cg daily news |
- Matte Painting tutorial: Making of Barbarossa
- Create a Stylish Retro Illustration
- New Vehicle Design
- Framestore London VFX in Avatar
- MGFest 2010 Tour
| Matte Painting tutorial: Making of Barbarossa Posted: 26 Mar 2010 09:13 AM PDT
 Matte Painting realized for the movie Barbarossa and artist inspired from an old painting of Rome with Castel Sant'Angelo CHECK HERE ! Related links: cgarena.com  |
| Create a Stylish Retro Illustration Posted: 26 Mar 2010 08:33 AM PDT
 This tutorial, will show you how to create a beautiful and colorful retro illustration using Photoshop and 3ds Max for this purpose. You'll learn some simple but effective techniques that will allow you to create a cool and stylish image. Final Preview:  TUTORIAL HERE Related links: forcg.com  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2010 08:18 AM PDT
 The Gnomon Workshop releases a new Vehicle Design series by visual effects art director Alex Jaeger. In these two volumes Alex will walk you through his process for designing a futuristic military vehicle, from ideation and designing a 3/4 view to creating orthographics for a 3d modeler and rendering a presentation piece. His demonstration places particular emphasis on using the script as a guide for his design decisions, including form, color, lighting and texture details. Alex brings to these lectures his experience working on major feature films such as both Transformers movies and J.J. Abrams' Star Trek, and his incredible ability to blend science fiction and reality into seemingly fully-functional believable designs. "Through hard work and dedication, Alex has gained an amazing amount of achievements in his professional career. His designs and art direction have brought life to some of the most iconic films in Hollywood. It is individuals like Alex who continue to forge the unknown roads ahead and define the industry we all call Entertainment. He is truly an inspiration for me." Feng Zhu Founder, FZD School of Design Founder, Feng Zhu Design Vehicle Design Volume 1: From Script to Concept DVD Description: In this series, Alex Jaeger demonstrates his process for designing a futuristic military vehicle based on descriptions from a science fiction screenplay. In this first volume, he covers the ideation phase through to completing a detailed three-quarter view drawing in Photoshop®. Alex discusses his design philosophy, informed by his automotive design background, and he uses key story details to inspire his decision making. As he starts to sketch in Photoshop, you will see his process for roughing in quick ideas and choosing which of those ideas is most successful based on the visual strength of each design and how well it adheres to the script's guidelines. Alex then picks a sketch to develop into a refined three-quarter view drawing, and demonstrates his techniques for detailing the vehicle and making sure that all the parts fit and flow together with a theme. Finally, Alex discusses the value of using reference as he adds elements to his futuristic vehicle to keep it believable but relevant to its world. Vehicle Design Volume 2: Concept Breakdown and Rendering DVD Description: In this series, Alex Jaeger demonstrates his process for designing a futuristic military vehicle based on descriptions from a science fiction screenplay. In this second volume, with an emphasis on the production pipeline, he shows how to break down a three-quarter view of a vehicle design into orthographic views for a 3D modeler, and then demonstrates the process for rendering that three-quarter view into a final presentation piece in Adobe Photoshop®. Alex begins with the side orthographic view, showing you exactly how to correctly measure and position each element from your design. He leads you through his workflow to then create top, front, and back views, as well as alternates for "on-rode" and "off-rode" modes. Throughout the orthographic demo, Alex focuses on keeping the design accurate, well organized and easy for a 3D modeler to "read". He then moves on to rendering the three-quarter view in Photoshop, adding details to the line drawing and finishing with color, lighting, graphics, photo-textures, scale cues and atmosphere to present the vehicle in its world and bring the final design to life. Vehicle Design with Alex Jaeger Volume 1: From Script to Concept Related links: thegnomonworkshop.com  |
| Framestore London VFX in Avatar Posted: 26 Mar 2010 08:04 AM PDT
