Effects Contest

There's a new contest over at VFXTalk.com, they give you the scenario and the prekeyed footage, and you gotta build the shot. Really sweet, and I found out about it in time, so I got a little less than 2 months to put it together, and it will be a good test of every single one of my skills. Plus it's an effect shot based on the new Star Trek.

The scene will be simple, but here's what I think I will need to accomplish:
1. Tack real-world camera, model that camera into After Effects and 3DS Max.
2. In 3DS Max, build terrain and model a futuristic snow scooter and small fighter craft.
3. Using the real-world camera model, animate all models into a single sequence.
3. In 3DS Max, build blizzard volumetrics and particles.
4. Render out all four animation assets: Terrain, both Models, and volumetrics
5. In After Effects, composite all four animation assets plus provided footage, add in background elements like mountains/clouds/etc and additional volumetrics.
6. Add in fighter craft elements like lasers/missiles.
7. Add in explosion elements and lighting.
8. Add in motion blur, camera shake.
9. Render out final sequence.
10. In Premiere, add in sounds/music.
11. Final Render and Review!

In the real world, almost each step would be a separate person/group within a studio. So there's a lot of work involved. The hardest step will be the futuristic snow vehicle and small fighter, since I've never considered myself to be good at modelling and the contest rules call for all original models. But if I can get the models and the terrain done, it should be all downhill from there!

The camera will be the most important part because it will set the base realism. Basically what I do is build a small set with trackers which I will film with a real camera simulating the movements that I want in the scene. Then I motion track the footage and apply the data to a camera, and viola, a virtual camera with real-world movement. I've done it before where I took footage shot on a tripod and used a separate camera to build a small but steady camera shake to give the impression it was hand-held.

Finally some real world practice, this is going to be fun!

Old and New

I was randomly thinking the other day about my computer build and what I wanted to do with it, when I realized that the oldest component in my computer is my case. I bought this case 9 years ago, and I've had more than a dozen different computer builds in it. I have case badges dated back to the original AMD Athlon! If I remember, the oldest build I had in this computer was a Celeron 300a with 256mb RAM.

I'm the kind of guy to stay a few steps behind the elite computer, on purpose. I like get the most for my money, and there are certain dollar limits that I will spend on each component.

I've had the current config since August 2008, built around the original quad-core Q6600. The new processors (I7 and I5) while impressive, were either too far outside my price range (i7 920 a great cpu for the price, but other components required are expensive) or didn't offer enough performance boost (i5 750 doesn't have HyperThreading) over my current cpu.

Then I came across a surprising discovery. The new Lynnfield Xeon processors, which have Hyperthreading, were only $40 more than the i5 750, and with cheap(er) Socket 1156 components turned out to be a great build! So I just picked up a Xeon 3440, new Gigabyte P55 motherboard, and 8gb of DDR3 ram, for just under $600. Awesome.

For a while I had a little desire to upgrade my case, but then I figured that I actually liked that "history", and being able to look back on my life and see where I was. The case certainly brings back memories, good and bad times in Atlanta, it survived a fire and survived in my car when it was totalled by a runaway DOT semi.

So, I think I'll keep the old look, after all it's the inside that counts :)