Search Results for: film

Zibra VDB Compression is the newest ZibraAI solution, being developed to bring film-quality VFX into games with GPU-powered compressed VDB effects.

Born from a custom AI-based technology, it makes it possible to:

• Compress huge VFXs, created in different tools and stored in OpenVDB format, up to 20 times, and add more high-quality volumetric VFX to the game, filling it with lifelike visuals, all without increasing the build size;
• Render volumetric effects in game engines in real-time;
• Reuse a volumetric effect in multiple use cases, optimizing memory consumption;
• Change the way the effect looks in different parts of the project with shaders, regulating color, density, and playback speed, all according to your needs.

Our VDB compression solution also opens new possibilities for realistic scene lighting. With our tech, you can use light data from VFX to light up a scene, add reflections, etc, making your game much more immersive and true to life.

https://variety.com/2022/tv/global/bbc-itv-channel-4-pact-strawberry-blonde-1235395993/

“With inflation hitting record levels, a looming energy crisis and rising interest rates, the whole of the U.K. has been left reeling. But for the domestic television industry, which was already dealing with a post-COVID skills shortage and industry-wide inflation prompted by the streaming wars, the situation has now become critical.”

“According to latest figures from the British Film Institute, U.K. production will require over 20,000 additional full-time employees by 2025”

https://nicksaraev.com/ai-animation-is-coming/

“If you’re looking to get into animation as a career, you have less than five years.

Why?

1. DALL-E 2 and other AI art models can now produce a near-infinite variety of illustrations using a simple text prompt. By 2025, they’ll outperform human artists on every metric.
2. AI animation models already exist that can take a static illustration and “imagine” different movements, poses, and frames. You can make the Mona Lisa smile, laugh, or cry – and there’s nothing stopping you from doing that to other images, too.
3. AI video models are right around the corner. Soon, studios will be able to create smooth videos of any framerate with nothing more than a text prompt. Short films will be next.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/03/marvel-disney-visual-effects-artists-speak-out

“The visual effects industry is filled with terrific people with lots of goodwill who really care but, at the end of the day, there’s nothing in place when their backs are up against the wall and Disney is making crazy demands,”

https://www.thegamer.com/marvel-mcu-vfx-artists-deadlines-crunch-stress/

“VFX artists are speaking out against Marvel, with many refusing to ever work with the entertainment giant again. This comes as artists share accounts of unworkable deadlines and immense pressure leading to stress and unsatisfactory final products. Many have requested to never be put on a Marvel project again, saying that the studio has the “worst VFX management out there”.

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/she-hulk-cgi-marvel-vfx-artists-1235332644

“Maslany, Gao and Coiro had been asked by a journalist about their experiences with the “She-Hulk” VFX artists and “how you feel about the finished product,” noting that “there have been numerous accounts lately that VFX houses … they are feeling incredibly crushed by the studios in general and Marvel keeps getting called out.”

https://www.slashfilm.com/941931/why-so-many-vfx-artists-are-fed-up-with-marvel/

“The studio has a lot of power over the effects houses, just because it has so many blockbuster movies coming out one after the other. If you upset Marvel in any way, there’s a very high chance you’re not going to get those projects in the future. So the effects houses are trying to bend over backward to keep Marvel happy. […] One visual-effects house could not finish the number of shots and reshoots Marvel was asking for in time, so Marvel had to give my studio the work. Ever since, that house has effectively been blacklisted from getting Marvel work.”

https://gizmodo.com/disney-marvel-movies-vfx-industry-nightmare-1849385834

“There’s a joke in the visual effects industry that goes like this: Someone hears you work on films, so they ask you, “What movie made you cry?” The artist will respond, “In theaters or in the office?””

https://www.slashcam.com/news/single/Netflix-removes-movie-noise--saves-30--bandwidth-a-17337.html

”’Filmmaker Parker Gibbons has drawn attention to a very interesting fact: Netflix removes film noise before streaming its movies and artificially adds it back when decoding. This is because digitally shot films are actually free of any film grain, the very specific (not to be confused with noise caused by too little light) noise that occurs in analog filming. But this type of noise has become so associated with “real” motion pictures through the long history of film (as a component of the film look) that it is unconsciously perceived by many viewers as an important feature of a motion picture.

…

This leads to a difficult-to-resolve contradiction between, on the one hand, film material that is as compressible and noise-free as possible, and, on the other hand, the noise caused by film grain that is desirable for the film look. Netflix has found a very special solution to resolve this contradiction. It uses a very special function of the open source AV1 video codec, which Netflix has been using for a long time, namely the artificial synthesis of film grain. Thus, film noise is first analyzed using statistical methods before compression and then removed for efficient compression. According to Netflix, this saves around 30% of the data during transmission.”’

https://deadline.com/2022/07/netflix-acquires-animation-studio-animal-logic-1235072619/

https://animallogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AnimalLogic_PressRelease_Final.pdf

NETFLIX ACQUIRES WORLD LEADING INDEPENDENT ANIMATION STUDIO ANIMAL LOGIC
19 July 2022 Netflix and Animal Logic are excited to announce today that Netflix plans to acquire the
Australian animation studio.* This acquisition will support Netflix’s ambitious animated film slate,
building on films like Academy Award-nominated Over the Moon, Academy Award-nominated Klaus
and the recently released The Sea Beast

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blastjp/pilot-film-project-of-sci-fi-ninja-movie-ninja-verse

Making of:

https://www.disneyanimation.com/resources/moana-island-scene/

This data set contains everything necessary to render a version of the Motunui island featured in the 2016 film Moana.

