[CG] Realistic Noise

Hi there.
This time, the question is: how to generate realistic noise ?
Ok, what do I mean ?

I mean; in the post production of a full CG work (3d); how much noise should be added, and how ?

Normally I add 2% monochrome noise, added to a new adjustment layer, and this adds quite nice effect, but thats not TOTALLY what I want.

So I thought, there may be anoy other tricky information that can improve the look of the noise, added in post – to improve realism.

Thank you.

Transformers – lighting and rendering

Hi,
Hope I got the corect sub-forum to post this.
I have been searching for discussions and information about how the lighting and rendering was done for those robots in PRman. All information I can find is more about 8K reflection map shot on set (not sure if it’s HDR pano), 30+ hours render time of each frame, and the rendering was done in a hybrid of mental ray and PRman.

I am wondering if there is specific technique to deal with those heavy hard-surface geometries, especially they are photorealistic shiny car-bots needing raytraced reflection, maybe?

Was image-based lighting used in PRman for this? If yes, how?
How did PRman address specular and glossy reflecitons? (brute-force ray tracing? environmental mapping? both?)
I saw displacement was used in the making of on DVD. But for subtle scratches/grooves on the surface, did they use bump map (or normal map?) or still displacement map?
Were those shaders custom Renderman shaders coded by ILM shader writer?
Is the approach (passes, compositing) completely different from the way they made Davy Jones? (Hard-surface vs. creature)

I will be very grateful if anyone can contribute some information.

Depth Pass Questions

Hi there.

I’m using cinema4d for my animations, and I want to use after effects for my depth pass, because as I know, it is a lot faster than rendering depth effects (like dof) in the 3d package itself.

Ok, here is the first question:

Is it possible to create realistic dof with a depth pass ? The plugin I hear as "the best" is fruschluft depth of field, but it has some artefects on foreground objects, which can not be fixed by tweaking plugin settings. And the default "compound blur" in ae is… Not close to anything real.

I was a plugin called "depth of field" in after effects "3d channel" effects (&presets), but I have no idea about how to use it, and I could not find any possible solution to that on net.

The second question about depth pass, is, 3d fog. I’ve used fusion before, and it has a very nice plugin called "fog3d" (deep pixel) and I’m looking for something close, to add 3d fog to my rendered scene by using the depth info in my depth layer.
Again, there is a plugin called "Fog 3d" in "3d channel" effects in after effects, but once again, I2m unsure how it can be used… it doesnt even have a setting to select the depth layer..

The last question – and hardest (for me) to explain, is, again a depth effect; which we can see on digital cameras "while taking photo or etc".
I knew this effect could be made, but did not see any examples so far, and could not explain to anyone; but; a nice video by aixsponze did that; and here is a screenshot

as you can see, as the objects go further from camera, they start to have "blue" and "red" lines at their left and right, which is VERY close to a real optical effect on a digital camera shot.
I’m wonderig how something like this can be achieved using a depth layer (and I guess it is achieved with that only !).

Ok. I know this is quite long, but I tried to -not to- keep this post boring as it becomes longer.
Time to shut up.

Waiting for answers, thanks for reading.

How to start a career in composting

Hello!
I recently graduated with my bachelors degree (digital arts and design ) and I’ve been working as an editor at a 3d studio. I’ve recently been getting interested in comp/fx work but I’m kinda of stuck as to what to do. I’m not sure if going back to college is the best thing for me to do since I’m already in enough debt and I feel like I have a basic understanding of certain things. I know after effects pretty well and have been trying to read all i can about composting/software etc…. As far as software what would most people recommend? Combustion? Fusion? Shake? (maybe there are other ones I just don’t know about)

ANY advice I would appreciate! Thanks!:niceone:

Track Points [Marks]

I’m wondering how track mark points (on thhe grun, on the face etc) are cleared.. I know tracking theorically, but when I think about points, it leads me nowhere.

Rigging a Jellyfish ?

hi there.
I want to create a jellyfish, and saw a great cg reference movie on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1iwmTCH4No…feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDwBO9BwXJI…re=channel_page

I dont have any idea about how this can be rigged. I’m needing some information/suggestions/tutorials about rigging this kind of stuff.

I’m using cinema4d as my main 3d package but I’m hoping to find any tutorials, well, rigging is same everywhere, I guess.

Maya Fluids to Geometry

Hey, I’m working on a project where some liquid metal pours out of a bucket, spilling out onto the floor.

We have 2 particle effects that are going on at the same time, fire and smoke. Due to the fact that fluids are so cumbersome in maya, we can’t have the particles and the fluids function at the same time. We tried to convert the fluids to polygons, but it didn’t convert the fluids cache into geometry. All that resulted, was one polyPlane that isn’t visible. We aren’t sure if there is a way to convert the fluids to geometry and have the geomtry animate identical to the fluids.

What would be the most efficient way to achieve the desired effect?

Thanks

Download DVD to PC -upload clips to After Effects-Which file format is best/lossless?

I’m working with After Effects on a PC, and I’ve encountered a problem with the type of file formats that After Effects CS3 accepts.

I’d like to download a DVD onto my computer’s harddrive and then import clips/sequences from it into AE. (I have a DVD of an old film that was missing some effects due to the producer’s lack of budget, and I’ve gotten the original storyboards and thought it would be fun to recreate those "missing effects" and matte paintings & edit these back into the movie).

The download from the DVD is in vob format (uncompressed 1:1 – I used DVD Shrink) and I’m trying to convert these files into a format After Effects will accept. I’m searching for a format where the conversion is lossless/without compression (the imagery from the DVD is poor enough & I don’t wish to make it any worse).

Would you have any suggestions on this? Thanks for all your help!

Old Heineken Beer advertisement effect

Hey guys, I like this effect and I’ve been playing around with footage and 3d stuff lately so i wouldn’t mind trying to figure out the workflow for this effect

http://theinspirationroom.com/daily/…st-experience/

basically the street changes from new to old kinda like transforms, the road turns into a brick road etc

I’m gonna give it a go in a few weeks when i finish my current vfx shot.

cheers.

ID render pass ?

How to create an ID pass? (for a car )