do you have the tools #2

So by a show of hands who all saw ‘Drag Me to Hell’ this weekend?

Ok, well I’m not actually sure if anyone is raising their hands or not. So I’ll just take a wild guess based on the box-office and say ‘Me too!’ Now normally this would be the point where I talked all about the VFX in the film, and give you a bunch of links to read further. But since this is generally a 90% recycled blog (because I’m lazy), I’m at the mercy of all the other VFX sites out there who have much more time to actually write articles about this stuff. So…we’ll save that for another day.

Anyways while we wait, I wanted to also write a post talking about all the tools that I use as a VFX artist day to day. Hell that MOST of the artists I know use actually. So to start off, lets talk about something that every VFX artist would kill for rather than be without…

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1) VLC Player / HULU / YouTube

After years and years of watching television, movies, and playing video games it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that VFX artists typically have a short attention span. Not in a bad way really. We’re constantly just multitasking between coding, rendering, comp’ing, you name it. And we do that for long hours at a time. So what keeps us from going insane? Streaming videos and DVD box sets. I’m not sure if everyone is like this, but for me personally when I have a good movie playing I swear I’m just more productive. Seriously! Ok well maybe not, but at least I’m happier. And in the end, isn’t that all that matters?

LINK: VLC Player

LINK: HULU

LINK: YouTube

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2) Sequence 911

Got a image sequence that’s all out of wack? Need to dump a bad frame but don’t want a sudden jump? Well Sequence 911 is coming to your rescue.

LINK: Sequence 911

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3) Google Reader

It’s important to say on top of what’s going on in the industry. And I have a lot of VFX blogs that I read each morning. And I mean A LOT. 80+. Which is a lot of content to sift through to say the least. Now I could open up every blog in a tab and just take the time to see what’s new. But that would take FOREVER, and I don’t think my supervisor would be all too happy if that’s what I spent most of my day doing. So thank God for Google Reader.

LINK: Google Reader

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4) DropBox

DropBox is a life saver. Plain and simple. It allows me to sync all the work I do at home with my computer at the studio. And saves me tons of time and frustration since I never have to deal with thumbdrives or wondering if I have the latest file. It’s all there. And as easy as dragging and dropping a file into a folder. So if you’re a VFX’er who does a lot of work at home as well as the studio…seriously get this program installed. It’s awesome.

LINK: DropBox

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5) Notepad ++

You wouldn’t think it, but a good code editor is pretty hard to find. Sure you have Notepad…but honestly, that program will cause you more headaches than anything when you’re writing python tools or tcl. Notepad ++ however is perfect. It highlights your syntax for debugging, suggests code based on the file extension of your project file, pretty much everything you need when coding. And you know what the best part about it is? It’s free!

LINK: Notepad++

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Now I know what you’re thinking. Only 5? Certainly you use more than just 5 tools! Well you’d be right!

And in next week’s ‘Do You Have The Tools’ post I’ll do another top 5 list of essential tools for every VFX artist out there. So stay tuned!

But in the mean time if you have any tools you use that I haven’t included please leave a comment! I’ll check it out and add it to one of the coming week’s lists!

Until then, remember…hugs not drugs.

do you have the tools?

Good flow chart skills is a necessity for VFX artists out there who design pipelines like myself. Usually people just think of us using high-end 3D or compositing software. But that’s just not the case.

Excel, Word, etc. All of these programs are indispensable when you work at a studio. They help everyone stay on the same page of a project at any given moment. But there has always been a gap when it comes to flow charts. I’ve never  come across any software out there for this task that’s both easy to use and cheap when it comes to making charts. That is until this online flow chart software Lovely Charts debuted!

It’s a great example of a new online trend called server side software. An offshoot of cloud computing. And I really think we’re going to be seeing more and more of this type of software in the future. The benefits of having access to tools like these anywhere in the world, and on any medium is just too powerful to ignore. Another favorite software of mine is a online Photoshop alternative called Pixlr. It’s not nearly as versatile as Adobe’s software, but just give it some more development time and I think everyone will be surprised with the capabilities of this free online sister tool.

Now that’s all well and good but back to the main question at hand. “How are flow charts useful to a VFX artist?” Well quite simply, it allows an artist to map out the whole CG pipeline from previs to finaled shot. While at the same time brainstorming solutions to problems that will likely come up along the way. And simultaneously organize all the sub-tasks that get you from A to B. You can then spread this pipeline diagram out to the whole studio and allow everyone to adopt this new approved process. However, this isn’t a end all be all solution by any means. And Murphy’s Law will always rear it’s ugly head. So you need to keep your pipeline flexible. But it saves a ton of time rather than going to each and every person and explaining the who, what, why, and how.