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/amazon-mgm-merger-close-1235207852

www.reuters.com/business/amazon-may-be-days-away-closing-deal-buy-film-studio-mgm-2022-03-14

www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-film-editing-definition/

www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-color-rendering-index

“The Color Rendering Index is a measurement of how faithfully a light source reveals the colors of whatever it illuminates, it describes the ability of a light source to reveal the color of an object, as compared to the color a natural light source would provide. The highest possible CRI is 100. A CRI of 100 generally refers to a perfect black body, like a tungsten light source or the sun. ”

www.pixelsham.com/2021/04/28/types-of-film-lights-and-their-efficiency

www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60401124

Streaming service Paramount+ has announced a huge slate of new shows and films ahead of its expansion to countries including the UK this year.

www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/matrix-co-producer-sues-warner-bros-over-hbo-max-streaming-release.html

“WB’s sole purpose in moving the release date of ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ forward was to create a desperately needed wave of year-end HBO Max premium subscriptions from what it knew would be a blockbuster film, despite knowing full well that it would decimate the film’s box office revenue and deprive Village Roadshow of any economic upside that WB and its affiliates would enjoy,”

“The Matrix Resurrections” disappointed at the box office, partially because of its simultaneous release strategy and partially because its target audience is older than the moviegoers who have been most active in returning to cinemas.

www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/winnie-the-pooh-and-bambi-have-entered-the-public-domain-212036.html

It’s important to distinguish here that Disney’s (and other) adaptations stay under copyright, as do other books by the authors. Any adaptations, remixes, or extensions of these stories must be based on the original 1926 works. Also, Winnie-the-Pooh’s pal Tigger first appeared in a book in 1928, so will remain copyrighted for another two years.

Another important addition this year is a library of an estimated 400,000 sound recordings, all released prior to 1923. Due to quirks in how the law has developed, this is the first major batch of recordings to enter the public domain in one go. If you’re looking to soundtrack your film, you can start by exploring this trove of old blues, jazz, classical music, comedy skits, and more (listen to highlights here: www.archeophone.com/arsc-top-ten-nominees/#smith).

spring2013animationseminar.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/march-27-alex-mcdowell/

www.rinascimentodigitale.it/transmedia.html

“I think that it’s important now for people coming into the entertainment or pop culture business to know that all bets are off, … We don’t necessarily know that film making as we know it will exist in few years.
​We don’t know that gaming is going to look the way it (now) looks or TV is going to look the way it looks. There is no doubt that there is convergence happening through these various media”

First introduced in 2012, nowadays OpenVDB is commonly applied in simulation tools such as Houdini, EmberGen, Blender, and used in feature film production for creating realistic volumetric images. This format, however, lacks the GPUs support and can not be applied in games due to the considerable file size (on average at least a few Gigabytes) and computational effort required to render 3D volumes.

Volumetric data has numerous important applications in computer graphics and VFX production. It’s used for volume rendering, fluid simulation, fracture simulation, modeling with implicit surfaces, etc. However, this data is not so easy to work with. In most cases volumetric data is represented on spatially uniform, regular 3D grids. Although dense regular grids are convenient for several reasons, they have one major drawback – their memory footprint grows cubically with respect to grid resolution.

OpenVDB format, developed by DreamWorksAnimation, partially solves this issue by storing voxel data in a tree-like data structure that allows the creation of sparse volumes. The beauty behind this system is that it completely ignores empty cells, which drastically decreases memory and disk usage, simultaneously making the rendering of volumes much faster.

www.aswf.io/blog/project-update-openvdb-version-9-0-0-available-now-introduces-gpu-support/

github.com/AcademySoftwareFoundation/openvdb/releases/tag/v9.0.0

https://www-indiewire-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.indiewire.com/2021/08/htc-vive-trackers-motion-capture-filmmaking-1234657119/amp/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Khoer5DpQkE

The full story
https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-art-of-deep-compositing/

Deep Compositing in VFX
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1325032/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Weta
https://www.wetafx.co.nz/research-and-tech/technology/deep-compositing/

Camera Space Deep Volumetric Shadows at Weta
https://jo.dreggn.org/home/2012_camera_space.pdf

Deep Volumes on Blade Runner 2049
https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/blade-runner-2049-compositing

Intro to Deep Compositing

Deep Compositing Webinar

www.cnn.com/2021/01/28/media/china-box-office-coronavirus/index.html

“In 2020, China overtook the United States to become the top movie market in the world. The country, perennially the second-largest movie market, brought in $3.1 billion at the box office in 2020, according to Comscore (SCOR) — nearly $1 billion more than the United States did last year.

“If China doesn’t need US movies, Hollywood studios will have to dramatically reduce their spending on big budget blockbusters,” Aynne Kokas, the author of “Hollywood Made in China,” told CNN Business. “The current budgets are unsustainable without access to the China market. That could fundamentally change the model of the US film industry.”

“Regardless of what happens with Covid, we have at a minimum entered a world where the Chinese and US box offices are equally important,”

So where do Hollywood and China go from here? That question, like so many in the film industry right now, has no easy answer. Yet whatever the future of the film industry is, it’s likely to be one where Hollywood and China remain the two major pillars holding up the global box office.

www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/pipeline-deployment-best-practice-katana

www.foundry.com/event/webinars/katana-deployment-essentials

www.cartoonbrew.com/animators/hayao-miyazaki-explains-develop-idea-film-147319.html

” The Idea—the Origin of Everything

Is the starting point of an animated film the time when the project is given the go-ahead and production begins? Is it at that point that you, as the animator, first go over your ideas for that story? No, that isn’t the starting point. Everything begins much earlier, perhaps before you even think of becoming an animator. The stories and original works—even initial project planning—are only triggers.

