I am going to be compositing both 2d and 3d elements onto a physical 3d grid that the actor will unfold from his hands.  Right now I am just in the early compositing stage and am creating all the elements to the scene however I wanted to show my patriotism for America’s birthday in the best (and the most nerdy) way possible; by color coding my layers appropriately.

I eventually am going to be making my way down to the jersey shore and will be soaking up the sun later on however work needs to be done before I can even think of riding some waves.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and hope you enjoy the extra long weekend.

What is even more exciting is the workflow we plan to use in shooting the episodes for the show.  The show is going to be an informative talk show discussing personal finance and law.  It will be shot using two HD cameras and we will use both green screens at our disposal. I will be using brand new software I recently obtained to track and camera match our shots into an entirely 3d scene that I created for the set. (I am still working on a better res Philly skyline image)

I am very excited to see how this works out, granted as with anything I am not going to get my hopes up that the workflow will be 100% as this will be the first time I am implementing it, however I do feel that I have done a lot of the necessary prep work for it so I am excited for the potential it presents.

Besides purchasing an actual camera that can track and record position data right into a computer for thousands of dollars I think this way will be the best for what we are looking to create for the show.  My boss who comes from more of a tradition shooting background has his fears, as he has openly admitted to never being able to fully grasp the 3d concept.  Thus I find myself in a difficult situation.  A situation where I need to have the confidence to reassure my boss of how the final product is going to come together, but not be over confident and too near sighted to think that it is all going to work flawlessly.

The workflow I finally decided to use came about almost by chance.  Recently I had been seeing more and more references online being made to the new plugin by The Foundry called simply “Camera Tracker”.  From the descriptions and screen shots I had seen the plugin reminded me of a After Effects native Boujo tracker almost, but for a much lower price tag ($280 compared to the almost $10,000).  I guess the closest software for the price that Camera Tracker is going to compete with will be  SynthEyes which runs right around $300 but stands as its own application that forces you to export to After Effects.

Those of you who have used the simple tracker points in After Effects know, that even with the enhanced featured with Adobe CS5.5’s release, tracking inside of AE can simply not handle 3d camera movement very well if at all.  And Mocha, the software that ships with After Effects is great for what it does, planer tracking, but again it can not handle 3d scenes.  That is why I decided to go with the Foundry’s Camera Tracker plugin as my final decision, they have a ton of other great products that I have used in the past so I am comfortable and confident in their environment.

In preparation for the shoot tomorrow I already have my rolls of tape and sharpies ready to create tracking points to use all over the set, making sure I get every area covered so that when Camera Tracker generates its markers it will have an even amount of points to follow.  Tracking the background of the scene will not be so difficult, the issue that we are undoubtedly going to face is that fact that the host of our show is going to be behind and interacting with a desk that will be green screened as well.  This hopefully will not post to much of a problem as many of the shots will be still shots with no camera movement except for a few seconds at the beginning of each segment.  This also helps in rendering the scenes because on my quad core I7 at home a single frame is taking about 6 minutes at full HD resolution to render in Vray.

The only real thing that I can see that’s missing from the plugin is an option to export the tracking data to a 3d program, which by itself id a huge problem if your trying to match the scene to something other than object you create in AE.  This is where the other wonderful plugin MAX2AE comes in.  What is great about this plugin is that the name itself is deceiving, it actually is able to go from 3ds Max to After Effects and vice versa.  Using this plugin I will be able to take the 3d camera created in After Effects and then export it along with any reference objects or lights from AE into my 3ds Max file where the entire set design and models are located.  I cant wait to actually get the footage in and begin playing around with it.  I plan to key out the footage and composite from AE so I am going to create the camera according to the Camera Tracker plugin and use that to generate a 3d camera in 3ds Max, render out the scene from there and then use that as my background plate and make correction from inside AE.

I plan to have to make a few adjustments to the actual rendered frames from 3ds Max as anyone who has attempted to composite 3d object with 2d video can tell you that more often than not 3d objects are too perfect.  No camera is able to shoot in any resolution without some imperfections, so I will undoubtedly need to add in some grain and color correct the shot.  I also plan to render out a z-depth pass from 3dMax to use on the new enhanced “Camera Lens Blur” effect now in After Effects CS5.5 to generate a depth of field equivalent to that of the camera’s lens.  What is great about this plugin which used to be simply the Lens Blur Effect is that it has so many more settings like diffraction fringe, that allow me to tweak the specific options I need to match the actual footage.  Using a z-depth map and compositing the blur saves me tons and tons of time as opposed to rendering the z-depth information from straight inside after effects, plus it allows me to adjust the amount of blur without having to re-render the entire shot.

