Power Creative Blogs

Breakdown of an Award Winning HIV CGChallenge

jeckert — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:16:59 +0000

Breakdown of an Award Winning HIV CGChallenge

Joel Eckert | Apr 18, 2013

Chris Harkins of the Power Creative CGI team recently won the Autodesk Autopack Visualization contest! Read further to learn more about it and how the winning entry was made and you can view winning entry at the bottom of the post.

By Chris Harkins

Overview:

A few months ago I entered the autoPACK Visualization CGChallenge. The challenge was to use a provided, recently-updated model of the HIV virus to “excite general audiences with visuals that will help [us] spread interest in the search for a cure”. I’ve not had any experience with medical animations or any exposure to the technical details of the HIV virus, so this was to be an educational adventure as much as it was a technical and artistic challenge. I encountered several problems along the way, some of which I have documented below.

I decided to focus the 2-minute animation on the structural makeup of the virus. Revealing the components layer by layer, from the external proteins down to the RNA core, I wanted to present the model in a way that was visually attractive and informative - to make learning about these details more appealing to those, like me, who are unfamiliar with the medical concepts and terminology.

Getting Started:

To start, I installed the plugins autoPACK and ePMV, provided by the Molecular Graphics Lab at The Scripps Research Institute and Graham Johnson's Mesoscope Lab at the University of California. These plugins enable you to import molecular data into various applications like Autodesk 3ds Max. Being able to import data from a databank that the scientists create preserves accuracy and greatly increases the speed of production. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Challenge: Being that the plugins are still being tested and developed, some of the features weren’t fully supportied in 3ds Max. I was unable to import the RNA data, which was crucial for accuracy.

Solution: Blender, a freeware application, was fully supported. I was able to import the RNA data into blender, visualize the data as a curve, extrude that curve to create a thin strip of geometry and export that out into 3ds Max to generate a spline from. Often times multiple applications are required to pull a project together.

Model

Once I imported the model, I started cleaning and optimizing the geometry to make it easier to work with - instantiating similar geometries that weren’t already instantiated, breaking up objects by materials and layers. I made several cosmetic changes; cutting a hole in the lipid bilayer, rearranging some of the envelope proteins, shifting some of the internal proteins around for a better composition, etc.

The environment is a particle cloud of blood plasma components, the models of which were also imported with the HIV model. I used the imported arrangement as a reference for density and grouping and regenerated them in a particle cloud. Using the particle cloud gave me much greater control over their overall look and behavior.

Challenge: The HIV virus model continued to change throughout the challenge. After I submitted a first “final” submission, I learned of some major flaws in how I was representing the model. In particular, my RNA geometry was bogus and the new lipid bilayer shape was more organic in form.

Solution: I basically tossed out the pre-existing virus model I was working with and imported all new geometry to rerender. It was painful and too close to deadline for comfort, but it had to be fixed. Projects on a tight deadline don’t offer the luxury of doing a project twice and refining it to be exactly what you want it to me. I was able to refine and submit an animation I was 99% happy with it.

Lighting

Once the model was arranged how I wanted, I started experimenting with lighting and materials. I wanted to illustrate the components to be easily identifiable in structure and grouping, so I gave the components a color based on a gradient working from the outside-in. The environment, the blood plasma, was a warm red color, so I started the envelope proteins and lipid bilayer with a cooler blue to help the virus pop out. From there the protein guts graduate from green to yellow to the red RNA core. I arranged some large fill lights around the virus and placed a strong directional light, so the sub-surface scatter materials would have enough depth to make it appear more organic.

Animation

Since this animation was centered on the geometry of the virus, animating the Brownian dynamics motion of the components and moving the camera was pretty straight forward.

I applied a random noise deformation and random animated rotation to everything that was free-floating. Components that were attached were deformed with a large-scale noise to create a jiggle.

The cameras were animated around a basic animatic that I created for timing. Once the cameras were plotted, I discovered that the blood particles were obscuring the view and were very distracting. This was easily fixed by selecting the individual problematic particles within the viewport and throwing in a ‘delete’ node in the pflow stack.