Inspired by that trigger, what rushes forth from inside you is the world you have already drawn inside yourself, the many landscapes you have stored up, the thoughts and feelings that seek expression.

When people speak of a beautiful sunset, do they hurriedly riffle through a book of photographs of sunsets or go in search of a sunset? No, you speak about the sunset by drawing on the many sunsets stored inside you—feelings deeply etched in the folds of your consciousness of the sunset you saw while carried on your mother’s back so long ago that the memory is nearly a dream; or the sunset-washed landscape you saw when, for the first time in your life, you were enchanted by the scene around you; or the sunsets you witnessed that were wrapped in loneliness, anguish, or warmth.

You who want to become animators already have a lot of material for the stories you want to tell, the feelings you want to express, and the imaginary worlds you want to bring alive. At times these may be borrowed from a dream someone related, a fantasy, or an embarrassingly self-involved interior life. But everyone moves forward from this stage. In order for it not to remain merely egotistical, when you tell others about your dream you must turn it into a world unto itself. As you go through the process of sharpening your powers of imagination and technique, the material takes shape. If that shape is amorphous, you can start with a vague yearning. It all begins with having something that you want to express.

Say a project has been decided on and you have been inspired by something. A certain sentiment, a slight sliver of emotion – whatever it is, it must be something you feel drawn to and that you want to depict. It cannot solely be something that others might find amusing, it must be something that you yourself would like to see. It is fine if, at times, the original starting point of a full-length feature film is the image of a girl tilting her head to the side.

From within the confusion of your mind, you start to capture the hazy figure of what you want to express. And then you start to draw. It doesn’t matter if the story isn’t yet complete. The story will follow. Later still the characters take shape. You draw a picture that establishes the underlying tone for a specific world. Of course, what you have drawn will not be your final product. At times, your work may be rejected entirely. When I mentioned earlier that you must have the will to go to any length, this is what I meant. When you draw that first picture, it is only the beginning of an immense journey. This is the start of the preparation stage of the film.

What kind of world, serious or comedic; what degree of distortion; what setting; what climate; what content; what period; whether there is one sun or three; what kinds of characters will appear; what is the main theme…? The answers to all of these questions gradually become clearer as you continue to draw. Don’t just follow a ready-made story. Rather, consider a possible development in the story, or whether a particular kind of character can be added. Make the tree trunk thicker, spread its branches further – or go to the tips of the small branches (this could be the starting point of the idea), and on to the leaves beyond as the branches grow and grow.

Draw many pictures, as many as you can. Eventually a world is created. To create one world means to discard other inconsistent or clashing worlds. If something is very important to you, you can keep it carefully stored in your heart for use at another time. Those who have experienced an outpouring of an amazing number of pictures from inside themselves can feel it. They feel that the fragment of a picture they envisioned, the other trunk of a story that was thrown out while piecing together a narrative, the memory of pining for a girl, the knowledge about a subject gained as they delved deeply into a hobby – all of these play a role and become entwined into one thick strand. The scattered material within you has found its direction and started to flow.

https://www.foundry.com/insights/film-tv/art-of-lighting-history

Also see: http://www.pixelsham.com/2015/05/16/how-aperture-shutter-speed-and-iso-affect-your-photos/

In photography, exposure value (EV) is a number that represents a combination of a camera’s shutter speed and f-number, such that all combinations that yield the same exposure have the same EV (for any fixed scene luminance).

The EV concept was developed in an attempt to simplify choosing among combinations of equivalent camera settings. Although all camera settings with the same EV nominally give the same exposure, they do not necessarily give the same picture. EV is also used to indicate an interval on the photographic exposure scale. 1 EV corresponding to a standard power-of-2 exposure step, commonly referred to as a stop

EV 0 corresponds to an exposure time of 1 sec and a relative aperture of f/1.0. If the EV is known, it can be used to select combinations of exposure time and f-number.

https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/141307/photography/exposure_value_ev_and_exposure_compensation.html

Note EV does not equal to photographic exposure. Photographic Exposure is defined as how much light hits the camera’s sensor. It depends on the camera settings mainly aperture and shutter speed. Exposure value (known as EV) is a number that represents the exposure setting of the camera.

Thus, strictly, EV is not a measure of luminance (indirect or reflected exposure) or illuminance (incidental exposure); rather, an EV corresponds to a luminance (or illuminance) for which a camera with a given ISO speed would use the indicated EV to obtain the nominally correct exposure. Nonetheless, it is common practice among photographic equipment manufacturers to express luminance in EV for ISO 100 speed, as when specifying metering range or autofocus sensitivity.

The exposure depends on two things: how much light gets through the lenses to the camera’s sensor and for how long the sensor is exposed. The former is a function of the aperture value while the latter is a function of the shutter speed. Exposure value is a number that represents this potential amount of light that could hit the sensor. It is important to understand that exposure value is a measure of how exposed the sensor is to light and not a measure of how much light actually hits the sensor. The exposure value is independent of how lit the scene is. For example a pair of aperture value and shutter speed represents the same exposure value both if the camera is used during a very bright day or during a dark night.

