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ILHAN ERSAHIN’S ISTANBUL SESSIONS “Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber)”

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ILHAN ERSAHIN’S ISTANBUL SESSIONS “Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber)”

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ILHAN ERSAHIN'S ISTANBUL SESSIONS "Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber)" [official video]

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TR/ ENG(below)


Sokaklarda dolaşan bir grup anonim. Her yer çok kalabalık ama kimlikler bir o kadar az. Birisi olmaya çalışmak, ismini, hızla giden bu dev geminin suda bıraktığı dalgalara yazmak kadar zor. Herkes, herkes ve herkes artık hiç kimse. Kendine kuytular bulduysa bile bu sessizlik, parlayan ekranlar üzerinden var olabildi ancak. O bas bas bağırılan ekranlarda, iktidarın aslında kimde olduğunu hatırlattılar o girilmez denen yerlere girerek. Ama bu güç umurlarında bile değildi. O üzerine günlerce ateşli konuşmalar yaptığımız alanlar bizim için ''artık böyle'' bir yerdi ama onlar, ''hayır aslında böyleydi'' demek için şöyle bir göründüler ama çok da ses etmediler. Bir kedinin çekiciliği vardı onlarda. ''Bakın burası böyleydi'' derken onlar da orayı ''artık böyle'' yapan her şeyin bir parçası oldu ve kaldırım taşları gibi fark edilmez hale geldiler. Sadece biraz olsun eğlenmek, kaygılanmadan birkaç yıl yaşayabilmek istiyorlardı. Beş dakika içinde, en fazla on beş saniye var oldular ve gittiler.  - Gökalp Gönen

Director's Statement
A group of anonymous wandering the streets. Everywhere is very crowded but identities are very few. Trying to be someone is as difficult as writing your name on the waves left by this fast-moving giant ship. Everyone is everyone and everyone is nobody anymore. This silence could only exist through glowing screens, even if it found itself nooks. On those loud screens, they reminded who actually had the power by entering the places that were said to be inaccessible. But they didn't even care about this power. The areas where we had passionate conversations about it for days were a "now like this" place for us, but they looked like this to say "no, it was actually like that" but they did not speak much. They had the charm of a cat. When they said, "Look, it was like this," they became part of everything that made it "like this" and became unnoticeable like paving stones. They just wanted to have a little fun, to be able to live a few years without worry. In five minutes, fifteen seconds at most, they existed and left. - Gökalp Gönen


"Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber)" being the first single of Ilhan Ersahin's Istanbul Sessions' new album "Bir Zamanlar Şimdi", is crowned with this fantastic video created by young talented director Gökalp Gönen.

Ilhan Ersahin's Istanbul Sessions, the genuine quartet of the eurasia, melt their original sound with modern jazz forms, eastern beats and spices. The band’s 5th studio album is co-produced and recorded by Grammy awarded Italian producer Tommaso Colliva.

Ilhan Ersahin - tenor saxophone
Alp Ersönmez - bass, effects
Turgut Alp Bekoğlu - drums
İzzet Kızıl - percussion

Video Credits:
Video designed, directed, shot and animated by Gökalp Gönen [see Director's statement below] 
Visit: https://www.instagram.com/gokalpgonen/  & https://vimeo.com/gokalpgonen
Dancing Girl with Red Scarf: Burcu Uçatenik
Walking Girl with Striped Scarf: Dilara Akbal
Camera Equipment: Çatı Moderntimes

Album Credits:
All songs composed and performed by Istanbul Sessions. 
Produced, recorded and mixed at Laboratori Testone, Milan by Tommaso Colliva
Mastering by Dave McNair
Cover art concept and design by Ertaç Uygun
https://vimeo.com/nublurecords
Contacts
Management / Booking (Except EU):  Artistic Ideas from Istanbul info@artisticideas.net
Booking (EU): Benjamin Levy ben@blmusicprod.com
Label: Nublu Records hello@nublurecords.com

℗ & © 2020, Nublu Records , All Rights Reserved.

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They say that Russia is a technically backward country, there are no roads, robotics do not develop, rockets do not fly, and mail goes too long. It’s a bullshit.

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RUSSIAN CYBERPUNK FARM // РУССКАЯ КИБЕРДЕРЕВНЯ

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Alan Watts on Nothingness beatifully illustrated

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"Until There Was Nothing"

...or "How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Black Hole"


Someday this will pass and there will be nothing left. The inevitable spaghettification of it all. That's not something to fear "because we come from nothing" as Alan Watts puts it... and from nothing comes something new. Similarly to a much lesser degree, this project was pieced together repurposing old and unused material to create something new.

Watch full screen, volume up, la-z-boy reclined.

Film by Paul Trillo
Words by Alan Watts
Drone Pilot - James Sykes, Paul Trillo

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Every artist who has discovered a passion for visual effects, animation, games and other design based industries always tend to get ahead of themselves on their learning path. It's impossible not to dive right in and try to bring your ideas to life even before you have learned the basics. I believe that one of the differences between a professional artist and a hobbyist is that the pro actually took a step back and spent time learning the fundamentals of design and worked really hard at perfecting them - the other is still creating work below the level of what they are actually capable of achieving.

The best advice I can offer is to start with the fundamentals. Resist the urge to learn the latest software right away. Sure, go download it, muck around with it a bit, but don't try and create your masterpiece with your first attempt. These skills take time and making sure you start with the basics is crucial to all artists.

1. Composition

The most important aspect of art to me personally is the composition. It sets the stage for everything else. This is your way to guide and lead the viewer to make them feel as if they are actually in your picture. If this part of the process is not created and controlled properly, everything else can and probably will fall apart. That doesn't mean that you have to follow every little rule. In fact, many have broken them and created very successful works of art. It's knowing how and when to break them that will allow you to do it successfully. But before attempting anything like that, you should completely understand the following tips for creating good composition.

Overlap

Place objects slightly over one another. This will get the eye to move from one element to another. Objects should not be touching each other by edges ("no kissing allowed!"). Avoid isolation. Build a relationship between objects.

Crop

Consider having objects go off the edge of the page. This gets the viewer in and out of the picture. Avoid floating objects within the edges of the page.

Rotate

Consider placing objects at an angle. Things that are tilted create a more dynamic composition. Artwork with objects that are perfectly lined up with the edge can be boring.

Focal Point

Create an area of importance. Give the viewer something to focus on. One way to achieve this is through size variation. Try not to have all elements the same size. Another way to create focus is through color dominance.

Off-Centering

Avoid placing objects directly in the center of the page. Think about placing objects slightly to one side. This will create a more interesting composi tion. Try to keep elements balanced as you do this. For example, one large object could be balanced by 3 smaller ones. (Note: this does not mean that a symmetrical design cannot be successful.)

Rule of Thirds

This is the simplest and most used composition technique, one that I use a lot myself. Because it is simple to learn, it's something that is recommended for beginners and those who are new to the fundamentals of composition. When used, it will divide the picture into 9 equal parts that are separated by two horizontal and vertical lines.

The main idea behind this is to place your most important element/object on one of the intersections where the lines converge (the +'s), as well as along or near the vertical line of wherever your focal may lie.

It is believed that when this is used and your subject/focal sits on one of these spots, it creates more interest in your picture rather than having it centered.

2. Perspective

Everything has a perspective. When standing in the street, look around and notice which side of the buildings you can see and why you see them all from different viewpoints. Then while you're at it, go ahead and look down a road, why does everything appear to get smaller as its distance is further away from you? All of these things have to deal with the perspective of those objects and your viewpoint.

Perspectives are an essential skill to learn, for architectural, environmental and many other reasons. They provide us with a way to create and build elements and objects and correctly place them within the picture plane. Perspectives rely on the horizon line (or sometimes called the eye level line) to find what is called a Vanishing Point. Vanishing points are where your perspective lines will originate (see below examples).

One-Point Perspective

This is the simplest of all perspectives to learn, but one that is not widely used a whole lot because of its limitations. That being said, it can be very beneficial, depending on what scene you are creating. In this perspective, there is a single vanishing point going back to the horizon line, which the object is receding to.

Two-Point Perspective

When more than one side of your object is receding back to multiple areas, you will need to use a two-point perspective system. When used, you will create two vanishing points, each on one side of the object/element. These points will again originate from the horizon line, and the perspective lines will run from this point all the way to the object. There is where you can really start to see perspectives shift.

Most times your vanishing point will be way outside of your picture, but don't worry. If working traditionally, you can always use extra paper to measure the exact distance. If working digitally, extend the canvas out until you find your vanishing point.

Three-Point Perspective

The three-point system is used when you really want to convey an extreme situation. It can be useful for scenes that are playful (doing a scene from a bird's or dog's eye view), exciting (action), and many more. To achieve this perspective, you will be using the exact same system from the two-point, but adding in a third vanishing point that is either above and below the object/element.

The third point acts exactly the same as the other two, so don't get tripped up by it, there's nothing sneaky about it. The only difference here is that the top or bottom (the verticals) of your object will adhere and recede back to this point. Which is what gives us that warped look and feel.

3. Color

Much like lighting, the color of your piece depends on many things; the time of day, season, location and so on. Determining the color scheme is important to do early on, even from the start if you can. Remember that things will always change and evolve, so the colors of your piece most likely will as well. As with everything, just because something looks good at one point, doesn't necessarily mean it always will. So don't be afraid to mix things up along the way and find something that might be better suited for what you're working on. Keep in mind that it's very easy to go overboard with color as well, so know when not to mess with it.

The Colour Wheel

A color circle, based on red, yellow and blue, is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666. Since then, scientists and artists have studied and designed numerous variations of this concept. Differences of opinion about the validity of one format over another continue to provoke debate. In reality, any color circle or color wheel which presents a logically arranged sequence of pure hues has merit.

A helpful resource to demonstrate these different colour relationships is the Adobe Color CC. Here you can select various relationships in the dropdown, and drag to create different variations. As you will see, triadic splits itself at points equal thirds of the wheel. An example of a triadic relationship would be the three primary colours of red, yellow and blue.

Color combinations

Complementary
Two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel. This combination provides a high contrast and high impact color combination - together, these colors will appear brighter and more prominent.

Monochromatic
Three shades, tones and tints of one base color. Provides a subtle and conservative color combination. This is a versatile color combination that is easy to apply to design projects for a harmonious look.

Analogous
Three colors that are side by side on the color wheel. This color combination is versatile, but can be overwhelming. To balance an analogous color scheme, choose one dominant color, and use the others as accents.

Triadic
Three colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. This provides a high contrast color scheme, but less so than the complementary color combination - making it more versatile. This combination creates bold, vibrant color palettes.

Tetradic
Four colors that are evenly spaced on the color wheel. Tetradic color schemes are bold and work best if you let one color be dominant, and use the others as accents. The more colors you have in your palette, the more difficult it is to balance.

4. Lighting

Like all major elements of art, lighting is crucial. Mainly because the average viewer knows what realistic lighting looks like, even if they don't know exactly what it is that makes it look real. They can usually tell if something is working or not. Sometimes you can get lucky and fool them, but most times it can break your shot and make all the hard work that was put into your piece wasted time and work. And that's definitely not what we want.