Challenge: I discovered that my particle-generated blood components were jiggling, but not rotating. There is a limitation with pflow that it would recognize the jiggle deformation, but not the object’s random rotation, driven by a noise controller.

Solution: I applied an xform link modifier to the particle objects and linked them to a ‘dummy’ null that was being randomly rotated. This seemed to work great, but then I later discovered that it was creating a memory leak and would crash the scene after a frame was rendered or the scene closed, making it impossible to render over the network render farm. After troubleshooting, I discovered that putting the animated null inside of the same group as the particle components fixed the memory leak. Sometimes one solution creates another problem to solve. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s just a part of the process.

Wrapping it up

I used VRay to render everything, consisting of several different render elements/passes to aid in the overall look in post-production. I needed enough control to tweak the files for final output, but not too many that I was encumbered with process time and setup time. Of the various passes I kicked out, the main ones were Ambient Occlusion, velocity, various matte selections, a texture override and depth. Rendering motion blur and depth of field in camera was not ideal for this as the reward (great-looking in-camera renders) did not outweigh the risk (not getting done on time) as it substantially increased render time. Doing DoF and motion blur after render, in post, was sufficient for this project. It rendered much faster with few obvious artifacts.

There were 2,665 total frames rendered (~16,000 if you count render passes). With an average render time of 13 minutes per frame, that's 34,645 minutes (577 hours) of render time. This would take about a month straight to render on a single machine. Fortunately, we have a powerful render farm that turns a month into 3 days.

Audio

The audio was provided by Power Creative’s Joel Eckert. He is a musician in his spare time and works under the name "a light beacon". He created this ambient score for the piece and later further developed the score into a song which will be on his next record to be released in Late Summer/Fall of 2013. The song is called, "The Virus Inside". You can learn more here if interested.

The Judgement

After a month of waiting for judgment, I was amazed and honored to discover that I placed first in the video competition. The other entries, which you can see here, are a really diverse collection of ideas and talent. I learned a great deal, felt the charge of competition and hope to have produced something someone will benefit from.

Winners Announcement Page: http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/autopack_challenge_winners

Full Finished Video: http://autopack.cgsociety.org/autopack/entry/Charkins/final_video/10004915

Files:

Topics: 3D Max, Autodesk, Autopack, CGI, harkins, HIV, Medical

Social media is one big party. Just don’t come dressed like a ninja.

Eileen Holston — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:27:59 +0000

Social media is one big party. Just don’t come dressed like a ninja.

Eileen Holston | Mar 4, 2013

Social media can be fun, rewarding and even life enhancing.

It can also be somewhat awkward.

You’re supposed to be there, or be stuck squarely in the middle of 2006. But “there” can be one of any number of platforms. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. Flickr. Google+. Instagram. The list goes on and on.

Once you get to the party, nicely frocked with some great handle or cover photo, the crowd’s big and loud. And, before you even have a chance to say, “Hello, my name is @BrogurtLover,” you get cornered by a stranger trying to hard-sell you on their colonic cleansing services. Or, worse, you get a phishy message that someone’s spreading nasty rumors about you.

Navigating social networks is hard enough when you’re there for strictly personal use. When you’re Tweeting or Facebooking on behalf of a brand or company, it’s even more challenging. Instead of going the DIY route, many businesses decide it’s a job best left to the experts. And it’s no wonder, given the results of a recent Harvard Business review survey, which showed only 12% of businesses participating in social media feel they use it effectively.

The problem for businesses looking to outsource their social media work is that there are all kinds of self-proclaimed experts. You can’t go anywhere online without bumping into one of the following:

Guru
Rock star
Maven
Magician
Jedi Warrior
Vixen
Diva
Dragon Slayer
Evangelist
Digital Architect
Scientist
Sherpa
Ninja

The people who do the best at social media generally fall into two groups: writers and strategists. Writers know how to talk to followers and engage them on sites. Strategists make sure a plan is in place and that campaigns are thought through all the way. Strategists also analyze and track results. Magic really happens when writers and strategists remember to communicate with one another before anything is posted online.