Each exposure value number represents all the possible shutter and aperture settings that result in the same exposure. Although the exposure value is the same for different combinations of aperture values and shutter speeds the resulting photo can be very different (the aperture controls the depth of field while shutter speed controls how much motion is captured).

EV 0.0 is defined as the exposure when setting the aperture to f-number 1.0 and the shutter speed to 1 second. All other exposure values are relative to that number. Exposure values are on a base two logarithmic scale. This means that every single step of EV – plus or minus 1 – represents the exposure (actual light that hits the sensor) being halved or doubled.

https://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/141307/photography/exposure_value_ev_and_exposure_compensation.html

Formula

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_value

https://www.scantips.com/lights/math.html

which means   2^EV = N² / t

where

• N is the relative aperture (f-number) Important: Note that f/stop values must first be squared in most calculations
• t is the exposure time (shutter speed) in seconds

EV 0 corresponds to an exposure time of 1 sec and an aperture of f/1.0.

Example: If f/16 and 1/4 second, then this is:

(N² / t) = (16 × 16 ÷ 1/4) = (16 × 16 × 4) = 1024.

Log₂(1024) is EV 10. Meaning, 2¹⁰ = 1024.

Collecting photographic exposure using Light Meters

https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/968/how-can-i-correctly-measure-light-using-a-built-in-camera-meter

The exposure meter in the camera does not know whether the subject itself is bright or not. It simply measures the amount of light that comes in, and makes a guess based on that. The camera will aim for 18% gray, meaning if you take a photo of an entirely white surface, and an entirely black surface you should get two identical images which both are gray (at least in theory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_meter

For reflected-light meters, camera settings are related to ISO speed and subject luminance by the reflected-light exposure equation:

where

• N is the relative aperture (f-number)
• t is the exposure time (“shutter speed”) in seconds
• L is the average scene luminance
• S is the ISO arithmetic speed
• K is the reflected-light meter calibration constant

For incident-light meters, camera settings are related to ISO speed and subject illuminance by the incident-light exposure equation:

where

• E is the illuminance (in lux)
• C is the incident-light meter calibration constant

Two values for K are in common use: 12.5 (Canon, Nikon, and Sekonic) and 14 (Minolta, Kenko, and Pentax); the difference between the two values is approximately 1/6 EV.
For C a value of 250 is commonly used.

Nonetheless, it is common practice among photographic equipment manufacturers to also express luminance in EV for ISO 100 speed. Using K = 12.5, the relationship between EV at ISO 100 and luminance L is then :

L = 2^(EV-3)

The situation with incident-light meters is more complicated than that for reflected-light meters, because the calibration constant C depends on the sensor type. Illuminance is measured with a flat sensor; a typical value for C is 250 with illuminance in lux. Using C = 250, the relationship between EV at ISO 100 and illuminance E is then :

E = 2.5 * 2^(EV)

https://nofilmschool.com/2018/03/want-easier-and-faster-way-calculate-exposure-formula

Three basic factors go into the exposure formula itself instead: aperture, shutter, and ISO. Plus a light meter calibration constant.

f-stop²/shutter (in seconds) = lux * ISO/C

If you at least know four of those variables, you’ll be able to calculate the missing value.

So, say you want to figure out how much light you’re going to need in order to shoot at a certain f-stop. Well, all you do is plug in your values (you should know the f-stop, ISO, and your light meter calibration constant) into the formula below:

lux = C (f-stop²/shutter (in seconds))/ISO

Exposure Value Calculator:

https://www.vroegop.nu/exposure-value-calculator/

From that perspective, an exposure stop is a measurement of Exposure and provides a universal linear scale to measure the increase and decrease in light, exposed to the image sensor, due to changes in shutter speed, iso & f-stop.
+-1 stop is a doubling or halving of the amount of light let in when taking a photo.
1 EV is just another way to say one stop of exposure change.

One major use of EV (Exposure Value) is just to measure any change of exposure, where one EV implies a change of one stop of exposure. Like when we compensate our picture in the camera.

If the picture comes out too dark, our manual exposure could correct the next one by directly adjusting one of the three exposure controls (f/stop, shutter speed, or ISO). Or if using camera automation, the camera meter is controlling it, but we might apply +1 EV exposure compensation (or +1 EV flash compensation) to make the result goal brighter, as desired. This use of 1 EV is just another way to say one stop of exposure change.

On a perfect day the difference from sampling the sky vs the sun exposure with diffusing spot meters is about 3.2 exposure difference.

 ~15.4 EV for the sun
 ~12.2 EV for the sky

That is as a ballpark. All still influenced by surroundings, accuracy parameters, fov of the sensor…

EV calculator

https://www.scantips.com/lights/evchart.html#calc

http://www.fredparker.com/ultexp1.htm

Exposure value is basically used to indicate an interval on the photographic exposure scale, with a difference of 1 EV corresponding to a standard power-of-2 exposure step, also commonly referred to as a “stop”.

https://contrastly.com/a-guide-to-understanding-exposure-value-ev/

Retrieving photographic exposure from an image

IF you are still trying to gauge relative brightness, the level of the sun in Nuke can vary, but it should be in the thousands. Ie: between 30,000 and 65,0000 rgb value depending on time of the day, season and atmospherics.

