The Great Martian War
Man, World War 1 was apparently greater (and more awesome) than I’ve been told in school.
The video above, which seems to be a compilation from a mockumentary on History Channel, is so funny it makes you forget the horrors of WW1 as shown in that real documentary on ARTE (IMDB page – unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be much info in English).
The shot of horses grazing in front of broken Martian machinery reminds me of the art of Simon Stålenhag.
Star Wars Without Music
With all the focus on vfx and pretty visuals you often forget about the importance of music and the trickery that is done with sound effects and sound mixing. Here’s a great clip that re-creates what the final ceremony in the original Star Wars must have sounded like to its participants. No, not the Ewok party. That one:
Check out the Auralnauts channel for more great dubs and movie spoofs. I recommend this fake director’s commentary for After Earth as well as a spoof of Star Wars Episode 2 where Anakin is friendzoned by Padme. It sports dubbed and lip-synced scenes by good voice actors and some original music.
bonus video: Red Letter Media’s take on why the romance of Anakin and Padme in Star Wars is an example of pretty bad screen writing…
MinutePhysics Explains Star Shapes
Most lens flares, especially artificial ones in VFX, have a star-shaped thingy around bright light sources. And every comp software has its own tool for this, whether it’s called glint, glare, highlight and so forth. This video explains the physics behind these star shapes and the correct chromatic aberration if you fake them (spoilers: red is diffracted the most).
With the knowledge from this video, you can make your own star-shaped diffraction patterns using a fourier transformation. Nuke has a tool for this.
Air Traffic Visualization
Nice video about air traffic in Europe on a single day.
Some more info about this can be found on the PR blog of the NATS, the air traffic control company behind this…
Check out the weird flight pattern in the top left corner around 1:10 🙂
Help Fund Fonotune
Fonotune, a stylish indie movie I’m involved in, has hit Kickstarter! An homage to Japanese cinema, cool actors, design, and electronic music – this movie’s got it all. Or rather… it WILL have it all 🙂
It’s almost halfway funded already. Go check out the teaser! And feel free to help us finish the movie if the clip has managed to captivate you.
The project page has all you need to know. Check out the people that director Fabian Hübner has brought on board. The designer of some of the props is just wicked!
Fusion / Syntheyes Bridge
A while ago I’ve blogged about the planar tracking features of Syntheyes and I’ve finally made some updates to the Fusion exporter to support them. In addition to that, I’ve played around with the Python support in Syntheyes and I’ve written a script that can create and update (!) a comp in a running Fusion instance. This saves you a lot of hassle if you have tweaked a matchmove or added trackers to a point cloud but you don’t want to export a composition from scratch!
The package consists of three scripts: an advanced exporter for Syntheyes, a Python script for Syntheyes that is able to create and update tools from a matchmove (camera, point cloud, planar trackers) and a small tool script for Fusion that sets up a Syntheyes project from a selected Loader. Syntheyes Pro 2013.11 or later required for the Python scripts. Readme included.
The Fusion6 exporter is based on the Fusion5 script that ships with Syntheyes and has been updated in many ways:
- support for stereo camera pairs
- support for planar trackers (with or without planar export preparation script)
- work area (timeline) options as in AfterEffects exporter
- Create locked cameras to prevent their accidental modifications
- Added project info to comp’s comments tab and footage name to camera’s comments
- various fixes like paths and obj meshes
- convert paths to a Windows format when running Syntheyes on Mac/Linux
Download the Syntheyes / Fusion bridge here.
