Interlacing stereo outputs

How do people output there comps for checking as they work? At the moment we are rendering side by sides and letting the monitor interlace it for us.

Is there a way to output interlaced shots directly from nuke?

edit .vob and resave asap

Hi folks-

I’m in huge need of advice here asap.

In short:
How to edit 90 hours of .vob files (selectively editing snippets) and get them back into .vob files with minimal loss in quality and minimal processor time.

A little longer:
Basically, I have a ton of DVD content that the producers have granted me full access to edit their material, but because of time I can’t edit the lossless source.

Ideally, I’d like to use something very light, such as Quicktime Pro (which I have) to insert in/out points and trim, then re-save. Done. QT does this for mp4 files, but it appears I cannot with mpeg and .vob files.

I would also like to be able to chop out the audio and insert my own.

I have FCP and After Effects, but I can’t afford the render time.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks-
paul

EP Banter: Talent, Trends Technique

ep_comp

What is an Executive Producer? This role may go unnoticed by many of us, but the success of a company is often defined by this individual. They shape the culture of the production company they lead. In addition to their sales and strategic roles, they must define and reinforce the creative ethos of the company. This begins with bringing in the right talent and nurturing them to their full potential.

The ways in which this takes place varies from EP to EP. What follows is how some of the good ones do it, including:

Read the round table discussion and get a glimpse into 2010 and beyond.

Posted on Motionographer

Reality check: Graduates find a long term home in CG industry

Working hours won’t phase graduates who want to break into CG

Employers in the computer graphics (CG) industry are better positioned to attract future university leavers than industries such as financial services and sciences, as graduates boast realistic expectations when it comes to a career in CG.

With the AGR annual graduate recruitment survey indicating a fall in graduate hires for the first time since 2003, projecting a decrease of 5.4% in 2009, a new survey from Escape Studios reveals that CG students have strong employment opportunities in the industry. The research shows 58% of graduates expect to work between 50 and 60 hours a week, despite the fact that most professionals admit to only working a 40 hour week. This statistic demonstrates that the majority of CG graduates are happy to put in more hours than the industry standard.

Even when it comes to the issue of pay, the divide between graduate expectations and the average starting salary remains slim. 56% of graduates expect to earn up to £24,000, compared with 68% of professionals who earned up to £19,000 in their first role. Pay is definitely not a deciding factor for graduates wanting to take a career in CG: only 12% of students selected salary as a reason for entering the industry, compared with 89% who believed that the simple act of getting paid for doing something they loved was more important. Working with other creative individuals and being challenged at work emerged as the other main reasons that graduates chose to enter the world of CG.

Career fulfilment is important for both students and professionals alike. 44% of professionals are proud of the work they do, with creativity (77%) and learning new skills (65%) cited as the main attractions of the job. Despite job security being a concern amongst many professionals, the survey revealed that 55% still plan to be working in CG in twelve months time.

Dominic Davenport, CEO of Escape Studios, said “The computer graphics industry appears to be bucking the trend seen in many industries, where graduate recruitment has all but dried up. This can have a huge impact on the future success of those industries, which is why it’s so encouraging seeing new CG graduates bear realistic expectations of what it’s like to work in this field, and still want to pursue training and employment opportunities. Graduates are clued up when it comes to working hours and salaries as they place greater importance around career fulfilment. CG is one area where the UK really does lead the world and a constant flow of new talent will ensure this continues to be the case.”

Stephen Venning, 3D Executive Producer at The Mill, said “It’s clear that our industry benefits hugely from a pool of graduates who are hard working and extremely dedicated to their jobs. Their main motivation is not money; it’s more about doing something they love and working in a creative industry. Not every sector is privileged enough to enjoy this level of commitment and drive from new entrants into the industry – it is important that we as employers tap into this enthusiasm so the UK’s CG industry retains its creative edge globally.”

The CG industry includes everything from the creation of 3D computer graphics to special effects featured in television and films. Last year, Escape Studios, Europe’s leading school of computer graphics, successfully placed the vast majority of its VFX graduates in jobs within the film and broadcast industries, highlighting the wealth of employment opportunities open to job seekers.

The Escape Studios CG Survey questioned over 2,850 professionals, hobbyists, students and academics in October and November 2009.

About Escape Studios

Escape is one of the most successful and well-respected CG academies in the world. We’re the proving ground for a new generation of computer graphics stars breaking into film, TV, games and commercials. We’re a vibrant community of professional artists. We’re a unique outsourcing resource for leading CG studios. We’re a specialist creative recruitment agency for entertainment, advertising, architecture and manufacturing businesses. We’re an authority on all things CG, offering informed opinions on cutting-edge creative, commercial and political issues. We’re host of the acclaimed CG awards. We’re a specialist IT consultancy and technology store. We are all of these things. We are CG. We are Escape Studios.