The values for a 12 o’clock sun, with the sun sampled at EV 15.5 (shutter 1/30, ISO 100, F22) is 32.000 RGB max values (or 32,000 pixel luminance).
The thing to keep an eye for is the level of contrast between sunny side/fill side.  The terminator should be quite obvious,  there can be up to 3 stops difference between fill/key in sunny lit objects.

Note: In Foundry’s Nuke, the software will map 18% gray to whatever your center f/stop is set to in the viewer settings (f/8 by default… change that to EV by following the instructions below).
You can experiment with this by attaching an Exposure node to a Constant set to 0.18, setting your viewer read-out to Spotmeter, and adjusting the stops in the node up and down. You will see that a full stop up or down will give you the respective next value on the aperture scale (f8, f11, f16 etc.).
One stop doubles or halves the amount or light that hits the filmback/ccd, so everything works in powers of 2.
So starting with 0.18 in your constant, you will see that raising it by a stop will give you .36 as a floating point number (in linear space), while your f/stop will be f/11 and so on.

If you set your center stop to 0 (see below) you will get a relative readout in EVs, where EV 0 again equals 18% constant gray.
Note: make sure to set your Nuke read node to ‘raw data’

In other words. Setting the center f-stop to 0 means that in a neutral plate, the middle gray in the macbeth chart will equal to exposure value 0. EV 0 corresponds to an exposure time of 1 sec and an aperture of f/1.0.

To switch Foundry’s Nuke’s SpotMeter to return the EV of an image, click on the main viewport, and then press s, this opens the viewer’s properties. Now set the center f-stop to 0 in there. And the SpotMeter in the viewport will change from aperture and fstops to EV.

If you are trying to gauge the EV from the pixel luminance in the image:
– Setting the center f-stop to 0 means that in a neutral plate, the middle 18% gray will equal to exposure value 0.
– So if EV 0 = 0.18 middle gray in nuke which equal to a pixel luminance of 0.18, doubling that value, doubles the EV.

.18 pixel luminance = 0EV
.36 pixel luminance = 1EV
.72 pixel luminance = 2EV
1.46 pixel luminance = 3EV
...

This is a Geometric Progression function: x_n = ar^(n-1)

The most basic example of this function is 1,2,4,8,16,32,… The sequence starts at 1 and doubles each time, so

• a=1 (the first term)
• r=2 (the “common ratio” between terms is a doubling)

And we get:

{a, ar, ar², ar³, … }

= {1, 1×2, 1×2², 1×2³, … }

= {1, 2, 4, 8, … }

In this example the function translates to: n = 2^(n-1)
You can graph this curve through this expression: x = 2^(y-1)  :

You can go back and forth between the two values through a geometric progression function and a log function:

(Note: in a spreadsheet this is: = POWER(2; cell# -1)  and  =LOG(cell#, 2)+1) )

Translating this into a geometric progression between an image pixel luminance and EV:

(more…)

www.awn.com/news/20-new-series-coming-disney-next-few-years

“In yesterday’s big Disney investor meeting, Lucasfilm’s Kathleen Kennedy revealed plans for 10 Star Wars and 10 Marvel series to stream on Disney+ in the next few years. PHEW! That’s 20 series in less than five years, which is ambitious to say the least.”

GO48 Challenge is an international competition that celebrates the creative skills of the global community comprising students, artists, designers, faculty, professionals and industry experts.

The contest would have 5 Exciting Competitions, each comprising of 2 Challenges, all bound by the common thread 48.
That means, you submit your art/design solution, either in 48 minutes or 48 hours.

To this effect, you can work on design solutions in the following 10 Challenges:

Go48 Graphix : Visual Communication Design : LoGO48 and MotionX.

Go48 Anim8 : 2d & 3d Animation : 3D As8 and Anim8.

Go48 Live : Filmmaking : Photography and Live!

Go48 GameIT : Game Design : CharACTer and Game IT.

Go48 UI/UX : User Interaction / User Experience Design : UI Eye and XD48.

chandigarhdesignschool.com/go48-competition/

www.livemint.com/companies/news/big-tech-snags-hollywood-talent-to-pursue-enhanced-reality-11604470420726.html

https://www.cultofmac.com/726927/apple-among-the-tech-giants-snapping-up-vfx-experts-to-work-on-ar/

Silicon Valley’s biggest companies are snapping up the people and technology behind some of Hollywood’s blockbusters in an effort to improve their augmented- and virtual-reality offerings.

“It’s harder to make as much money working in visual effects,” said Paul Debevec, a veteran of the visual-effects industry who is now a professor at the University of Southern California. About 4½ years ago Google hired Mr. Debevec, an award-winning pioneer in the creation of convincing digital humans, to help the company advance extended reality.

Working in visual effects in film and TV can mean long, unpredictable hours, limited compensation, poor job security and paltry benefits—many call it the “cool tax” one pays for the pleasure of working in Hollywood.

https://www.animationxpress.com/vfx/meet-daniele-tosti-a-senior-cg-artist-who-is-on-a-mission-to-inspire-the-next-generation-of-artists/

You’ve been in the VFX Industry for over a decade. Tell us about your journey.

It all started with my older brother giving me a Commodore64 personal computer as a gift back in the late 80′. I realised then I could create something directly from my imagination using this new digital media format. And, eventually, make a living in the process.
That led me to start my professional career in 1990. From live TV to games to animation. All the way to live action VFX in the recent years.

I really never stopped to crave to create art since those early days. And I have been incredibly fortunate to work with really great talent along the way, which made my journey so much more effective.

What inspired you to pursue VFX as a career?

