Hasta La Motion!

Childhood is perhaps the fondest phase of one’s life. A phase that’s replete with memories, happiness and everything joyful, that everyone likes to hold on to. These bittersweet memories help an individual to temporarily escape the otherwise mundane and monotonous reality.

To relive these memories, Indian animator Sagar Funde who has been a part of Hollywood biggies like, Life of Pi, The Big Friendly Giant, The Mummy : Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Night at the Museum 2 and many more, has created an adorable animated short – Kite.

With the festival of ‘Makar Sankranti’ just ending, the very word brings back a vivid imagery flashing by infront of our eyes. The kite festivals and kites in general have been an integral part of local Indian life, adding a lot of excitement and fervour to it. Flown at different places at different times and occasions (for an instance during ‘Vishwakarma Puja’ in Bengal), kites usually never fail to bring back a smile on one’s face.

Funde reciprocated the same sentiment, “Bringing the childhood memories and the neighbourhood I grew up into life in animated style and then sharing it with people who had the same experiences, is the biggest inspiration for the film…I was recalling the childhood memories of kite flying, the kite battles with friends, chasing kites on street, visiting kite shops, even sometimes crafting my own kite and thread and so on. The visual became so strong in my mind that I couldn’t stop myself from making this film.”

Sagar Funde

Funde has a decade of experience and has recently finished working on Alita : Battle Angel at Weta Digital. Starting in 2007 from Rhythm & Hues Studios, Mumbai, he had been there for six years and worked on several renowned projects. Then he got an opportunity at Barajoun Entertainment in Dubai to work on their first animation feature film Bilal. Serving as a senior animator there, he was soon supervising the sequences that were outsourced to other studios.

Later he joined Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand for fourth Alvin and the Chipmunks movie and continued there for three years. His most favourite moment there was getting an opportunity to work on legendary director Sir Steven Spielberg in the film The Big Friendly Giant. Presently, he’s on a break and focusing entirely on finishing his short film. 

Dedicating one hour everyday since last three years on Kite, Funde never had any deadline in mind as the film seems to be his labour of love. The animation he has used in Kite, is uncannily lifelike, unique and captures attention. Funde has chosen 3D animation cartoon style in the film but kept the action less exaggerated and grounded so that it looks natural and feels close to life.

“I am highly skilled in Autodesk Maya and have been using it for a long time now. I used it for my previous projects so 3D was an obvious choice for this large film. I was able show the epic scale of sets in full 360 degrees and aerial cameras using 3D medium. It also allowed me to try various iterations of the scene and camera movements,” he revealed.

Only having his laptop to do Kite, he was very careful about the load that he was to putting in it. So, instead of storyboarding he did a previsualisation for the film, so that the character placement and camera movements in the scene can be nailed down. Elaborating more on the techniques he adopted while making this film he said:

“I used low polygon modeling technique to model the sets, which allowed me to handle large sets easily on my laptop. I was also caching the crowd animation so that Maya doesn’t have to handle multiple rigs at the same time. I also avoided the Render Passes and instead rendered a single image to save render time. I kept texturing minimal and less detailed and relied mostly on colors. The shaders are also the basic Maya shaders and I totally avoided using Maya fur. While compositing I was extracting the characters from main image on a separate layer using colour matte technique.”

Kite has been majorly aided by technology. Being a fully CG film, the film required huge sets and sometimes even an entire city which was challenge in itself. Initially Funde was reluctant if it was possible on a laptop, but the high configuration of Alienware 17 and the powerful Autodesk Maya handled the heavy sets quite well.

As mentioned by Funde himself, the challenges he faced over the course of three years are :

Sets

The biggest challenge was building the massive sets and they consist if various things such as houses, buildings, parks, shops, vegetable market, one massive temple along with other mini temples, road layouts,vehicles,public transports, junkyard, Ganpati sets, statues, massive gates, trees, plants, grass, stones, debris, broken houses, electricity poles, power lines and list goes on.

Crowd

The shot in the film varies from having no crowd in one shot to having more than 200 in another shot. On average most of the shot has at least 15 crowd characters in it.

Animation

I animated around 200 shots over the course of 3 years which is most challenging thing I did in my animation career so far but I loved every moment of it because of the way it turned out at the end.

Kite Thread

It was really difficult to make the thread interact with human hand. the challenging thing was making the long to interacting properly when character was pulling it fast and thread was gathering on ground.