At Power, we’ve experienced the successes that come with solid planning and execution. We’ve also made a few minor social media blunders. Just last week, in celebration of a social media ad we ran in the Louisville edition of Business First, we asked for comments to a social-themed post on our Facebook timeline. As a reward for participating, we offered up a $10 Starbucks gift card. We got a little excited and bent the rules on running a Facebook contest. In response, we were called out on Twitter by one of our followers. The irony here is that we asked people to share what they thought were the top social media mistakes made by businesses.

Social media is about human-to-human interaction, and humans make mistakes. We figure the best way to correct those mistakes is to be honest and own up to them. If you go at it from the right perspective, you even realize you learn from them.

We’d love to learn more about followers like you and your experiences out on the social media scene. So we invite you to join us on Facebook or Twitter (#PowerSocial) for some friendly conversation over the next few weeks. We promise we’ll do our best to keep things from getting awkward.

Topics: social media

Google Enhancements & The E Street Band

tlucas — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:22:11 +0000

Google Enhancements & The E Street Band

Tim Lucas | Feb 15, 2013

Once you set the standard, any changes you make will be graded on a steep curve. Is less more....or is more less?

Is Google's new attempt to streamline its offerings and play to the masses the online equivilant of a musician who pushes creative boundries with his/her art, but finds their greatest commercial success courting airplay and pumping out hits? (Springsteen's Born In the USA comes to mind first here).

Can we compare AdWords to 3-chord rock 'n roll?

We'll attempt to answer most of these questions in our latest "Enhanced" Power Media Blog entry

The Power Creative media team has been heavily invested in Google for many years now. We've taken the tests, followed best practice procedures and managed to stay on top of their many updates with the help of many contacts we've worked with inside the Googleplex. Its no stretch to say its a passion of ours, and we like digging in to the AdWords dashboard to test and tweak in hopes of improving our clients' performances. So, when we get a call teasing the biggest changes ever to the AdWords program, we are equal parts excited...and nervous.

Which brings us to Google Enhanced AdWords...

In a nutshell, the Enhanced AdWords platform takes multiple search tactics, such as tablet, mobile, and desktop, and funnels them into one all-encompassing campaign, thus eliminating the need (or ability) for a mobile-only campaign. This tactic is meant to lessen the burden on the advertiser from having to track multiple campaigns for a single message. While this change will undoubtedly be appreciated by a large portion of AdWords users, and make the entire program more accessible for those just jumping in, there will be a fringe element (the early adopters, the DIYers) who may see these changes as a loss of control. For example, with mobile now a default, those advertisers and clients who have resisted mobile will now join the same party as those who have been believers from the start.

Is this the same feeling those folks who danced all night to "Rosalita" and "Thundercrack" had when they first heard "Dancing In The Dark"? Is a more accessible Google a better Google?

Our early response is a tentative yes. The changes made are creating a smarter system and better reporting. We also know that future changes to be rolled out will only expand upon these updates. There are still plenty of numbers to track and knobs to tweak to ensure that more effort equals better performance, which is all that those of us with years invested can ask for.

We'll jump back to this space as we become more comfortable with our new surroundings and share any additional insights on this topic.

In the meantime, cue up the opening chords to "Glory Days" and dive into the new Enhanced Campaign platform. We'll find out together if this thing still rocks "like their early stuff".....

Topics: Enhanced AdWords, Google, Search, SEM, Springsteen

An Introduction to Facebook Graph Search

Joe Wiegand — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 13:56:37 +0000

An Introduction to Facebook Graph Search

Joe Wiegand | Feb 12, 2013

Last month at a Facebook press event, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced the social network's latest feature, called Graph Search. Graph Search will offer users a new way to explore the social network's collection of 'likes'. Graph search works similar to a traditional search bar, but rather than typing in keywords, users are encouraged to string together series of simple phrases and categories to find results.