 Learn how Framestore London used Houdini to add multiple VFX to James Cameron's Avatar.. Director James Cameron's academy award winning masterpiece Avatar has set new standards by which all future VFX films will be measured against. The movie was first conceived in 1994 and then put on the back burner until James Cameron felt that CG technology was ready to bring his vision to life cinematically. The resulting movie uses CG throughout and required the combined effort of many top VFX studios to make Cameron's dream a reality. One of these studios was Framestore London who developed a wide range of visual effects for the film. The Houdini team included Gunnar Radeloff, Adrien Toupet, Ben Frost, Tom Bolt and was led by Guillaume Fradin. This small team of artists and technical directors were able to make a significant contribution to the overall shot count by using Houdini's deep toolset to help them meet the high standards set out by James Cameron. Fire and Smoke In background shots of the human camp on Pandora, Framestore needed to generate fire and smoke pouring from chimneys and chose to use Houdini's PyroFX tools. To find the right look for this effect, the team decided to take different approaches for the fire and the smoke. This made it easier to create long elongated smoke trails on the one hand and more compact flames on the other. For the flames, the team was able to easily create numerous fire variations using the built-in Pyro FX shader. "The shader provided by Side Effects met our needs exactly" says Guillaume. "The smoke effect was achieved using custom VEX code. Depending on the situation, our artists could either create volume geometry or define it at render time. We soon realized that we had more control when we used volume geometry."  "Shadow generations and render times are very fast and the geometry is visible in the viewport, meaning we could easily fine tune it. We could also modify it using either, transforms or by applying additional vex expressions if we needed it to fade or get denser in certain areas" Guillaume explains. "But sometimes the smoke was filling a very large area of the shot and volume geometry would have been too big to manage. In those situations, it was very handy that the smoke vex library could be called at render time from a shader. And we could still preview the effect at a low resolution in the viewport." As the action in the film intensifies, bullets strike metal and tarmac surfaces which generate sparks and smoke. No realism was spared by Framestore's VFX team. In one particular shot, a helicopter was pelted with gunfire as it floated just off the ground. The smoke created as the bullets impact the metal had to quickly disperse due to the strong wind generated by the helicopter blades. "In shots where the forces are quite high simulations tend to become unstable making it tricky to find the right amount of force needed. It has to be fast enough, otherwise it is not realistic, but it also has to be slow enough so that it stays pleasing to the eye" Guillaume says. "Some shots used particles with our in-house volumetric generator while more detailed shots used fluids. Houdini's tool set made it easy to find a general technique for all the impacts, while still allowing us to tweak each result separately". God is in the Details In a film full of jaw-dropping visual effects, there are so many subtle details that help add polish and bring to life the film's virtual shots. For instance, when the protagonist Jake Sully glides his wheelchair through a puddle. This interaction between the wheelchair's wheels and the water puddle is given a sense of realism using a combination of particles for the water droplets and textures to create ripples. The sultry climate of Pandora is very evident in all of the beautiful bird's eye view shots of the environment, but what about when the Pandora is observed from the ground? Well, this too has been taken into consideration. When a helicopter lands in this film, the downward force of air from the blades creates a vortex-like light fog. This has been achieved by generating fluid from the helicopter moving downward. This fluid then bounces on the ground and creates the vortex. Particles are then advected through this fluid so the team can fine tune where it should be visible then begin adding layers of noise.  The human settlement in Avatar is full of high-tech machinery, much of which emits great amounts of heat. In a shot where Jake Sully is conversing with Colonel Quartich who is climbing into a robotic AMP suit, the team was required to animate heat haze projecting from the suit. This was especially challenging due to the stereoscopic nature of the film. Heat haze is typically created as a compositing trick where particle passes would be handed to the compositors so they can distort the background. This distortion works effectively in a non stereo movie, but in this case it would lose the 3D effect. "Houdini was a great help here since it allowed us to prototype many types of shaders, interact easily with Nuke and try out versions in particles, fluid or a combination of both" says Guillaume. One of the subtler yet necessary effects created involved the mixing two different types of air. The air on Pandora is not the same as that found on earth. This is evident when doors from within the human settlement open to the outdoors and mix with the humid air of Pandora. This "combination of air sources" was achieved using normal fluid simulation and was rendered in Mantra using normal passes and RGB lighting passes so that compositors could use them in order to distort the background. The human base was surrounded by an immense forest. Here, Houdini and Xfrog were utilized to prototype layouts for the forest. To easily test many layouts, many points were scattered where they desired trees and were used as instance points. With this they were able to vary the sizes and species of trees, make fine-tuned adjustments and then quickly render with