Browsing Tag
DP2403
22 posts
What’s new in Flame
Autodesk is releasing the next version of Flame just in time for NAB. And once again, the update is a colourful bag of innovations. From minor optimisations to major new features, from product maintenance to fundamental changes, everything is included.
Virtual production on celluloid?
"What You Don't See" is a pioneering project that is one of the first to combine the oldest and one of the newest technologies in the film industry - 35mm film and LED volumes - in a scenic production.
WIND UP – Family drama on a desert island
As part of their second year of study, students from the VFX specialisation joined forces with all other departments at the Munich University of Television and Film to create a short film. This ambitious project combines various disciplines of the HFF and tells a dramatic story using visual effects.
A beastly good choice
The in-depth investigation of a FullCGI production with Houdini KineFX, Grooming and V-ray in Solaris.
VR beyond the hype
Although the hype surrounding the Apple Vision Pro is still going strong, VR has yet to really gain a foothold at home. However, where it is really picking up speed is in the area of "rides" and free roaming. Amusement parks are where the technology can be fully utilised, regardless of home PC compatibility. We ask ourselves, what does it all look like then?
Fritzi & Sophie
The cinema film of the story was produced in classic 2D. For the series, we opted for the "third dimension". This presented us with new challenges, but also opened up completely new doors. Blender was our main tool.
VFX-Shoot in the trunk
How do you shoot a film in the smallest setting imaginable, a closed car boot? Can you manage to maintain the narrative tension for 90 minutes and at the same time reinvent yourself visually time and again?
Shock Dog from Stuttgart
Now, we're known to be more cat fans than dog fans - but when we saw "The Nevers", that went from "more" to "definitely" not dog fans - because (without giving anything away from the story), the "Shock Dog", Dr Hague's pet, made us turn on the light in the room in the evening while watching it.
Comfy UI – AI for artists!
While some become the Stable Diffusion play child, and others lament the demise of the industry, we're staying out of this round of prophecy and looking at what you can really do with it as artists - and not as slightly brainwashed newsletter marketers.
SynthEyes at BorisFX
3D camera tracking, also known as "match moving" in the professional scene, is now offered by every better software for video editing or 3D. But when we compared a few such popular 3D trackers in DP 18:01, SynthEyes was already our high-end reference for good reason.
Nuke Utilities Volume 8 – Textures
You can have great footage under the pen - sometimes you just need a few extra details to give your comp the finishing touch. And so that we don't all keep using Nuke's own noise generator, this issue contains a small, fine collection of texture generators for Nuke.
Procedural Worldbuilding mit Unreal
We build realtime environments with Unreal's Procedural Content Generation Framework (PCG) - or do you really want to do everything by hand?
USD, Solaris and Karma in Houdini 20 (and elsewhere…)
Solaris saw the light of day 4 years ago in Houdini 18. When I tried it out for the first time back then, it was still very bumpy and initially put me off. One crash followed another. If that happens today, then it's probably due to the graphics card driver, which is supposed to be up to date.
Blender 4.1 goes into detail
The Blender release cycle consists of three new versions of the software per year. The first release is usually characterised by new features. The reason for this is that the third and final release is a Long Term Support (LTS) version, which is supplied with bug fixes for another two years.
We’re building an AI box!
Okay, we admit it: AI is slowly becoming interesting - even for everyday production. And as we see more and more tools that are relevant for artists, and not just for "tech bros", the more our workstation is glowing. So it's time for us to find out what it takes to work normally and what adjustments we can make to reconcile budget and computing power.
The Never Ending Story: Are Apple XDR devices suitable for reference use in colour grading?
This has been burning under my fingernails for a long time: Almost every day the question stumbles in on every colour grading forum: "My video looks different after export." 99 per cent of the cases concern Apple users. Just as often as this question comes up, the explanations are incomplete, incorrect or misleading. No wonder, the topic is complex.
The knights from the cutting table rush to the rescue
As I often work on several projects at the same time with Premiere, After Effects and Photoshop, it's difficult to keep track of the time spent. In my search for a solution, I came across "Knights of the Editing Table".
Monkeys, the fourth
The time has come: the next part of the "Planet of the Apes" saga - now number four - will be released in cinemas on 8 May. And that's why we simply asked Weta how they - instead of the apes - built the environment.
Prism Pipeline, the second
The technical requirements of animation and VFX productions are increasing every year - I don't have to tell you that. In most projects, a variety of tools are used to achieve the desired quality. In order to complete these increasingly complex projects within the specified deadlines, more powerful pipeline tools are also required.
The discovery of slowness
Artificial slow motion, i.e. the calculation of additional intermediate images, has been around for a long time. The best methods to date have been called "optical flow", although this actually refers to the visual perception of movement in general. Now A.I. or neural networks are also establishing themselves here. We compare Twixtor 8, DaVinci Resolve 18.6 and Topaz Video AI 4.
Block Power Station
Routine tasks in video
editing are often time-consuming. For Premiere Pro and After Effects
there is a plugin that aims to make
programming easier.
"Automation Blocks" allows you to optimise the workflow in both applications and get results on screen faster.
Blender: An upgrade for our particle system – We lay pipes!
In issue 23:04|05 we learnt how to create a particle system with the new Simulation Nodes in Blender 3.6. In Blender 4.0, an interesting new function has been added that allows us to connect a series of points via curves. That would be a nice feature upgrade for our custom build. In addition, Cycles can now do light linking, which allows us to set the scene perfectly.