Explore using Simple Phrases

Using Graph Search, phrases like 'My Friends' and 'Photos of my friends' are preloaded into the search bar's interface and as the user starts typing these suggestions are automatically refreshed with a variety of options to complete the query. Start by typing 'My Friends' and the search bar will refresh, showing suggestions like 'My Friends in Louisville', 'My Friends photos', and ‘Music my friends like’. At this point a user can execute their search or continue adding to their phrase and fine tune the results. For example, I could search for "Friends in Chicago who like bacon" and I would be shown results of all my friends who live in Chicago that have liked the bacon Facebook page. With searches like "Bars in Louisville that my friends like" or "Restaurants in Nashville that my friends like," it's easy to see how the importance of likes for a business on Facebook has increased with the introduction of graph search.

Graph Search for Businesses

Of course, brands are already trying to uncover the possibilities it creates for advertising to and engaging customers through Facebook. Last year, Facebook changed their edge rank algorithm, reducing the visibility that most brand's pages were getting on Facebook. This left many marketers and businesses with questions about the relevance of their Facebook presence.

With Graph Search it is now more important than ever for brands to utilize Facebook. Graph Search's greatest impact on business pages will be all the ways that users can be connected with a brand. The pages that have the most connections will appear in results more often meaning the number of likes will matter more than it did in the past. Although Facebook's Graph Search brings up privacy concerns for individuals, it definitely creates new opportunities for brands to communicate to customers on Facebook. More than ever, it is important for a brand to encourage all of it's customers to like their Facebook page, to check in when they visit their location, to write reviews and recommendations on Facebook, and to optimize their business page (think SEO) using keywords that might help users find them through Graph Search.

Search Results from Bing

Facebook has also integrated Bing into the Graph Search to display results that cannot be answered through a particular search, meaning users will not have to leave the Facebook interface to perform web searches. Although the Graph Search has not currently affected Facebook’s Advertising platform it does suggest future updates that will allow advertisers to better reach their target audiences with sponsored results.

Graph Search not yet available to everyone and is being introduced gradually to users who sign up for a limited beta program.

What are your thoughts about the new Graph Search?

Topics: Facebook

No Better Time

tlucas — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 15:10:41 +0000

No Better Time

Tim Lucas | Jan 23, 2013

Your email box has filled up with 37 emails before the sunrise....your Twitter feed whirls at the tempo of an early Metallica song....your annual budgets were reduced, but your metric goals have increased....your 3rd Party AdServer is speaking a different language (literally and figuratively)...

And yet, there is no better time to be in the media mix....

Yep, its January, so while we all look for ways to trim a few pounds and drop a bad habit or two, the Power Creative Media Department is looking past all the digital-based headaches that arise from living each day at techo-speed and seeing our horizon for the great opportunity that it is. We anticipate a year that will push our abilities with digital search, expand our mobile skill set, and stretch our reporting platform. If that sounds like a work out, we are betting that it will be (which is why you might find us taking 5 minutes exercise breaks during the day ;)

But its not just the Power Creative media team. The agency has just completed the first of several internal process reviews by introducing a brand new digital workflow process designed to elevate efficiency, productivity and quality of work. We have new job titles, new talent and expanded job discriptions meant to fill in "gaps" that have occured during foundational shifts in the type of work we do. We have running teams, soccer teams, improv teams and biking teams that help reduce stress, create camaraderie and keep us healthy. And we have more improvements to come....

We at Power Creative are ready for 2013.....and are convinced that we are doing what we love at exactly the right time!

Topics: Digital Media, new year's resolutions, opportunity

Creating A Rim Light Effect Using A Normal Pass In Photoshop

jeckert — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:22:38 +0000

Creating A Rim Light Effect Using A Normal Pass In Photoshop

Joel Eckert | Jan 21, 2013

Situation: You just rendered a scene and would like to tweak the lighting a touch in Photoshop. You think the rendered image is good but would like to give things a rim light to make it pop more. Often adding another light to something that is basically done can take too long or interfere with too many things in the scene. We’ll just use the normal pass and do it in Photoshop. What’s A Normal Pass? It is image information that is generated at the same time the image is being rendered. It converts surface geometry from XYZ position to RGB color. By utilizing the information from the Normal Pass, we can extract a specific RGB tone and use it as an additive light source. This can create artistic effects that can easily be tweaked in Photoshop.