So, in order to know how light reacts to the environment and different materials, go outside and study it. If you are basing a piece off of something else (e.g., you're your photographic plate in terms of matte painting or anatomy for painters), study it until you can confidently tell somebody else how it looks, feels and functions. Using photos is fine, but there's an almost infinite source just outside those walls you are in waiting for you.

OK, it's your turn

The best advice I can give is to just start. You will not regret putting in the effort and learning these fundamental skills. Make sure to share your latest projects here and also share any interesting tutorials or learning resources you find here and here.

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Skip these Design Fundamentals and you will regret it

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Every artist who has discovered a passion for visual effects, animation, games and design always tend to get ahead of themselves with trying new things. It's impossible not to dive right in and start bringing your ideas to life even before you have learned the basics.

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A Horse struggles to exist

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A horse struggles to exist.

Concept, Direction and Animation : AJ Jefferies
Sound and Music : AJ Jefferies

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State of the art digitization & immersive 

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State of the art digitization & immersive 

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Scanning & immersive works. TOKYO SCANS SERIES. NAJERA. CAVES

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sounds dull at first, but vital to deal with...

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Preface:
If you are working in post, you have most likely been hearing more buzz about color management in the last few years. Whether it is delivering assets for Netflix or simply preparing projects for the future, color management is undoubtedly part of the modern post-production workflow.
To help support our users, Boris FX recently teamed up with noted author and TV/film industry veteran, Steven Katz to help explore and demystify some of the common questions and issues surrounding color managed workflows. Please enjoy this as the first, in an ongoing series of special guest articles. - The team at Boris FX
Quick Links: Color Primer Main Article & Interviews ACES Partners About the Author Glossary

ACES, OCIO... What's the Deal?

What's the big deal? In the older days of analog film and television, there were few format choices to actually make in the overall post-production and delivery process beyond film stocks and tape formats. However, in today's digital landscape there are more file formats, intermediate processes, codecs, and applications - all viewed on a myriad of devices and displays. Most camera companies have their own proprietary RAW file formats and almost all projects incorporate effects, graphics, legacy formats or stock footage... that all have their own color space. You get the idea. There is a lot of shared data being worked on, but not enough common definitions to ensure that what an editor sees on the monitor in their edit suite, is exactly the same through visual effects vendors, color grading, and broadcast.

Color Primer

Color theory is obviously a deep topic. Here is a quick primer on some basic color concepts to help you fully understand logarithmic and linear spaces.

Cameras measure light in f/stops or just stops.

Humans can see about 10 stops in daylight.

But in shadow or darkness humans can see 20 stops of light from black to white.

Daylight covers a range of brightness wider than humans can see.

Cameras only record a portion of what humans can see.

To capture the full range of a daylight scene (dark to light) we have to compress the light to fit into the camera's Dynamic Range.

Light in the real world is linear.

If you shine a light on a table and then double the light and measure that with a light meter it will show 2X the light intensity. But human vision/perception doesn't work that way.

Humans have more light sensitivity in darkness than in bright light.

This is probably evolutionary. 100,000 years ago having better night vision helped humans not become food.

This relationship of perception and light intensity is non-linear. Our eyes see light logarithmically as the graph below shows.

In production, we work with both linear and log video files.

Cameras record in linear encoding and this is called scene-referred linear.

Display devices such as monitors and projectors are typically logarithmic to match how humans perceive light. These are called display-referred log.

Both ACES and OCIO provide LUTS and transforms.

ACES adds new standardized color spaces.

When you bring camera RAW into an application like Adobe Lightroom the RAW (linear) data is converted to Log when imported. This conversion is at the core of color management for film and video. In film/video production this conversion is performed many times. Color conversion can work both ways:
Linear to Log OR Log to Linear depending on the operation such as VFX or color correction. Colorists and VFX artists often need to work in linear color space, but can't make artistic decisions in the flat looking image. So a LUT temporarily makes things look correct. Under the hood the file is still linear. After work is performed the linear file has the creative changes, but requires the LUT to view it properly. When applied correctly, the conversions preserve all the data.

Linear encoding looks flat and washed out, but holds a great deal of data. Log encoding compresses the Dynamic Range to fit within the limits of a display device. However, it reduces the data for viewing purposes. So, linear encoding is great for capturing the greatest range of light, but log representation is better for viewing and working. Below is a simplified version of a studio pipeline. In reality there would be more blocks and intricate relationships, but this serves the purpose of showing why color management is complex. For example, editorial could include several display monitors and a screening room each requiring color conversion. Now consider what happens when there are three VFX studios around the world working on a show each with their own color pipeline. That means more conversions and the opportunity for errors. Between each node, a color conversion is applied with a LUT or a transform. In some cases, a file can be converted to a color space, worked on and then transformed back to the original incoming color space. Just as log and linear processing of light takes the human visual system into consideration, the same is true for color. Humans see a range of energy called the visual spectrum. Below is the electromagnetic spectrum that includes x-ray, gamma rays, radio waves, and the visual spectrum between approximately 380 to 740 nanometers or ultraviolet to infrared.

In 1931, the CIE (Commission internationale de l'éclairage) created a color matching system.

It has been the global standard for colorimetry since then with a few important updates. The following is a condensed version but the main thing to understand is the CIE Chromaticity Diagram below.

The outer boundary is the visual spectrum as if we bent the electromagnetic spectrum into a horseshoe shape. Colors along that line are the most saturated colors. The colors within the boundary are the colors human's perceive.

The CIE diagram is defined by RGB colors based on Tristimulus Color Theory which basically states that all colors in the visual spectrum can be created with just three colors, red, green, and blue.

The black curved line towards the bottom of the diagram is the Planckian Locus and is used to indicate color temperature in degrees Kelvin. When R, G, and B have equal energy, the color is white.

The CIE diagram is a 2D rendition of a 3D color cube.

Here's a look at color spaces you're probably familiar with projected on the CIE diagram. The triangles are color spaces formed by red, green, and blue primaries at the vertices. They are subsets of the full visual spectrum meaning colors are left out if they don't lie within the triangle. Color spaces can be defined by anyone and many companies do. Establishing a standard is much more difficult.

Rec. 2020 is a recommended color space for Ultra high-definition television. It has a much wider gamut than color spaces in use. The wide gamut was chosen in the interest of future proofing.

Rec. 709 is the official standard for high-definition television HDTV.

DCI-P3 is the standard for digital projection for theatrical exhibition.

Standards are set by SMPTE

We're almost ready to look at ACES and OpenColorIO. First, some things you can do to check out color management in software you already own. Resolve, After Effects, Premiere, and NUKE all have the ability to read LUTs. Not a bad way to see how it may affect your work now or in the future.

You might also look in Photoshop at the Edit>Color settings. A list of color spaces (including Rec 709) are there to load. Your operating system, Mac or Windows, will also have color profiles you can load thereby changing the way your monitor displays colors, essentially a LUT.

On the Mac, the Colorsync tool lets you compare 3D color spaces.

OCIO

OCIO was first developed in Vancouver by Sony Pictures Imageworks. Originally initiated by SPI Imaging Supervisor Jeremy Selan, the first version was released to the public in 2009. Reflecting its specific development circumstances, OCIO doesn't delve into camera output or archiving, but rather the needs of a facility pipeline. OCIO is really aimed at coders, the pipeline programmers who are at the heart of today's visual effects workflows. The main contribution of OCIO are the free libraries of C++ and Python scripts for the most common hardware/software used at any studio to create custom LUTs and transforms as needed. According to Selan in his useful paper Cinematic Color:
"OCIO color configuration files define all of the conversions that may be used. For example, if you are using a particular camera's color space, one would define the conversion from the camera's color encoding to scene-linear. You can also specify the display transforms (for multiple displays) in a similar manner. OCIO transforms can rely on a variety of built-in building-blocks, including all common math operations and the majority of common lookup table formats. OCIO also has full support for both CPU and GPU pathways, in addition to full support for CDLs and per-shot looks."
Understanding that can be a little daunting at first, but we'll be diving into more details soon enough.

Software that supports OCIO (such as Sapphire, Mocha Pro, Silhouette, and DFT) can load an ACES profile, making it fully compliant in an ACES workflow. Learn more about Sapphire's OCIO features
ACES

The first version of ACES was developed under the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, released in December 2014, and approved by SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers). Post facilities, VFX boutiques, and even freelance editors and artists are likely to have to deal with ACES files in the future.

ACES was originally created for feature film, visual effects, and animation workflows and has been adopted by many established facilities working at the enterprise level. But with Netflix adoption and proliferation of remote production and outsourcing, ACES can be relevant for all levels of post-production. Anyone who is feeding shots to VFX and post-production facilities will want to know about it to future-proof their jobs.

Differences and Similarities
The goal of both ACES and OCIO systems are straightforward: Provide consistency throughout post operations and preserve data during the production process at the highest possible quality. From the first conversions of camera RAW files to the working format(s) of choice, or if handling VFX, rendered files to a viewable format, this will happen many times during a production. A complex color management workflow becomes easier by providing a library of transforms and LUTs for the major display devices and grading software.

ACES and OCIO are both highly-configurable color management systems, but there are differences. Is one better than the other? Not really. It's more about how a studio or production team wants to characterize the project. ACES looks for industry-wide compliance based on color spaces standardized by SMPTE. Meanwhile, OCIO focuses more narrowly on providing tools to pipeline developers for whatever color space they choose to use. Thankfully it's not one or the other. Hybrid ACES and OCIO pipelines are supported by both systems.

ACES COLOR SPACES
ACES color spaces have been standardized by SMPTE. SMPTE 's engineers and academics have kept watching over standards since the beginning of film and television eras, and now includes the digital realm.

But what makes a good color space? In simple terms, more colors, greater Dynamic Range, and future proofing so that the monitor you buy in 10 years with a greatly expanded color space will correctly display the color correction you've created today. The key here is AP0 (that's an AP with a zero). This is ACES master color space (or gamut) and the hub of the system. AP0 was created as a way to wrangle the many color spaces from camera manufacturers such as Arri, RED, and Blackmagic Design, to preserve the look of each camera in a common color space. Since it is a format that manufacturers have signed on to support, AP0 is vendor neutral for interoperability.

ACES has five color spaces: Two storage spaces AP0 and AP1 (one linear and one log encoded) and three working spaces: ACEScc, ACEScct, and ACEScg. The working spaces are designed for color correction and VFX. ACES approves all the transforms and LUTs needed to convert between the color spaces supplied by device manufacturers.
The diagram below helps show these relationships:

Here's a basic ACES workflow. Large projects typically have more branches to additional processes and incoming/outgoing files to other studios.
For a better sense of what's happening in the workplace, we asked some prominent facility managers, artists and colorists what color management system they're using now. If none, what do they plan to use in the future, ACES or OCIO?

What we learned is that the industry is transitioning from a time where everyone pretty much did what they thought best on a project-by-project basis into more defined methods to address color management. For large studios with color scientists and programmers on staff, ACES has become the accepted way to future-proof their investments.

