Hasta La Motion!

Hello.

For a month or so, I’ve tried to understand what sort of system I should get, now that I’ve decided to buy a new computer. Hardwear is a real jungle to me. I hope someone can point me in the right direction:). I’ve tried to talk to the sales people from various companys. Maybe it’s me maybe it’s them. But I still don’t get it.

I work as a 3d generalist and a compositing artist. Doing just about everything. I use Maya, Nuke and After Effects on WindowsXP. So I know that I need a pair of XEON processors to render. Then I understand that I need lots of memory since I always run out both when comping and doing 3d (I have 2GB right now). I now that I need a bunch of hard disk space. And I know that I need a graphics card wich is ggod. So far so good.

Now to what I don’t know. When it comes to graphics card. I have used both highend gaming cards and low end Professional cards. I don’t notice any difference. What is the difference. When would it be a good idea to get a Quadro FX 3700 instead of a Geforce GTX 285?

The speed of the Front Side Bus 1300 or 1600 and how does that connect with memmory speed and CPU speed?

Then there is the hard disk configuration. I was thinking 1 300GB Veloci Raptor and 3 to 4 1TB disks with raid 5. I have understood that a raid is what I need for playing HD and bigger (4k). Is there any difference between a raid in the computer and an extrenal besides that you can hook up more computers to an external. The external ones are a whole lot more expensive. I have seen that raids are mesured in mb/s. How fast a raid do I need for full HD and how fast do I need for 4k? I have tried to figure out the difference between SATA, SAS and SCSI. Would a raid with 4 SCSI drives be as fast as a raid with 8 SATA drives? What is the best cable to transfer the data, USB, FireWire 800, eSATA or fibre? Do I need a raid card either way I go with the raid in the computer or with the external one? And what’s the difference between different raid cards besides the huge price difference?

I now that I’ve asked alot of questions. But if you can answer one of them I will be a bit better prepared atleast:). And since I’m not the first one to have these wonderings (I think), others might find the thread interesting.

/Calle

NFL “Run”

Airdate: 2/1/09

Client: NFL Network

Agency

Agency Consultant: Mering Carson

Partner & Creative Director: Greg Carson, Dave Mering

Executive Producer: Liz Ross

Sr. Art Director: Lucho Ortega

Sr. Art Director: Dennis Milllete

Sr. Copywriter: Scott Conway

Copywriter: Jeffrey Butterworth

Production

Production Company: Motion Theory

Director: Mathew Cullen

DP: Claudio Miranda

Executive Producer: Javier Jimenez

Line Producer: Bernard Rahill

Post-Production

VFX Company: Motion Theory

Sr. Art Director: Kaan Atilla

VFX Supervisor: Bryan Godwin

Comp Lead: Danny Yoon

Producer: Matt Winkel

Lighting Lead: Charles Paek

CG Lead: Danny Zobrist

Designers: Heidi Berg, Jenny Ko, Angela Zhu

2D Animation: Joseph Chan, Evan Parsons, TJ Sochor

3D Artists: Ben Grangereau, Michael Clarke, Jericho Green

Lighter: Matt Bell

Modeler: Troy Barsness

Compositors: Deke Kincaid, TJ Sochor

Previsualization: Patrick Rodriguez

Rotoscope Artist: Amy Paskow, Eric Almeras, Mike Boden, Megan Gaffney, Kanae Morton, Eva Snyder

Matte Painters: Ram Bhat, Pete Pace

Flame Artists: Matt Motal (1.1 VFX), Danny Yoon (1.1.VFX), Carlos Morales, Rob Winfield

Post Production Manager: Sheri Patterson

Post Production Assistant: Rebecca Lindberg

Editorial

Editorial Company: String

Editor: Doron Dor

Assistant Editor: Greg Kim

Editorial Coordinator: Peter Nelson

Finishing: Danny Yoon (1.1.VFX)

Music Superbowl: Lime Studios

Music Probowl:  Bongo Post

When watching television commercials, you might not always notice that the products they are trying to sell you are increasingly becoming computer generated, most obviously those that are animated – who can miss a talking pop can or a dancing M&M? – and with more subtlety, the final beauty shot.

