The results are in from CGenie’s user survey on 3d artists satisfaction with the software they use. Above is a graph of the overall satisfaction scores for each software. It’s interesting to see that Blender (the open-source 3d graphics package) consistently tops the list in most of the categories listed from new features to value. Of course some of this is not surprising considering that Blender is free. The offerings from Autodesk (namely Maya and 3ds Max) are grouped over and over at the lowest rungs of ladder. The survey results also include some choice comments from users in which the Autodesk products take quite a beating from those who toil in front of them day in and day out. Like these…
Maya: I’m forced to use this software to make a living but I resent it every minute.
and
3ds Max: A lot of the times it feels like the developers do not listen to the artists. Some tools that have been in max for ages and always had problems, they are just left as they are… Come on let’s fix the old stuff clean up the code and then move onto the new stuff.
It seems the open source model is outpacing the bloated development cycles of the big boys. It’ll be interesting to see if they can find a way to catch up.
Seems that the Golden State has finally wised up and started offering some of the same tax credits other states and countries have given up to movies and tv shows for years. The deal is that Cali will give back 20% of below the line costs capped at a $500 million dollar payout over the next five years. The tax credit also does not extend to films with a budget over $75 million (you heard me Stretch Armstrong:The Movie).
That sounds like a lot until you look at all the other tax credit schemes out there. According to the L.A. Times…
New Mexico offers a 25% rebate on production costs and does not have a cap. Neither does Michigan, where filmmakers get up to 42 cents back for each dollar they spend on filming.
So the question will be, which of the Hollywood glitterati is going to volunteer to spend 4 months of their lives eating Chile Con Carne in Albuquerque over the Pan-Roasted Organic Chicken With Oregon Morel Mushrooms at Spago to save the studios a measly 5%. I guess time will tell
LINK to the full article about the tax rebate in the L.A. Times
The most common question I’ve been getting around the VFX world lately is “How the hell do I shot and HDR?”. For those of you still doing visual effects on a Commodore 64, that stands for High Dynamic Range, the process of combining multiple camera exposures into a single image. Well, harass me no more VFX brethren! Professor Kirt Witte from SCAD (pictured above) has a great site called HDRI Tips and Tricks FAQ. Here’s a taste…
4 Rules of shooting HDRs
Lock f-stop (aperture – which controls your depth of field)
Lock focus
Lock white balance
Turn off any in camera “automatic” image enhancing (i.e.: auto-contrast or auto-saturation, including sharpening)
There all kinds meaty info here so enjoy, and stop bothering me.
Q: What’s better than slaving away on VFX jobs in downtown Detroit? A: Doing it all in an abandoned casino!
Seems like the tax breaks the great lakes state is offering have drawn some big VFX money. According to the Detroit Free Press, the facility called Wonderstruck…
would be the first of its kind in Michigan. Wonderstruck said it would deliver full-scale Hollywood productions from inception to state-of-the-art computer generated 3D software. Its content is mostly targeted toward families and young audiences.
They’ll be setting up shop inside an old MGM Grand casino so they better start trying to get the cigarette and spilled booze stench out of the carpets now. Oh, and there is the slight problem of not having anyone there to do the actual work.
Since Michigan currently lacks many workers with the skills Wonderstruck needs, Wonderstruck said it was developing an intense training program for potential new Michigan employees.
I wonder if they will keep the cocktail waitresses and nickel slots open for the new artists in training.
If your ever been on set and need to survey something really tall you basically have two options.
Shimmy up said tall object with a tape measure clenched between your teeth or..
Use a spiffy trick with an inclinometer to tell how tall the thing is from your foldable camping chair whilst you sip a frothy beverage
If you are like me and like the sound of #2, all you’ll need is a Suunto Tandem Inclinometer, a laser tape measure and the magic of “math”. Check it out it’s actually very handy
The folks over at VFX Nexus have nice little piece of code up that seems like a great all-in-one solution for keeping your VFX House in order. Aimed squarely at the indi-film and small studio market, VFX Nexus offers a nice suite of well designed tools (some in-house VFX tracking systems look like the control panel of Soviet cargo plane) that’s hosted off-site lowering software maintenance needs and enhancing communication between far flung artists and vendors. It even includes a “Knowledge Base” section so you don’t have to set up a separate wiki. Nice.
LINK to the VFX Nexus main site (make sure you check out the demo)
It seems in this town, once you become a VFX Supervisor someone issues you a MacBook Pro and an iPhone. The iPhone for me has been a great tool for presenting previz and work in progress to clients on set and has proven indispensable in settling bar bets with grips and gaffers. Of course one of the best things about this little marvel from Cupertino is the applications you can put on it. Here’s my top 5 for VFX production.
