From Russia With Apologies

http://youtu.be/OTTidq-BOfM

Ziph Desert Stronghold - VFX Shot

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g87juUKv4b4

Ziph Desert Stronghold by Dallas Lammiman created for the ChristianFilmmakers.org VFX Challenge #7

Behind the scenes on Subitize Me: Amazing Math (Article)

Subitize Me: Amazing Math is a DVD recourse and teaching aid for educators released by MovieMakers just last month. I was the Artistic Director for the project. The main film on the DVD is a 20min adventure film that teaches a fundamental math skill called "Subitizing". I am not going to get in to that much in this article, as I want to talk about the technical and artistic side of things.

Subitize Me was shot entirely on a green-screen stage, and takes place in fully CG sets made from scratch and contains over 250 visual effects shots. In the end, every shot seen in the film is a visual effects shot in one way or another.

Now, for all the geeks who just need to know, we used Blender for all our 3D work, and Apple's Shake for the compositing. I did a little work in Apple's Motion as well, and a few of the titles were done in Final cut pro itself.

Wile that is impressive for a film of this kind, effects and cool eye candy do not make a movie, what is really special about

this film is how he handled the meet of the film. The script.

This is a math film, a sit down and learn something film. I wanted the film to be more than numbers, it had to connect with kids. As a child I was not a math lover, so I knew I wanted to make sure we had the kids attention. The math concepts in Subitize Me are powerful, as we made the film I found that my math skills were even improving in little ways. Story engages people, and that includes children. Stories are a powerful teaching tool, a vehicle that communicates ideas and principles strongly. The kids want to watch films like this, they get engaged by the story and learn all kinds of important lessons along the way.

I always try to use everything I have at my disposal to make sure our films are accessible and engaging to kids, little things like making sure the camera is positioned at a child's hight rather than adult hight can make big differences. In Subitize Me I created worlds that were full of color, and fit in to a child's point of view as much as plausible. We even endeavored to write dialog that, wile being grammatically correct, was also what you would except to hear from child. There is a lot of little details to think about that can easily be missed.

Subitze Me was a lesson in time management for us, we created a project that was much larger and more extravagant than it should have been from a business perspective. That is really good thing for people who will be using this product, they get a lot of bang for their buck.

Written by Dallas Lammiman - Project Artistic Director.

For more information see www.MovieMakers.ca

Smoking kills

Ever notice how bad guys are always smoking just before they die? Smoking kills, with bullets. Made for the ChristianFilmmaerks.org VFX Challenge #3 - Feb-Mar 09

Crash Site

1. My source footage from Christmas. We burned the Christmas tree when we were done with it, because it keped falling over.

2. Shake has a supper “work free” Stabilizing and tracking node called “SmoothCam”, you just tell it to lock the video, rather than smooth it, and click analyze! Vala! Done!

3. Shake also has a cool QuickPaint Node that has a very handy clone brush in it, so you can take pixels from one point of the image, and use them as your paint color. Very simple to remove the swing set.

4. I made a Cessna in blender really quick, angled it so I didn’t have to add windows. layered some textures from http://www.cgtextures.com/ and I have an airplain. I think the wing looks to bit though.

5. The clip had snow falling in it, but it was falling behind the plain not in front. So it make that less noticeable I added some extra falling snow. I exported the snow from Motion. Motion has a great particle system.

6. I add the motion back in to the clip by duplicating the SmoothCam node above and setting it to “match”.

"Simple" Set Extension

I thought this would be a simple shot to do…

I taped it with a handy cam on the end of a tripod that I held in my hand and it extended out from my hip. I was really surprised at how “smooth” it was, but when I got in to Shake… yuck, I tryed to track this thing at least a dozen times over the last week, some times with tracker nodes, other times by hand with not good results.

I should not I was not “match moving” the church to the camera, but rather stabilizing the footage, to get it, I used 2 different stabilized and smooth cam trackers. It is stabilized, smoothed, stabilized, and then smoothed again. And even then the results are not fantastic.

After I put the church and sky in, and color graded, I placed the camera movement back in to the shot.

Although the shot is not the way I would like it, I am fairly happy with the results.