Of course, making ACES succeed is not a just matter of convincing digital imaging techs on set or VFX artists of its benefits. ACES is a major industry-wide initiative It has taken time for various equipment makers to add support.

Industry Interviews
Dado Valentic, Award-winning colorist, color scientist and CEO of Color Intelligence
Valentic recommends OCIO and its implementation of ACES.
"ACES' recognized that every camera manufacturer has their special sauce in how they interpret data of the sensor and that's proprietary. We've seen this happen with still cameras. Everyone has their own version of RAW. But if we bring this variety of color spaces and gamma curves into a unified space, we can simplify the color grading process. So ACES created a very large, robust color space - ACES AP0."
Linear AP0 can also be converted to one of ACES three working spaces tailored to color correction or VFX (ACEScc, ACEScct, ACEScg). You can output to various deliverables for Cinema, SDR, HDR or back to linear ACES AP0 to archive. Dado also points out some current limitations:
"I have cinematographers who can't get the look they want in ACES. The most significant advantage of ACES is also its biggest drawback. To make ACES work, they had to standardize the RRT (Reference rendering transform - one part of a transform, a math operation to convert one type of data into another). They have to use it because that's how they get all the different color grading or VFX applications to get the same result. But the RRT has a 'look.' Going from Alexa Log C to Rec. 709 is going to look different than Alexa to ACES because it's using a different transform. The cinematographer says, 'That's not how I shot the scene. It looks different.' And if they are happy with the ACES look, there's no problem. But what if that's not the case?"
Dado also points out that there's another issue that isn't usually talked about.
"We needed ACES Log because we needed something in 10-bit. Everything in the post-production environment is limited to 10-bit. The monitors the projectors and SDI cables are 10-bit. Video cards are 10-bit. 10-bit is a bottleneck. This is why we had to find a way to make ACES 16-bit linear more practical and why we had to convert it to 10-bit log variants like ACEScct. Now that Boris FX has implemented OCIO, it's now possible to use plug-ins in all ACES projects." Chris Haney, VFX Artist, Software Hacker, Owner of OffWorld VFX
Haney recently served as VFX Supervisor on Dark Waters directed by Todd Haynes. He is regarded as a pipeline technician with a considerable understanding of color management. Like most boutique facilities, OffWorld often provides shots to larger studios and must adapt to their color management requirements.
Does it allow for Scene Referred Linear Compositing with float values? This color space is best for photorealistic compositing and accurate reconstruction of 3D renders. Does it allow other operations to be done in the proper color space? Not all operations are intended to be done in Scene Referred Linear. For example, many final color looks are intended to be applied to a LOG image. Can it handle conversions for all incoming and outgoing formats robustly (Alexa C Log, Cineon Log with all of the original parameters, S-Log, Rec 709, etc.)? In order to do linear compositing, one needs to convert all inputs to linear and all outputs to the client's preferred format, which is often Rec709, Cineon Log, or Alexa C Log in my world. "Color management systems for photo realistic film compositing have different requirements than those for print and even broadcast. When evaluating a particular piece of software's color management I look for specific capabilities. "Operations that work well in linear space are 3D rendering, photorealistic compositing transparencies (fog, glass), optical effects (lens blur, motion blur, lens flares), and transforms with anti-alias filters, sub-pixel positioning, etc. Operations that can work well in log space are things like color correction, levels and histogram adjustment, tracking and stabilizing, grain, some keying and simple paint and roto." John Bair, Owner, Visual Effects Supervisor, Phosphene
Haney's second requirement: Making sure operations, such as applying a color filter, are always done in the appropriate color space, linear or log.

Phosphene is an award-winning New York-based design and visual effects studio, whose projects include Motherless Brooklyn, The Deuce, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and Escape at Dannemora ( read how the Emmy-nominated team used Mocha Pro). The company relies on Foundry's Nuke compositing system to manage its OCIO workflow.
Mike Nuget, Freelance Colorist
"As a VFX studio we are almost always operating within the color workflow established by production and the post facility for any given project. Most of the time this means processing, viewing, and building editorial LUTs along with color information through our OCIO pipeline. Sometimes, however, ACES is the requested specification from a client."

New York-based colorist Mike Nuget uses DaVinci Resolve for grading documentaries and TV shows. Resolve facilities can work in an ACES workflow using its native color management although it is not yet an official ACES certified host. Nuget believes that with so many technical advances and changes it's up to the colorist to understand color management.
Host Applications
"Nowadays every colorist should know as much as they can about color spaces. Just about every streaming service now requires certain color spaces to work in, so you kind of have to know about it. It's also good to know so you can take advantage of all of the different camera and file types better. Certain sensors are purposely made to do things to the image. If you work in the wrong color space, you could be losing information."

Autodesk Flame and Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve work in an ACES managed environment and include native color management tools.

Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects include native color management tools and do not support ACES. However, Adobe users can turn to third-party tools to load OCIO profiles.
Nick Crist, Compositing Supervisor, Phosphene
Avid Media Composer is now a full ACES partner and dedicated visual effects applications like Foundry's Nuke and Boris FX Silhouette have supported the ability to load the various color profiles for many years.

"Nuke tends to be pretty clear with both OCIO or ACES. However, I find some of the ACES integration and switching between ACES and OCIO within Nuke to be cumbersome - bordering on problematic. I've found issues in the past when working on one project in ACES vs another in OCIO and having to switch between projects with different workflows became tedious because the settings were saved at the preference level and not within the shot level. That may have changed in newer versions of Nuke but last I checked it was a problem."

It can be unrealistic to expect this kind of pipeline upgrade to be completely without bumps along the road, especially at smaller studios that rely on a core staff of full-time artists mixed with freelancers who have to be brought up to speed on file management and workflows. While there is a tendency to be critical of ACES, OCIO or any other new system, human error is a major factor in the perception of issues. Evidence of this is on the forums at ACES Central, where some problems often turn out to be implementation errors.

Even experienced colorists seek help on why a shot doesn't look the same on different monitors. While there are excellent resources in the forums, it's easy to see that using ACES or OCIO, however simple in design, has a fairly steep learning curve. It's not so much the color management that's complex, it's the large number of device manufacturers and legacy software/hardware that creates the head scratching.
"The ACES clip-level metadata file ("ACESclip") is a 'sidecar' XML file intended to assist in configuring ACES viewing pipelines and to enable portability of ACES transforms in production. An ACESclip file describes the transforms necessary to configure an ACES viewing pipeline for a moving-picture image sequence."
Nick Christ (Phosphene) has used both OCIO and ACES tells us: "It needs to be simpler to use across multiple software packages. When you have so many different versions to choose from within the software and unclear information coming from the client, it just seems like it takes a lot of detective work to get everything working properly."

This is a step forward in organizing and archiving show data. Consider what happens when a show made in 2012 releases a director's cut in 2020. A facility has to reconstruct the movie including new material and perhaps a re-edit. What if the director also wants to modify the look of the delivered show? This would require all the transforms and looks that were layered into the final archived show. Normally, reconstructing the show would be a nightmare, but ACES metadata will now keep a record of the creation process.
"Most of the time we are delivered EXRs which have been converted from the RAW camera files by a post-processing facility. Thankfully it is becoming more common for all metadata to freely pass through the transcoding process. While it is not quite there yet, we are on the verge of having a thorough and complex set of metadata baked into every camera source. It will be incredibly helpful for us, as a VFX studio, to have all color information, lensing, camera translation, etc., always available in our source plates."

Bair sees this as an important development but would like even more metadata:

ACES is addressing issues quickly and most people are invested in its success as is clear from their long list of officially-certificated industry partners.

Again, user error and lack of documentation was a common theme in our interviews. In new complex systems, people make mistakes.
"At the end of the day, we are making art and are required to deliver it to the client in the color space they have defined. If the smartest programmers in the world have a system that is technically correct but leads the average artist to output images with wrong gamma or color, then I consider that system to be flawed and a liability to my business. Adobe products can be difficult in this way. Some operations/effects do not work in float. Adobe Photoshop's CMS was built for print and does not lend itself to film. Adobe After Effects' CMS can also lead to output problems. We have had better success with Nuke and the open source OCIO for After Effects for select operations in AE."
Haney points out:

Crist also sees user error as high on the list of challenges in his job:
"Sometimes someone upstream can make a mistake. I've had plates delivered at the wrong color space, incorrect LUTs, and CCC files break. It's hard to say when or where the errors occur until you really test each and every file bit by bit. Color still seems to very much be a manual process that requires a really keen and technical eye to oversee and I don't think ACES has really fixed that yet."

Nuget's experience with clients is mixed:
"I think a lot of the bigger productions know more about color in general. I work in docs a lot, and to be honest, either this never even comes up, or they just rely on me to make the decisions and create the workflow environment. From what I've seen, the VFX industry is more aware and capable of working in a color-managed environment, smaller shops, not so much."

Conclusion
Constant and fast-moving change is a certainty in the digital era. Cameras and devices continue to advance. HDR is now a standard feature on most displays and new monitors may soon have a fourth and fifth color primaries. The Dynamic Range of cameras will increase and bring more factors to color management. ACES and OCIO offer rational solutions to industry chaos caused by innovations. So, yes, you should look into these initiatives even if you are currently not working on color-managed projects. The future of moving pictures will be brighter because of today's innovations, even with the potential learning curve to get there.

APPENDIX A - ACES Partners

Arri
Assimilate
Autodesk
Avid Technology
Canon
Codex
Colorfront
Color Trix
Deluxe
Digital Vision
DJI
Dolby Laboratories
FilmLight
FotoKem
Foundry
FireFly Cinema
In2Core
LaserGraphics
Light Illusion
Marquise Technologies
MTI Film
Panasonic
Pomfort
Snell Advanced Media
RED Digital Camera
SGO
Shotgun Software
Sony Electronics
Technicolor
TVLogic (Vidente Co., Lfd.)
Vision Research

Footnotes:
1. Selan, Jeremy, Cinematic Color (SIGGRAPH '12 ACM SIGGRAPH 2012, 2012)

Special thanks to:
Rod Bogart, Vice Chair ACES
Sean Cooper, OCIO and board member of ACES

About the Author

S.D. Katz is a writer/director/producer working in film and television. His work has appeared on Saturday Night Live and in film festivals around the world. He is also the author of the best-selling books on film design and directing, Shot by Shot and Cinematic Motion.

Learn more at shotbyshotbook.com

Color Management Glossary

CAMERA RAW
RAW is an image format that stores data from a digital camera sensor with minimal processing. A RAW file is uncompressed and not viewable without conversion to another format. Each camera, scanner manufacturer develops their own RAW format. There are over 100 RAW files in use. Most RAW formats use linear encoding.

BRAW
Blackmagic Design's RAW format (BRAW) with light compression is used in all BlackMagic Design cameras and in their color grading software DaVinci Resolve. The format is a non-linear 12-bit color space and is smaller than most other RAW formats.

CinemaDNG
Adobe introduced its own RAW video format in 2008 with the goal of industry-wide adoption. However, it has not sought standardization from SMPTE or the ISO.