An incredible combination of opportunities, really. The opportunity to express myself as an artist and earn money in the process. The opportunity to learn about how the world around us works and how best solve problems. The opportunity to share my time with other talented people with similar passions. The opportunity to grow and adapt to new challenges. The opportunity to develop something that was never done before. A perfect storm of creativity that fed my continuous curiosity about life and genuinely drove my inspiration.

Tell us about the projects you’ve particularly enjoyed working on in your career

I quite enjoyed working on live TV projects, as the combination of tight deadlines and high quality was quite an incredible learning platform as a professional artist. But working on large, high end live action feature projects was really where I learnt most of my trade. And gave me the most satisfaction.

Every film I worked on had some memorable experiences. Right from Avatar to Iron Man 3 to Jungle Book to The Planet of the Apes to The Hobbits to name a few.

But above all, the technical challenges and the high quality we reached in each and every of the projects that I worked on, the best memories come from working with amazing and skilled artists, from a variety of disciplines. As those were my true mentors and became my best friends.

Post Production, Animation, VFX, Motion Graphics, Video Editing …

What are some technologies and trends that you think are emerging in the VFX Industry?

In the last few years there has definitely been a bias from some major studios to make VFX a commodity. In the more negative sense of the word. When any product reaches a level of quality that attracts a mass of consumers and reaches a plateau of opportunities, large corporation tend to respond with maximising its sale values by leveraging marketing schemes and deliverable more than the core values of the product itself. This is often a commoditisation approach that tends to empower agents who are not necessarily knowledgeable of a product’s cycles, and in that process, lowering the quality of the product itself for the sake of profits. It is a pretty common event in modern society and it applies to any brand name, not just VFX.

One challenge with VFX’s technology and artistry is that it relies on the effectiveness of artists and visionaries for the most. And limiting the authority, ownerships and perspective of such a crowd has definitely directly impacted the overall quality of the last decade of productions, both technically and artistically. There are very few and apart creative forces who have been able to deliver project that one could identify as a truly creative breakthrough. While the majority of productions seem to have suffered from some of these commoditisation patterns.

The other bigger challenge with this current trend is that VFX, due to various, historical business arrangements, is often relying on unbalanced resources as well as very small and feeble economic cycles and margins. Which make the entire industry extremely susceptible to marketing failures and to unstable leadership. As a few recent bankruptcies have demonstrated.

It is taking some reasonable time for the VFX crowd to acknowledge these trends and learn to be profitable, as the majority has never been educated on fair business practices.

But. Thankfully, the VFX circle is also a crowd of extremely adaptable and talented individuals, who are quite capable at resolving issues, finding alternatives and leveraging their passion. Which I believe is one of the drives behind the current evolution in the use of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, virtual production, real time rendering, and so on.

There is still a long path ahead of us but I hope we are all learning ways to make our passion speaks in profitable ways for everyone.

It is also highly likely that, in a near future, larger software and hardware corporation, thanks to their more profitable business practices, large development teams and better understanding of marketing, will eventually take over a lot of the cycles that the current production houses currently run. And in that process allow creative studios to focus back on VFX artistry.

What effect has the pandemics-induced lockdown had on the industry?

It is still early to say. I fear that if live action production does not start soon, we may see some of the economic challenges I mention above. At both studio and artists’ scale. There is definitely a push from production houses to make large distribution clients understand the fragility of the moment, especially in relation to payment cycles and economic support. Thus, there is still a fair risk that the few studios which adopted a more commoditised view to production will make their artists pay some price for their choices.

But, any challenge brings opportunities. For example, there is finally some recognition into a momentum to rely on work-from-home as a feasible solution to a lot of the current office production’s limitations and general artistry restrictions. Which, while there is no win-win in this pandemic, could be a silver lining.

What would you say to the budding artists who wish to become CG artists or VFX professionals?

Follow your passion but treat this career as any other business.
Learn to be adaptable. Find a true balance between professional and family life. Carefully plan your future. And watch our channel to learn more about all these.

What inspired you to create a channel for aspiring artists?

As many fellow and respected artists, I love this industry, but I had to understand a lot of business practices at my own expenses.
You can learn tools, cycles and software from books and schools. But production life tends to drive its own rhythms and there are fewer opportunities to absorb those.

Along my career I had some challenges finding professional willing to share their time to invest into me. But I was still extremely fortunate to find other mentors who helped me to be economically and professionally successful in this business. I owe a lot to these people. I promised myself I would exchange that favour by helping other artists, myself.

What can students expect to learn from your channel?

I am excited to have the opportunity to fill some of the voids that the current education systems and industry may have. This by helping new artists with true life stories by some of the most accomplished and successful talents I met during my career. We will talk about technology trends as much as our life experiences as artists. Discussing career advises. Trying to look into the future of the industry. And suggesting professional tips. The aim through this mentor-ship is to inspire new generations to focus on what is more important for the VFX industry. Take responsibilities for their art and passions as much as their families.

And, in the process, to feel empowered to materialise from their imagination more and more of those creative, awe inspiring moments that this art form has gifted us with so far.

http://TheCGCareer.com

screenrant.com/mulan-movie-streaming-release-date-disney-plus-price/

“This news of Mulan skipping a theatrical-only release to debut on Disney+ and in theaters the same day is quite shocking.

Disney’s Mulan is without question the biggest film to move to a streaming release so far (with, perhaps, the exception of certain movies that were already in theaters when closures began), even if it’s a combination of streaming and theater screenings. Mulan was expected to be a big box office earner for Disney, particularly as it’s one of the first blockbusters with a predominantly Asian cast.

