Visual Effects
by PVC Staff
Monday, June 16, 2008
It’s not the budget, it’s where you put the camera!
Equipment doesn’t make the image; people do. I proved this on a music video recently where we had more people than equipment.
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Cameras • Editing • Lighting • Post Production • Production • Visual Effects • (0) Comments • • Permalink
Monday, June 16, 2008
Recently Added: Gobos and Gels in After Effects
Concluding our three-part series on 3D lighting in After Effects, we show how to project patterns and colors.
Finishing our tour of 3D lighting in After Effects, in this third column we discuss how to recreate gobo and gel effects. Gobos cast shadow patterns, while gels are colored filters that in turn control the color of the light being projected. Use video in place of a solid color, and you can project video onto other objects (such as the example here).
Click here to jump straight to “Gobos and Gels.”
(The first installment in this series - an overview, with helpful information on the Material Options - can be found here. The second installment - which focused on tips and tricks for conventional shadows - can be found here.)
Lighting • Motion Graphics • Visual Effects • (0) Comments • • Permalink
Monday, June 09, 2008
Recently Added: 3D Shadows in After Effects
Several parameters must be set correctly in order to coax shadows out of After Effects.
In the second part of a three-part series we wrote about learning lighting in After Effects, we covered shadows. Among the gems uncovered include the one parameter that defaults to “off” when it needs to be “on” to see shadows (the Cast Shadows switch for the layer in front), what affects shadow size (the type of light plays a big roll, along with distance between the light, layers, and camera), how to soften or sharpen shadows including how Shadow Diffusion works, and how to create colored shadows.
Click here to jump straight to “Lurking in the Shadows.”
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Saturday, April 19, 2008
NAB 2008 Super Session: A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget
At the show ruled by suits and dilberts, the rebels get their turn
With big exhibitions like The NAB Show falling out of favor, and some disappearing altogether in the 21st century, NAB struck back this year by offering more educational fare than in years past, featuring keynotes and panels of experts from the industry, as well as day-long classes. On Wednesday was “A Million Dollar Look on a Thousand Dollar Budget,” a keynote and panel on getting cinematic production values out of equipment you may already have sitting around your studio.
The session was kicked off with the Legend of Zelda fan trailer “linked” here (nerdy pun for gamers paying attention) which appeared on April Fool’s Day, followed by a keynote by Stu Maschwitz of The Orphanage (and author of a fantastic blog) and then a panel featuring Dave Basulto of Clarity Pictures, Alex Lindsay from Pixel Corps, D.P. Taylor Wigton (447 Productions) and moderated by Brian Valente from Redrock Micro.
Stu’s keynote was a nice riff on his book The DV Rebel’s Guide in which he focused on the concept, “Less is More,” that you achieve perfection when you remove everything unnecessary from a scene - but no more than is necessary. He cited examples, showing a scene from The Matrix using the old knife throw trick where the knife is thrown out of frame and then we cut to the result, to support his argument that the cheap and scrappy method of constructing shots often yields the best result (even in a… more »
Budgeting • Business • NAB 08 • Post Production • Pre-Production • Production • Visual Effects • (1) Comments • Most recent comments by: fredjones, • 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.
more »Motion Graphics • NAB 08 • Training • Visual Effects • (0) Comments • • Permalink
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Animator vs. Animation
A fun animation that shows what can happen when you tease your art a little too much…
Steve Kilisky recently wrote a thought-provoking blog about how video (and now, the web) has traditionally been initially driven by technical folks, with the artists following along. To this day, there is still often a distinction between an “artist” and an “operator,” “animator” or “developer.”
In that light, Trish recently found (on a calligraphy list, of all things) a pointer to this excellent cartoon that shows what can happen when an animator provokes his animation to revolt. It’s well worth a few minutes from your day. (Be patient through the first minute; it keeps picking up pace from there...)
more »3D • Motion Graphics • Visual Effects • (0) Comments • • Permalink