Primary Colors
Red, green, and blue make up the three primary colors. In an additive color system such as slide film, projection, and colored lights, the colors produce white light when mixed in equal proportion. In any other proportion, they mix to create all the colors humans can seen.

RGB
Red, Green, Blue. The primary colors in an additive color system.

OCIO
OpenColor In Out. OCIO is an open source color management system developed at Sony Imageworks and released to the public in 2009. The core of OCIO is the library of LUTs and transforms used to convert color spaces and how they are represented on display devices.

ACES
Academy Color Encoding System. A color management framework consisting of new color spaces standardized by SMPTE. LUTs and transforms convert common display and camera devices through delivery and archiving.

AMPAS
Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. The honorary professional organization of the motion picture industry. AMPAS is best known for the yearly Oscars awards show. Founded in 1927, headquartered in Beverly Hills, California.

SMPTE
Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. Founded in 1916, SMPTE is a global professional organization of engineers, scientists, and executives working in motion pictures and television. SMPTE's main function is producing standards, but it also provides educational and academic activities and publishes the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal.

C++
Is a widely used general-purpose programming language, an extension of the C programming language first released in 1985.

Python
A programming language in wide use in computer graphics because of its ease of use. Many graphic software packages allow Python scripting to modify the interface and other aspects of the program.

LUTs
An acronym that represents Look Up Tables. A table of RGB input and output values to convert one color space to another. LUTs can be 1D and 3D.

16-bit (half float)
The level of mathematical precision that represents pixel color in computer graphic images. Photoshop offers 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit color. Floating point values can represent far greater dynamic ranges.

Scene-Referred Linear
Encoding that represents the light in the real world. Digital cameras encode this way with the option to output linear files in the RAW format. Most camera manufacturers develop their own version of RAW.

Display-Referred Log
Encoding that emulates the logarithmic way display devices and human perception process color and dynamic range.

OpenEXR
A highly robust image format developed and released (1999) by ILM. It uses 16-bit half float values and can record up to 30 stops of dynamic range.

Dynamic Range
The range of dark to light values captured or perceived in photography and human vision. Photographic dynamic range is typically measured in camera f-stops.

CIE 1931 Color Space
The International Commission on Illumination (commonly known as CIE from its French name, Commission internationale de l'éclairage) is an organization founded in 1931 that creates international standards related to light and color. CIE 1931 color spaces were the first defined quantitative links between distributions of wavelengths in the electromagnetic visible spectrum, and physiologically perceived colors in human color vision. (WIKI)

Human Visual Locus
The full range of color vision and perception as measured on the electromagnetic spectrum (approximately 380 nanometers to 760 nanometers from ultraviolet to infrared).

Gamut
The complete range of colors in a color space defined by the location of the RGB primaries.

Standard Observer Spectral Locus
The 1931 CIE color proposed international standards based on human perception. However, color vision varies slightly between subjects with "normal" vision. CIE tested two groups of subjects in tests to establish an average baseline for color perception.

Color Transform Language (CTL)
A programming language for digital motion picture digital color management systems created by AMPAS.

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Preface: If you are working in post, you have most likely been hearing more buzz about color management in the last few years. Whether it is delivering assets for Netflix or simply preparing projects for the future, color management is undoubtedly part of the modern post-production workflow.

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Video breaks down use of LED walls, Unreal Engine, ILM's StageCraft and other tech.

You may have already read a few things about the making of The Mandalorian, but now you can see it all in motion with this incredible video that showcases the virtual production approach behind the show.

The way that many in-camera VFX shots were achieved and interactive lighting obtained on a stage in Los Angeles using real-time rendering techniques is mindblowing, and certainly harks back to the days of rear-projection, but then clearly goes much further. All this is outlined in the behind the scenes video.

The solution for The Mandalorian came about via a collaboration between ILM's StageCraft Virtual Production Platform, Epic Games' Unreal Engine and Golem Creations (Jon Favreau's production company). Technology partners included Fuse, Lux Machina, Profile Studios, NVIDIA and ARRI.

The series was recently recognized at the Visual Effects Society VES Awards, taking out the Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Episode and Outstanding Model in a Photoreal or Animated Project prizes.

In a press release, ILM and Epic Games noted some of the big game-changers in crafting the series:
Over 50 percent of The Mandalorian Season 1 was filmed using this ground-breaking new methodology, eliminating the need for location shoots entirely. Instead, actors in The Mandalorian performed in an immersive and massive 20' high by 270-degree semicircular LED video wall and ceiling with a 75'-diameter performance space, where the practical set pieces were combined with digital extensions on the screens. Digital 3D environments created by ILM played back interactively on the LED walls, edited in real-time during the shoot, which allowed for pixel-accurate tracking and perspective-correct 3D imagery rendered at high resolution via systems powered by NVIDIA GPUs. The environments were lit and rendered from the perspective of the camera to provide parallax in real-time, as if the camera were really capturing the physical environment with accurate interactive light on the actors and practical sets, giving showrunner Jon Favreau, executive producer and director Dave Filoni, visual effects supervisor Richard Bluff, and cinematographers Greig Fraser and Barry "Baz" Idoine, and the episodic directors the ability to make concrete creative choices for visual effects-driven work during photography and achieve real-time in-camera composites on set.

Congrats to everyone who contributed to The Mandalorian. It's an exciting time in virtual production and visual effects right now, and also exciting, I think, to ponder how this tech can be used in so many other films, television and streaming series and games into the future.

Get exclusive content, join the befores & afters Patreon community

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You are going to flip when you see this video of how 'The Mandalorian' was made - befores & afters

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Video breaks down use of LED walls, Unreal Engine, ILM's StageCraft and other tech. You may have already read a few things about the making of The Mandalorian, but now you can see it all in motion with this incredible video that showcases the virtual production approach behind the show.

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Try this in Houdini

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!
#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!
#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad https://t.co/xQSr6adBsK

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad pic.twitter.com/xQSr6adBsK
— Victor Haegelin (@VictorPatator) January 21, 2020

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!
#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad https://t.co/xQSr6adBsK

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!
#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad https://t.co/xQSr6adBsK

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Invisible Skater
In 2020 I keep looping!
#animation #loop #stopmotion #skateboard #invisbleman #vans #chessboard #endlessroad

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Still a classic. All you need to know about studying VFX

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Check out these assets including The VFX Student Primer

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If you are researching careers in post-production, visual effects or animation, we guess you will be looking for authoritative advice to help you with your choices.

What are the different job roles that are available? What qualifications do I need, if any? Can I do an apprenticeship, or should I go to uni? What's it like to work in this industry? Are these "proper jobs", which pay a good wage and give job security? Do I have to move to London? So many important questions that need answering.

There are some great resources available online that do just that and, on this page, we are going to introduce you to some of our favourites.

If you want to find out what all those people do when you look at the hundreds of names and job roles on the end credits of a VFX-heavy movie, then the VFX Careers map is just what you need.

Then if you want to dig a little deeper, the Core Skills of VFX student primer is an essential read not just for students but for parents too. There's also a companion Core Skills Repository for VFX educators.

Our friends at Access:VFX are building up a library of blogs and p odcasts that will give you great insights into what it's like to work in VFX or animation. You can also sign up free of charge to get a mentor who will give you bespoke advice based on their own real-world experience of our industry.

If you really want to kick start your career, check out the NextGen Skills Academy courses in VFX, Animation and Games that are aimed at 16 to 18 year-olds. These are designed and supported by industry. The Level 3 courses are equivalent to A-Levels and give you a head start, whether want to study these subjects at university or to get an apprenticeship. The couses are avaialble in selected Further Education colleges around the UK.

NextGen also has information about apprenticeships in VFX

The main skills organisation for our sector is ScreenSkills and they too have information about the job roles available in the whole TV and film industry.

Animated Women UK is an industry body which exists to positively support, represent, celebrate and encourage women in the animation and VFX industries in the UK. Through their subgroup Animated Women UK Education, they aim to inspire change through Networking, Recruitment, Showcasing, Mentoring & Education.

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Careers advice for VFX, animation, post production, TV & film studios or SFX | UK Screen Alliance

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If you are researching careers in post-production, visual effects or animation, we guess you will be looking for authoritative advice to help you with your choices. What are the different job roles that are available? What qualifications do I need, if any? Can I do an apprenticeship, or should I go to uni?

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This page is all about clips, images, people, films, articles, breakdowns that imply there is more to VFX than just lightsabers. PLEASE CONTRIBUTE interesting clips, not marketing. Thanks.

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What Jahirul Amin has to say about Observation

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A comment I hear from students (and professionals sometimes) goes like this:

"I've seen this dude's work, and oh wow, it is awesome! I wish I was as good as that. And this dude's work too. And check out this link, and this link, and this link. They're amazing. I'll never be that good though ☹."

Clicking on the links they send, it's usually true; the work is amazing.

The understanding of anatomy in the models; of bone, muscle, tendon and fat - beautiful.

The subtlety of movement in the animation; the timing, the weight, the gesture - inspiring.

The attention to detail in the shaders; the corrosion of the metals, the dirt on the plastics, the micro detail in the skin - incredible.

They usually follow the above comment with something like this:

"I wish I knew how they did it. They must use some really good software. I bet you can only do that in that software, and I bet it is quite expensive. And I bet they have a really good machine ☹."

My response to such a conversation can usually be summed up in 3 words:

"Observation. Analysis. Practice."

And I usually follow up with something like this:

If you want to be as good as that dude, you need to go out and study anatomy, understand materials and light, go to some life drawing classes, shoot some photography, get a magnifying glass and get knee deep in the mud and study the world around you. And no, looking at images online is not the same as looking at something in the real-world.

If you want to be that good, go out and observe, analyse and then practice. Because if you do not know something, you will never be able to capture it in your work, and you cannot then push the boundaries to create new, imaginative characters, worlds and stories.

No traditional/digital tool or button will ever make you a better artist. The right tool will make things more efficient to get the job done, but there are NO magic buttons. Just good old practice makes perfect (or better as perfect is not really achievable in my eyes). So get your butt out there, experience the world around you, and then put that experience in to your work

We've gone from painting on the walls of caves to creating full digital environments in VR. Technology and the tools will always change, but your sternocleidomastoid muscle, that's been around a while, and I am sure that we are not due a version update any time soon.

To stay in the loop with upcoming news, announcements and updates about CAVE Academy, you can subscribe here: https://www.caveacademy.com/contact

Read more posts by this author

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A comment I hear from students (and professionals sometimes) goes like this: > "I've seen this dude's work, and oh wow, it is awesome! I wish I was as good as that. And this dude's work too. And check out this link, and this link, and this link. They're amazing.

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Taken from the November 2019 issue of Physics World where it appeared under the title "From weightlessness to curly hair". Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app.

There's no escaping the laws of physics - even at the movies. Michael Brooks reveals why they're vital in creating the best possible visual effects

It's almost ironic that, decades after failing to attend many of his own undergraduate physics lectures, Tim Webber found himself teaching his colleagues the physics they needed to do their job. As chief creative officer at London-based Framestore - one of the world's leading visual effects (VFX) studios - he'd worked on blockbusters such as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). But it was his Oscar-winning work leading the visual effects on the Alfonso Cuarón movie Gravity (2013) that forced him to share his physics insights.

