Friday, November 14, 2008

Kensington Mice and After Effects CS4

The secret settings to get the Unified Camera Tool to work.

After Effects CS4 has added a “Unified” camera tool to aid navigation in 3D space. Instead of having to scroll through three separate camera tools - Orbit, Track XY, and Track Z - to reposition an active camera or reframe an alternate view, users can now use a three-button mouse to quickly switch between these three tools.

All of our computers here have Kensington mice that include a clickable scroll wheel as the third (middle) mouse button. And lo and behold, they don’t work out of the box with AE CS4; the clickable scroll wheel defaults to toggling between horizontal and vertical scrolling. But a couple of settings tweaks will make your mouse behave the way you want:

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Autodesk+RED Workflow Guide

Autodesk release a white paper on using the RED One with Smoke, Inferno, Flame, Flint, and Lustre.

The RED One camera and its ability to capture large frame size, RAW-format files has certainly ignited the imagination of filmmakers and videographers. But its unusual file format and requirements has also created a lot of head-scratching among users trying to find the most efficient way to send RED footage through a normal production pipeline.

To this end, Autodesk just released a white paper that covers using RED One footage with their Smoke, Inferno, Flame, Flint, and Lustre systems. It covers shooting, lighting, color spaces, proxies, going from offline to online, audio, finishing and final output including suggested settings, as well as an appendix on RED-specific applications and where they fit into the workflow. In other words, this isn’t a brochure; it’s a mini-handbook for users that describes the current recommended practices in some detail.

You can download the white paper here. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of some of its suggestions:

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Saturday, October 18, 2008

After Effects CS4 is Shipping

Make sure your computer & plug-ins are compatible.

For those who might have missed the news, Adobe Creative Suite 4 started shipping this past Wednesday. Users are already receiving their pre-orders.

After Effects users looking to upgrade need to be mindful of two issues:

• As reported earlier, AE CS4 will not run on pre-Intel Macs.
• Not all CS3-compatible plug-ins are compatible with AE CS4; some will need upgrades. So far, most of these upgrades seem to be free or available for a nominal charge.

Fortunately, there’s information out there to help you through this upgrade decision and process:

Motion Graphics •
Training •
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Monday, September 22, 2008

After Effects CS4

A quick tour of the new features that will be of interest to motion graphics artists.

Adobe has announced their Creative Suite 4, in which they have aligned the schedules of virtually all of their products to be updated at the same time. One of these programs is, of course, After Effects, which we have based our business around since its release in 1992. As a result, we obviously go over each new release with a fine-tooth comb, looking for which new features will make our lives easier, will give us new looks, and which may open up new avenues of business for us. That last point has become particularly interesting in light of Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, plus their focus on integrating functionality across the various programs in the Creative Suite.

In this article, we will give a brief overview of many of those new features. Then in the coming weeks and months, we’ll focus on some of these features individually, relating what we found interesting about each one, with tips on how to use them (and what might trip you up). These additional articles will be posted on our CMG Keyframes channel on PVC.

In addition to articles up here on ProVideoCoalition, there are several other places where you can glean additional information:

• Later Tuesday afternoon (the 23rd), Adobe will be placing the"live help” file for After Effects CS4 online. When it is up, you can access the entire Help file by clicking here, and search for features of specific interest. Click here to jump straight to the New Features page; click here to jump straight to the page that describes changes in the User Interface between CS3 and CS4.

• We’ve created an hour of video training on using the new features in AE CS4 for Lynda.com’s Online Training Library. The course is called After Effects CS4: New Creative Techniques; when it goes live, it can be found here. Two of the movies are scheduled to go online at the same time as the CS4 announcement; the remaining ten will go live once CS4 ships. Lynda.com will also be posting New Feature previews for Illustrator CS4, Flash CS4, and Photoshop CS4, plus plus full courses for the new features in Fireworks CS4, Soundbooth CS4, and Dreamweaver CS4 (these last three are available as public betas from the Adobe Labs web site.) If you don’t already have a Lynda.com subscription, you can get a free all-access 7-day trial on us by clicking here.

• We’ve also written an article about the new features in AE CS4 for Focal Press, which appears at www.CMG4CS4.com. That article also outlines our plans for our books in relation to CS4.

On to our hit list of interesting new features in AE CS4:

*VIDEO* •
CS4 •
Motion Graphics •
Visual Effects • (1) Comments • Most recent comments by: Chris Meyer, • Permalink

Sunday, August 24, 2008

TED Talk: Using Biology to Make Better Animation

Torsten Reil talks about how the study of biology can help make natural-looking animated people.