Although Mulan can still prove to be a financial success, it will never be known whether the movie could’ve seen massive, record-breaking success like that which Black Panther earned when it released in 2018.”

https://www.urtech.ca/2019/04/solved-complete-list-of-screen-resolution-names-sizes-and-aspect-ratios/

(more…)

www.awn.com/news/technicolor-files-chapter-15-us-citing-covid-19-impact

Technicolor has suffered a series of setbacks in recent months. On May 28, the company announced it had merged its Mill Film and MR. X VFX companies in response to industry changes brought about by the pandemic; operating now as MR. X, the company noted it would keep all facilities open in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Adelaide and Bangalore.

Last year in early December, MPC abruptly shut down its Vancouver facility, leaving what sources claimed was as many as 300 artists out of work.

A week later, the company and its former CEO Frederic Rose, were indicted for fraud and breach of trust by French authorities. The charges were levied as part of an ongoing investigation of their role in the bankruptcy and subsequent acquisition of Tarak Ben Ammar’s post-production group, Quinta Industries, in 2012.

thewiredshopper.com/how-to-use-your-dslr-as-a-webcam/

nofilmschool.com/turn-your-canon-camera-high-quality-webcam

swizec.com/blog/connected-canon-dslr-webcam/swizec/7477

www.video-stitch.com/how-to-use-dslr-as-webcam/

nofilmschool.com/lil-miquela-cgi-caa-signed

https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/during-the-pandemic-models-get-a-digital-makeover-covid-19?utm_source=Vogue+Business&utm_campaign=0e243952b8-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_20_09_25&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5d1e7914df-0e243952b8-57282883

variety.com/2020/film/news/skydance-media-john-lassiter-ilion-studios-1234571810/

The acquisition gives animation chief John Lasseter control over all aspects of production. Skydance and Ilion, both of which are privately held, did not disclose a purchase price.

The deal will give Skydance roughly 500 employees across two continents. It comes as Lasseter is trying to transform the company into a major force in animation. That transformation has been bumpy, at times, primarily because Lasseter’s hire was controversial. Lasseter, the major creative force at Pixar and Disney Animation, was ousted from the company in 2018 amid allegations of sexual misconduct with employees.

www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200403-why-cinemas-will-bounce-back-from-the-coronavirus-crisis

“Theatres are closing around the world… No one knows when projectors will be fired up again… Chinese theatres shuttered when the virus hit. In mid-March, an attempt to tentatively start opening cinemas again after the easing of the lockdown saw distributors refuse to release new films and audiences stay at home.”

“Compounding the misery for cinema owners is the fact that film studios have responded by putting films only very recently released in cinemas online.”

“The consequence of all this is that studios may wonder why they’re sharing revenue with exhibitors if they can get a bigger cut by going straight to homes. Indeed, while cinemas are on their knees, streaming platforms are profiting.”

“A century ago, there was even the worry, as there is now, that cinemas would be permanently shut down by a virus. From 1918 to 1920, the so-called ‘Spanish Flu’ took the lives of 50 million people worldwide”

“[But] The British government saw cinema as an essential tool for public well-being. “Cinema was the major leisure activity – it kept people occupied, and it helped keep them calm. It also kept them out of the pubs!” says [film historian Lawrence] Napper. The British government saw cinema as an essential tool for public well-being.”

“[all this] should give us cheer to note that while the film industry in America was certainly impacted, it did not suffer overall but rather changed shape – and in fact flourished even further.”

“Film writer Richard Brody recently noted ….Many smaller companies went out of business, and the resulting shakeout led to a consolidation that made the big ones bigger, creating the studios that became the masters of production, distribution, and exhibition together; the flu, combined with the end of the war, gave rise to the mega-Hollywood that’s being duplicated again today.”

“World War Two was also, against the odds, a time in which cinema prospered. Many countries, including Britain, saw the cinema as a propaganda tool: a place to give information and boost morale”

“Pre-pandemic, there were already signs that the culture of cinemagoing was starting to crack under this {streaming culture] pressure”

“However in the new Coronavirus-afflicted world, the battle with streaming platforms seems like relatively small fry.”

“The effect of the virus has already been to make things that seemed unimaginable a month ago a reality. Hollywood studios have joined Netflix in breaking the theatrical window. ”

“And given that blockbusters rely on huge marketing campaigns, it’s unlikely that studios will want to take an immediate risk with their bigger titles when cinemas do eventually re-open – before they are sure if audiences are ready to embrace cinema again.”

“But for all the sense of impending doom, history suggests that cinema will adapt and bounce back. Crowds flocked to the cinema after the 1918 pandemic, and videos only made people more interested in cinema, not less. After several weeks or, more likely, months cooped up indoors, watching films on our television sets and computer, the experience of seeing a film in cinemas the way they were meant to be seen will be all the more magical”

www.cnbc.com/2020/04/03/katzenberg-film-industry-ready-to-embrace-at-home-viewing-theaters.html

“Katzenberg’s comments come at a time of disruption for the film industry due to the coronavirus. Movie theaters across the country have shut down, causing studios to adjust their release lineups.”

“Katzenberg used a sport analogy to describe where the movie industry was headed, arguing the embrace of in-person sports and TV broadcasts has been successful despite hesitancy decades ago.”