Gravity featured Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as space-shuttle astronauts fighting for their lives in a zero-gravity environment after their craft gets hit by space debris. According to Webber, the problem was that animators spend years developing the skill of creating virtual beings that don't just look good, but also move in a way that suggests they have weight. "Suddenly," he says, "they had to animate things that didn't have weight, but still had mass." It was a concept that Webber's team struggled to get their heads around. "So I got them into a room and gave them physics lectures."

His tutorials paid off. Webber - plus his colleagues Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk and Neil Corbould - won the 2014 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for their work on the movie. But then Webber has always had a creative bent. As an undergraduate at the University of Oxford in the early 1980s, he'd spend more time in arts studios than physics labs. Indeed, he's one of many similarly inclined people who use their training in physics, engineering and maths in the VFX industry. And no wonder. When it comes to recreating a believable world on screen, physics is everything. "Maths and physics feature very heavily," says Webber's Framestore colleague Eugénie von Tunzelmann.

Before working at Framestore, von Tunzelmann - an engineer and computer scientist by training - was a visual-effects designer at another London VFX firm called Double Negative. While there, she worked on Christopher Nolan's epic sci-fi movie Interstellar (2014) and ended up co-authoring a scientific research paper about Gargantua - the black hole that's the focus of the film (Class. Quant. Grav. 32 065001). She wrote the paper with Paul Franklin, who had co-founded Double Negative, and another colleague from the firm, Oliver James. The trio had collaborated with Caltech physicist Kip Thorne (the fourth author on the paper) to create as realistic a simulation of a supermassive black hole as possible. The simulation won plaudits from physicists and Hollywood critics alike - and led to Franklin sharing the VFX Oscar in 2015.

From humble beginnings

Things have certainly come a long way since the iconic - but less-than-realistic - VFX of King Kong (1933) or Jason and the Argonauts (1963). The transition to computer-generated imagery (CGI) in films such as TRON (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993) was a game-changer, but there was still plenty that was unrealistic about the way light behaved, or creatures moved. This, though, is an industry that never stands still. "New techniques are constantly being developed," says Sheila Wickens, who originally studied computer visualization and is now a VFX supervisor at Double Negative. "It is very much a continually evolving industry."

These days, the industry has embraced what is known as "physically based rendering" whereby physics is "hard-wired" into the CGI. Industry-standard software now includes physics-based phenomena, such as accurately computed paths for rays of light. "The complex maths used in ray-tracing is in part based on maths developed for nuclear physics decades ago," says Mike Seymour, a VFX producer and researcher at the University of Sydney whose background is in mathematics and computer science.

Other phenomena captured by today's CGI include life-like specular reflection, which means that materials such as cotton and cardboard - which in the past did not reflect light in CGI scenes - are now modelled more realistically. A similar thing has happened with the inclusion of Fresnel reflection so that image-makers can account for the fact that the amount and wavelengths of light reflected depend on the angle at which the light hits a surface. Indeed, it's no longer acceptable to make things up, or break the laws of physics, says Andrew Whitehurst, VFX supervisor at Double Negative, who won an Oscar in 2016 for his work on Alex Garland's artificial-intelligence-focused thriller .

"When I began in the industry a little over 20 years ago, we cheated at almost everything," Whitehurst admits. "Now, surfaces are more accurately simulated, with reflectometer research being implemented into code that describes the behaviour of a variety of materials. Our metals now behave like metals and, by default, obey the laws of energy conservation. Fire and water are generally simulated using implementations of the Navier-Stokes equations: the tools we use in VFX are not dissimilar to those used by researchers needing to compute fluid simulations."

In fact, Whitehurst says, it's hard to see how many things can be made any more realistic. "We can blow anything up we want, we can make anything fall down that we want, we can flood anything we want, and we can make things as hairy as we would like."

Much of this accuracy comes out of deliberate research programmes, either in academia or within the studios themselves. The fact that filmmakers can now accurately model curly hair, for example, owes a debt to researchers at the renowned US animation studio Pixar, who, in the early 2010s, developed a physics-based model for the way it moves. Their model is described in a Pixar technical memo ( 12-03a) entitled "Artistic simulation of curly hair" by a team led by Hayley Iben, a software engineer who originally did a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, on modelling how cracks grow in mud, glass and ceramics.

Modelling the movement of curly hair for animations, it turns out, is best done by representing hair as a system of masses on springs. The technique Iben and her team developed was used to great effect in the animation of the curly-haired hero Merida of Brave (2012), and later in films such as Finding Dory (2016) and The Incredibles 2 (2018). Admittedly, it's more accurate to model hair as infinitesimally thin elastic rods, but this, the Pixar group says, straightens out the hair too much when in motion. Increase the stiffness to avoid this, and the hair takes on an unrealistic wiriness as the character moves their head.

Such compromises are important. After all, it's the movie director who gets the final say in whether a visual effect works. "Being able to make something 100% real is actually just a stepping stone to making something cinematic," says Seymour at the University of Sydney. "It is often critical to be able to create something real, and then depart from it in a believable way."

Sometimes the departure doesn't even have to be believable. Back at Framestore in London, von Tunzelmann recalls being asked to create fantasy fire where the flames curled in spirals. "There was no software that can do that, so we wrote a new fluids solver that measured the curl of the field and exaggerated it," she explains. Everyone in the VFX industry, it seems, wants someone with a background in physics or engineering on their side (see box below).

Even in things where we are trying to play by the rules, we are going to bend them here and there

The same conflict between aesthetics and reality occurred in Interstellar. Whitehurst, who helped develop some of the VFX techniques used in the film, suggests that movie was both realistic and not. The team had to rewrite the ray-tracing software to account for the intense curvature of space around a black hole - and also had to dial down Gargantua's brightness for the audience. "You can see exciting detail in it, and you probably wouldn't be able to [in reality] because it would be so staggeringly bright," Whitehurst points out. "Even in things where we are trying to play by the rules, we are going to bend them here and there."

That human factor

For all the progress in making movie animations look as realistic as possible, one challenge still looms large: how best to represent human beings. Getting human features to look right for movie-goers is about more than just simple physics. We can make a human face that is photographically perfect - the issues of light transport through skin and modelling how wrinkles work have largely been solved. The difficulty is in the subtleties of how a face changes from moment to moment. The problem, Framestore's Webber reckons, is that evolution has trained the human eye to analyse faces and work out if someone is lying or telling the truth, is healthy or unhealthy.

"Being able to recreate faces and fool the human eye is exceptionally tricky," he says. And the truth is that we don't even know what it is we see in a face that tells us something is awry: it's a subconscious reaction. That means VFX designers don't know how to fix a wrong-looking face - and just can't generate one from scratch, let alone know how they might recreate a particular emotion that you want that character's face to portray at that moment. "The last thing you want is a character saying 'I love you' when the eyes are saying the opposite," Webber says.

And if you want to make life for a visual-effects designer even harder, try asking them to put a human face underwater, Seymour suggests. "The skin and mass of the face moves with gravity mitigated by buoyancy," he says. "If they then quickly move a limb underwater near their face, the current produced by the simulated flesh of their hand needs to inform a water simulation that will affect their hair, their face-flesh simulation and any tiny bubbles of air in the water. These multiple things all interact and have to be simulated together."

For now, animators compromise by combining CGI with motion capture, whereby an actor does their performance with dozens of dots glued to their face so that the image-processing software can track all the muscle movements from the recorded scene. VFX designers then use this information to create a virtual character who might need larger-than-life qualities (quite literally, in the case of the Incredible Hulk). Finally, they overlay some of the original footage to re-introduce facial movements. "This brings back subtleties that you just can't animate by hand," Webber says.

It turns out that our eye is more forgiving when it comes to CGI representations of animals. That's why we have seen a slew of movies led by computer-generated "live-action" animals, from Paddington (2014) to the recent remakes of Disney's The Jungle Book (2016) and The Lion King (2019). Framestore has recently been working on Disney's upcoming remake of Lady and the Tramp. Due out later this month, it mixes footage of real and CGI dogs - and the VFX are so realistic that many in-house animators can't tell which is which, according to Webber. "People in the company have asked why a particular shot is in our showreel when it's a real dog, and they have to be told - and convinced - that it isn't!"

The new remake of Lady and the Tramp mixes footage of real and CGI dogs that's so realistic that many in-house animators can't tell which is which

Some things in movies, however, will never be truly realistic. Directors in particular want their monsters to move quickly because that's more exciting. However, the laws of physics dictate that massive creatures move slowly - think how lumbering an elephant is compared to a horse - and our subconscious knows it. So when we watch a giant monster scurry across the screen, it can feel wrong - as if the creature has no mass.

"If Godzilla or a Transformer were actually to try to move at the speed they do in the movies, they would likely tear themselves apart, as F = ma last time I checked," Whitehurst says. "This is a fight that I always have, and that everyone always has. But ultimately a director wants something exciting, and a Pacific Rim robot moving in something that looks like ultra-ultra-slow motion doesn't cut it." It's a point echoed by Sheila Wickens, who studied computer visualization and animation at Bournemouth University and is now VFX supervisor on the BBC's flagship Doctor Who series. "We usually start out trying to make something scientifically correct - and then we end up with whatever looks good in the shot," she says.

That fight between directors wanting visual excitement and animators wanting visual accuracy is what made working on Gravity so special for Webber. He says the film was the highlight of his career to date - but also "by far the most challenging movie" he's worked on. "All we were filming was the actors' faces, everything else was made within the computer," he says. The team had to write computer simulations of what would happen in microgravity when one character is towing another on a jet pack, and the result became a plot point. "We found that they bounced around in a very chaotic and uncontrollable way," Webber says. "It's literally down to F = ma, but Alfonso, who was working with us, really loved it and folded that into the script."

That was quite a moment, Webber says. Suddenly, all his physics lectures - given and received - had been worth it.

Paths to success in the visual-effects industry

If you're a physicist who wants to work in the visual-effects (VFX) industry, what opportunities are available and what skills do you need - beyond a willingness to lecture your colleagues about the finer points of F = ma?

Yen Yau, a Birmingham-based project manager who trains newcomers in the world of film

Having worked on careers publications for ScreenSkills - the industry-led skills body for the UK's screen-based creative industries - Yau says there is huge diversity in the paths people can take. "Certainly, physics is going to be more important in some roles, but there are numerous routes in for all types of backgrounds and experiences of applicants."

Eugénie von Tunzelmann, a visual-effects designer at London VFX firm Framestore

While most workers in the VFX industry don't have a background in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects, she says there is a need for people with skills in those areas. Anyone working in a job that involves programming a software plugin that, say, defines how light bounces off a surface will almost inevitably have a background in physics or optics. If you were trying to model fluid flow, "you'd need to have an understanding of thermodynamics", she says.

