More compositing… TVC cleanup and rotoscoping Last modified on 2020-06-25 10:02:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top. Here’s another quick breakdown, it’s much easier to put these together than it is to re-edit a new showreel! These spots were produced by Rotor Studios in North Sydney. They were shot on an Arri Alexa and graded in DaVinci, the footage is gorgeous. The interesting thing about these spots is the colour workflow that Rotor used. Colour management is a very complex subject matter, and it’s not a simple task to introduce a fully integrated, colour managed workflow to the entire post-production chain. I’ve work at loads of places where they think that colour management is simply a matter of calibrating the computer monitor. I’ve also seen places that don’t even bother with any colour management, and grade spots destined for broadcast on cheap computer monitors – without even a TV as a reference. But it’s quite a complex area, and the best advice for colour management comes from the awesome TV show ‘Monkey Magic’, which opened an episode with the quote “it is the beginning of wisdom to say ‘I know nothing’ “. Rotor cleverly avoided colour management by reversing the usual post-production process. Normally (in my experience anyway) colour grading is the last step completed. Compositors work with ungraded footage and colour grading in After Effects is usually part of the compositing / fx process. Once the edit is locked off and all the visual-fx shots are complete, a colour grader will work through the timeline and make sure everything is consistent. Rotor reversed this process and colour graded the footage first, in a fully calibrated and broadcast specc’d DaVinci suite. All grading decisions made were made based on what they looked like on a broadcast monitor, properly setup and operated by a professional grader. The compositors then worked with the graded, output footage and didn’t adjust colour or levels at all. When the rendered composites were reassembled in Final Cut and output, the end result looked the same as when the footage was initially graded- because nothing had been altered! By using this ‘reverse’ process many of the pitfalls that go with a colour managed workflow were avoided. A quick look at multi-pass compositing Last modified on 2020-06-25 10:02:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top. Multi-pass compositing using Adobe After Effects. I haven’t had time to create an updated showreel, but here’s some recent compositing work completed in After Effects. This was a fun project to work on and it was produced by a great team of guys at Digital Pulse, in Sydney. The fun part of compositing is thinking of elements that would enhance the scene and then creating them from scratch within After Effects. For example, the opening shot required rain – that was in the script. But adding splashes on the footpath added authenticity- simple yet effective.  In the shot where the guy looks out of the window, some subtle light rays (using CC light burst) give the scene a softer atmosphere. And the ripples on the car windscreen as the wipers animate also add realism to the shot. Most of these shots use a ‘light wrap’ to enhance the edges of objects. These are easy to make from a matte shape. You duplicate the matte layer and use it as an inverted alpha for itself. Then blur the top layer (the track matte). In most cases I didn’t have a matte shape for every object in the scene, so I would concoct one from the depth pass using plugins like levels, curves or ‘extract’. For stronger edge effects, and to create directional rim-lighting effects, I simply used the ‘bevel alpha’ effect on the matte layer. First I’d use the ‘fill’ effect to fill the matte with black, so you couldn’t see anything. Then the ‘bevel alpha’ effect would add a directional edge that I could easily move and adjust the thickness of. This could then be tinted and added over the colour pass. It’s a very useful technique using very basic effects! The ambient occlusion pass is used to define shadows and edges, usually with either a ‘multiply’ or ‘linear burn’ blending mode.  I would always tint the blacks of the AO pass to be the opposite colour to the light source.  So if the light source is blue, I would tint the AO pass orange.  This adds realism and also a sense of warmth to shots that would feel colder and harsher if all of the shadows were pure black. Finally, the Frischluft ‘Lenscare’ plugin was used to give each scene a shallow depth-of-field, and for a number of pull-focus shots.  It’s an awesome, gorgeous looking plugin. 3D in AE – The Centrica Carnivale Last modified on 2020-06-25 10:02:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top. Way back in 2006, working with After Effects 6.5 on an 800mhz G4 PowerMac, I completed a conference opener for Centrica that attracted a lot of attention. Although the video looked as though it had been created using a 3D animation package, almost everything was done inside After Effects: I recently completed a 3-part video tutorial on how it was all done, and you can watch the series over at the ProVideo Coalition. To celebrate the release of my first video tutorials for the ProVideo Coalition I’ve put together a small demonstration project that you can download here. For the best result you will need a copy of the Knoll Light Factory Spectacular plugin, but even if you don’t have a copy you will still be able to see how the scenes in the Centrica animation were put together, and you’ll be able to play around with the same files that I’ve used in the tutorials. Dr. Jekyll’s Eye Last modified on 2020-06-25 10:02:00 GMT. 0 comments. Top. “Jekyll” is