Cinzia Angelini, Director and Head of Story, Cinesite Studio
VFXVoice and Autodesk are co-sponsoring a series of webinars titled: “Ask Me Anything: VFX Pros Tell All.”
The next live event is July 15, 2021, at 12 PM PDT. This event features Cinzia Angelini, Director and Head of Story, Cinesite Studios. Her experience spans from Cinesite to Warner Brothers, DreamWorks, Sony Imageworks, Disney Animation Studios, Duncan Studio and Illumination Entertainment.
Past speakers include:
Chris White, Visual Effects Supervisor, WETA Digital
Nonny de la Peña, Founder, Emblematic Group
Ellen Poon, Visual Effects Supervisor, Visual Effects Producer
Aruna Inversin, Creative Director & Visual Effects Supervisor
Karen Dufilho, Producer, Google Spotlight Stories
Greg Anderson, Head of Studio-NY, Sr. VFX Supervisor, FuseFX
and many others.
Here’s the link to access all of these. All events are free.
This article, written by Chris Zwar, first appeared in ProVideoCoalition.com. This is a summary.
Render times in After Effects can vary a lot. If you’ve been using After Effects for a while, you’ve probably had some projects that render quickly, and others very slowly. Sometimes it can be hard to pinpoint exactly why some projects render faster than others.
At a very basic level, there are four things which determine how fast After Effects will render a single frame. Firstly, there’s the resolution of the composition. Secondly, there’s the resolution of each individual layer in the composition. Thirdly, there’s the number of layers in the composition. Finally, there’s the bit-depth of the composition – which determines how much data is required to process each individual pixel.
More recently, Adobe has added a fifth new variable – Multi-Frame Rendering. This is a new feature, still in Beta development, that utilizes more than one CPU core to render multiple frames of a composition at the same time. Depending on your hardware, rendering can be more than twice as fast.
The video [in this article] covers all of the details, but it’s probably worth emphasizing that this is a relatively niche demonstration. I didn’t try changing the overall composition resolution, and having 920 layers in a composition isn’t something you see every day. The project only uses one effect, and yet it’s a great example of how simple changes to bit-depth and resolution can dramatically affect the amount of data that After Effects has to process in order to produce a rendered image.
Three free tutorials covering a panoply of effects software.
Image courtesy of BorisFX.com
The team at Boris FX recently released three new free video tutorials covering Particle Illusion, Sapphire’s Builder Effect and Mocha Pro Silhouette.
Combine 3D Particles & Text in After Effects
John Dickinson shows how Continuum 2021.5’s new Particle Illusion features allow you to easily integrate 3D particles with After Effects 3D text. Includes AE project file to follow along.
Stylized Text Effects Using Sapphire Builder Effect.
Ben Brownlee jumps into Sapphire’s Builder Effect to share an insider tip. Use the Quick Text Effect preset (new to 2021) to transform simple boring text to striking.
LIVE STREAM:Mocha Pro + Silhouette for Nuke Compositors
Dan Smith, CraftyApes senior compositor and author of NUKE Codex: Nodes within Nodes, joins the Boris FX team to show how he uses Mocha Pro and Silhouette to supercharge his compositing workflow inside Nuke. (Live Stream – July 7)
https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-07 01:30:002021-07-07 01:30:00Tip #1761: Boris FX Offers Three New Tutorials
TVBEurope reports that UK-based Strictly Come Dancing has introduced augmented reality into this year’s series. Here’s a detailed look at what they did.
It’s not been easy to bring the ballroom back in the year of the pandemic, and the production team deserve all the plaudits they’ve received for their hard work to get the show on air. Strictly’s production team has been particularly innovative by bringing augmented reality into the mix. From the racing cars in week one, to the elephant that appeared during Bill Bailey’s Quickstep, augmented reality has featured every week during the live shows.
The use of AR has been a real team effort, involving both the lighting and audio teams, as well as companies, Mo-Sys and Potion Pictures. While this year is the first time AR has been employed in the show, it’s something the team has been considering for a while. “We’ve previously used perspective in the floor to create the illusion that the dancers are standing on top of a lighthouse or wedding cake, or skyscraper,” explains Potion Pictures’ managing director David Newton, who also serves as the show’s graphics designer.
“That’s been really effective but the big drawback is you can’t move the camera.”
Newton was asked by Strictly’s producers to look into the possibility of AR, and chose to use Unreal Engine as they were already starting to use it for real time rendering. “Mo-Sys’s name kept coming up in relation to AR and camera tracking, and Epic Games said Mo-Sys have a plugin that works great with their software and we were comfortable with using Unreal so it all sort of added up.”
Using AR looks great on screen, but there’s always the possibility that the couples will end up dancing right through it. How do the team ensure that doesn’t happen? Newton cites Clara Amfo’s recent jive, which featured an AR record player. “The first draft of the record player had it much further down stage, we thought the original starting position was going to be camera right. So we sort of changed how a record player works to actually have the arm on the other side. But it all changed, and it went further upstage and there were a few more meetings about where it was going to go, what colour it should be, what side the arm was going to be, how many letters of complaint we would get if the records spun in the wrong direction,” he laughs.