To create this effect, Save the following two images out and open them in Photoshop, or try it with a render and a normal pass of your own. Then follow the steps below…

Step-by-Step to Create The Effect:

To start, combine the images into a single layered image, with the normal pass on top of the render.
Put the normal pass into a group by itself, set the groups Mode to Screen.
Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in the new group, over the normal pass, name it HS1. You can just leave the hue default, but set the saturation to 100 for now.
Add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer in the new group, over HS1. Check the Monochrome checkbox on the effect options. As a default, set it to 125%, 125%, -200%. This will isolate a color that will act as an upper left light.
Add another Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in the new group, over the Channel Mixer, name it HS2. Set this to colorize. Increase the saturation and pick your favorite color for now. This will be the rim light effects color adjuster.
You can optionally delete the layer masks from the adjustment layers because they aren’t really needed for this demo.
Select the three adjustment layer passes and choose ALT+CTRL+G. This will make all of them clipping masks so they only affect the normal pass.

Now you should have a layer stack that looks something similar to what you see above. After you get the hang of it, you can get pretty elaborate and specific with it. Below I will elaborate a little more on the purpose of each layer to help make sense of it.

Layer breakdown and explanation:

Parent Group: Set this to Screen if in 8Bit or Lighter Color if in 32bit. This is to add the result of the light effect into the source render.
- Hue Saturation #2
  - Use the H/S/L controls to tint the overlaid color of rim light effect.
  - This layer can be removed if you aren’t interested in colorizing the light at all and just want white light.
- Color Mixer
  - This isolates a color from the Normal Pass which creates the lighting effect.
  - This works in conjunction with the HS layer below it. Play with both to learn how they interact with each other.
  - A good trick with this channel mixer is to not have more than two channels % values up at once. It becomes more predictable when you don’t have a mix of color and if all three colors are added, you will not be able to create a rim light. The rim light effect occurs because you are limiting the color to one or two channels, if you have % amounts for all three colors, it will behave more like a fill light.
- Hue Saturation #1
  - H is for Easily Shifting/Phasing Light Direction. This can also be done with only the color mixer, but using this HS adjustment layer is way faster to tweak.
  - S helps control Light Falloff
  - L is probably most predictable and best left at 0.
- Normal Pass Render
  - Rendered as a VRay Render Element from 3DStudio Max.
RGB Render
- Raw render from 3D package.
- 3D Max and VRay in this case.

Explore on your own form here and you will find this to be quite useful.

Files:

Topics: 3D, Normal, Photoshop

3 Tips for Effective 404 Error Pages

jcarter — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 15:11:58 +0000

3 Tips for Effective 404 Error Pages

Jenny Carter | Aug 24, 2012

kyshakespeare.com/

The 404 error page is the page displayed when a web page is called that simply does not exist. Whether it is due to user error, a site error, or a page that has been removed, the 404 error page serves the purpose of guiding website visitors when they have lost their way.

Although a default page is provided by the server, a custom page gives you the opportunity to keep your website visitor engaged and on your site! Here are three tips for an impactful and effective 404 page.

Tip 1. Stay Consistent to the Site Design

The 404 page should reflect the same look and feel as all other pages on the site. This will ensure that users who are served the page are clear that they have not left the site, and will deter abandonment.

Tip 2. Guide Web Visitors

Give visitors a clear call to action and a path to alternative pages, while keeping the number of links clear and concise. Include a link to the homepage as an easy way to restart the website visit. You can also include a Site Search option, providing an easy way to search and find keyword-driven content users are looking for.