You’ll see 3D food products, mobile phones, razors, pop bottles, beer bottles, waffles, dominoes, handbags, volleyballs, soccer balls, pharmaceuticals and arguably the most extreme of all product shots – the automobile. Product shots are important to solidify the consumers “brand recognition” and maximize “product appeal” which is a vital issue in effective advertising. Perhaps due to the pressure that comes along with this responsibility more and more Directors are looking to 3D animation to allow more flexibility and freedom to design and manipulate the shot to meet greater standards.

Commercials are being created at many animation and visual effects studios – it is often the bread and butter genre for a studio. The list (in Canada) includes Red Rover, Guru Studio, Cuppa Coffee Animation, Hatch Studios, Spin VFX and Axyz FX in Toronto; deShed, Skuad and Buzz Image in Montreal; and Vancouver’s The Embassy VFX, Global Mechanic and CIS.

At Lost Boys Learning, one of our Term 1 demo reel projects is to create a photo realistic brand-name object for a simulated TV commercial product shot. Students have created shots for Lipton, Corona, McDonald’s, Chanel, Sun-Rype, Nestle, Advil, Molson, Starbucks and more, developing photo realistic texture mapping, lighting and rendering skills. Typically these shots are 5-7 seconds in which the product must be cleanly established and have suitable text or logo overlays displayed before the commercial ends. Simulating the fast-paced scheduling involved in commercial production, our students have two weeks to take their projects from concept to completion.

Read on as our Class 4 students talk about their process.

JongJun (Danny) An – Tropicana Orange Juice

“I chose Tropicana brand orange juice, using a “morning sunrise” lighting concept and incorporating sun rays and bright colours in the background. One of greatest challenges was UV mapping and texturing of the juice carton to make it photo-realistic. To get an accurate texture map I purchased the product and carefully unfolded it so it could be scanned and cleaned up in our paint software.” – JongJun An

John Lipskie – Sun-Maid Raisins

“After accurately recreating the Sun-Maid Raisin box I felt that the shot still needed something more to increase the nostalgic appeal of the product. After searching online for ideas, I was inspired to create a childlike illustration of a happy sun character. I did a quick test and found that the sun and the box were a perfect pair. The other challenge that I had to solve was seamlessly transitioning from the raisin box to the product logo in full screen. After numerous unsuccessful and tedious attempts to align the two elements the solution turned out to be much easier than I thought. I rendered a separate layer in Maya of only the product box and a surface shader with a simplified texture map which ensured correct alignment. I then cross dissolved the two layers in Nuke with a matching red constant around the logo.” – John Lipskie

Clifford Green – Virgin Mobile

“Setting up the lights for my product shot was challenging. I used an area light to solve this problem – the aim was to create a photo realistic lighting environment. Initially I planned to utilize polygon based modeling but the results were not promising so early on in the project I switched to using subdivision surface modeling techniques. This work flow was far more successful at achieving the smooth contours and subtle details that was required to accurately recreate the cell phone product.” – Clifford Green

Monica Rodriguez – Dolce Gabbana “Light Blue”

“One of the most challenging parts of my Product Shot Project was to texture the perfume box. In order to create the velvet texture of the box as close as possible with the real one, I had to create a custom reflectivity and specular roll off map. I then blended these together with Maya’s facing ratio utility to create the soft wrapping of light which is inherent to velvet. An additional challenge was locating the exact font used by Dolce Gabbana in their Light Blue campaign. After an extensive search of our font library I found a suitable match that only required a small custom tweak to the “G.” – Monica Rodriguez

Daniel Jackson – Monster

“I used Maya’s curve and revolve tool to accurately recreate the unique contours of the Monster can. Slicing a can into a flat shape that is suitable for scanning is more of a difficult process than one would expect. After a quick search online, I was able to locate the Monster logo which I then added the appropriate text/font to complete the cans textures. After animating a subtle dolly out, I added a small quaking effect to the product implying that something powerful was inside the can awaiting its release.” – Dan Jackson

Polished to a high degree of professionalism, this shot is an asset on a student demo reel, edited alongside a variety of visual effects shots created during the assigned projects and during self-directed studies in Term 3.

Feel free to comment with accolades or critiques – all feedback is appreciated and very helpful! For more student Product Shot Stills visit our gallery. Watch for further project posts of our UFO project and 24 Hour Short Film Project coming in the next few weeks.

Cheers,

Mark

We are now accepting applications for our intakes starting in May and September of 2009. Please visit our website and/or email us for further information.

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