is made of a combination of red and green with a little blue.

Color Correction

2007-10-19T01:07:00.001-07:00

Color correction, or color grading, is a technique often used in cinematography. It is the concept of altering the color balance of a film in post-production, to achieve a desired effect. While color correction used to be achieved with chemicals applied to the film stock, modern technology allows directors/cinematographers to apply color correction digitally. This same digital color correction is also a feature of the Source engine. Modern color correction, whether for theatrical film or video distribution, is generally done digitally.

There are two types of Color Correction (CC)
Hardware-based systems (da Vinci 2K, Pandora, etc.) have historically offered better performance and a smaller feature set than software-based systems (i.e. Discreet Lustre, Apple's Color (previously Silicon Color Final Touch), ASSIMILATE SCRATCH, Iridas Speedgrade, etc.). While hardware-based systems always offer real-time performance, software-based systems need to render as the complexity of the color grading increases. On the other hand, software-based systems tend to have more features such as spline-based windows/masks and advanced motion tracking.
The line between hardware and software is blurring as many software-based color correctors (e.g. Digital Vision Film Master and Filmlight Baselight) use multi processor workstations and a GPU (graphics processing unit) as a means of hardware acceleration. As well, some newer software-based systems use specialized hardware to improve performance (e.g. da Vinci Resolve).

6th International Animation Day

2007-10-16T03:16:00.004-07:00

21st October: Mumbai - NCPA
24th October: Pune - MCCIA Towers

28th October
Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Chennai, and Kochi

Asifa India is proud to present the 6th International Animation Day (IAD) celebrations! IAD is an annual global celebration to recognize the people involved in the art and technology of animation, celebrated every year on the 28th October.

Since its start in 2002, IAD has been a film festival that has provided the Indian animation artists a platform to interact and build a community. Being the amongst the first animation festivals in India, IAD has been actively supported by the artists community and the industry at large.

This year they plan to take the celebrations across the country for a whole week from the 21st October to 28th October. Jump-starting the celebrations from Mumbai on the 21st October at the NCPA, going to Pune on the 24th and finally on the 28th of October it will be simultaneously celebrated in 7 cities across the country including Hyderabad, Delhi, Bangalore, Ahemdabad, Kolkata and Chennai!

IAD 07 Pre-Registration Form
We hope you can come and be a part of this celebration!!!

Tracking

2007-10-16T03:16:00.003-07:00

Video tracking is the process of locating a moving object (or several ones) in time using a camera. An algorithm analyses the video frames and outputs the location of moving targets within the video frame.
The main difficulty in video tracking is to associate target locations in consecutive video frames, especially when the objects are moving fast relative to the frame rate. Here, video tracking systems usually employ a motion model which describes how the image of the target might change for different possible motions of the object to track.

Examples of simple motion models are:
• to track planar objects, the motion model is a 2D transformation (affine transformation or homography) of an image of the object (e.g. the initial frame)
• when the target is a rigid 3D object, the motion model defines its aspect depending on its 3D position and orientation
• for video compression, key frames are divided into macroblocks. The motion model is a disruption of a key frame, where each macroblock is translated by a motion vector given by the motion parameters
• the image of deformable objects can be covered with a mesh, the motion of the object is defined by the position of the nodes of the mesh.

The role of the tracking algorithm is to analyse the video frames in order to estimate the motion parameters. These parameters characterize the location of the target.

Wire removal

2007-10-16T03:16:00.002-07:00

Wire removal is a visual effects technique used to remove wires in films, usually to simulate flying in actors or miniatures.
Wire removal can be partly automated through various forms of keying, or each. frame can be edited manually. First, the live action plates of actors or models suspended on wires are filmed in front of a green screen Editors can then erase the wires frame by frame, without worrying about erasing the backdrop, which will be added later. This can be accomplished automatically with a computer. If the sequence is not filmed in front of a green-screen a digital editor must hand-paint the lines out. This can be an arduous task.
It can be partly automated through various forms of keying, or each frame can be edited manually. Live action plates of actors suspended on wires are placed in front of a green screen. Editors can then erase the wires frame by frame, without worrying about erasing the backdrop, which will be added later.

Plug-ins for Wire Removal

ADI FilmPAK - Color and tone scale manipulation, film grain management, wire and rig removal.
Boris FX, Inc. Continuum Complete - A comprehensive set of over 150 most powerful, flexible effects including advanced keying, matting, compositing, image processing, distortion, temporal effects and motion tracking.
Boris FX, Inc. RED - The only integrated 3D compositing, titling, and effects application to over twenty nonlinear editing applications.
Boris FX, Inc. Final Effects Complete - Otherwise known as simply "FEC" and recently acquired by Boris from Optibase via Media100, originally developed by Cycore, Final Effects Complete is a collection of over 100 plug-ins.
Red Giant Software Composite Wizard - Automate color correction effects, blur or feather edge borders, and clean up unwanted artifacts.
Silhouette Paint - An innovative high dynamic range 2D paint system that works with Silhouette Roto.

Matchmoving

2007-10-16T03:16:00.001-07:00

Anytime a computer-generated (CG) element needs to be placed into a live-action sequence vice versa, a matchmove is required. But what exactly is matchmoving?Matchmoving is the process of matching CG elements into live-action footage. As a result,crucial part of many visual effects shots.Despite its importance, it is completely invisible in final shot—that is, if it’s done right.

In cinematography, match moving is a special effects technology to allow the insertion of virtual objects into real footage with the correct position, scale, orientation and motion in relation to the photographed objects in the scene. The term is used loosely to refer to several different ways of extracting motion information from a motion picture, particularly camera movement. Match moving is related to rotoscoping and photogrammetry. It is sometimes referred to as motion tracking.