Clinometer
So of all the things I always manage to forget in VFX kit bag, my inclinometer always ends first on that list. But you know what I never forget? My iPhone! Enter Clinometer, turn it on it’s side and it becomes a pretty darn accurate slope finder. I compared it to an old school analog angle finder and came out with the same results. The coolest thing about this app though is if you lay it flat the whole interface turns into a bubble level. You can lock the angle for easy transcription later but it doesn’t have the ability to save, catalogue or email readings.
HdrHelper
A common question I get as a Supe is “How many stops apart should the pics for my HDRs be?”. First of all, when gathering bracketed exposures for generating HDRs (I use Photomatix but CS4 makes ‘em too) you want to make sure you change the shutter speed not the aperture. That way the depth of field won’t vary between exposures. There is no magic number to how different each exposure should be as long as the difference is consistent and travels from almost completely blown out to nearly black. I used to take test exposures, find the high and low end and do the math on a notepad to figure out what my shutter speeds should be. In HdrHelper, enter the start and end exposures and how many pictures you want to take and presto! It figures out the rest for ya.
Jott
So if you are like me inspiration and/or panic can come at any time. You may be driving or away from our notepad and need to record a specific piece of info. What Jott does is turn your iPhone into a mini dictation machine. You just talk into it and after a few moments Jott transcribes what you said (watch out for super techy words) and lets you file the written tidbits away for later. To get started you have to sign up for there website from which you can send your notes as emails, SMS and the like. That’s the good news. The bad news is, what was previously free will now be a pay service as of February 2nd. Sign up for the free now and you still may be able to get the 10% coupon code when they start making us pay.
Dropbox
Dropbox is a web app kinda like iDisk with two large exceptions, you can use it on the iPhone and it works. Signup for an account online and you get 2GB of disk space free and little app for your desktop. The desktop app puts a folder on your system and every time you write to it Dropbox uploads the file to your site and assigns it a url where you can access it from any web browser including Safari on the iPhone. The great thing is if you put a text file, pdf, jpg or iPhone supported movie in the Dropbox folder your desktop, you can see it immediately on the iPhone side. I use a program called TaskPaper to make my todo lists. Taskpaper saves in plaintext so I just keep the file in my Dropbox folder and I always have it with me. Oh did I mention that you can share folders and files with your iPhone brethren?
Google Docs
Another web app but one that can really help you with gathering data on set. As you may know Google Docs allows you to create documents, presentations and spreadsheets via a web interface that you can then share with others. What you may not be familiar with is a document type called a form. With forms, you can set up a series of questions that you can post or email. After you fill out the form and submit it, Google posts the data from the form into a master spreadsheet. The forms show up great on the iPhone and when you come home at the end of a long day on set, all of your data is nicely timestamped and thrown into a spreadsheet for you. Here’s how it works..
Open up your browser and make a new form from the dropdown menu in Google docs.
Fill out the title and description of the form then add the questions you want to show up in the spreadsheet. When you are all done, click on the “Email this form” button. Open up the email on your iPhone and follow the link. Here is a screenshoot of a form I made for VFX on-set data.
Bookmark the link and bring it up on the go when you need to enter data. When you get back to the office, you will see that Google Docs has happily created a spreadsheet for you with the same title as the form. All the data you entered into the form is now placed in the spreadsheet through the magic of technology. Like this…
You can edit the form, email it, or embed it into a your own blog or web page from the Form menu when you are editing the spreadsheet.
This is great for gathering info anywhere and also for gathering from multiple sources at once. Anyone who has access to the form can enter data into the same spreadsheet. That way you can have multiple people entering data at the same time! Who says a VFX Supe can’t have there butt in two places at once?
LINK to the VFX Data spreadsheet used in this post (you need a Google account if you want to save yourself a copy)
What is VFXHack?
Here’s the deal…
All the other visual effect sites and visual effects blogs lack that certain something. Visually they are jumbled, they tend to shill shamelessly for the big studios and the galleries are filled with same old ogres and big tittied chicks with metal bikinis that we’ve all seen 1,000 times. And honestly, after over a decade kicking around this crazy industry I’m sick of it. What I want to do in an in the trenches, real-life, counter-culture VFX blog. Stuff that’s cool that you might not know about cuz it’s not from the majors. Along with “real” tips from the folks on the ground like you and me.
The results are in from CGenie’s user survey on 3d artists satisfaction with the software they use. Above is a graph of the overall satisfaction scores for each software. It’s interesting to see that Blender (the open-source 3d graphics package) consistently tops the list in most of the categories listed from new features to value. Of course some of this is not surprising considering that Blender is free. The offerings from Autodesk (namely Maya and 3ds Max) are grouped over and over at the lowest rungs of ladder. The survey results also include some choice comments from users in which the Autodesk products take quite a beating from those who toil in front of them day in and day out. Like these…
Seems that the Golden State has finally wised up and started offering some of the same tax credits other states and countries have given up to movies and tv shows for years. The deal is that Cali will give back 20% of below the line costs capped at a $500 million dollar payout over the next five years. The tax credit also does not extend to films with a budget over $75 million (you heard me Stretch Armstrong:The Movie).