Mantra. Once a layout was approved it would be sent to the lighters for final rendering. Simplifying the Pipeline Before tackling the actual visual effects, the Framestore team first needed to nail down their pipeline. The first issue they addressed was the importing of footage shot with a stereo camera. Using Houdini, they wrapped two instances of their in-house camera importer into a Houdini Digital Asset. This became their new default camera importer and guaranteed that any Technical Director would have a correct set of two cameras in a scene. Working with both Houdini and Maya simultaneously in production, the team had to ensure that they could easily import precise geometries and animations into Houdini to allow the two packages to have perfectly synchronized renders. Framestore is no stranger when it comes to working with multiple software packages during a production however in this instance each shot they were working with contained a huge amount of assets. With this being the case, some tools had to be re-designed and Houdini made it easy to adapt quickly to changes and plug itself back into a constantly changing pipeline.  "Houdini's flexibility was a big help and most of the solutions we ended up were solved with out-of-box Houdini nodes without too much scripting," says Framestore VFX Artist Guillaume Fradin. "We only scripted a python node that would pull an XML file that was built from the layout department containing all asset position and geometry cache file. This let us recreate a very light set of geometry containing only one point per asset." This set of points had all the necessary attributes to load the asset geometry later if desired using a copy SOP, or for each with a simple file SOP. This way they could quickly visualize where all the assets were in space, which allowed the artist to have a clear idea as to where each point corresponds. Since it was impossible for a single computer to load all assets together, this was a huge time saver and they did not experience any slow-downs by while loading assets that weren't needed. Framestore's approach to creating effects for Avatar show how highly polished details can make a big difference. By focusing on many small details designed to add up to a new level of realism, the Houdini team at Framestore was able to play a big part in bringing James Cameron's vision to life. Related links: avatarmovie.com framestore-cfc.com sidefx.com  |
| Posted: 26 Mar 2010 07:52 AM PDT
 Boston Motion Graphics Festival 2010 The Motion Graphics Festival launches its 2010 tour by returning to Boston from April 1st to 5th. MGFest will bring a new wave of artists and technologists to awaken those sleeping synapses. Witness and participate in a convergence of motion, sound and interactivity, embrace new ideas, celebrate the inquisitive spirit, and at evening's approach, dance. MGFest stands as the premier creative conference for motion design, visual effects, sound design and interface technology, presenting a wide array of events including: art showcases, workshops, panel discussions, studio tours, theater screenings, industry mixers and audio visual showcases. Featured artists include: The Mill, Dvein, Pleix, Psyop, Herzog & De Meuron, Three Legged Legs, Jean-Paul Frenay, Yoshi Sodeoka, Alan Sondheim, Addictive TV, Liquid Stranger, Warp Records, The Crystal Method, Royksopp, Assassin's Creed 2, LucasArts, N.A.S.A., Larry Carlson, Ken Adams, Jen Stark, Shantell Martin and many more. The Festival debuts the 2010 schedule with screenings by Lumen Eclipse, "Psychedelia" and "Somatic Death, Soma Life". Journey down the road set by thirteen artists exploring a new mind-manifesting experience, challenging afresh perceptions and pointing towards a reawakening unhindered by the prosthetic body. The Boston Motion Design Conference on Friday, April 2nd is a full-day conference featuring diverse topics and inspiring presenters from AVID, Fox, MIT, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and more. Friday night's Best of 2009 screening by Stash DVD Magazine highlights music videos, virals, short films, commercials, broadcast designs and game cinematics from top-tier studios across the world. Something will grab your attention, setting off a chain reaction thus igniting a fresh set of ideas. Hands-on Workshops happen Saturday, April 3rd with Maxon Cinema 4D Essentials, Animating with ActionScript 3, and Animation in a Browser with jQuery. Saturday night's realtime A/V performance in the 2012 Lounge at Machine features Liquid Stranger with the Psymbolic visual show and Z.E.E. The visuals are rendered in realtime, seamlessly spread across 3 full-HD resolution projections. The entire evening experience brought to you by Zebbler, Vermin Street and MGFest. Sponsored by Maxon, MassArt, Lumen Eclipse, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Stash, Future Media Concepts, NetDiver, IdN and Cambridge Arts Council. Boston MGFest Schedule >> http://MGFest.com/10/boston/ Boston MGFest Tickets & Registration >> http://MGFest.com/10/boston/#tickets Year-long Call for Entry Guidelines + Entry Form >> http://MGFest.com/10/call/#4entry Related links: MGFest.com  |
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