The Big Fall

More on this latter.

VFX Reel

I have come in need of a VFX Reel, not the best put together really quick, hope you like it!

If you want to download it click here.

Leave comments please!

Cloth Physics tests in blender

And some more physics tests I did today:

Comments please.

Ball falling in to water

Here is a test I did wile  trying to figure out how to simulate falling objects.

I was following this tut, I tweaked mine a bit, but not much. 

http://www.davidjarvis.ca/blender/tutorial-14.shtml

Amazing Math: Moving up, up, and away!

Well, I am been moving along at a pretty good speed,  except the last 2 days, were I spent all the time on ONE shot. It was a lot of render time with a simple animation out of Blender.  But it worked out well, and looks really nice I think.

Here is some of my progress:

Update

Wedding DVD Cover Art

Well, I have finally finished the wedding. As of last week, I sent them a copy of the DVD to approve. With that out of the way I can get back to working on Amazing Math.

TT And Bebo explore a ruin made in blender, composited and keyed in shake.

Things are moving along quite well, I have almost finished the first few shots VFX (Ruin, Treasure Room 1 and Arctic) and editing the hole video on to the time line for the first time. The running time looks to be over 20 min.

Amazing Math: Mountain Forest Ruin

You may have noticed a lack of posts recently, that is because I have been in Drumheller AB acting in the Canadian Badlands Passion Play! This weekend is our last set of shows.

Amazing Math, The Neighborhood

Just thought I would give all you an update.

To do still:

• A Few More trees
  
• More dead stuff on the currant trees
  
• A tricycle
  
• A basket ball
  
• Fix the water in the pools, it looks bad.

Thoughts?

Amazing Math, 5 Citys

Well a neighborhood has become 5 cities, or towns, or... something small... for the big shots like this, I had to strip down the houses quite a bit, as it was taking eons to set up to render. But it doesn't matter as they are so small anyway. I have to work on the lighting a bit, as you can see on the angled pict above, not all the lights show up they are so small, and even in the pict below they are quite small... I also need to add a but more variation in the ground texture, and some plant life, like some cacti!

I have done a bit of work on the neighborhood as well, you can see a bit of landscaping is going on, I will be adding a bit more as well. I want to add some trees, but I don't know how to make them. all my past attempts have turned out... week.

Amazing Math, A Neighborhood

Well, a bit more work today and we have the workings of a Neighborhood! Whoohoo! I think this will work out nicely. The main concern is I might have o be a bit more creative on lighting. See TT and Bebo have to Subitize (count) the street lights, or a street light and a house combined = one. However, although it currently looks really good, I don't think that they are cuttingly that each "one" is distinct enough, and if left as is might caws some confusion... Any ideas out there?

Here are some more screen grabs:

Amazing Math, Houses

I have spent the last few days learning to build a house in blender. It has been highly educational. I am getting close, and will soon begin turning my one house in to a whole neighborhood! And then cities! This scene will look very cool when it is done! Exciting! The video is a test with the model as I have it today (composited in Shake).

I am using this tutorial: http://www.vimeo.com/785249?pg=embed&sec=785249

The treasure room...

Well, in just a few days (2 I think), I have turned this...

...into this:

I am very happy with how quickly this model is coming along compared to the the space ship (days as opposed to weeks)! In this room TT and Bebo must count seemingly uncountable amounts of gold in order to achieve their goal of getting the treasure! That is, until they learn the lessons and skill of... Subitize.

There is still a bit of work that needs to be done on the model before I can start rendering and compositing. The roof of the porch, for instance, needs to be textured, and the gold screens need a bit of help. Also, the balcony is a bit narrow, so that will have to be expanded as well as the lighting tweaked.

Here are some more renders for you to enjoy.

The view for the porch.

Hallway to the treasure room.

And a top down render, showing the lay out. Can you count the gold coins?

Amazing Math Report

Well things are going slowly here, but some things have been done. Here are some images of things I have been working on:

Amazing Math Update

The Amazing Math Project is coming along, we haven't had any time to film again, so I have been doing FX, however I got sick, and then things piled up, so I am a bit behind. However I do have a Render to show you all!