“Katzenberg’s latest venture is Quibi, a mobile-focused video streaming service that is set to debut Monday.”

“Viewers no longer have frequent stretches of 30 to 40 minutes to watch uninterrupted content, even though they consume 70 minutes of short-form content a day, Katzenberg said. They can use moments of downtime to watch chapters of serialized content in shorter increments of 10 minutes or so.”

“While Katzenberg acknowledged — somewhat humorously — that success in the venture will be “somewhere between improbable and impossible,” he said that Quibi would be “skating to where the hockey puck is going,” rather than pursuing the type of hour-long television shows that everyone else is chasing.”

quibi.com/

www.zdnet.com/article/apples-new-ipad-pro-arrives-with-updated-chip-and-lidar-scanner-for-ar-apps/

www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apple-unveils-new-ipad-pro-with-lidar-scanner-and-trackpad-support-in-ipados/

The LiDAR scanner — a technology better known in self-driving cars — measures the distance to surrounding objects up to 5 meters away. New depth frameworks in iPadOS combine depth points measured by the LiDAR scanner, data from both cameras and motion sensors, and is enhanced by computer vision algorithms on the A12Z Bionic for a more detailed map of a scene. The aim is to boost the quality of AR experience created on the iPad Pro.

Apple said existing ARKit apps will automatically get instant AR placement, improved motion capture and people occlusion.

The tablet will have a 10-hour battery life, a 12MP Wide camera which can capture 4K video, and a 10MP Ultra Wide camera that zooms out two times to capture a much wider field of view.

Apps like DoubleTake by FiLMiC Pro, available next month, leverage the pro cameras and studio-quality mics to turn iPad Pro into a mobile video production studio.6

With iPadOS 13.4, Apple brings trackpad support to iPad, giving customers an all-new way to interact with their iPad.

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/bad-cgi-films-movies-why-call-of-the-wild-cats-sonic-the-hedgehog-dolittle-a9355466.html

“When something in the design goes wrong, creating a furry Lovecraftian horror who repulses the human eye, all the blame lands on the VFX. And when something goes right (like Sonic’s cuddlier redesign) the team sees no reward, not even job security.”

“Those who work in post production are “much more vulnerable than almost any other industry”, “No one has job security, not even the higher-ups. No one knows where they’re working next year, or three months from now. The industry is in a race to the bottom – everything has to be done quicker and cheaper than the last project. And we’re treated as a disposable short-term workforce.”

“The infamous “crunch” which animators have blamed for rushed work like Cats is a reference to “crunch time” – the period before a film’s release where artists have to work staggering amounts of overtime in order to get a job done before the money runs out. The instability of the VFX industry, and the inconsistency of the work it produces, may be due to these tight schedules.”

“Unpaid excessive overtime is the default,”“Some places are better than others. But generally speaking, when you get a contract somewhere big in London like ILM, the first thing you get is an overtime waiver. At the minute, EU rules limit how much overtime employers can ask for, so workers have to waive their own rights before they begin. These companies plan for unpaid overtime in their spreadsheets before they even start a project.”

getwrightonit.com/animation-cost-per-minute-inflation-adjusted/

“The cost per minute to produce the traditionally animated films from the 1930s – 1960 was much lower than today even when adjusted for inflation. This is likely due to low paid animators pulling excessive unpaid overtime, including an army of women in the Ink and Paint department who barely made enough money to cover the rent.”

“Overall, animation is a high cost and labor intensive way to get a story to the screen, but there are big returns to be made, particularly with re-releases as a new generation of young audience members discover the films.”

https://www.cg-wire.com/en/kitsu

Kitsu is a web application to track the progress of your productions. It improves the communication between all stakeholders of the production. Which leads to better pictures and faster deliveries.

CGWire PRESS RELEASE

“We noticed that a good way to improve the quality of CG movies is to improve the communication inside the studio. That’s why we made a software that is easy to use. All the stakeholders of the production can add and get data efficiently. Everyone is better informed and take better decisions.

The most notable features of Kitsu are:

– The listing of all elements of the production: assets, shots and tasks.
– A powerful commenting system that allows to put notes on tasks while changing status and attaching previews.
– A playlist system to view, compare, annotate and comment shots in a row. It’s super easy for the director to perform his reviews.
– A news feed to know in real-time what is happening during the production.
– Quota tables to evaluate the productiviy of the studio.

Aside of that we added other tools to simplify the daily usage : timesheets, scheduling, production statistics, Slack integration and casting management.

Kitsu Today CGWire is deployed in 25 studios. Most of them are split in different locations. So, our users are spread in more than 15 countries working on production of all kinds: TV series, feature films and short movies (our customers are Cube Creative, TNZPV, Miyu, Akami, Lee Film, etc.). Once shipped, all productions tracked with Kitsu met success by receiving awards or getting millions of views on Youtube or on TV.

Another good thing is that Animation Schools really enjoy our product, 10 of them are using Kitsu to manage their end of studies projects (Les Gobelins, Ecole des Nouvelles Images, LISAA, etc.).

Our goal in 2020 is to make the ingestion process even better with a stronger import system, software integration and production templates. With these features, we want to be the reference software for building animation productions, especially for TV series.”

www.technologyreview.com/f/615376/pixars-computer-graphics-pioneers-have-won-the-1-million-turing-award/?utm_medium=tr_social&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=LinkedIn#Echobox…

The two men who invented game-changing 3D computer graphics techniques now widely used in the film industry have won the highest distinction in computer science: the Turing Award