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…
____________________________________
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?
____________________________________
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.
____________________________________
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.
____________________________________
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.
____________________________________
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!
____________________________________
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.