A great vide discussing the new Camera Lens Blur effect can be found on Adobe TV here.  There are also a ton of other great tutorials on this page so I encourage you all to have a look and find out some of the other new features shipping with CS5.5.  Also if you want to test out your own match moving techniques you can download a 15 day free trial of Camera Tracker from The Foundry as well as use free capture plates that they have included with their tutorials or head over to Hollywood Camera Work and download some of their free match moving plates that give you great examples to work with as well as provide some helpful tips as to why some of the examples work better than others.

I have found that learning from others is a wonderful way to grow your knowledge base, thru tutorials, blog postings, and so forth. I am very grateful for my teacher showing me how to find and use tutorials to not just copy, but use as a starting point and inspiration. When I was in school I was criticized for being a frequent visitor of VideoCoPilot.net and using many of the tips and tricks Andrew Kramer provides as he goes through his video tutorials.  As you will see even in my later tutorials I create myself, I use a lot of the same principles and ideas. This is because they are easy to adopt and work perfectly for the way I work in After Effects.  Using a similar technique or idea to create your own unique project is one thing, while copying an entire project and workflow and simply changing colors or text is another; this is what some classmates could never understand.

I use many influences when creating my animations and motion graphic composites.  Sites such as Video CoPilot, Red Giant TV, Creative Cow, AE Tuts and many others have all been so helpful I don’t know where I would be without the tips and workflows they provide. Over the past year I have even re-taught myself how to design and code websites thru CSS and HTML5. I have even got a pretty good grip on coding in PHP and designing custom WordPress layouts.  All this has been just through searching online and reading blogs that cover different topics, which is pretty impressive since not more than a year ago I designed a site for a friend consisting solely of one large table of rows and columns with a flash header. For those who don’t know this is a huge no-no in web design today… at least it wasn’t done in frames!

In this post I wanted to show my support for all of these wonderful teaching sites that helped to educate me and I’m sure so many others long after graduation. I have gained invaluable knowledge that has enabled me to go above and beyond my original skill set.  I continue to learn and find new ways of creating animations that “wow” clients and give them something they have never seen before, or sometimes even show them something they have seen before but with a new creative twist.  One day I hope to have an equally extensive library of informative, creative, and unique tutorials that visitors use as learning and inspiration for creating something truly unique.

I am already in the process of laying out the foundation for my tutorials and coming up with topics I would like to cover, now all that remains is finding the time to create them and ways of incorporating the skills I wish to teach together with exciting projects. I am even in the process of looking into purchasing a specialized USB microphone so that my tutorials sound as professional as they look. Be sure to check back often for new updates and tutorials coming soon!

So this update will be more for me to kind of set the groundwork for what I hope to accomplish, both through my blog and my website as a whole.

Since that first post I finally was able to afford to get myself an android powered smart phone and went with the Droid2 Global.What I love about this phone is just all you can do with the device, not only the web, email and calander options which for me are huge.  There is no price I can put on finally being organized in terms of scheduling and time management.  Projects, files, backups and so forth where never a problem, but time management was and still is my biggest hurdle.  Some of the programs out on the android market are remarkable. For instance, I am actually writing this blog post via my DROID and the official wordpress app. This is great because it not only allows me ways of posting for the future but allows me to review and respond to comments and check stats.

I find myself attempting to focus in on a specific topic to gear this blog towards, but as I did in school when I was told to focus on one area, I find myself thinking of tons of different areas to cover.  My future posts will be less wordy and more appealing with images and media tnroughout and even after effects tutorials I am looking to create down the line.

I have found so many new tips and tricks in designing websites as well as motion graphics and video production and can not wait to share them with you to help imspire you to learn and expand on what I have to show. So please stay tuned and again excuse my verbal rants into all sorts of directions, I tend to do that from time to time.

Are there any specific topics out there in terms of web design or animation and motion graphics that you really want to see me discuss and show examples of?

Anyway, just to get my feet wet on the blogging atmosphere I decided to take the plunge and begin posting. I am sure many more edits are along the way, as soon as I figure out the workings of customizing my own blog and the styles in it. But for those of you who have stumbled upon it, or are here from my site originally I thank you for being some of the first of hopefully many to become followers of it. I will continue to learn more and organize my thoughts on the matter so I can create more concise, organized, and logical posts for everyone to follow.

In the near future I plan to discuss a wide range of topics/categories ranging from:

• Posts dedicated to displaying new animations and sites I construct
  • Including tutorials on some of my pieces to show how I was able to construct some of the motion graphics pieces and to give others inspiration and insight as I have gained from other’s tutorials
• General thoughts on topics from within the industry
• Breaking news on anything peaking my interest in terms of new technologies and growing trends
• Updates including photos and videos of general day to day activities to help add a more personal touch to my otherwise business driven site
• And many more topics that I just cannot think about at 5am