Visual Effects and Rotoscoping

I have here below a rotoscoping tutorial.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1048359[/vimeo]

 ”The work presents an interactive system for quickly creating alpha mattes for objects in a video. Unlike previous techniques commonly employed in the visual-fx industry (e.g., rotoscoping) our system can help novice users create professional quality mattes with very little manual effort.

These alpha mattes can then be used to cut out objects from one video and composite them into another video. Alpha mattes can also be used to apply image filters selectively to objects in a video.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqsVTPnmh8A&feature=related[/youtube]

Now Apple Final Cut Pro users can animate live-action video with NewBlue Cartoonr,  the fast, easy and free way to give scenes a cartoon look from NewBlueFX.  Inspired by those stylized television ads for a major brokerage firm, NewBlue chief technology officer Todor Fay led his team in designing a lightweight, flexible free video effects plugin that instantly applies a hand-drawn, cartoon-like effect to live video. Explains Fay, with NewBlue Cartoonr, users can combine intriguing artistic effects with the power of live action.

Read more about it here.

Zander has prepared a tutorial on rotoscoping where he has compared the basics of  rotoscoping in three different applications such as Nuke,Combustion and AE.

View his rotoscoping tutorial here.

VFX Industry Influencers to Participate on Panel of Judges; Winner Takes Home $10,000 VFX Tool Kit

GUILDFORD, UK (July 8, 2008) Imagineer Systems (www.imagineersystems.com), creators of next-generation VFX tools, today announced it is extending a challenge to Imagineer Systems customers and the entire VFX, content creation and post production community, to create the next great series of video tutorials for Imagineer Systems VFX tools. Continuing its spirit of listening to, and learning from its customers, the Company is challenging users to create video tutorials that best educate new users of Imagineer VFX solutions on the workflow features of its tools.

The winners will be judged on content, video quality, technical quality of audio and video and instructional clarity and completeness. Additionally, the top winner will receive a comprehensive Imagineer Systems VFX software suite valued at $10,000. Winners will be formally announced by the Company to the industry press, and the winning entry will be highlighted on www.imagineersystems.com.

As part of the contest, Imagineer Systems executives, as well as industry influencers and well-known VFX heavyweights such as Aharon Rabinowitz of Creative Cow and AENY, Chris Meyer of Cybermotion and Mark Christiansen of Pro Video Coalition, will participate on a panel of judges and will help decide on the winning entries.

“We have always been committed to listening to what our customers are saying about Imagineer Systems products, and we take their feedback very seriously,” said Allan Jaenicke, chief executive officer of Imagineer Systems. “One of the resounding comments we hear from customers is, ‘we want more tutorials.’ As we thought about tackling this request, we realized that by challenging the community to share their ideas with us, we could ultimately deliver a series of tutorials with perspectives, tips and advice that are so valuable to users, and at the same time, generate a lot of excitement in the community. We’re very excited to see what our users come up with!”

Read more of the contest details here.

This is clip from the Korean film, “Life is Cool”. This is a story about three best friends falling for the same woman and traces the respective dating styles of a goofy playboy, reckless Romeo and hopeless romantic. This movie has an adult sense of humor that would make you want to hang out with your old buddies.

Life is cool was done through rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is tracing a live action sequence frame-by frame. Although shooting this movie took about a month only, the post production process took two years. A total of 140 rotoscoping artists completed the roto job.

Director Choe Ik-hwan (“Whispering Corridors 4: Voice”) brings “Life Is Cool,” South Korea’s first rotoscoped film. In this HD film project by CJ Entertainment, local production company DNA, which whipped up animation and graphics for “The Animatrix,” creates hip visuals for a friendly love story.

Director Choe Ik-hwan draws his inspiration from Richard Lanklater’s film, “A Waking Life”, a rotoscoped movie about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state.

You can read the press release for “Life is Cool” here.

