Category Archives: News

NAB 2013 Wrap Up

Well folks it’s that time of year again! NAB time! Where film and broadcast companies show off all that new fancy equipment. The big show down in Las Vegas, has tons of new stuff coming, I’ll try to cover most of it, but it’s hard to cover it all.

First off the big stuff:

Adobe – Cinema 4D integration

The one of the biggest announcements for me, will be the newly integrated C4D, and AE. This new plugin, called Cineware, lets you render and composite full C4D files in AE. Also the lastest version of AE will come with a new version of C4D, called C4D lite. This new version shouldn’t be anything new, just a more complexed demo, as it seems. Cineware will work within AE as a plugin, and comes with the standard list of effects in AE. For more info on Cineware, check here.

The next big announcement is (CS7 or CS6.5, I’m not sure what the naming of the product will be).

Of course there are general improvements to the software, but some big stuff in AE specifically. There is also new Speedgrade improvements, and pretty much all of the CS, but I will not mention them here, as it is too much to put in a single post. For more info on the other CS apps check here.

Back to AE: Remember CS5, and the Roto Brush tool, which would roto footage for you? Well, I’ve since tried it, and I prefer to roto things myself, granted this does take, on average, like 4x more time, but it is much more accurate. One of the huge things I’m excited about, is rotoscoping things that are hard to roto on your own, like a tree line, or hair. These things are a major pain! Well now, you (hopefully) don’t have to worry about that. With the all new “Refine Edge Tool” this should take care of rotoscoping out normally very difficult things to roto. You can watch the promo video for it here; Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Part Four. Of course there will still be issues, but all in all, I think it’ll work well.

Now, for all you folks running the creative cloud, this new release is great news! You don’t have to worry about paying for the latest and greatest at a full retail price. The price per month remains the same, and auto updates. If that isn’t cool, I don’t know what is!

Cameras (not in depth):

Of course, with NAB 2013, there are always new cameras. I will not go into too much detail here.

For a semi-professional camera check out the new Black Magic lineup. It’s pretty cool. Also the new $995 camera from BM is sweet!

For low end – (prosumer) cameras, check out Canon’s new T5i, or the cheaper, and very slightly different, T4i. You can also pick up the older T3i refurbished for $374 for just the body, and $442 with a kit lens (18-55 zoom). For more info on these camera’s check here.

Also I recently discovered a prosumer camera from Panasonic. It’s called the Panasonic LUMIX GH3. Long name, but an awesome prosumer camera. It shoots at 1080p/60fps, where the prosumer Canon’s can only do 60fps in 720p.

Of course there is more stuff to come, like Bullet Proof from Red Giant Software and much more awesome software! For more info on Bullet Proof and to sign up for the beta, check here.

That’s a wrap on the NAB 2013! Hope anyone who attended via the internet or in reality had a great time!

Project Ion

What is it?

Coming soon!

More info to come, for now, please look here, or follow Ion on twitter here!

Ion iCON with slogan

 

Latest Timeline Video; 3 Apps

Here is the latest Timeline video: 

Here is the 1st video: 

Three Timelines. Three times the fun.

Tell your story.

Timeline, you say?

Yes. New video soon. Expect great things. That is all.

Update: 02-27-13

Video is posted. See here.

Life of Pi and Rhythm and Hues and Why I Went Green

If you’ve been living under a rock these last few days then you probably haven’t heard. But if your on Twitter/Facebook  and follow anyone who’s VFX related, then you’ve probably seen the green profile picture.

Mine is below:

HS [Converted] copy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You will also see this image on my profile pictures for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

The green is a protest. It represents a lot of things. The company behind the “Life Of Pi” Visual FX, Rhythm and Hues went bankrupt on February 11th 2013. According to boxofficemojo.com ”Life Of Pi” made $583,700,798 worldwide. It’s sad to me that the company that made this all possible is now going out of business, filing for bankruptcy.

On sunday “Life Of Pi” won several awards for many things, among them was the VFX team. The cast of “The Avengers” introduced them, which took longer then they were given to actually accept the award.