As well as the graphics, Strictly’s lighting is a key component of the augmented reality employed in the show. David Bishop, the show’s lighting director, says it’s been interesting to explore the relationship between lighting and AR. “In my mind there are two routes with AR, you have to either make something that is real, and therefore it has to appear on the screen as being absolutely real, or you have to make something that’s very clearly an ethereal dimension and isn’t meant to be real,” explains Bishop. “For example, if you’re inside an AR-created house, as we’ve used this series, and there’s a light bulb inside then the person that’s standing inside that house needs to be lit as though it’s coming from that fake light. That means I have to find a real light in the same direction, which sort of does the same job.
Bishop continues: “The tricky thing about that is that our spot ops can’t see the things they’re trying to point the lights at. So they’d be pointing the spotlight in one direction and then I would be saying left a bit, down a bit. It’s that sort of workflow that’s become quite new to us but it is absolutely key, getting the lighting angles right is what’s making the AR even more believable, and that’s certainly something that’s improved throughout the series.”
https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-07-07 01:30:002021-07-07 01:30:00Tip #1763: The AR Elephant in the Ballroom
Robbie writes: “Please learn from our misfortune.”
Robbie Coblentz’s QNAP server.
This article, written by Robbie Coblentz, first appeared in ProVideoCoalition.com. This is a summary.
I’m heading to a shoot and my phone rings. It’s Jake, my senior producer.
“Boss, I think we’ve been hacked.”
And with that starts a loooong week of recovery, troubleshooting, and formatting. Our QNAP actually had been hacked.
Quick background. I have a small video production company that produces commercials, brand films, and TV programming.
We are a PC-based shop, with all machines connected to 48TB NAS via a closed 10 gig ethernet network. The NAS, a QNAP TS1685, is stocked with 4TB drives and striped into a RAID 6 configuration. That gives us 40 TB of usable space with the safety net of being able to survive 2 drive failures. The QNAP services four edit suites and a few other computers for browsing and offloading
The QNAP has four 1-gig ethernet ports and a single 10-gig Ethernet port. The 10-gig port services the edit suites. One of the single gig ports connected to our traditional network and was outward-facing to the internet. That was part of the problem.
Up until now, my backup strategy was based around the idea that a hardware failure was the most likely — and dangerous — problem we would face.
Typically, we have at least four copies of all footage shot.
We burn footage cards on an iMac via ShotPut Pro to a bare hard drive (copy 1) along with a copy to a locally attached RAID 5 (copy 2). Then, the footage is loaded into an active project folder on the NAS (copy 3). Once the bare drive (copy 1) reaches capacity, we make an LTO copy (copy 4). When the project is complete, we archive to another bare drive (copy 5) for mastered projects. When that drive is full, it gets an LTO copy (copy 6). The RAID 5 and NAS copies get deleted once everything is mastered off.
We make a Chronsync backup of the NAS every night using an older RAID system to give a near-line-identical copy. Technically, that would be the seventh temporary copy. In this case, 7 wasn’t our lucky number.
The Chrosync backup was made after the hack had occurred, so the ransomed files copied over the last known good copy. And we didn’t have archiving on.
So if you are keeping score at home, that’s a bunch of copies of the footage, but only one copy of projects, image, animation, and music files — all typically smaller than 20 MB. That was our Achilles heel.
Read the full article as Robbie describes how they recovered, how his backup strategy changed and how they are moving forward.
You don’t need to be a big company to get hacked. You just need to connect your servers to the Internet.
This free upgrade significantly expands creative options.
Image courtesy of Boris FX.com
Boris FX released Continuum 2021.5. The new release delivers more 3D power to Particle Illusion, brand new cinematic effects & presets, and time-saving workflows.
Plugin host support includes Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, and OFX hosts Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Foundry Nuke, and VEGAS Pro. (FCP X and Motion coming soon)
This is a free update to customers on a current subscription or a valid upgrade & support plan.
New in Particle Illusion:
Node View: Select any particle node in the tree and corresponding parameters instantly display in the control panel
3D Emitter Shapes, Forces, Deflectors, and Emission: From flat 2D to true 3D
Deep Integration with After Effects: Emitters can trace AE native live text and mask layers and emitters can attach to host native lights and 3D layers
Emitter Presets: Stunning drag and drop presets added to the included Emitter Library
Foundry explores the new VFX pipeline in “The Found Lederhosen.”
Image courtesy of Foundry.com.
This article first appeared in Foundry.com. This is a summary.
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) Retreat has just marked its 26th year with a virtual 9-day event exploring today’s most transformative technologies. Exploring the challenges and opportunities of cloud-based distributed workflows was a main aim of the HPA Retreat’s 2021 Supersession — a production that Foundry was excited to be involved in.