Wanna see an example? Well here’s a flow chart I made this morning in honor of the new Ghostbusters video game coming out on June 19th.

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So if you want to speed up your pipeline, flow chart that sucker out! And that’s my little VFX insider tip of the day. If you have any questions about my ramblings, leave me a comment below!

the foundry speaks, and we listen

The Foundry gave some more details about the new versions of Nuke coming up, v5.2 and of course v6. What I’m personally the most excited about are the changes coming to paint and roto. For years the biggest thing Nuke was lacking was a reliable and easy to use paint node. Now it looks like we’ll have it towards the end of the year!

There’s also going to be a brand spanking new 3D Tracker. Which will allow us Nuker’s out there to actually matchmove shots! Something that the Nuke community has been wanting for a while. Now I’m sure it won’t be replacing tried and true applications like Boujou, Syntheyes, or PFTrack anytime soon. But the fact the Foundry is continuing to live up to it’s promise to carry on Digital Domain’s original mission to build a Compositor that’s made by artists FOR artists. Well that just makes me love Nuke and The Foundry all the more.

Can’t wait to get my hands on the beta!

LINK: The Foundry announces Nuke 5.2 and 6/6x

Nuke 6.0’s direction has been led by artist feedback and incorporates a completely new shape rotoscope and paint toolset based on a rewritten core curve library and new RotoPaint node. This release introduces a flexible, non-destructive, layer based paint hierarchy integrated with Nuke’s animation and tracking capabilities and supporting per-object attributes such as blending modes and motion blur.

nuke master class

The Foundry has uploaded all the Nuke Master Class demos for your downloading enjoyment!

Have a good and tutorial filled weekend everyone!

LINK: The Foundry – Examples

nuke roadmap

This past week The Foundry held the first ever Nuke master class in London with over 200 European artists packing the audience. You had presentations from The Foundry’s python scripting artist, Jon Waddleton. As well as VFXTalk forum god and gizmo wizard, Frank Rueter, and bunch of guys from FXPHD.

That alone is enough reason for us American artists to try and make the trip across the pond. But what I would have really killed to see is what the day closed with. That was when The Foundry talked about their short term plans for Nuke in the coming year. Including details for what to expect from upcoming version 5.2, and even Nuke 6!

Check out the link below for highlights and the full article.

LINK: The Foundry’s 2009 Nuke Roadmap

Nuke 5.2 (beta testing beginning this month!)

Video Output Support. Broadcast monitor support for the Blackmagic DeckLink card to be followed with supporting AJA IO/HD and Kona cards
Pre-comp External Scripts. Artists will be able to save sub portions of a comp as an external script, which the main script then references. This will effectively enables the first steps of collaboration in Nuke, since another artist could be modifying this external script. Functionality will also include a read-write cache. When a new render is created from this pre-comp script, the main script is notified of changes and can be updated if desired.
Python UI Panels and Callbacks. Extends the capability of creating custom dockable UI panels from within Nuke using Python. Callbacks can allow the UI to change based upon the buttons pressed or values in the fields.
Viewer/Flipbook Performance and Caching Improvements. Cache nodes can be inserted at any point in a graph so that intermediate renders can be done, saving reprocessing time when changes are made later in the graph.
New Metadata Support. Artists can have metadata flowing throughout the graph. For instance, read data could get data from dpx files and provide for use later in the graph. Burn-in would be a simple example of this. It could also read a script included in an image as n EXR channel and build a preliminary comp from it.
RED R3D Reader. Will be using the RED SDK to bring RED footage into Nuke. The standard SDK adjustments will be available for import

NUKE 6:

1) A new roto and paint node
2)Totally updated curve library starting with bezier and bsplines
multiple paint and vector strokes per node
3)A layer hierarchy for splines with editable attributes
4)A toolbox in the viewer to quickly change tools Integrated 3D Camera 5)Tracking, creating a camera and point cloud right in Nuke
6)Integrated Lens Distortion Tools

ps evolution

Something simple for a simple Tuesday. But cool none the less.

spacetime goodness

Today I stumbled upon yet another amazing new tool for visual effects artists like myself. No, this is not from this years Siggraph. It was actually presented last year at the 2007 Eurographics Symposium on Rendering. Which makes me curious why this hasn’t made bigger waves? Especially with an overly futuristic name like “Spacetime fusion“! One has to wonder.

Maybe because it looks to be really only a concept and a bunch of algorithms right now. But with a few years more development…this is going to have a BIG impact on the world of compositing. So with that I present to you…

Say goodbye to painful clean plates everyone! In the future, it looks like all you’ll have to do is paint out a couple frames and let the computer do the rest. Amazing.