What we want is a union, a guild something. Please join me in changing your picture and spreading awareness to those who may not know.

For more information on the subject, here’s some sites to check out:

http://prolost.com/pi

http://effectscorner.blogspot.com/2013/02/oh-mess-were-in.html#.US0vJuugnYE

http://vfxsoldier.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/a-day-without-a-vfx-pro/

http://sg.entertainment.yahoo.com/news/why-vfx-artists-protesting-054600152.html

Update: (02-26-13)

Twitter is going crazy about this, which is awesome! Check this out:

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23vfxunion&src=hash

Newton 2 is out!

Two days ago, February 20th 2013, Newton 2 was released! The latest release from Motion Boutique, supports CS 5+ (CS 5, CS 5.5, and CS 6) Newton two has some awesome new features as well as a totally redesigned interface. Check out the quick start guide below: 

Newton 2 is currently $250 USD at aescripts.com, which offers a ton of scripts and plugins at a reasonable price. The best part about Newton 2 is probably the ability to link two layers together, and get them interacting with magnetism and joints; which allow for multiple layers to interact in different ways. Of course there are a bunch of changes, so see the above video for a list of all of them.

The starting price is $250 USD, and is discounted for both educational users and previous owners of Newton 1.

Where have I been?

Well, it’s February, and last time I posted I was working hard on Timeline. Over the last two months, I have been incredibly busy and have not had time to work on Timeline. I worked on a short local film as a DIT back in the end of December. Throughout January and February I have been going to school, polishing short films to be released, at some point.

Timeline will be an ongoing project as I get ready for release (at some point) and polish the back end code, and how the actual app works, looks, and runs. For know, I am not ready to release Timeline, or any new posts about it, so it will be on a temporary hold.

If you are into After Effects at all, you probably know that Element 3D got a free update to v1.5. The coolest feature (there are a lot) is the animated OBJ sequences. Animated OBJ’s would basically mean that you could make something, in lets say C4D, and then animate it, export it as an OBJ sequence, then add that animated sequence inside of AE and E3D. It will be cool to see what people put together with this new addition to such a great plugin.

I also just recently got a part-time job, so my posts could become less frequent.

When I started the site over a year ago, I wanted to post once per day. Unfortunately, due to scheduling, and busyness, I could not. Ideally, I would like to go to one post a week.

I am also in the process of releasing another small short film (currently untitled), as well as another short film, which I am in pre-production for. You might even get to see some goodies (posters, etc) on the Facebook page, or on here.

A quick update on Souvenir, it will be taken down from the website, as it has been put on hold. In it’s place, will be another film entitled “Three Secrets.” We are currently in pre-production on this project as well. Right now, I am not ready to release any more details on this latest project, but all will be revealed soon.

That is all for now, please check back soon for more information on all these projects!

What’s Been Happening

Hello everybody,

I have a very busy schedule, but I wanted to post about a few things.

Timeline: Timeline has been pushed aside for now, that’s not to say its dead, no, far from it! But just not a current project. I will have more information about Timeline, once it gets closer to release, which we are no where near.

I am, however, very pleased and excited to announce the start of a short film, entitled ”Souvenir.”

There will be several more updates about this project in the coming months, right now, all I can give away is the title. You’ll just have to wait and see. You can find updates on our official Facebook page here, or check out some behind the scenes content here. You can also check out our official Twitter page here.

Website content change:

In the past I have posted things about news related to VFX and motion graphics as well as some inspirational content. I am not killing these ideas, simply cutting down a bit, probably many of you have noticed. My posts have been few-and-far-between, simply due to my schedule. Once I get more time on my hands you can expect to see more content coming your way. (As well as the above short film, and several other projects that are in the works.)

Other great things are coming, just wait and see.

 

Welcome to Timeline

Timeline is the ultimate Film App, bringing your ideas to life:

Find out more here.

Plexus 2 — New Features

A video for Plexus 2 was released yesterday, and it looks great! Really excited for the exporting to illustrator bit! These are not a full featured list, but just some of the cool stuff Plexus 2 has to offer.