Match moving has two forms.
Compositing programs, such as Shake, Adobe After Effects and Discreet Combustion, have two dimensional motion tracking capabilities. This feature translates images in two-dimensional space and can add effects such as motion blur in an attempt to eliminate relative motion between two features of two moving images. This technique is sufficient to create verisimilitude when the two images do not include major changes in camera perspective. For example a billboard deep in the background of a shot can often be replaced using two-dimensional tracking.
-Voodoo (freeware)
-Icarus (University of Manchester research project, now discontinued but still popular)
-3DS max
-Maya Live (Module of Maya Unlimited)
-The Pixel Farm PFTrack
-PFHoe (Cost effective matchmover based on PFTrack algorithms)
-RealViz MatchMover
-Science.D.Visions 3DEqualizer (which won an academy award for technical achievement)
-Andersson Technologies SynthEyes
-2d3 Boujou

Three dimensional match moving tools make it possible to extrapolate three-dimensional information from two-dimensional photography. Programs capable of 3D match moving include:
These programs allow users to derive camera movement and other relative motion from arbitrary footage. The tracking information can be transferred to computer graphics software such as Blender, Maya or Lightwave and used to animate virtual cameras and CGI objects.

The first, and still some of the best, examples of match moving were used in the film Jurassic Park. The filmmakers placed colored tennis balls in the scene as reference marks. They then used these marks to track the motion of the camera through the scene. This allowed virtual objects, such as CGI dinosaurs, to be added to complicated camera movements and even handheld shots. The tennis balls were later digitally painted out of the final shot.

Rotoscoping

2007-10-16T03:16:00.000-07:00

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, pre-recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. More recently, the rotoscoping technique has been referred to as interpolated rotoscoping.

In computer graphics, to rotoscope is to create an animated matte indicating the shape of an object or actor at each frame of a sequence, as would be used to composite a CGI element into the background of a live-action shot.

Rotoscoping has often been used as a tool for special effects in live-action movies. By tracing an object, a silhouette (called a matte) can be created that can be used to create an empty space in a background scene. This allows the object to be placed in the scene. However, this technique has been largely superseded by bluescreen techniques.
Rotoscoping has also been used to allow a special visual effect (such as a glow, for example) to be guided by the matte or rotoscoped line. One classic use of traditional rotoscoping was in the original three Star Wars films, where it was used to create the glowing lightsaber effect, by creating a matte based on sticks held by the actors.
The term "rotoscoping" (typically abbreviated as "roto") is now generally used for the corresponding all-digital process of tracing outlines over digital film images to produce digital mattes. This technique is still in wide use for special cases where techniques such as bluescreen will not pull an accurate enough matte. Rotoscoping in the digital domain is often aided by motion tracking and onion-skinning software. Rotoscoping is often used in the preparation of garbage mattes for other matte-pulling processes.

Matte painting

2007-10-09T11:48:00.000-07:00

"Digital Matte Painting combines digital painting, photo manipulation and 3D in order to create "virtual sets" that are otherwise hard, if not impossible (and nevertheless not cost effective), to find in the real world. Traditional matte painting was developed initially for the movies and was done optically, by painting on top of a piece of glass to be composite with the original footage, but nowadays, matte painting is done in computers with the use of a tablet asa drawing device and 3d software.

Matte Painted scenes are used widely for any kind of application that requires a virtual set, but, of course, movies are still the ones who use it the most. The goal here is to produce realistic environments (sets) where actors can perform as if they were there.

Basically, in modern movies, the actors are performing on a small area called “active set” or “platform”. This can bea studio room (like the weather forecasts which are filmed against a blue/green background), an outside platform or even a real environment. It’s then the job of the matte painter to change everything around them and to make it blend with the active set.

Matte Painting can be used to create entire new sets, or to extend portions of an existing set; It became a true trendof the new century and it has a bright future, together with the relatively new 2.5D and 3D compositing techniques."

Matte Painting Resources

Tutorial

Camera Mappingby Janine Pauke
http://www.3dfluff.com/cameramapping/cameramappingtut.htm
Florida FXby florida fx
http://www.floridafx.com/
FullMoonby Effect Lab
http://www.effectlab.com/tutfullmoon.php
Jet Flyby Mike Seymour
http://www.fxguide.com/fxtips-193.html
Modern Ruinby Tocath
http://www.worth1000.com/tutorial.asp?sid=161052&print=1
Mystic Night Sceneby Shantanu Jahagirdar
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/2dshaan/2dshaan.asp
Painting Cloudsby Steven Stahlberg
http://www.optidigit.com/stevens/cloudtut.html
Ruinby Sebastien Gaucher
http://www.seb4d.com/tutorials/Mattepainting/mattepainting_english.htm

Books

What is VFX

2007-10-09T03:35:00.000-07:00

VFX is the term given to a sub-category of special effects in which images or film frames are created and manipulated for film and video. Visual effects usually involve the integration of live-action footage with computer generated imagery or other elements (such as pyrotechnics or model work) in order to create environments or scenarios which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. They have become increasingly common in big-budget films, and have also recently become accessible to the amateur filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.

Visual effects techniques

practical effects
in-camera effects
miniature effects
stop motion
Schüfftan process
matte paintings
rotoscoping
dolly zoom
optical effects
travelling matte
aerial image effects
optical printing
bluescreen
prosthetic makeup effects
motion control photography
Audio-Animatronic models
digital compositing
wire removal
morphing
computer-generated imagery
match moving
virtual cinematography