Andrew Whitehurst, Oscar-winning VFX designer

Describing himself as "an artist with an interest in physics and engineering", Whitehurst says that many people in the VFX industry are physicists or engineers with a creative itch that won't go away. "I work with people with physics doctorates or engineering doctorates and art-school dropouts but we all meet in the middle. I have no formal background in physics, but I have a reasonable passing knowledge of a lot of physics and engineering principles. I need to know why camera lenses do what they do, for example, so that we can mimic their behaviour." But scientists working in VFX will have to learn how to compromise, he notes. "We use a lot of science and engineering, but we are not in the business of scientific visualization. I am an enormous respecter of science, but if I can make a more beautiful picture that tells the story better, I'm going to do it."

Tim Webber, physicist who is now chief creative officer at Framestore in London

Even if you don't need to understand the maths hidden in the software that the VFX industry use, Webber feels it helps to understand the principles of what the equations are doing, pointing to his experience early in his career working on a 1996 Channel 4 TV mini-series dramatizing Gulliver's Travels and starring Ted Danson. "There are lots of small people and big people and we had to work out the angles, where to put the camera, so that the perspective would match what it would match in the other scale. I was using bits of paper and rulers and protractors and calculators."

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VFX in movies: from weightlessness to curly hair - Physics World

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Taken from the November 2019 issue of Physics World where it appeared under the title "From weightlessness to curly hair". Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. There's no escaping the laws of physics - even at the movies.

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When used correctly, color can change the mood of the image, or impact the story. It can also draw the viewers eyes to a focal element. In the image below, digital colors are used effectively to focus your attention on the tube. And the controlled color palette also helps keep the image calm.

Color is used effectively in this image to keep the mood playful and light:

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Discover why color is so important and how to use it effectively.

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Max Dennison and Paul Franklin talk through the surprise VFX hit of the year!

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Part 1: Behind the VFX of Chernobyl – "VFX is another character in the show"

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Behind the Scenes of Oddko's 'Disobey' promo

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Behind the Scenes of Oddko's 'Disobey' promo

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Yoghurt, pizza dough used as prosthetics!

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ODDKO - Making of the "Disobey" Music Video

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An exclusive look at Eric Prydz’s 5-ton LED Holosphere

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You can get inspired from the simplest of things- Sand in the air.

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GRAVITY | SAND CREATURES II
(2019)

"Sand comes alive and creatures are born in frozen moments of weightlessness..."

After a long time, I finally started my further progress on creating more
Sand Creatures, which led me to these newborn photoseries. Just like ' Sand Creatures I', these are captured on beaches in Holland, and contain landscape, natural elements and zero gravity. The Sand Creatures series focuses on nature in an unexpected way. The explosive and at times powdery scenes of the grainy sand being thrown into the air can be taken as a manifesting life form, and they become sand creatures.

These series form part of the 'Gravity Project', where earths different elements are captured to let them stand out in their natural surroundings using moments of zero gravity. Previous series are ' Flower Power' and ' Sand Creatures I '.
'Gravity' will be continued...

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Claire Droppert - Gravity | Sand Creatures II

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"Sand comes alive and creatures are born in frozen moments of weightlessness..." After a long time, I finally started my further progress on creating more Sand Creatures, which led me to these newborn photoseries. Just like ' Sand Creatures I', these are captured on beaches in Holland, and contain landscape, natural elements and zero gravity.

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VFX from a totally different vector. Pass the marmalade...

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Rhuairidh MacNeil critiques students 3D in his YouTube series

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software researcher Doug Roble debuts "DigiDoug": a real-time, 3-D, digital rendering of his likeness that's accurate down to the scale of pores and wrinkles.

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Doug Roble: Digital humans that look just like us

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In an astonishing talk and tech demo, software researcher Doug Roble debuts "DigiDoug": a real-time, 3-D, digital rendering of his likeness that's accurate down to the scale of pores and wrinkles. Powered by an inertial motion capture suit, deep neural networks and enormous amounts of data, DigiDoug renders the real Doug's emotions (and even how his blood flows and eyelashes move) in striking detail.

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Artist Romain Langlois

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Space Attraction | Sculpture by Romain Langlois for Sale at Artistics

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Space Attractionis a work by contemporary French artist Romain Langlois. In this colossal bronze sculpture, Romain Langlois very realistically imitates the aspect of rock. The textures are obtained in the casting process and the colours through different patinas. The... #Artistics #ArtisticsGallery

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There arent enough Axolotls in VFX, am I right?

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There arent enough Axolotls in VFX, am I right?

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Well, am i?

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Hector Salamander - The Axolotl - VFX Breakdown

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Personal project using Maya, Zbrush, Mari, Houdini and Arnold.


https://www.instagram.com/suetake_r/

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Bosstown Dynamics

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New Robot Can Now Fight Back! (Corridor Digital)

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Treat yourself to some summerwear!

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If you dont get a job immediately, read this.

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My Experiences Between Graduating and Getting My First Industry Job

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I didn't walk straight into an industry job after graduating university, and definitely wasn't prepared very well with what to do in this scenario.

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Madonna needs no introduction. The giganticly successful pop icon is back with her latest album, titled ''. But, it was a huge surprise for the audience when she performed her latest single track "Medellín", with Latin singer and songwriter Maluma (Juan Luis Londoño Arias), on the stage of Billboard Music Award (BBMA) 2019, inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada. She was looking stunning, wearing the black eye patch with 'X' written on it. Madonna preformed with her four digital avatars aka virtual versions (secret agent, musician, cha cha instructor and a bride). It has been first of its kind. The core backbone of these visual extravaganza was:

Augmented reality (AR) technology

Volumetric captured videos / 3D videos

Brainstorm software (InfinitySet, Brainstorm's VR and AR application)

Unreal Engine

Well, the final output / amalgamation of these cutting edge technologies is not visible to your naked eyes. The way you wear 3D stereoscopic glasses to 'feel' the effects of 3D stereoscopic movies, you need to see the AR output through a lens; either camera, TV screen or mobile. For the performance of Medellín, Madonna used on-set special effects with combination of Augmented Reality effects. The technical crew generated on-stage special effects of digital rain, cloud, scenery and many other pyro effects. These were seamlessly blended with Madonna's four digital avatars, real Madonna, Maluma and dancing group. It was visual treat to see four Madonna characters (secret agent, musician, cha cha instructor and a bride) appearing and disappearing on the stage, with complete sync of real dancers.
So, in nutshell,

With naked eyes, the audience can see only real humans - (flesh and bone) Madonna, Maluma and dancing crew.

There were video screens in the area. It was powered by real time camera tracking to combine 3D visual effects into the live dancing, with help of Augmented Reality (AR) technology, Brainstorm and Unreal engine. If you watch these screens, you will see real time integration of Madonna's four digital avatars, with all computer generated visual effects, combined with real Madonna, Maluma and dancing crew.

How Sequin shoot the AR experience of Madonna's Medellín?

, the AR company, took this challenge of incorporating the real world with digital world, real time visual effects in augmented reality. They made four digital doubles / virtual versions of pop diva Madonna - secret agent, musician, cha cha instructor and a bride. The biggest challenge of Lawrence Jones (co-founder of Seqin, executive creative director) was to create a truly amazing broadcast AR experience, with tight integration of 3D volumetric data, real time camera tracking and rendering the entire scene through Unreal engine. He has to match the choreography of real stage people with four 3D digital characters of Madonna.

Such projects, one of the best AR experiences, pushes the envelope for next level technology revolution for various Media and Entertainment segments. It opened up a new horizon for real time VFX integration in broadcast media. The workflow / production pipeline of Medellín is as follows.

The technical artists of Sequin AR used a tool called Brainstorm to execute this massive project. InfinitySet, Brainstorm's VR and AR application takes data from live shooting and and send to Unreal engine in real time. Such tight integrated workflow gives perfect cohesion between real world and 3D world.

To make it error free, the technical team worked in sync with dancing crew of Madonna and Maluma. It took care of other crucial parameters like lighting, shadows, reflections and many more.

Exact time codes were designed for each dancing move and effects, so everything falls in place, at the right spot at the right time.

Finally, the dance performance of Madonna's Medellín was captured by three AR-enabled cameras: the crane / jib, a front-of-house camera and a wireless Steadicam. Wireless Steadicam was the best as it gave free camera movement.

Everything was synced closely and streamed in real time to video screens. It broadcast AR enabled output which was combination of real characters, 3D volumetric data and visual effects.

Enjoy one of best AR experience, Madonna's performance with her digital avatars of Medellín song:

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How Madonna performed Medellín using AR and Unreal Engine?

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Madonna needs no introduction. The giganticly successful pop icon is back with her latest album, titled ''. But, it was a huge surprise for the audience when she performed her latest single track "Medellín", with Latin singer and songwriter Maluma (Juan Luis Londoño Arias), on the stage of Billboard Music Award (BBMA) 2019, inside the MGM Grand Garden Arena, Las Vegas, Nevada.

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In Tokyo.

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Hashimoto Baku ("a Tokyo based video director/visual artist/developer") digs into fascinating depth on the "slit-scan" technique: "[imagine] a quite thick flipbook that all frames of a video are bound page by page. If you just rifle through it, the original video will be just played. Slit-scan intrinsically means slicing the flipbook diagonally."

Applied to digital video, this "means displacing a cross section of 'world volume' (like a flipbook, it is an imaginary 3D cube consists of 2D image + 1D time) along with 'time axis'. Part of time displacement whose cross-section is planar is so-called slit-scan."

The effect is to make things stretch, distort, shrink and produce landscapes that are reminiscent of Inception.

advanced slit-scan pic.twitter.com/gzSua8dlED
- Baku 麦 (@_baku89) May 17, 2019

( via JWZ)

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Juice Media's Honest Government Adverts are some of the best, most biting political satire being produced today -- they're so good at afflicting the comfortable that Australia basically banned their style of humour -- and now, on the eve of (yet another) critical Australian election, they've produced a "season finale" that recaps the parade of [...]

Software developer Chris Harris is experimenting with machine learning to remove cars from video footage; while the software isn't quite seamless, the results are pure, glorious glitch aesthetic.

You need your gadgets, and your gadgets need a charge. We've rounded up ten pieces of gear that will do the trick, from sleek wireless pads to manual-powered emergency chargers. The best part: They're all an additional 15% off the final price you see. Just use the promo code WEEKEND15 for your bonus discount. iPM [...]

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Trying to earn a promotion? Memorial Day weekend might be a good place to start. There are tons of e-learning packages that can help you build professional skills a lot quicker (and cheaper) than any technical academy. Whether you want to earn IT certifications, learn to code, become a designer, or anything else, these comprehensive [...]

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On the visual miracle of "slit-scan" video

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Hashimoto Baku ("a Tokyo based video director/visual artist/developer") digs into fascinating depth on the "slit-scan" technique: "[imagine] a quite thick flipbook that all frames of a video are bound page by page. If you just rifle through it, the original video will be just played. Slit-scan intrinsically means slicing the flipbook diagonally."

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See the Mona Lisa at the end

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Machine learning researchers have produced a system that can recreate lifelike motion from just a single frame of a person's face, opening up the possibility of animating not just photos but also paintings. It's not perfect, but when it works, it is - like much AI work these days - eerie and fascinating.

