Bézier Curves

Bézier curves are used all the time in computer graphics and animation. They allow you to make complex vector shapes and motions while only using a very small amount of data. Instead of having to plot every point of a curve, a Bézier curve can be produced from a simple equation. All you need is two points for the beginning and end of he curve, and two extended handles that you can stretch to change the angle and intensity of the curve. It is very simple to use these curves, and you can easily achieve the curves you want with trial and error, but it is hard to understand how they work without a good explanation. I found an extremely simple and satisfying video explanation of how Bézier curves work. This might help you in the future if you work with Bézier curves, and if not, it's still entertaining for anyone who has no idea what a Bézier curve is and doesn't care either.

Our Current Projects

So clearly working on these projects have been a lot of work and taken a lot of time. But after all of the work that we have put in, it has most definitely come a long way. The insert yourself into a movie project has honestly been the most difficult one. I feel as though it required the most amount of work just to be able to find a scene that it was even possible to insert yourself into.

Me doing Ferris Bueller, I thought that it wouldn't be too difficult. Clearly I was wrong when I chose a scene that was just about 5 minutes long. But that's not the point. The point is that learning to roto-scope yourself into a project will be able to help me out much later in life. Especially if I am able to possibly get a job working in post.

The name project and the intro project are also very time consuming, however, I felt as though we would be able to be much more creative and show our style and show what we can actually do and what we have actually learned in this class. The name project that I did was difficult and time consuming, but I feel as though it came out really good for the amount of information that I know.

The Dexter project that I'm doing is taking me the longest because I have my own footage that I am trying to adjust to make it fit into the intro. Being able to put cool effects into it also is time consuming because putting an effect that doesn't exactly fit can really hurt you and throw off the whole aura of your project.

Anyway, the point of this post was to talk about the projects that we are working on in class. Once they are done, I can't wait to show all of my friends that I was able to accomplish such a thing.

Resident Evil Zombies

You know, I know that the zombies in Resident Evil are CGI. Well, rather the BIG zombies. The "normal people zombies" are  clearly just people in makeup. But I've always wondered about the CGI zombies.

There isn't a lot of information online about the making of these things, but I can do my best to try and describe it as best as I can.

Being a fan of all of the Resident Evil movies, I have been able to see the evolution of the CGI from the first film to the last, and when I tell you how much it's actually changed, it is honestly crazy. In the span of 10 years, the technology has obviously become more and more advanced; so being able to create more intricate and more "gruesome"zombies was becoming more and more possible.

Watching the first movie, the CGI for 2002 was honestly not too bad. But watching the last (2012), oh man was it so much better. The way they were able to improve it to make it look so much more... well.. as real as they can without getting cheesy.

But relating this post to my previous posts, with great detail comes great render time. I was unable to find how much time it took for the render times, however, you can probably guess that it wasn't a short time. But all in all... they made a great movie.

First blog post for the class... Here it goes!

So I decided to make this post about something that Arturo mentioned towards the end of the class that really sparked my attention: Render-farms. It peaked my interest because I LOVE computer stuff and hearing it made me think about it and want to look more into it. So away we go.

Doing some research online about what a Render-farm is, I come across a slew of images.Taking a look at these, clearly the range in size from small enough to fit into filing drawers or large enough to blow your mind. That's what they would look like. However, when you hear the words "render-farm," I'm sure you're curious to know what it actually is. The simple definition is a large number of computers all wired together in order to render large videos. A more technical definition, according to Wikipedia, the higher the quality of the images and videos, the more processing they would need to keep that quality. When an image needs more processing, clearly more time is going to be needed. So in order to shorten that time, having more computing power does just that. The more computers you have and the more power you have in each of said computers, the faster the rendering will be completed WHILE keeping the quality that you want.

So in retrospect, if you want a feature length film that is shot in 1080p to be finished by a deadline in a week, a Render-farm is most definitely going to be in need.

Transforming Train Whaddup

So this an animation done by some dude named Dan Tremont, an animator who is skilled as any I've ever stumbled across online. This is a simple, 12 second animation that showcases the animators talent for texturing, modeling and animating a very interesting sequence. This probably took a long time to render, but I'd say it probably landed him a few jobs. Maybe he can make the next Transformers movie better than the last two God-awful pieces of "cinema." But I digress, here's the vid:

 Tell me that isn't awesome.

It's simple, yet totally effective. It's a stylized animation, not super realistic where this could be in a Transformers/Battleship movie, but simple enough to get the point across. That's what the best short VFX clips do: they showcase the author's talent.

But here's a friendly reminder that sometimes the best visual effects are no visual effects at all (miniatures and practicals)  :) 

Stop Motion is AWESOME

So I know a lot of you guys have probably seen this video before but it still gets me every time.  Stop Motion truly leaves me in awe.

My absolute favorite part of the video is when he is cutting one thing and it magically turns into dice as soon as the knife hits the cutting board.  If you were not paying attention to the fact that he is using things like grenades and baseballs to make guacamole, you would think it was a cooking tutorial.

It has great comedic timing and sounds effects.  The colors are absolutely brilliant and the picture is unbelievable.  This video has inspired me to make a short film with stop motion.  Now I just need to know where to start.

In class we are learning all about title sequences.  However, I hope that we can learn how to create a stop motion short film using the wonders of After Effects.  I love the convergence of art technologies.