Ensure that you are not overwhelming visitors by offering too many detailed options for next steps. Keep the tone of the page friendly and understanding, and visitors will be led to appropriate content on your site.

Tip 3. Be Creative!

Saved the most fun for last!

Having fun with 404 pages can increase engagement and serve as a driver to keep visitors on your site. A unique message and design can get users’ attention while guiding them to next steps.

While you can get creative with the message and layout of a 404 error page, you must not lose sight of the purpose. Going too far with the creative of a 404 page can confuse users.

Check out Power’s 404 Page or Share Your Own Favorites!

Here are some samples of effective 404 pages:

Lego.com

Mint.com

Sendgrid.com

thenorthface.com/en_US/

MailChimp.com

lennox.com

hootsuite.com/

hasbro.com

blogsouthwest.com

vetrazzo.com

heinz.com

greenpeace.org

Topics: 404 page, error page, web strategy, website creative, website usability

The Illusive Metric….Enewsletter Tracking Data

pjohnson — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 13:22:29 +0000

The Illusive Metric….Enewsletter Tracking Data

Paige Johnson | Jul 27, 2012

According to Think with Google “Adults spend 18 hours a week online” that’s basically the equivalent to a part time job. What about you…think about it how often are you engaged with digital content?

Enewsletters, magazine digital editions, YouTube, Hulu, blogs, social media… the digital world changed our lives and changed the world of marketing.

Thanks to ‘cookies’ and ‘tracking pixels’ we can track the performance of online placements… knowing if the ad was visible on the page, if a user was so intrigued they actually took the time to click on it and what they did once they came to the desired website.

Tracking ads isn’t as easy as you would think. Power Creative’s Media Department has utilized third party adservers for over six years. By definition these adservers push ads out to websites and allows advertisers to track the performance of the creative messaging, the site and the placement itself. “A third party ad server allows advertisers to know how many times an advertisement has been served, the number of clicks associated with the ad, conversions resulting from the ad, etc.” (David Shim, eccoBay) This kind of information allows Power to allocate media dollars to sites that provide the highest ROI.

We have successfully served client’s ads on hundreds of publisher’s sites and from the performance data we retrieved, developed detailed reports showing the success of each placement in the campaign, for the most part…

This finally brings us to our challenge…

The hurdle we face is tracking enewsletter creative. That banner or text message appearing in a enewsletter deployed by a publisher (you know the ones you’ve opted in to receive industry news, sports updates, sales alerts).

These vehicles, by design, do not reach the masses... but allow us to strategically focus on a particular audience based on the content of the enewsletter.

Each site has their own method of serving the enewsletters most of which are not able to incorporate a third party adserving tag (Dilemma). On occasion a tracking pixel can be inserted, which provides clicks but not impressions on the ad. So to retrieve performance data, we must reach out to publishers each month and request numbers (this may take several correspondence and take up precious time). Next, the data is compiled into a spreadsheet and then merged with display banner data.

Each month (after multiple rounds of coffee and headaches) we wonder….are we the only ones out there going through this?

One vendor’s solution was to exclude the enewsletters all together and to only analyze the display data for campaign success. However, it has proven time and time again that the enewsletters are effective in reaching our audience and usually earn higher engagement rates over display placements. The impressions and clicks simply can’t be ignored.

Third party adservers are not able to incorporate publisher provided data into their reports as they are bound by iab www.iab.net/ guidelines to only utilize data collected from the tags. But if the tags cannot be implemented into the creative, how else do we determine the performance of the enewsletter placement?

Your Power Creative Media Team is actively working towards a new solution. However, we’re interested in your feedback. Have you experienced difficulty in tracking enewsletter data? And if so, what was your solution? Feel free to share your experiences below and help keep our media department from hours of spreadsheet frustration!

