As we continue exploring ways to stabilize footage, we’re going to take a look at a plugin for VirtualDub called DeShaker. I’m betting you never heard of VirtualDub, right? (more…)
Author: Sean
Blender – Stabilizer Improvements & Muzzle Flash
If you’ve tried to stabilize footage in Blender at any point since the inclusion of tracking tools during the production of Tears of Steel, you may have noticed a large, glaring omission – scale. Translation and rotation, no problem. But we have not been able to stabilize scale in Blender at all.
Smoothing Camera Motion in Blender
Handheld camera work is very common today, but if you’re out there shooting your own movies, sometimes you may find your footage has a high frequency shake that is just really annoying. I’ve found that the smaller the camera is, the more chance there is of introducing that jittery motion. With people shooting movies on smartphones and GoPros, cameras really can’t get much smaller! That means there is a lot of high frequency jitter in those handheld shots. (more…)
Blender upcoming feature – Shadow Catcher
Very often in visual effects you’ve got to deal with shadows. If you’re adding a CG object or character to a scene, it’s almost certain that somewhere else in that scene it’s going to be casting a shadow. This is typically dealt with by using a shadow pass, one of the many render passes you can output when rendering. In Blender, the shadow pass usually entails (more…)
Frame Sequence Viewers
Visual effects artists work in frames sequences. That’s what we expect to get from the client, and it’s what we give back to them. EXRs, DPXs, PNGs, TIFs, even TGAs and JPGs. Compressed movies are for reviewing, but our main means of delivery on feature films are frame sequences. Independent projects can have a variety of different formats for delivery, but even then, it’s recommended that you work from frame sequences and just create the delivery movie from the final frame sequence at the end. (more…)
Blender screen replacement & marker removal
Lately I’ve been doing more and more for 3DArtist magazine. I got to meet editor Steve Holmes at Siggraph last year, and since then, he keeps inviting me back to do more fun compositing tutorials in Blender, which of course is a pleasure.
This is one I did for them in Issue 88. I wanted to introduce people to the idea that Blender isn’t only a 3D program, but could be used in place of Nuke or After Effects for most compositing tasks. One of the simplest and most common jobs is replacing a screen on a device. Monitors, phones, tablets, televisions, this technique works for any of those. It also works for anything flat in general, like billboards, walls, floors, replacing book covers, photographs, etc.
Renderpilot for Blender
If you’ve ever found yourself with the need to render multiple Blender projects overnight, this is the program for you!
RenderPilot is a render manager for Blender, and if you’re working on a project with a lot of long render times, this little thing is about to become your best friend.
Maybe you’ve been working on a huge project all day, and you’ve only got one workstation. You may want to save all your rendering until later, perhaps overnight, when you’re not actually using the workstation. That way, your computer is being used 24 hours a day to it’s fullest potential.
2D Tracking for Compositing in Blender
A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of working with Wes and Jonathan over at CGCookie. I’d known them for at least a year or so at that point, after having approached Jonathan at Siggraph to let him know that I had gotten started with Blender by following the great tutorials over at BlenderCookie. After they invited me to do some tutorials for them, we decided on a comprehensive 2D tracking course.
I had a couple reasons for wanting to do a 2D tracking course. Of course I was tempted to jump right into the deep end and do some kind of complex vfx scene, but if we did that, I’d have to explain a lot of the tracking as the training progressed. Not only tracking, but other basic skills, like rotoscoping, would slow us down. Tracking and rotoscoping are important enough to warrant focused training on their own. So I thought it best to start with tracking. This course was the beginning of that foundation.
(more…)CoSA VFX’s work on Gotham
I’ve been working at CoSA VFX for about 8 months now (although I did not work on the Gotham image above). It’s a great studio to work for, and we’re having lots of fun working on many different TV shows. I just stumbled across this article over at CG Society, where they talk a little about the studio and what we do there. Enjoy!
World Blender Meetup Day 2016
World Blender Meetup Day is a big, coordinated online video chat of Blender user groups. It took place this year on February 27th. For 24 hours, anyone could jump in and watch live-streaming presentations by Blender users all over the world. Pretty cool, huh? 🙂
This year I wasn’t able to be at the Los Angeles Meetup to do my presentation live, but I still really wanted to be a part of it, so I prerecorded something for them to play. I’m happy to be able to post the video here for anyone who may have not been able to see it. (more…)