The annual TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference is a place where Big Thinkers gather annually to inspire and be inspired. I’ve been going through their online archive of talks for my own amusement and education, and sharing with you ones I found to be particularly interesting.

This week I’d like to share a talk by Torsten Reil, originally of Oxford University and now of NaturalMotion. He and his team started from the point of view that most animation in computer games that were based on motion capture or manual keyframing were too simplistic, repetitive, and predictable. So rather than try to guess ahead of time what actions would be needed, and creating or capturing those actions, they went about simulating a human nervous system, wired it up to control a skeleton and muscles, and then gave it artificial intelligence. They used a form of simulated genetic evolution and mutation to teach it how to at first walk, and then react to external forces (such as being tripped or shoved). This system is now being used not only in computer games such as Grand Theft Auto IV, but also in movies for virtual stuntmen - or perhaps most famously, in battle sequences in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

This movie from TED - originally recorded five years ago - was the first public demonstration of the technology. Watching how their creations learned and then reacted was initially humorous, then breathtaking, and then actually somewhat disturbing; I highly recommend watching it (if you’re impatient, start around the 3 minute mark or so).

If you want to see where the technology is now, visit the NaturalMotion to learn more about their endorphin Dynamic Motion Synthesis simulator which can bake animations, and their euphoria real-time AI engine, including a good demo movie the gives you an overview of the technology.

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Friday, August 22, 2008

Adobe MAX, motion 08 Awards Shows

Opportunities to show off your work.

There are a few awards show coming up that we wanted to let you know about:

Adobe 2008 MAX Awards

The Adobe MAX Awards recognizes the best uses of Adobe software for creating engaging experiences. Normally, the MAX show is the domain of web content creators, but lately it’s been expanding out to include more video and motion graphics. In keeping with that, this is the first year that there is a category for digital video projects The top three finalists will be invited to show their projects at MAX 2008 in San Francisco Nov 16-19. The winner receives free MAX registration. Award submissions are due September 5. Click here for more information.

motionfest and motionawards
Call for Entries

These two awards show are connected with the motion 08 conference (which we both will be speaking at). The first is for animation (including Flash, stop motion, 3D, etc. flavors); the second is more for motion graphics artists:

motionfest is a juried competition honoring the best in animation worldwide. Specifically, motionfest recognizes the best animations created for the purpose of entertainment: animated shorts and full-length features. Finalists will be notified by September 12, 2008. Winners of motionfest08 will be announced as part of our opening day animation events, Sunday, October 12, 2008. The deadline to enter is September 8, 2008. Click here for more information.

The motionawards celebrate creative excellence in motion graphics, animation, and vfx, honoring the most current, breakthrough work. All worked entered must be the result of paid creative services and media placement, with the exceptions of public service work, projects for the arts, self-promotion, and student. Finalists will be notified by September 12, 2008. Winners of the 2008 motionawards will be announced Monday, October 13, 2008 at the motionawards party - part of motion08. The deadline to enter is September 8, 2008. Click here for more information.

Save on registration. save $300 on early-bird registration and an additional $200 by using promo code 08stashMO - courtesy of stash. To register, click here.

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Friday, July 11, 2008

Leaving Los Angeles

Trading Hollywood for The Land of Enchantment.

The reason we haven’t been posting up here for the past couple of weeks is because we’ve been packing up our home/office/studio and putting it into storage while we buy a new home in the East Mountains section of Albuquerque, just down the Turquoise Trail from Santa Fe. There are many reasons we’re undergoing this major life change, several of which we’ll be elaborating upon in the upcoming weeks and months. If you’re curious, here’s a few of the reasons why:

Business •
Motion Graphics •
Post Production •
Production •
Visual Effects • (3) Comments • Most recent comments by: Chuck, Chris Meyer, sean90291, • Permalink

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

NAB 2008: Plugged In

We came away with three themes buzzing in our head: plug-ins, training, and Nuke.

As expected, NAB 2008 did not reveal any major new software releases for motion graphic designers, but it did showcase a number of interesting new plug-ins. We’d like to give you a quick round-up of our favorites here; we’re arranging to give many of these more in-depth reviews up here on PVC over the next several months. We also were very interested in with what The Foundry has done with the high-end compositing application Nuke (which they acquired from Digital Domain), and came away with the impression that in this slow economy, training has become more important again.

Motion Graphics •
NAB 08 •
Training •
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