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Moviola.com has a video tutorial on how to create landsharks – those nefarious beasts that keep tearing up our streets.
Specifically, the tutorial tracks in Meshroom, animates in Blender, and composites in Nuke Non-commercial —all free downloads.
Here’s the link.
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Feeling like your graphics need more oomphf? DesignBuckle.com created a tutorial on how to add fonts to Photoshop.
This tutorial shows how to add or import fonts into Adobe Photoshop, along with a link to an in-depth tour of fonts in Adobe Stock.
Here’s the link.
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School of Motion has created a free 10-day online course that provides “an in-depth look at what it takes to be a Motion Designer. Along the way, you’ll learn about the software, principles, and techniques used in the field through in-depth case-studies and tons of bonus material.”
Presented by Joey Korenman, founder of the SchoolofMotion.com, “The Path To MoGraph” is a free 10-day course where you’ll get an in-depth look at what it takes to become a professional Motion Designer. You’ll get a tour of four very different Motion Design studios. Then, you’ll check out the creation of an entire real-world project from start to finish; showing you the software, tools, and techniques that you’ll need to know to break into this industry.
Here’s the link.
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GridMarkets hosted Fabian Nowak, VES award winning Houdini artist, in a webinar last week during which he discussed how he created the gravity scene in “Passengers.”
In the webinar, Fabian talks about the research that he invested into the shot and how the CG and live action elements came together. As is often the case, there were many unexpected challenges to overcome in order to produce this iconic shot. Fabian describes the approaches that he took to “keep making forward progress” in the face of adversity . . . something we can all learn from.
EXTRA CREDIT
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This article, written by Ian Failes, first appeared in VFXVoice.com. This is a summary.
James Cameron loves stereo. After also championing the stereo conversion of Titanic a few years ago, Cameron’s latest 3D re-release is Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The 1991 film was first re-mastered in 4K, before receiving the stereo treatment from Stereo D (part of Deluxe).
Before the stereo conversion could take place, Deluxe’s Post and Restoration Services Group, housed out of EFILM, scanned the film at 4K on a custom wet gate scanner. “The wet gate liquid conceals and reduces most base and emulsion scratches,” explains Deluxe’s Allan Tudzin. “The technology submerses the film frame into liquid, making the scratch invisible to the camera.”
The Post and Restoration Services Group also removed dirt and repaired scratches. The manual ‘dust busting’ procedure took hundreds of hours to clean the 4K scans back to their original pristine condition, but it was a necessary step since the 3D conversion process essentially involves rotoscoping thousands of images in every frame.
The mandate from Cameron, notes stereographer Yoichiro Aoki, was simply to “make a great 3D experience,” while also keeping things as realistic as possible. That, adds stereo supervisor Russell McCoy, meant maintaining good internal shaping for all the characters, particularly Arnold Schwarzenegger as the now-good T-800 Terminator.
Incredibly, that effort took around 1,800 artists about eight months to pull off. “It sounds like an exaggeration but it’s not,” says McCoy. “With a project that spans eight months, everyone gets a shot. And since there has to be so much detail and so much work put onto these shots, breaking it up into small teams just doesn’t work.”
The article continues with more details on the process, along with trailer and featurette videos.
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Toolfarm has added or updated 8 demos to their ever growing collection of free trials. The demos give you chance to take a plug-in for a spin and kick the tires, so you can get a feel for how it works, and if it works with your system.
Here’s the list:
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BorisFX released Sapphire 2021.5. Sapphire plug-ins let you create stunning organic looks unmatched by any host native effect tools. Key features include over 270 effects and 3000+ presets, a powerful Effect and Transition Builder, and integrated tracking and masking with the Academy Award-winning Mocha. Sapphire’s superior image quality, control, and render speed offers massive time-savings — allowing creatives to focus on what matters most, delivering an impact that keeps audiences coming back.
According to the BorisFX website, new in this version:
New in the 2021.0 version:
Here’s a link to learn more.
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This article, written by Chris McGowan, first appeared in VFXVoice.com. This is a summary.
Star Wars: Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge was produced by ILMxLAB in collaboration with Oculus Studios and launched last November on the Oculus Quest VR platform.
The primary narrative features new and iconic Star Wars characters and is connected to the Black Spire Outpost, a prominent locale in the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge lands of Disneyland and Disney World. As the player, you are a droid repair technician whose ship is boarded by Guavian Death Gang pirates and their leader Tara Rashin (Debra Wilson). To save your skin, you must jettison a mysterious cargo and flee in an escape pod to Batuu.
It was a challenge making Tales and moving the story forward while “giving the player more agency,” notes Jennifer Cha, Lead Animator.
Maintaining high-quality animation was another challenge. The volume of work increased for several reasons, including branching animations and AI trees, as well as longer shots and the resulting heavy animation files, according to Kishore Vijay, Lead Animator. “We don’t really have cuts,” he says. “The characters cannot really go off frame easily, so everything has to be animated to work from different viewpoints and distances. There are also technical considerations for interactivity and blending for branching cinematics and AI animation that the animators have to be cognizant of.”
The article provides an in-depth look at the design of the visual look of the game, as well as a number of production stills.
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ActionVFX just introduced the first two VFX collections in the new Crowd category: Sports Crowds and Concert Crowds. Industry productions will no longer need to film individuals on green screens while bringing hundreds of other extras to create a massive crowd. We’ve done the work for you. This creates a safe environment for your set and crew as we navigate an uncertain world rattled by a pandemic.
Both Crowd products will have 330 clips, our biggest collections to arrive on our website. The vast amount of clips will allow easy replication of crowds with different variations, crowd reactions, and talent. The collections also come with 15 different angles, giving artists unlimited amounts of creativity to implement digital crowds into any scene, no matter the perspective.
The variations in the clips include:
Here’s a blog post with more details.
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Re:Vision Effects sent an update email late last week:
We’re in the process of updating the current versions of our plug-ins for M1 support. Sorry, but older versions can’t be retrofitted so you will need to upgrade.
All of our product for OpenFX are now available with an M1 version. The installer will now detect the machine type and you will have an option to install M1, Intel or both. These have been tested in the Resolve 17 M1 build and should work with other OpenFX hosts (e.g. Nuke, Scratch,…) as they release M1 builds.
We’ve released Twixtor regular as FxPlug 4 for M1 and labeled the release M1 beta. On an Intel machine you will still use the old plug-ins. Bonus: more support for Motion with Twixtor is coming soon, we’ll announce when the update is ready.
For more information, visit: www.revisionfx.com