Currently going through editing and sound tweaks, Kite will be ready by March to start its run for film festivals. The film has no commercial target as of now as Funde is mostly using social media to promote the film.

Funde sees digitisation as a boon for this industry, given the fact that many independent animation filmmakers launch their film online. “I think we are in a golden age where a filmmaker or an artist doesn’t have to wait for a platform to showcase his talent. Social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin have proven itself by giving expose to many artist who have consistently showcased their work. In some cases artist have also benefited commercially where some producers or big studio noticed their work on these platform and have been given big offers,” concluded Funde. 

The genre of Indian animation short films is still a growing baby and has a lot to create and discover. There are some artists who’re making independent films but the numbers are not that reflective. Some films also have earned a name globally but most of the people in India aren’t aware about it. We need to explore stories like Kite that appeals to wider audience. 

We really hope that Kite makes your heart goes ‘Kai Po Che’! 

The post ‘Kite’: Sagar Funde’s new animated short will hit you with nostalgia appeared first on AnimationXpress.

A back-and-forth journey to find the perfect new displays for 3D artists and motion designers.

If you think shopping for new PC is difficult, try shopping for a new computer display.

I’ve been rocking two displays for quite some time now, one NEC PA271w-bk as my main and a ViewSonic VP2780-4K for 4K reference. I knew my displays were starting to show their age and it was time to upgrade, but deep down inside I was dreading the process.

My first inclination was to check out the NEC website, only to find out that the newest version of my current monitor didn’t have many new features other than LED backlighting. After quickly being overwhelmed by the amount of options, I decided to see what I could find locally.

I drove to a MicroCenter and discovered the Dell U3818DW, which was a 38″ widescreen monitor with a resolution of 3840×1600 and a PPI of 110 for $899. It seemed like it could be the perfect monitor to replace my two. I quickly looked it over and decided the price was right, so I bought one.

The Dell U3818DW is definitely wide.

I lugged this beast home and quickly set it up. The screen was even in terms of color and lighting and after staring at it closely for a few minutes I determined there were no dead pixels. With much excitement I went right into Cinema 4D and completely redesigned my layout so that I could take full advantage of such awesome screen real estate. Everything was working great.

Two days later I was in C4D navigating around the viewport and I noticed something quite peculiar. Anytime I moved the camera around when there were some light to dark gradations, there was some very bad banding occurring. I thought this thing was 10bit, so I did some extra research and quickly came to the conclusion that this particular display had issues with motion banding. Being a motion designer and 3D artist, this was not acceptable. This thing was getting returned.

I really did love the 38″ form factor, so I looked for other similar displays. I found a few from LG, ViewSonic, and Acer. After digging some more, I figured LG was the best bet and I purchased the LG 38UC99-W. At $1299, it came in at $400 more than the Dell.

Once setup, I opened up Cinema 4D and did a view-port motion banding test, and I was delighted to see that it did not have any motion banding. Next I started to scan the display closely to see if there were any dead pixels. I noticed some debris so I grabbed my microfiber cloth and try to wipe it off the screen but it wasn’t coming off!

LG 38UC99-W debris behind the screen.

The debris was stuck inside the panel. Instead of exchanging the LG for another one like a normal person might do, I started to give up on the idea of a 38″ display.

I wanted to give it one more try, so I ordered the ViewSonic 38″ display. To no surprise, I immediately noticed a very bad discoloration from the left to the right side of the monitor. I think this solidified my thoughts that these 38-inch panels were all problematic and not ready for this type of work.

ViewSonic VP3881 discoloration.

I was still determined to find the best solution without have to spend too much money. After further research, I narrowed down my options to a couple 32″ 4K displays. My next purchase was the LG 32UL950-W (MSRP $1299), which I was immediately impressed by. Wonderful bright colors and awesome contrast. I opened C4D and sure enough you can get away with running Windows at 100% 137 PPI.

After using this monitor for about a day or so, I noticed that the colors were shifting quite drastically from the left to the right side. There was a bit of magenta tint on the left and green tint on the right. This was something I did not expect to see on LG’s flagship 32″ display.

LG 32UL950-W magenta to green shift.

I actually started to feel like 32″ was a little large. It’s as if the screen is outside of your peripheral vision. I found myself having to move my head around a lot more than with my 27″ monitor. Focusing my eyes from the corners to the center of the screen also felt like a bit of a strain. With all of these concerns, I decided that this one had to go back as well.