You might have seen this before. This is the part 1 of the rotoscoping tutorial by Scott Squires.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z32h-b9-8Qw[/youtube]

Version 5 feature highlights include a new Optical Flow-based Motion Key for foreground object removal, Optical Stabilizer for smooth image stabilization, and a range of other new effects. OS and host support extends to the latest version of Linux and the 2009 lineup of Autodesk compositing and finishing systems: Flint, Flame, Inferno, and Smoke, including Burn network rendering. The BCC 5 Sparks package contains a total of 145 filters including the popular Glint, Glitter, and Glare series, Lens Flare, Film Process, Film Damage, Particle Systems, Volumetric Lighting Rays, and Wipe effects.

“The new Autodesk Sparks update of the popular BCC package will save our customers time and money by automating tedious frame-by-frame rotoscoping jobs with Optical Flow technology,” comments Boris Yamnitsky, founder and president, Boris FX. “Many new effects and workflow suggestions came straight from our user forums as well as Autodesk’s customer base.”

Boris Continuum Complete is the only plug-in suite that allows users to swap filter presets with other BCC host applications regardless of the manufacturer or model. This streamlined workflow allows editors to copy effects from offline to finish and vice versa.  Additionally, the new BCC Sparks release includes over 1,500 preset effects, further accelerating effects production workflow.

New BCC 5 Sparks Filters include:

Motion Key – remove moving foreground objects based on the motion vector field automatically generated by the filter.

Extruded Image Shatter – break up an image into extruded shards flying in 3D space.

LED – transform a movie clip or text layer as if it was displayed on an array of blinking LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights.

Prism – simulate the photographic effect of chromatic aberration for artistic effects or auto-generated backgrounds.

Damaged TV – emulate the look of a badly-tuned or broken analog CRT television screen.

Scanline – create rolling RGB scanlines over the source image – for example, as if a computer monitor is shot by a video camera.

Optical Stabilizer – automatically lock a hand-held shot without having to set up tracking points.

Color Choker – Posterize and blur color channels to achieve creative and artistic looks.

BCC Cube – create a six-sided cube with your choice of media and transparency for each side.

BCC Turbulence – create gel-like distortion fields using noise map and turbulence controls.

Half-Tone – simulate the look of a newspaper print in grayscale or color.

Noise Map 2 – generate procedurally-based, resolution-independent, auto-animated clips.

Light Wrap – reflect the background layer in the foreground composite.

BCC 5 Sparks is immediately available through the Boris FX worldwide reseller channel and direct from the Boris FX web site at www.borisfx.com for an MSRP of $2495.00 for new licenses and $695.00 for upgrades. Users can test-drive BCC 5 Sparks by downloading a 60-day Trial Version from the Boris FX web site.

When shooting a stormy scene, you don’t have to wait and hope that your local weather station would announce that lower pressure is building and there’ll be a coming thunderstorm. You can opt to shot even with the sun shining brightly and then later add CG effects to make the sunny weather a bad one.

The article “Making a CG Rainstorm with After Effects Plug-ins and Automated Rotoscoping” discusses the latter option. Based on a commercial for BMW, it shows how a scene shot in sunlight is transformed into a fierce rainstorm.

When making this commerical, several techniques were employed. Rain and falling stones are generated by the plugin Particular. One can use it to render 3D particle simulations directly in After Effects. To postprocess the filmed BMW the team used Motor, a popular rotoscoping software by Imagineers.

Making a CG Rainstorm with After Effects Plug-ins and Automated Rotoscoping

I saw this link over at VFXtalk. I am sure most of you go there and mingle with fellow VFX designers. This cool demo reel I am talking about was made by Mariana Acuna, a 2D compositor aspiring to become a VFX supervisor. Pixelbyme, is her personal portfolio. In her demo reel she has done a lot of impressive work such as decomposing a skin, glass shattering, and some wire removal work as wel. All compositing were done using Shake.

(Drum roll please) So here it is finally, Mariana Acuna’s Demo Reel 

What do you think of her works? Good stuff ei? good stuff.