Dalies are at the heart of VFX. It’s where artists get feedback and develop their eye. It’s where production is kept on track. It’s also where seniors develop opinions on their artists, where directors evaluate their teams, and where critical choices are made.

My best advice for artists attending dailies for the first time is to be quiet and pay full attention. Take notes, as Garman suggests. Keep your mouth shut unless your input is needed or asked for. Never lie, never try to spin anything, never be defensive or explanatory – just listen to the instructions that are given, ask questions if anything is unclear, and be professional.

The people evaluating the work are almost always aware of issues or concerns an individual artist is not exposed to – a VFX sup may be thinking about continuity with other shots, upcoming changes, or criteria passed down from a director. The leadership attending or running the dailies may also not have much time, or the viewing theatre may have other teams waiting, so the general rule is to let the person(s) making decisions quickly and accurately evaluate what they are being shown, make a decision, and convey that decision as directives for action.

And always, always as an artist address the notes you are given. The people giving notes remember what they ask for, and nothing infuriates a director or VFX sup more than to give the same notes over and over. If you are dialing in towards a result, ie if the notes are on the order of “more” or “less,” that’s ok. But if the notes keep coming back as “where’s the fix?” then you are probably pissing someone off.

Anyway, it’s a good read, on an important subject, from a knowledgable source worth listening to.

Mercedes “Santa.” :30, created snow rig using slipstream/fury which was then implemented into the shots by artist and friend Sue Jang. Method/NYC. The actor is Peter Xifo – nice job Peter!

The visual effects department is new, having risen from a small group of artists who performed miscellaneous visual effects as needed to enhance or fill out the stereo process, and my job as I see it is to lay a foundation for growth given the large demand for services we’re encountering. The effects vary from show to show, from environmental and supportive effects (snow, rain, smoke, fog etc) to more unusual effects, some of which are only possible in the realm of stereo.

Challenging, and a lot of fun. When I first arrived at StereoD I was staggered by the number of shows they are running concurrently, below are just a few, in no particular order. If you’re an experienced visual effects artist and are looking for a place that is growing and evolving and has work on some of the largest and most advanced films being created, StereoD should definitely be on your radar. And most amazing of all? Unlike some places (cough) the VFX dept at StereoD is already showing profit and has more requests for work than we can accommodate…. ;)

]]> http://andy.moonbase.net/archives/541/feed 0 http://andy.moonbase.net/archives/516 http://andy.moonbase.net/archives/516#comments Tue, 26 Jul 2011 13:59:45 +0000 andy http://andy.moonbase.net/?p=516 It’s been done by better TDs than myself, but a question arose on SI-community so I decided to pull out and dust off a simulation I slammed together during green lantern in a couple of hours, as an example scene. I put this together when we were doing rapid look dev for a “green energy” effect at PLF, where a woman is rescued by splashing into a surface of “water” which then turns into a flood and whisks her away from the fight…

You can find the compounds and the scene used to make this image here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For those of you wondering why this is important, it’s simple enough. Fury is fast. Really, really fast. And it was written by Ben Houston, the original author of Krakatoa, a tool of choice for rendering particles. Softimage, Max and Maya users alike can move their simulations to ICE (or create their simulations with ice directly) and partake in the Fury awesomeness.

LOOK at it. 1 million points. Self shadowing and cast shadows. 1-second-per-frame.

Click here to view the embedded video.

“The major new features in Fury 2.0:

* GPU-accelerated particle self-shadowing
* Shadow maps
* Built-in compositing previewing.
* Command line renderer support.
* Synchronized Softimage and Maya support.

In this example, 1 million points are lit and rendered in about 1 second per frame and the shadow map is also created at the same time. Motion blur and DOF do not slow down rendering time.

The simulation in this example is from a alpha-version of SlipstreamVX 2.0 and thus the smoke motion isn’t quite perfect in this video.”

There is a good article online about Exocortex and the work they did using Slipstream VX for the last Harry Potter film. You can find it here.

Some excerpts:

The pool, known as the Pensieve to Harry Potter fans, contains an oillike liquid that sloshes around in its basin whenever someone gazes into it. While they had managed to make do with available tools in previous Harry Potter movies, this time around animators wanted the effects to be bigger, better and more realistic than ever before.

Houston, 32, sold the company a piece of specially designed software that mimics real world physics and helps to accurately create water digitally. The water special effect had taken Houston more than three years to perfect. The software tool was designed to work with Gradient’s existing special effects software.

“I went and further customized our software to meet the needs of the Harry Potter production,” said Houston, adding the experience has been “awesome.”

Animators at Gradient learned about Houston’s software from a review in a computer graphics magazine, he said.

Having written the magazine article in question, I couldn’t be happier for Exocortex. Good work, guys!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.