A widescreen monitor still made the most sense for work, as those of us in high-end professional software require a large user interface to access all of the tools we need. I noticed Dell had a 49″ curved widescreen display (Dell U4919DW) that I had missed previously, but when I went to the store they were sold out. Next to the Dell demo model in the store was another LG widescreen that looked quite stunning. The LG 34WK95U-W was an ultra-wide 5K, which I figured the pixel density must be far too high, but I wanted to test it out.

To my surprise the LG 34WK95U-W was the best display I had experienced yet. Even though the PPI were approaching a level that required me to run Windows at a DPI scaling of 125%, I was quite happy with how this display looked. I jumped into C4D and adjusted the layout for all the amazing screen real estate and pixel density.

LG 34WK95U-W was almost a winner.

After my initial test, I decided to connect my other computer. That’s when I checked the back of the display to notice that there was only one DisplayPort and two HDMI ports. The DisplayPort was already taken by my first machine, so I hooked up my HDMI cable to the second computer. That’s when I realized the monitor was not running at 5K but rather 3K or 3440×1440.

The current HDMI maximum resolution is 4K, so I couldn’t get a 5K signal on the other machine. To do so, I’d have to get a KVM switch for both computers to connect to the one DisplayPort, which would end up costing me another $300-400.

This was my breaking point, I was at my wit’s end about the entire monitor upgrade. I then looked into all sorts of monitors, from smaller in size to high-end professional reference grade monitors that cost upwards of $10,000. I felt absolutely lost.

Throughout this entire process, it finally dawned on me that I had never considered any gaming monitors. I checked out a couple of new LG 34″ wide screen gaming monitors, which reviews raved as the best gaming displays to date. I opted for the LG 34GK950F-B (MSRP $1199), which is the AMD FreeSync version of this display and $250 cheaper than the NVidia G-Sync model.

LG 34GK950F-B is the keeper.

After setting it up, it was running at 120hz and I really had no idea what I was missing at 60hz. Everything on the screen ran more fluidly at 120hz, including the Cinema 4D viewport. I was pretty much sold that this was finally the monitor I was looking for. The only downside was that the resolution was a little lower than I was hoping (3440×1440).

I still really needed a true 4K reference. I decided that the best option would be to run this LG 34″ alongside a smaller 4K model as a secondary display.

I discovered BenQ’s new 32″ 4K monitor, the BenQ PD3220U. It was expensive (MSRP $1,199), but at this point I knew I could just return another monitor if I needed to.

The BenQ PD3220U grey uniformity issues.

Welp, to keep my hot streak going I ended up returning this monitor because I noticed the same green magenta tint variations from left to right.

My next attempt was the new NEC EA271Q-BK (MSRP $619). No go. The display was beautiful, but again I noticed color uniformity issues. Back it went.

Now, any sane person may have just quit entirely by now, but given how stubbornly determined I was, I kept going. I headed back to a local store and found the LG 27UK650-W (MSRP $499) with very high reviews. It happened to be on sale, so I saved $50 at the register. I setup the monitor to check for color uniformity, and it finally happened! No issues. I felt like I had just won the lottery!

The LG 27UK650-W became my secondary 4K reference monitor.

So what did I learn in this entire experience? I’m likely far more particular than most people, but knowing I’d be staring at these displays for 8 hours a day for the next few years, this was just too important for me and my work.

Also worth note, though it may just be a coincidence, I have this funny feeling that shipping 30-40 lbs of sensitive computer equipment through the mail probably doesn’t do them any good. It is likely that so many issues I experienced with these many monitors may have occurred because of the shipping process.

Calibrating with the Spyder Elite 5.

I had one last thing to do in this monitor journey, and that was to finally calibrate these displays. I used a Spyder Elite 5 (MSRP $249, but available cheaper) and this may have been the best money I spent. It did an amazing job at matching the colors of both of my monitors and making fairly drastic color adjustments to get them accurate as possible.

The Spyder Elite 5 also analyzes the brightness of light in your room and coaches you on adjusting your monitor brightness to the correct levels. I also used a web-based monitor test tool, EIZO monitor test. Feel free to give that a test on your displays too.

My final monitor setup.

Here are my final not at all scientific results:

• Best Display (Main) – LG 34GK950F-B
• Best Display (Secondary) – LG 27UK650-W
• Calibration – Spyder Elite 5

All images via Shawn Astrom. 

Want to know what gear the Greyscalegorilla teams uses? Check out our Resources page.

Looking for more PC content?