LINK: Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene

We present a framework for automatically enhancing videos of a static scene using a few photographs of the same scene. For example, our system can transfer photographic qualities such as high resolution, high dynamic range and better lighting from the photographs to the video. Additionally, the user can quickly modify the video by editing only a few still images of the scene. Finally, our system allows a user to remove unwanted objects and camera shake from the video. These capabilities are enabled by two technical contributions presented in this paper. First, we make several improvements to a state-of-the-art multiview stereo algorithm in order to compute view-dependent depths using video, photographs, and structure-from-motion data. Second, we present a novel image-based rendering algorithm that can re-render the input video using the appearance of the photographs while preserving certain temporal dynamics such as specularities and dynamic scene lighting.

LINK: EGSR Paper (PDF)

Bhat P., Zitnick L., Snavely N., Agarwala A., Agrawala M., Curless B., Cohen M., Kang S. Using Photographs to Enhance Videos of a Static Scene. Eurographics Symposium on Rendering (EGSR) 2007.

augmented reality

Now this just blew my mind today. It’s called ‘Studierstube tracking‘, and if they can get this good of a track in real-time from a 2 megapixel camera phone…can you imagine the possibilities if you were using an HD film camera?

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Most high-end HD camera record straight to a hard drive anyways. So what if the computer you were recording too was also running a program acquiring 3D tracking data…in REAL TIME! Matchmoving would be done by the time you yell “cut!”.

This is just too cool for school man. And the best part? It’s all based on open source technology. I need some time to think.

LINK: Handheld Augmented Reality

Studierstube Tracker is a computer vision library for detection and pose estimation of 2D fiducial markers. It is a successor to the well known ARToolKitPlus library. Its concept is very similar to that of ARToolKit (ARTK), ARToolKitPlus (ARTK+) and ARTag, but its code base is completely different. Studierstube Tracker has been written from scratch with high performance for PCs as well as mobile phones in mind.

UPDATE:

And check out what artist Julian Oliver made using the same technology…amazing…

code monkey and fx phd’s guide

My day job as a Compositor, isn’t just pushing pixels and making things look pretty. I also develop tools for our Nuke pipeline here at Speedshape.

That’s meant mainly coding tools called ‘Gizmos’. They’ve been either utilities that do repetitive tasks for me…because I’m lazy. Or filters that apply some kind of cool effect. But recently with the release of Nuke 5, I’ve been doing a ton of down and dirty python / TCL coding. Mostly interface mods, but I’ve also been working on some pretty cool Nuke plugins.

Now what does that have to do with the price of beans? Well…nothing really. :) Just a little back story on how I found something very cool today…

LINK: FX PHD’s Compositor’s Guide to Nuke

I was digging through The Foundry’s NDK documentation and found that little gem listed above. Eight delicious video tutorials that take you through the world of Nuke 5.

And…it’s all for FREE! That’s right…as in FREE beer.

God I wish this was around a couple years ago when I was making the transition from Shake. So if my incoherant ramblings have sparked any interest, and you want to learn Nuke…that’s the place to start.

Thank you FX PHD!

Alright, back to coding.

krakatoa

short and sweet post this afternoon. “Deadline” is the secret word of the day.

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I found this really cool ‘Snickers’ spot over at the CGSociety today. It was done by a company called Unexpected in Germany. And they used a new particle simulation program called Krakatoa. It’s a pretty mean piece of software.

It’s capable of rendering hundreds of thousands of particles with ease, while still keeping light on it’s feet through a particle caching technique.

This allowed a calculation to be recycled for different passes such as for the diffuse layer, RGB layer for different PFlow events and, of course, for changing values afterward, like size of particles.

It was developed by the software division of ‘Frantic Films‘, and plugs right into 3DsMax.

Pretty cool tech man.

Read more about it and the spot after the break…

LINK: Krakatoa on Rugby

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This is a two spot campaign and the next commercial is due out later this year.

The first spot “RUGBY,” is currently airing throughout Russia, while a second spot, “TAG,” breaks in fall 2008.

I can’t wait!

UPDATE

Thanks to Borislav at Frantic Films for more details about Krakatoa! Apparently I didn’t even scratch the surface of how many particles it can render with my research pointing to hundreds of thousands. According to Frantic Films it’s capable of rendering..

140 million particles, give or take, depending on what
shading features have been requested. Some of our
customers have pushed it in the direction of
a billion.

Needless to say that’s a huge accomplisment!

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Alright, that’s it for today. My renders are almost off the farm so it’s back to work I go! Talk to you tomorrow, I hope you’re all doing well!