The model is documented in a paper published by Samsung AI Center, which you can read here on Arxiv. It's a new method of applying facial landmarks on a source face - any talking head will do - to the facial data of a target face, making the target face do what the source face does.

This in itself isn't new - it's part of the whole synthetic imagery issue confronting the AI world right now ( we had an interesting discussion about this recently at our Robotics + AI event in Berkeley). We can already make a face in one video reflect the face in another in terms of what the person is saying or where they're looking. But most of these models require a considerable amount of data, for instance a minute or two of video to analyze.

The new paper by Samsung's Moscow-based researchers, however, shows that using only a single image of a person's face, a video can be generated of that face turning, speaking and making ordinary expressions - with convincing, though far from flawless, fidelity.

It does this by frontloading the facial landmark identification process with a huge amount of data, making the model highly efficient at finding the parts of the target face that correspond to the source. The more data it has, the better, but it can do it with one image - called single-shot learning - and get away with it. That's what makes it possible to take a picture of Einstein or Marilyn Monroe, or even the Mona Lisa, and make it move and speak like a real person.

It's also using what's called a Generative Adversarial Network, which essentially pits two models against one another, one trying to fool the other into thinking what it creates is "real." By these means the results meet a certain level of realism set by the creators - the "discriminator" model has to be, say, 90% sure this is a human face for the process to continue.

In the other examples provided by the researchers, the quality and obviousness of the fake talking head varies widely. Some, which attempt to replicate a person whose image was taken from cable news, also recreate the news ticker shown at the bottom of the image, filling it with gibberish. And the usual smears and weird artifacts are omnipresent if you know what to look for.

That said, it's remarkable that it works as well as it does. Note, however, that this only works on the face and upper torso - you couldn't make the Mona Lisa snap her fingers or dance. Not yet, anyway.

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Mona Lisa frown: Machine learning brings old paintings and photos to life

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Machine learning researchers have produced a system that can recreate lifelike motion from just a single frame of a person's face, opening up the possibility of animating not just photos but also of paintings. It's not perfect, but when it works, it is - like much AI work these days - eerie and fas...

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Basic Advice for Beginners Or“I wish I knew that when I was starting”

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Basic Advice for Beginners Or“I wish I knew that when I was starting”

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Christian Bohm from FMX talk!

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Removing objects in real time

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Biophillic Vision - Experiment 1: Removing cars from our roads with neural networks.

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Who exactly are all these VFX artists, and what do they do?

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Who exactly are all these VFX artists, and what do they do?

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Ian Failes talks you through VFX Roles

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If you're one of those audience members who sits through the credits on a Marvel film - and usually there's every reason to, in order to catch the post-credits tag - you have noticed the largest "blocks" of credits that scroll up the screen: the visual effects artists.

VFX is, obviously, a huge component of the making of giant blockbusters. On Avengers: Infinity War, for example, only around 80 shots were untouched by the visual effects team, out of a total of more than 2,500 shots.

But who exactly are all these VFX artists, and what do they do? Because so few of them actually receive individual acknowledgment for their contributions, Twitter user DradakVFX tried to lift the lid on just who makes up the long list of effects credits in Avengers: Endgameby sifting through the credit block of artists and heads of departments for VFX studios Framestore, Industrial Light & Magic, and Cinesite, and color-coding each person into their respective roles, from jobs such as texturing and compositing to rotoscoping.

That helps you understand the breadth of work that goes into a movie like Endgame, but if you're a casual moviegoer, the job descriptions may not mean much. It might seem obvious that VFX artists build creatures and characters in CG and place them into shots, but there's so much more involved. Scenes are often crafted with stand-ins, or actors in motion capture suits or partial costumes, that then need to be replaced or painted out. All of this is incredibly painstaking VFX work.

It's important to remember that different VFX studios have different names for certain positions, which may be one reason why the credits list so many people under the generic titles of "artists" or "digital artists." Also, what ends up in the credits roll is often a matter of negotiation. Sometimes not all the VFX artists who work on a film are even listed, as there can be a maximum number allowed for each VFX studio.

Likewise, all the work involved in bringing visual effects to life tends to happen concurrently, so there's not necessarily an "order" to these roles in the production of shots for a movie, and there are certainly other crucial visual effects roles that may not be touched on here. But based on DradakVFX's breakdown, here's what you need to know for the next time you're reading through names in anticipation of one more MCU clip.

Rotoscoping/Prep

Need Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark to appear as if he is fighting on the alien world Titan, as he did in Infinity War? All that starts with live-action photography, often against green screen or just a partial set. Rotoscope artists - regularly dubbed the true heroes of VFX for the meticulous work involved - then have to cut Downey Jr. out of the photography. This allows other things to be placed behind him, or for the actor to be properly integrated against digital environments or with CG characters.

Tracking/matchmove

Like rotoscoping, this is another role in the "prep" phase of visual effects, and it's crucial for films with tons of CG imagery. What happens here is that a tracking or matchmove artist will track - often frame by frame - the motion of the camera or a live-action actor, vehicle, or prop so that it can match the motion of other CG elements. Without it, things can appear to incorrectly "float" in a scene (i.e., they don't "track" to the motion of something else).

Modeler

All the CG characters, creatures, ships, environments, and even clothing in the Marvel films need to be created, or modeled. You can think of modelers just like sculptors or even set builders. CG modeling tends to happen in specialized 3D software, sometimes starting from scratch or from concept art, and sometimes with the aid of reference photography and 3D scans.

Rigging

Once a CG model is made, it will need to have motion, and that begins with the job of riggers. These artists provide an underlying digital skeleton to give CG characters the most realistic (or sometimes deliberately unrealistic) motion possible. They really get under the hood, and often need to have an intimate understanding of anatomy.

Animator

With a rigged CG model in their possession, animators take on the task of providing animation for CG characters, vehicles, or just about anything else that has to move. These artists might use on-set reference, motion capture, or even film itself in order to do so, or go with a completely "key-framing" approach. That means moving the model into key poses to form the final performance.

Texturing

Now we move to the surface of these CG models, such as the skin or clothing of a character, or a ship's paint job. All these things need to be painted, which is the job of texture artists, who use digital brushes to do just that. Where do they get these textures from? Often from the real world, or from vast libraries of materials.

Grooming

Rocket simply isn't Rocket, say, without his unique furry features. But simulating CG hair is still one of the hardest things to do in visual effects, so grooming artists work to both craft the look of the hair and work out how it should behave. In many cases, there are millions and millions of individual pieces of hair that need attention.

Creature FX

This is somewhat of a catch-all term for all the kinds of extra pieces of motion and simulation that can be added to a creature beyond modeling, texturing, and rigging. For example, underlying muscle and flesh simulations can add just the right kind of wobble and jiggle as Thanos walks or speaks. Hair, fur, and clothing simulations also come under this role.

FX

Explosions! Water! Superhero magic! This is the domain of FX artists, who replicate real-world phenomena or create other kinds of effects that need enormous amounts of particles or fluids. When Doctor Strange fires off his astral and mystical powers, they tend to come alive thanks to careful artist choreography of complex simulation software.

Environment/DMP

Before the days of digital visual effects, environments that couldn't be filmed for real were often done as matte paintings: literally, paintings on glass. That name - matte painters - is still used to describe the role, with digital matte painting (DMP) covering what they now do with the aid of digital tools. No longer, however, are environments just 2D paintings; often, they're complex 3D assets or extensions of live-action photography.

Lighting

Many of the roles in VFX are about asset creation, but once these assets move into real shots in the movie, they need to be "lit," just like a cinematographer lights a set or an actor. Maybe Groot needs to appear in shadow, or in an overcast environment - lighters will dial in all the different scenarios. In visual effects, lighting also often goes hand in hand with rendering.

Compositing

Think back to the Tony-Stark-on-Titan example. The actor needs to be combined with a background environment, with his Iron Man suit, with other characters and assets, and with lasers, explosions, and all manner of other effects layers. These layers are put together by compositors, who are often involved toward the end of the process to form the final shots, where they also fine-tune lighting and extra effects elements. Seamless compositing can make a scene look like no visual effects are actually involved at all.

Pipeline TD

Just as these Marvel movies have become huge productions, so too have the pipelines employed by VFX studios to handle so many shots. A pipeline TD, or technical director, is charged with fitting together the different toolsets, code sets, communication links, and processes behind bringing VFX elements from almost nothing to their final form.

Editorial

There's editing in VFX? There sure is. VFX editors are often the go-between for VFX studios and the main production, placing work-in-progress or completed scenes in context, moving footage through the facility and running shot reviews. They are also regularly the artists behind those killer visual effects breakdowns you see, especially during awards season.

Those are the main VFX roles highlighted by DradakVFX in his color-coded Endgame credit observations. Next time you're enjoying the credits for one of these films, take a moment to think of the long hours these artists might have endured in bringing your favorite characters to the screen. It certainly takes an army.

Ian Failes is a journalist based in Sydney specializing in visual effects and animation. He recently launched his own VFX and animation publication called Befores & Afters. He also writes for Cartoon Brew, VFX Voice, 3D Artist and 3D World. Ian is the author of the book, Masters of FX. Find him on Twitter at @vfxblog.

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What the VFX people you see while waiting for Marvel post-credits scenes actually do

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If you're one of those audience members who sits through the credits on a Marvel film - and usually there's every reason to, in order to catch the post-credits tag - you have noticed the largest "blocks" of credits that scroll up the screen: the visual effects artists.

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Simple problem solving that goes unnoticed by viewers..

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Behind the Scenes: Audi ‘Synchronised Swim

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Take a look behind the scenes of Audi 'Synchronised Swim'. Created with BBH London and Director Johnny Hardstaff from Independent Films, this Audi campaign film beautifully shows that all Audi models have the same capabilities, tech and attitude. Find out more about the project: http://www.themill.com/portfolio/4876/synchronised-swim

BTS Editor: Rauri Cantelo
BTS Music: Wolves 'Funk in Da Trunk' 

Follow @Millchannel on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram for more updates.
Website: http://themill.com
Facebook: facebook.com/MillChannel
Twitter: twitter.com/millchannel
Instagram: instagram.com/millchannel

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While finding out how realistic animals can be made using CGI, I came across this video.

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CGI & VFX Breakdown HD Wanda Reign Lion VFX Breakdown

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Found some references that I thought could be useful while researching how CGI gore can be done.

Environments & Gore Logan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APH-p7XzJWo

Walking Dead VFX Breakdown - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y4Zute7ARY

Walking Dead Season 6 Decapitation Breakdown - https://www.artofvfx.com/the-walking-dead-season-6-shot-breakdown-fido/

Walking Dead Season 8 Body Grinder Breakdown - https://www.artofvfx.com/the-walking-dead-season-8-vfx-breakdown-by-goodbye-kansas-studios/

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Are you keeping up with Captain Disillusion?

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Are you keeping up with Captain Disillusion?

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Get on it. Now.