a 2007 BBC series starring James Nesbitt and Michelle Ryan, which updates the well known tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by adding modern technology and a conspiracy theory. The DVD authouring was handled by London company ‘Cheerful Scout’ who gave me the job of designing the DVD menus. The main menu of the DVD features a close-up of Hyde’s eye which was created in After Effects – and this post will demonstrate how it was done. One thing I liked about the series was the low-key approach to visual effects. It must have been tempting for the Director to utilise a full arsenal of CGI technicians to depict the transformation between Jekyll and Hyde, but instead it was done in a much more refined manner – a simple close-up of the main character’s eye. The ‘Jekyll’ character – renamed ‘Dr. Jackman’ for the series – has perfectly normal, clear green eyes. The ‘Hyde’ character’s eye is brown and murky with disturbing bloodshot discolourations around the pupil. When the character transforms in the series we cut to a quick close-up of the eye as it opens and we can tell by the colouring what has just happened. Still frames from the TV series I decided that a suitable loop for the main menu would be a close-up of the eye as it blinks and transforms between the two different states. A selection of video clips from the show, along with the text for menu options, would appear as reflections in the eye. Although I thought this was a fine concept I had to overcome several problems. If you watch the series you will never actually see the eye blink and transform as it does in the DVD menu. The show only ever features one eye at a time – and fairly quickly too. So I had two clips of an eye opening, one for Jekyll and one for Hyde, but they were separate shots and were never used together in the series. Each shot was less than a second long – about 20 frames – but using the main theme music as the sound bed for the menu meant I had to stretch these shots out for 40 seconds. The next thing I realised was that the two eye shots didn’t line up. When the shots are edited next to each other the two eye’s position, size, shape and even skin tones are different. Because the series never showed the eye blink and transform from one to the other they didn’t have to line up perfectly, and if you consider how they would have been filmed (possibly even on different days with different actors) then you can’t really expect them to. I wanted the menu options to be reflected in the eye but because of the way that DVDs work the text can’t move around. This meant I would need to adjust the size and position of the two eye shots so they matched – that way when the eyes blink and transform from one to the other the DVD menu text can stay in the same position. Although we never saw the eye during the actual transformation in the series, I was clear on the type of effect I was after. I wanted the murky, discoloured patches of the eye to swirl around and flood into the white areas. In order to create this animation in a way that I could align it with the existing footage of the clear green eye, I would have to re-create the entire eye as a graphic element. I started by building the swirly effect for the discoloured eye. Any time I’m trying to create an organic pattern or texture I think of fractal noise. I was confident that by using fractal noise, and other plug-ins that use the same underlying principles as fractal noise, I could create a realistic and effective eyeball entirely within After Effects. The first step was to create a swirling matte which I would use to create an organic and flowing border for my fractal noise texture. Just a solid with the ramp effect… This was done with nothing more than a simple ramp, followed by the turbulent displace effect. The turbulent displace effect was set to loop seamlessly. … with some Turbulent Displace, creating a seamless looping animated matte Then I created a strip of fractal noise, also set to loop seamlessly, using this turbulent ramp as the matte. Looping fractal noise with the track matte In order to wrap this texture into a circle I would be using the Polar Coordinates filter, but the source layer needs to be a square in order for the result to be circular. So the animating strip of fractal texture is dropped into a large square composition. Square pre-composition The fractal strip is used twice, with a copy of the layer flipped upside down so we get a swirling border on both sides. I also used the offset filter and the CC wire-removal plug-in to make the texture tileable, so there is no visible seam. You can find more information on this technique over at the Creative Cow. At this stage I’m working with a really big composition because I know that wrapping the layer into a circle will shrink it quite a bit and also crunch out a lot of the fine detail. My initial fractal strips were 3000 pixels wide, so this square precomposition is 3000 pixels square. Even though I was doing this at the start of 2007 I was using an old G4 Mac with AE v6.5 and the render times were pretty long! Now that I had my texture set up in a square composition I could use the Polar Coordinates filter to wrap the texture into a circle. By animating the position of the fractal strip within the square composition I could make the texture move closer or further away from the centre. This way I could make the texture look as though it was swirling into the eyeball from nowhere, or out of nothing. Again- the Creative Cow article gives more details on this technique. Finished manky texture, using Polar Coordinates This circular texture will be used … Continue reading Gallery and case studies