3d Modeling/Compositing/Mathematics/Technical

Soft-Skinned 3d Geometry in Blackmagic Fusion

Posted on by Bryan / 3 Comments

Muse VFX recently created visual effects for Robert Rodriguez' From Dusk Till Dawn television series. The show involves a species of reptilian vampires whose teeth fold back like a snake's.

caseStudy_fangs_02
Zane Holtz as Richard Gecko. Fangs folded on the left and extended on the right.

Given the fast pace of television effects, we found that a traditional CG pipeline was painfully slow. The flexing gums meant that animation, lighting and rendering had to be handled in our 3D department, and each iteration required two or three days to get through the pipeline. In an effort to speed things up and make the process more flexible, I and my coworker Christian Bloch (author of the HDRi Handbook; go buy it!) tackled the problem of how to use a soft-skinned mesh in Blackmagic Fusion.Continue reading →

Compositing/Fusion Tools/FX Animation/Glitch Tools/Projects/Technical

Fractal Blocks for Blackmagic Fusion

Posted on by Bryan / 5 Comments

Update: Version 2.0 of FractalBlocks is much faster, has better handling for out-of-range values, and features improved controls. Also, this tool can be found in Reactor, Fusion's free, community-built package manager.

After Effects has a very useful setting in its Fractal Noise effect that turns its output into blocks. Here is a macro that replicates most of that feature in Fusion.

MT_FractalBlocks.setting

It's a bit slow, and there are a couple of issues that I'll eventually iron out, as well as a couple more controls I'd like to add, but in its current form it solves the problems I wanted to solve.

MT stands for MuseTools, a collection of tools and elements created by and for Muse VFX.

fractalBlocks

3d Modeling/Compositing/Technical

Blackmagic Fusion: The Texture Node

Posted on by Bryan / 3 Comments

While I was studying visual effects in college, one of my instructors ran us through an exercise where we recreated a simple chroma-key tool using basic nodes in Shake. The result was no more functional than just using a Chroma Key node, but by understanding what goes on inside the tool, we gained a better understanding of how to use it and, probably more importantly, when not to use it. Unfortunately, I did not really appreciate the lesson at the time, and I do not recall the structure of that custom tool. Years later, however, I have come to realize that I can greatly expand my capabilities by reverse-engineering some of my compositing software's tools and applying what I learn to make new ones.

Long story short: I spent a little time this week deconstructing the Texture tool in Blackmagic Fusion and building a new one using the CustomTool. It turns out that the node is ridiculously simple, but it takes a bit of mental gymnastics to understand what's going on. Or at least, it did for me. So let's get into it.Continue reading →

Art/Illustration/Object and Vehicle Design/Projects

Kinunir Class Battlecruiser redesigned

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My Traveller group is making the transition to the new Traveller 5 rules. Or some of them, at any rate. Using the new ship design rules, I recreated the Kinunir class battlecruiser described in Adventure 1. The existing deckplan didn't even follow the design rules set forth by Classic Traveller, so I threw it out the window, redesigned the ship entirely, and created a new more reasonable deckplan.Continue reading →

FX Animation

FumeFX stair-step artifacts

Posted on by Bryan / 1 Comment

I've had the pleasure of learning some FumeFX* at Eden. Recently I had a scene that gave me some odd artifacts that I couldn't solve. My excellent coworker, Stefan Brederick, spent some time with it and came up with a solution. First, an illustration of the problem:

On the rendering tab, in the Rendering Parameters is a Step Size % setting. By default, this is at 50, and according to the documentation, lowering the value should result in a higher-quality render. In this case, though, for unknown reasons, raising the number improved the result. A comparison render:

I haven't yet figured out exactly why this is happening in this particular scene but not in the others that I've made.

*FumeFX is a plug-in for Autodesk 3DS Max that simulates smoke, fire, and other gaseous fluid effects. I am currently using it to create clouds.

Early Career/Visual Effects Industry

Job titles in VFX and CG: 3d Artists

Posted on by Bryan / 0 Comment

Stereo "3d" movies have made terminology a bit confusing recently. When I refer to 3d, I mean the virtual 3-dimensional Cartesian system that exists inside the computer. 3d artists create objects that exist in that space and can be looked at from any angle (within the software, of course). When I use the term stereo,  I am referring to what viewers often call a "3d movie." It gives the illusion of three dimensions by tricking the viewer's eye into believing that objects on the screen are at different depths. That's not really 3d, though, since no matter where you stand in the theater, you're going to see the same image.  That is, you can't get a different perspective, even though it feels like you should be able to. So, vocabulary lesson aside, I give you:Continue reading →