New Syntheyes – Better Fusion Support
A new version of Syntheyes just has been released. It features updates to the Fusion export script, including contributions that I had made a while ago.
Since Fusion doesn’t support the Syntheyes distortion model by itself, Syntheyes will set up a UV map distortion/undistortion workflow for you on export. In my experience, the image quality might suffer a bit with strong distortion values since there’s no sub-sampling, but this technique has many advantages. One being the fact that it automatically contains the undistorted image’s resolution that you need for 3D via the UV map.
Alles Fake im Fernsehen
Hier mal ein Einblick, was heute alles technisch möglich ist im Fernsehen 😉
(Video muss leider über YouTube direkt angeschaut werden)
Pop Culture at the Speed of Light
The new Star Wars Teaser made most people happy just by containing scenery that looked like the original trilogy.
Not even two days later there’s a pretty well-composited spoof of a “George Lucas special edition” that reminds you of how cluttered Episode 1 to 3 looked like:
And the only thing that was actually new in that teaser? A ridiculous light saber design reminiscent of a medieval sword (interesting trivia: in German, the light saber had always been called a “laser sword”). And of course, mere days after the trailer, this gets its own spoof as well…
source: unknown
I love the evolution of pop culture in the internet age 🙂
Reconciling Job and Family
Reconciling a job in the media or vfx industry with a family can be a tough task. I hope more companies follow the lead of Canadian ad agency Union. Once a year, on employee appreciation day, their employees are rewarded for their hard work by being allowed to see their families 🙂
(found via pixelsham)
Ok, that’s a joke. Obviously. But it coincides with another blog post from vfxsoldier about an article in ‘Variety’ where the frustration about the working conditions at MPC boils over in the comments section. The title of that article? Moving Picture Co. Finds Valuing Artists is the Best Effect.
Disclaimer: personally, I can’t judge any of this since I have never worked at MPC nor in the UK for that matter.
The Great Martian War
Man, World War 1 was apparently greater (and more awesome) than I’ve been told in school.
The video above, which seems to be a compilation from a mockumentary on History Channel, is so funny it makes you forget the horrors of WW1 as shown in that real documentary on ARTE (IMDB page – unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much info in English).
The shot of horses grazing in front of broken Martian machinery reminds me of the art of Simon Stålenhag.
MinutePhysics Explains Star Shapes
Most lens flares, especially artificial ones in VFX, have a star-shaped thingy around bright light sources. And every comp software has its own tool for this, whether it’s called glint, glare, highlight and so forth. This video explains the physics behind these star shapes and the correct chromatic aberration if you fake them (spoilers: red is diffracted the most).
With the knowledge from this video, you can make your own star-shaped diffraction patterns using a fourier transformation. Nuke has a tool for this.
Fake Wide Aperture
Took 10 seconds of video with a gentle camera motion, stabilized and averaged 400 frames. If I’ve applied the formula correctly, this should be about f/0.04 (about 100mm diameter for the iPhone’s 3.85mm focal length). But due to rolling shutter and motion blur, the bokeh is ugly.