Topics: adserving tag, digital, enewsletter, Media, third party adserver, tracking pixels

Search Engine Summit

tlucas — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:44:00 +0000

Search Engine Summit

Tim Lucas | May 22, 2012

We at Power Creative are always happy to welcome our friends from Google to Louisville, KY. With the many different clients and campaigns we have actively running across their platforms, it is nice to spend some quality time in the same room for a strategy, planning and Q&A session. While much of the discussion was client-specific, there were some general trends and topics discussed, such as:

The convergence of search and social – across both laptop and mobile platforms
Purchase funnels (something we are quite familiar with around these parts) and how best to deliver appropriate messaging at the key points along the purchase pathway
ZMOT (Zero Moment Of Truth) – not a new concept, but one that Google has adopted to best describe their timely advertising approach
New and exciting concepts for Power Creative to utilize to better reach and impact our target consumers

Concepts such as remarketing, view-through conversions, assist keywords and dynamic search ad units were parsed and discussed, with the Power team engaged at each level of discussion. After the all-day session, the Power Media and Digital team left with thought-starters for future efforts as well as positive reinforcement that our active efforts to stay at the leading edge of Google products continue to provide a strong foundation for many of our Power Creative clients.

Topics: Digital Media, Google, Search Engine Marketing

3D Max Media Sync With After Effects

jeckert — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:34:41 +0000

3D Max Media Sync With After Effects

Joel Eckert | Apr 3, 2012

by Chris Harkins

Software evolves. Useless, outdated features fade away and newer features make the application stronger, even if it takes some time to work out the kinks. Applications are more powerful than the year before because our industry is in perpetual change to keep up with higher client expectations - the applications we use have to keep up. There are several applications to choose from as they compete for power, flexibility and above all, market share. We use Autodesk 3ds Max because we've found it to fit our needs moreso than Autodesk Maya, NewTek LightWave or even the free, yet robust, application Blender. But there is not one application that does everything perfectly. The trick is using the right tool for the job at hand. We have a powerful arsenal of hardware and software at our finger tips, but merely having the right tools does not keep us on top of the competition and delivering superior quality to our clients. Among other things, it's important to be informed on emergent technologies and even participate in their crafting when given the opportunity.

I was granted an opportunity to create a sneak peek video for a new feature in 3ds Max utilizing "Media Sync", a new interoperability between 3ds Max and Adobe After Effects, two of the tools in our arsenal. This new feature enables us to send rendered passes and some scene data from 3ds Max into After Effects to finish up the product in a motion graphics environment. With both applications, we're able to deliver a product that neither application could do alone, using each application to its strengths. The challenge has always been, "How?" How do you share the data between two different applications? And how do you do so in such a way that's easy and efficient? Let's explore this with a recent job.

Recently, I was asked to produce about two dozen 3D-animated graphs for an iPad app. These were all very similar in style and format, differing mostly in scales and text. Though technically simple, it appeared it was going to take a long time to go through the motions for all of them - changing this, changing that, rerender, recomposite, output, rinse and repeat. Just recently the new interoperability feature was released and this was the perfect testing grounds.

In short, I animated the scene in Max, rendered out the bars as they animated upward. I placed helper objects in the general locations where I wanted to add my text and exported everything I wanted in After Effects. Within After Effects I loaded the "link" and a basic composition built itself. My rendered passes and helper objects came in perfect. Now I was working with Max data in After Effect's 3D environment, so I could easily add text and graphics that would track flawlessly as the graph rotates and builds up.

The real power of this workflow comes in ensuring consistency with speed. I could easily adjust font style and placement, which would render immediately, whereas if I had to make a change in 3ds Max, it would require much more time to make a change and rerender. Adding text and formatting for motion graphics is best done in After Effects. We were able to accommodate color, text/font and graphic changes quickly. This new feature helps to bridge the gap between 3D content and motion graphics.

As artists and technicians, we rely on these tools. Likewise, developers rely on their customers to tell them what we need or what needs improvement. Not every new feature is profound, or even works as advertised, but it's all a part of the process moving forward, developing stronger tools for greater challenges.

My sneak peek video can be found here: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/mediasync_best_interop_with_adobe_after_effects_gets_better/

Topics: 3D Max, After Effects, Media Sync