Diving deeper into the The Found Lederhosen project, Matt Mazerolle, Foundry’s Director of Product, New Technology, weighs in: “The aim was to explore the next level of remote work—distributed production pipelines. You have crews shooting all over the world, with 200 artists working remote during a variety of COVID lockdowns. Everything’s in the cloud, and you’re connecting different vendors into that data through cloud platforms. So in the case of The Found Lederhosen, there are six geographical locations where there are shots being done. At each location, all the data is being put into AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Different vendors are then connecting different platforms to work on that data, in order to realize the film.”
The result was a production made up of novel workflows that tease at what the next stage of distributed production could look like, heralding a future for the industry that more closely aligns with the MovieLabs 2030 Vision for the Evolution of Media Creation. Here’s a link.
EXTRA CREDIT
The article – linked above – includes illustrations and links that explore this subject in more detail.
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https://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpg00Larry Jordanhttps://www.theinsidetips.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Tips-Logo-700x150.jpgLarry Jordan2021-06-30 01:30:002021-06-30 01:30:00Tip #1739: Is the Traditional VFX Pipeline Dead?
TEDxREAL explores reality through the work of 10 VFX studios.
Image montage courtesy of Motionographer.com.
This article, written by Scott Geersen, first appeared in Motionographer.com. This is a summary.
TEDx: REAL is a visual exploration of the nature of reality, as seen through the hopes, fears, and dreams of a mother-to-be who imagines the possibility of a better world for her child. It’s part exquisite corpse – in that it’s filled with unique, surreal moments – but doesn’t quite adhere to the rules of that convention because it’s much, much more collaborative. In total, we curated work from ten studios, including ourselves, and pieced it all together for the final product.
The TEDx briefs are always just one word, and it’s up to us to interpret them. For 2020, the theme was “REAL,” which is a very broad theme to work with.
We realised that REAL couldn’t be pinned down to one neat explanation, and a single-styled expression could never do the topic justice. What’s REAL can be so fluid and personal, but ultimately, a shared experience. So, we leaned into the multifaceted nature of reality and decided collaboration would demonstrate this perfectly. I guess we could have pursued a multi-style approach ourselves, but we just felt it was more authentic to include different points of view, and it gave us all a more global presence – in keeping with our ongoing strategy of positioning TEDx as an event with global impact.
The studios they showcased are:
BEMO
Nerdo
Spillt
Mighty Nice
Post Office Studios
Bullpen
Oddfellows
Mixcode
State
Substance
Here’s the link to their results. This includes work samples and additional interviews.
Rocket Lasso has released another plugin for Cinema 4D. Ricochet behaves like a particle system for splines by automatically animating splines to “ricochet” around your Cinema 4D scene or even within models. Ricochet pre-calculates the entire path of the splines, so there is no need to guess where it will end up or wait for the timeline to play every frame.
Ricochet automatically animates splines ricocheting around your models and scene. You can have them bouncing around forever by setting the Rate, Surface Alignment to wrap splines around objects, or you can dynamically fill volumes of any model or space over time with Growth.
Spline segments can be colorized with built-in random color, greyscale or driven by MoGraph Effectors. Use Cinema 4D’s Matrix object as the basis to create as many Ricochet origins as you want and Fields to drive the advanced interactions with Ricochet’s parameters.
Ricochet is compatible with Cinema R20 and greater on Windows and macOS.
Modular Thunderbolt expansion systems for desktop and rackmount.
DuoModo image courtesy of Sonnet Inc.
Sonnet Technologies announced the DuoModo line of professional, modular Thunderbolt expansion systems for the desktop and for rack installation, the latest entries in its award-winning lineup of Thunderbolt products. The DuoModo line is comprised of three interchangeable expansion modules — a three-slot PCIe card system, an eGPU card system, and a Mac mini mounting system with integrated 40Gbps Thunderbolt storage dock — and three enclosures consisting of two dual-module housings (one desktop and one rackmount) and a single-module desktop housing. Sonnet will also offer four preconfigured systems to simplify the order process for the most popular combinations of modules and enclosures. All modules are Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 compatible.
For the past decade, Sonnet’s Thunderbolt-to-PCIe card expansion products and computer mounting solutions have enabled users to overcome limitations in connectivity and adaptability, with the computers often favored by pro audio and video users. The capabilities to connect PCIe cards to computers lacking card slots and install Mac mini computers in computer racks have been integral to enabling countless workflows. With the launch of the DuoModo line, Sonnet has fulfilled its customers’ biggest requests to make modular products that offer greater flexibility of use in more workflows.
The DuoModo line addresses the particular requirements of audio, video, and broadcast users. Users can now configure a system to fit their specific needs, creating diverse combinations such as a system housing two GPU cards or six PCIe cards to connect to their computers with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ports, or another with a Mac mini plus one GPU card or three PCIe cards. Additional modules are planned for future release.
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