VFX New Zealand admin

Syntheyes Tutorials

admin — Sat, 17 Jun 2017 06:30:04 +0000

Syntheyes is the 3d tracker I tend to use if i need something better than Nukes inbuilt camera tracker in my comps. Below are some links to tutorials that might help.

The official Syntheyes Tutorial Area of their website has a number of good tutorials covering all aspects of the software. If you are new to the app, this should probably be your first port of call (click here to go there)

Matthew Merkovich has done a number of syntheyes tutorials.

He has been a match over for eons so to show the sorts of things he has worked in I’ll pop his Minority Report and Dr Doolittle demos below (which are an interesting behind th scenes anyway)

Now to the syntheyes stuff. First up a basic intro to syntheyes interface.

Rubiks Cube tracking

If you want to do head/face object tracking in syntheyes, have a look at the below series. The first ones cover a basic head track, his second series shows how to track ad forming face (to get a deforming mesh).

Next is his head tracking series:

Tracking Face Deformations (soft tracking)

Here is another intro tutorial by Fenix Motion Graphics

Samuel Fuller also has done a two part intro tutorial

Pixel bump also have a gory face track using syntheyes, realflow, maya and after effects

Rotoscoping tutorial videos and articles

admin — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 11:55:49 +0000

Rotoscoping is one of the fundamental skills of compositing so thought I’d collect together a few good videos and articles on it.

Some of these are over a decade old and though the tools used have changed since then, the techniques still remain the same for the most part. The things that have changed are generally ways we can track these roto shapes onto moving objects in the frame (examples of which are using a planar tracker like mocha, or smart vectors, or projection on a 3d tracked card).

The Art Of Rotocoping

This is a great fxguide article outlining the history, applications, software and basic tips.

Scott Squires Rotoscoping

Great videos showing a good rundown of rotoscoping techniques for beginners.

0:41 Rotoscoping Basics and Examples

2:50 Tracing for animation

6:42 Matting with GreenScreen

8:02 Garbage Matting

9:55 Mid Ground Roto

12:08 Compositing Mid Ground

14:54 Creating Twins

19:10 Colorizing

20:36 Animated Wipe

Here is his article on rotoing hair.

Silhouette Roto tutorial video

Mocha Pro Rotoscoping Basics

Nuke Rotoscoping Basics

Post Haste the free file structure organiser

admin — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 12:07:40 +0000

This is a great little freebie that allows you to set up template file structures for jobs (including a starting project for whatever software you use), then generate shots in bulk using that template.

If you aren’t already using something to automatically create shot structures for you (i use the wonderful smartlib withing nuke), you should look at this mac/win freebie. It will save you time and mean all your shots are in clear structures. Here’s a video on how it works (and click here to go to their page):

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=4jdj_lE_er8

ProEXR and EXR-io, free openEXR for Photoshop

admin — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 11:34:40 +0000

With the emergence of the free exr-io plugin for Photoshop, the long standing leading exr solution for Photoshop, ProEXR, has also become a free download.

OpenEXR is the industry standard multichannel HDR image format which ILM invented (for more info click here).

The proEXR package has been around for a decade and bundles plugins for Photoshop, premiere pro, & after effects. Indeed adobe has bundled 3 of the packs plugins in after effects for many years. Having access to all the layers from a CG or comp render in Photoshop is handy, and now you can pick it all up for free it is worth checking out (click to visit page).

The alternative which is worth a peak also is exr-io (click here to go to site). As both plugins are free now and offer similar features, check out both to see which appeals most.

An Oral History of Morphing in Michael Jackson’s ‘Black or White’

admin — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 10:10:38 +0000

25 years ago Michael Jackson’s music video for the song ‘Black and White’ ushered in the morphing technique.

The process which in 2D terms is a combination of warping and dissolving similar features of two different plates, had been used previously in the likes of the film ‘Willow’, but this music video took things to the next level and inspired over-use of what can be a very useful technique (especially if invisibly used for making different takes join together as one).

Here is a great article by CartoonBrew that talks to those who made the music video and the whole process.

Below is the video

Disneys New Keyer

admin — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 10:46:25 +0000

Disneys research arm have come up with a new way to key that they say gives a quicker, better result than traditional keying and despill tools.

They have rolled it into a Nuke node but as of yet it is purely an in house tool (quite possibly will never be released to the public but they have released the research paper so odds are some boffin might cobble together their own version).

Check out this video for an overview.

They have published the paper in PDF form which you can get here.