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Surveillance is a big issue in Sci-Fi now

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Surveillance is a big issue in Sci-Fi now

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In Canada they are using VFX to incite discussions about Surveillance in Schools

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funded Screening Surveillance project: a trio of Creative Commons licensed short science fiction films about "everyday issues around big data and surveillance." The movies run about 10 minutes each, and come with classroom materials.

The movies were produced under the auspices of Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center as part of sava saheli singh's postdoc; singh is married to SF writer Tim Maughan, author of the wonderful recent debut novel Infinite Detail (Maughan also wrote one of the movies):

Blaxites follows the story of a young woman whose celebratory social media post affects her access to vital medication. Her attempts to circumvent the system leads to even more dire consequences. (written by Nehal El-Hadi)

In A Model Employee, to keep her day job at a local restaurant, an aspiring DJ has to wear a tracking wristband. As it tracks her life outside of work, she tries to fool the system, but a new device upgrade means trouble. (written by Tim Maughan)

In Frames, a smart city tracks and analyzes a woman walking through the city. Things she does are interpreted and logged by the city system, but are they drawing an accurate picture of the woman? (Written by Madeline Ashby)

Screening Surveillance project [The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada/Queens University's Surveillance Studies Center]

Time 4 Machine is a Ukrainian design shop led by Denis Okhrimenko; their latest project is "The most beautiful construction set in the world", a set of thin steel parts that you bend together to make (yes) beautiful mechanical models: a business-card case, a tractor, a working clockwork timer, a vintage sportscar, a springpowered cabriolet, [...]

The bitter, yearslong debate at the World Wide Web Consortium over a proposal to standardize DRM for web browsers included frequent assurances by the pro-DRM side (notably Google, whose Widevine DRM was in line to be the principal beneficiary) that this wouldn't affect the ability of free/open source authors to implement the standard.

Last week's NYC book launch for Radicalized took the form of a fantastic conversation with the journalist Julia Angwin; the Strand folks were kind enough to video it and they've posted it to Youtube. Julia is incredibly smart and a wonderful interviewer, and we had some great Q&A as well.

The one place you want your internet service to work flawlessly is your home - especially if you work there. Sadly, we all know that spotty Wi-Fi is all too common, even with the best package. If you've lost crucial projects or had trouble streaming movies, NetSpot Home can not only show you why and [...]

Big companies need to manage big stacks of data, and the language they use to access and manipulate it is SQL. If you want to make a career of IT, you'll need to master SQL like a native tongue to get started in the lucrative field of database management. With more than 120 hours of [...]

Ever heard of Agile? If you're on the ground floor of any big corporate project, it's more than likely you have. Agile is the methodology that major companies use to tackle big projects. And if you're looking to make yourself invaluable, a certification in Agile is what you need to lead that project development team. [...]

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Screening Surveillance: three short science fiction films about surveillance, with accompanying classroom materials

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https://youtu.be/jfJX8HaGy6s The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada funded Screening Surveillance project: a trio of Creative Commons licensed short science fiction films about "everyday issues around big data and surveillance." The movies run about 10 minutes each, and come with classroom materials. The movies were produced under the auspices of Queens University's Surveillance Studies...

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All about the process...

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Visual effects and animation magazine from journalist Ian Failes.

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Wet.

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium https://t.co/Xfrh9h1jJD

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium pic.twitter.com/Xfrh9h1jJD
— Justin Bates (@JustinBates_VFX) March 21, 2019

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium https://t.co/Xfrh9h1jJD

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium https://t.co/Xfrh9h1jJD

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Testing out my xpFluid settings on something a little more energetic. #mocap #C4D #XParticles #Reshift @insydium

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Here's some useful apps if you are planning on being on set

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The Annotable app Rowe allows users to notate photos and documents, and then send them around quickly while on a production. Says Rowe: "I used it on The Meg to notate to myself where the shark was supposed to be in the chase sequence. The director was firing out ideas about each shot, and I found quick photos and a bad doodle of a shark told the story clearly. At the end of a 12-hour shoot the last thing you want to do is write up notes. With this tool I would put them into a document and make a PDF on the day of the shoot."

APPS FOR VFX PRODUCTION

Managing the flow of information is sometimes just as important as the imagery itself. And there are plenty of apps to help. Visual Effects Supervisor Jay Worth relies heavily, for example, on Airtable, an app that plugs into database software FileMaker Pro.

"With working on multiple projects with multiple artists, this is the best method I have found to keep track of all the elements I need," says Worth. "Something like Shotgun is great, but I don't need to track that much data. For our most recent work on Westworld, we fully embraced Airtable and it was great - everything from financials and shot tracking to editorial count sheets and set data."

Bespoke solutions can also be generated out of FileMaker Go, FileMaker's own tablet and phone app. "Many people have their own custom databases they have set up prior on the computer in FileMaker's main software application," discusses Harvey. "Then in the app it's all about being able to quickly record the needed info. If you don't have a custom camera report database, the VES has a great free one at camerareports.org."

Another common database solution is Setellite. According to Guerra, "this app is a complete package to create a full VFX report. It allows you to take notes, catalog all the cameras, lenses, lights, keep track of all the takes, and helps you label the VFX plates, among other things. It also has a cloud save in case you have 4G during filming. In the end, it creates a very complete PDF of everything that happens on set regarding VFX. This PDF is fundamental to keep information flowing between the VFX houses and the production."

Bancroft-Wilson says the latest versions of Setelitte have improved upon initial releases of the app. "It allows sharing between accounts and a web readout which I at first was excited about, but the web interface wasn't great for manipulation and data entry. They've since offered a standalone version, which is annoying after spending twice its price on subscriptions. I'll give the app a go again and see what they've improved. It's a great way to make sure data, reference and media are being gathered in a clean, searchable way."

Finally, VFX supervisors who travel a lot during production might benefit from the use of Trip Case, an app that manages your flights all from one place. "For work," relates Rowe, "I fly all over the world. All you do is forward the Movement Order or E-ticket booking to trips@tripcase.com and it puts your flights into the wallet. It will update you of changes and cancellations, and, very importantly, it reminds you that you have trips coming up."

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The Annotable app Rowe allows users to notate photos and documents, and then send them around quickly while on a production. Says Rowe: "I used it on The Meg to notate to myself where the shark was supposed to be in the chase sequence.

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Choc full of Invisible VFX that helps authenticate the story and place.

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Reference Pictures - High Quality Images for Creators

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High resolution, premium, affordable reference for creators--artists, designers, illustrators, concept artists, and more! For use on personal & commercial projects.

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Mhsprod on Instagram: "Opening made with the mate @stuz0r for the VIDEO COPILOT LIVE! LONDON. Check our story for Vimeo and few making of pics #stuz0r #cinema4d #cyber #elonmusk #work #progress #astronaut #artwork #spacex #nasa #cyberpunkers #sketch #techno #cyberpunkart #space #japan #photoshop #design #digital #digitalart #scifiart #paris #artcollective #octanerender #instagram #ocean"

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1,927 likes, 103 comments - mhsprod on January 23, 2019: "Opening made with the mate @stuz0r for the VIDEO COPILOT LIVE! LONDON. Check our story for Vimeo and few making of pics #stuz0r #cinema...".

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Some interesting discussion here about John's history and continuing involvement in VFX.

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CGM Interviews - John Knoll (Rogue One, Abyss, Star Wars, Mission Impossible)

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Already on the NuaVFX twitter but here it is again a really cool breakdown for Compositing explaining the steps from concept to completion for an oscar winning film

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri. https://t.co/vWCO2KItTc

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri. pic.twitter.com/vWCO2KItTc
— Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri) February 24, 2019

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri. https://t.co/vWCO2KItTc

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri. https://t.co/vWCO2KItTc

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"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" (2006), visual effects by ILM. Visual effects supervisor John Knoll. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.

Rotoscoping by Lauren Morimoto, compositing by Todd Vaziri.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

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The brilliant opening to the 2015 James Bond film, Spectre. ©Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ©Capitol Records ©Columbia Pictures I do not own the rights to this film.

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A study of light, shadow, form, and function. Built on the basic principles of trigonometry and a simple mathematical formula, this series aims to encapsulate the beauty of repetition while embracing the familiarity of space.

instagram.com/_james_owen_
http://jamesowen.co/

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BBC got to be the first to tour Intel Studios, a state of the art greenscreen facility, with no suits, no motion capture, just a live performance captured in a green dome by hundreds of cameras.

Via Variety:

The new facility, aptly named Intel Studios, features the world's largest stage for volumetric video capture. At the center of it is a 10,000 square-feet dome designed to capture actors and objects in volumetric 3D, essentially producing high-end holographic content for VR, AR and the likes.

"We have created a new state-of-the-art production studio for immersive media," Intel Studios director Diego Prilusky recently told Variety. Designing and building out the space took some 18 months. "It was a very long process of research and development," he said.

The future of film production (YouTube / BBC Click)

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Watch how far green screen technology has come

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmKFUffO5G4 BBC got to be the first to tour Intel Studios, a state of the art greenscreen facility, with no suits, no motion capture, just a live performance captured in a green dome by hundreds of cameras. Via Variety: The new facility, aptly named Intel Studios, features the world's largest stage for volumetric video capture....

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ExtraWeg on Instagram too.

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Meet The Artist Behind These Viral 3D Animations

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Digital Design Days + OFFF Milano 2018 Main Titles

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Digital Design Days + OFFF Milano 2018 Main Titles

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Digital Design Days + OFFF Milano 2018 Main Titles

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more info: https://www.behance.net/gallery/56537199/OFFF-Milano-2018-Main-Titles 

Event: Digital Design Days + OFFF Milano 2018
Tool: Cinema 4D / Octane Render / AfterEffects
Title Designer / 3D Artist: zaoeyo (Xiaolin Zeng)
Sound Design & Score : CypherAudio | John Black & Tobias Norberg
Special Thanks: RenderBus, Filippo Spiezia

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Glitch overload, some crazy processing

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Romain Tardy proposes to the visitors an involuntary self-portrait of our contemporary networked society.
The Great Indecision Council works exclusively with data from the country in which it holds the session, which is mixed with visual content and animations designed by the artist.

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The Great Indecision Council has several billions of members.
The Great Indecision Council is honoured to share some bits of human knowledge with non-humans.
The Great Indecision Council does not take any decision.

What do we say we’re interested in? What are we actually interested in? In the intimacy of our smartphone or computer, we secretly tell Google what we’d like to know about.
By fetching most looked up words from Google search and Google news in real time, and by bringing them to the public space through visual and sonic signals, visual artist Romain Tardy proposes to the visitors an involuntary self-portrait of our contemporary networked society. 
The Great Indecision Council works exclusively with data from the country in which it holds the session, which is mixed with visual content and animations designed by the artist.

The Great Indecision Council takes the shape of a large scale, light and sound installation. A 20-meter circle in which the audience is invited to get immersed in light, words and mystic computer-generated chants, while being watched by potential observers — from far, far away.



Credits:

An installation by Romain Tardy

Music and sound design by Loran Delforge
Software programming: Hand Coded

WWW: www.romaintardy.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/atelierromaintardy/
IG: @romain.tardy