For further information, please visit www.escapestudios.com

About The Mill

The Mill is a world-leading visual effects company with offices in three of the most important global advertising centres; London, New York and Los Angeles. For over 19 years The Mill has been providing pioneering effects solutions to the advertising, music and film industries. We craft commercials, music videos and generate compelling film and TV. We create characters and the worlds they inhabit, photo-real CG so convincing that you won’t be able to tell its animation. We build installations, projections, applications and create multi-media content and experiences. We have a global team of 400 plus made up of multi-national and home grown talent, and these passionate producers, artists and technicians use cutting edge technology to solve creative problems by delivering inspiring and award winning content to small and large screens around the world.
In addition to VFX, The Mill also provides solutions and concepts at the ideas and execution level. Our clients work collaboratively with our in-house directors, concept artists, animators and creative directors to define, direct and execute content for use across media.

For further information, please visit www.the-mill.com

Realwave mesh

Hi everybody! I’ve had a quick look around these forums and can’t seem to find anything on this, although point me in the correct direction if I’ve missed it!

Essentially I’m going to be combining the RealWave with a particle system, and the only way to do so that I have found is to create particles at each vertex of the RealWave with the "Particle layer" option. However, this means that a low res mesh has to have a large metaball radius, to allow the particles’ meshes to join up. This makes it a really "thick" mesh object. One way I’ve considered to to write a script to place extra particles in-between the verts, to make a denser RealWave particle system, and thus allowing me to make the mesh radius of the particles that make up the Realwave mesh smaller.

I was wondering if there was another way to create a mesh from a RealWave, other than setting the "Particle layer"?

…Urgh, I hope that makes sense. 😀

Sam.

gsenpod

gsenpod aka Chris Bartsch… skilled in interactive media and directing…

1stAveMachine / Aaron Duffy: Google Chrome Features

Using the same camera perspective trick employed by weareom for their “Chop Cup” viral (or sidewalk artist Julian Beever or Salvador Dalí or countless others, I’m sure), Google worked with 1stAveMachine’s Aaron Duffy to craft a series of elaborate analogue vignettes to tout the features of its Chrome browser.

Some of the ideas work better than others, with the obvious crowd-pleaser being the Speed demo. The subtext for all the vignettes is a celebration of DIY ingenuity, of making something seemingly simple through the complex combination of unlikely components. In many cases, the machines are human-powered, with hand-turned cranks and puppeted objects supplying the “animation.”

Mostly, though, the message is one we don’t often hear among the nerdified banter of browser battles: Surfing the net should be fun. It should be unexpected, but not because your browser crashes or because you contract a nasty virus.

Big ups to Fred Kim for the tip (via Gizmodo)


1stAveMachine – Production Company
Aaron Duffy – Director
Sam Penfield – EP
Jennifer Brogle Jones – Producer
Claire Mitchell – Head of Creative Development
Jennifer Stratton – Production Coordinator

Bob Partington – Art Director, Fabrication
Nathan Asquith – Fabrication
Peter Erickson – Fabrication
Carlos Ancalmo – Storyboards & Design
Mario Romeo – Assistant Director
Vi Nguyen – Technical Director
Daniel Roman – Compositor
George Vincent – Compositor
Jason Tsang – Compositor
John Laughlin – Compositor
Kathleen Tobin – Compositor
Lily Feng – Compositor
Ryan Hooks – Compositor
Sohee Sohn – Compositor
Ralph Scaglione – 3D Tracking
Val Gnaedig – Costume
Patrick Scola – Documentation
Emery Wells – Colorist

Agency: BBH New York
Calle Sjoenell, Pelle Sjonell – ECD
Aaron Royer – Agency Producer
Steve Peck – Art Director
Jared Elms – Copywriter

Posted on Motionographer

normal How to do

how to composite

two layers

😀

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Autobackup

Hello All,

Excuse my ignorance; I’m moving to Maya after about 10years of Max…
A simple question: is there no Autobackup in Maya?
I’ve been through the manual, but can’t find any useful answers.

I’m aware of the plugin ajrAutoSave.mel on HighEnd3d.com, but surely in Maya 2010 they must have implemented this basic feature?

Cheers all. 😉

How to query image sequence names into array in python

Hello everyone,

I`m new to this forum and searching for a way to get all image sequences of a selected directory into an array to later iterate through and batch render.

basic idea:

choose directory

for i in directory (0,size directory+1)
nuke.toNode(‘Read’).knob(‘file’).setValue(i)
render writes 1 2 3………

My Nuke Scripteditor just shows filenameFix(…) when I read some sequences. Actually that window with the sequences box activated already shows the exact list of strings that I need inside the variable.
But how to get the command behind ?

Any hints are highly appreciated

all the best,
Marco