• What PC do I need for 3D?
• Unboxing and Setting up my C4D Workstation
• Testing Cinema 4D and Redshift Speeds on a PC

The post Searching for the Best Monitor Displays for Motion Design and 3D appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.

New opportunities and studios are popping up all the time. In this Motionographer article, we take a look at the newly formed Bullpen and the sea of possibilities opened up for small studios within the world of working remotely.

Dissertation which are demanded if at paralegal or Ph.D. degree are wholly led, a lot of enough full time indicating that students is merely allowed a pre determined quantity of hours together with their class educator. This suggests it is completely essential to help make the longer frequently not you need along with these because their assist will likely be invaluable in writing a high top of this lineup dissertation.

Arrange:

It’s essential to acquire all set totally for your own dissertation workouts. Your period is going to be wasted in case you want to devote a bit of it becoming out of bed to rate and also carrying a gander in substances you might have mulled around beforehand of time. This careful structure and assessment can be actually a critical bit of writing a dissertation. Establish a set of issues or subjects you need to pay every instructional exercise and also affirm you become beyond them. Remember the number of that time period that the instructor seems to be on your drafts in the newspaper writing phase, may possibly additionally be restricted so strategy ideas and subjects to test instructional workouts to find the best possible way of measuring information from the thesis manager in work .

Plan:

The pre determined quantity of dissertation supervisions you need will soar much snappier than you possibly anticipate. To keep a tactical space out of the simple snare of detecting you’ve show up brief on allocated hours nonetheless at an identical period possess an tremendous section of thesis touch base with undertake, or even a vital scope to test, find out ahead of how long you’re allowed. Now set an agreement in swap by means of your administrator, adhering to every considerable motif or place a educational practice or some little bit of a educational practice, confirming you’ll possess the capability to match all in to enough period empowered. The arrangement with the arrangement needs to deep your own newspaper arrangement. Retain remember to try to leave a few period prior to the ending to get a very last read-careful along with your boss when you’ve wrapped-up your exposition, for treatment of little blunders and referencing, publication catalog therefore on.

Moment:

Your newspaper director will be an expert about the subject you’re writing your dissertation on. Verify that you just take ample notes throughout supervisions that will assist you recollect most of the worthwhile exhortation and information they’ll provide you. Odds are when they state that the material or scholar you should choose a gander at afterward supports it, do not rely on memory . All these oversight hours along with also their comprehension will be into a terrific level invaluable and you’ll kick yourself later on in case you may remember a bit of everything has been discussed about.

The post Making the Right Plan for a Dissertation appeared first on Your best study assistant.

Before starting shoot a snapshot in your thesis touch base with, you can want to examine examples written by unique college students. It is tough to begin to write your newspaper without even knowing exactly that which your section is currently hunting for as well as therefore you’ve got to examine previous job of prior college students or various sources out of making it possible to get the ideal sample that’s appropriate depending on directions supplied by your own supervisor. Here within this informative article post we will talk to you a few dependable sources out of making it possible to start looking to get dissertation examples.

Higher education Library:

In case you’re following a search to try to find preceding dissertations compiled by previous college students afterward can be held on your faculty or college catalog. The advantage with this origin is the fact that custodians may in a few scenarios train you regarding the dependability of this job plus it’s possible they possess a range of names reachable. In afew schools, perhaps as a result of queries literary thieving, thesis stuff has been retained at the workplace. You might have to generate an agreement to find exactly the newspapers and you’ll not be allowed to siphoned them.

The internet:

Compose dissertation/thesis illustrations in a online searcher and also you are going to certainly be faced by a substantial numbers of outcomes. So will you’re capable of making sure which newspaper examples really are exact or valuable? Online cases ought to be attracted closer using all consideration. At case the thesis turns through to a faculty or faculty catalogue site subsequently it’s more likely to become quite a reputable source regardless of how it’s aware that a stuff might happen to be moved within a case of some inadequate newspaper.

Weighing the substance by simply looking at:

In the final, you are going to be utilising the way exactly to seek out practice, you have been awarded below your level far to examine the helpfulness of this dissertation/thesis assist you’ve discovered. When it had been, this really is just the sort of circumstance your level was preparing you . Consider perhaps the substance about displayed? Messy demonstration, inadequate spelling and horrible syntax can attest for you the understudy founder has never placed much effort in their exploration. Can the founder biased to your particular mindset? Can this create sure they are blow off confirmation? Can the stuff have an absolute bibliography?

Finding suited thesis could possibly function as very first actual evaluation of just how long you’ve edited and retained that the skills of preparing.

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