My World of VFX

Working with very large files in Photoshop

Hannu Hoffrén — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:58:44 +0000

Sometimes I’m in a situation where I need to handle very high resolution layers in Photoshop and would love to work with smaller resolution proxies instead and only later have the high detail image for the corresponding layers. But, I’ve never figured out the way to replace the contents of the Smart Objects (proxies) without the layer dimensions exploding on the main composition after the file inside the Smart Object has been resized. Well, now I finally found a way and I’m so happy about it that I need to tell the world! (I really couldn’t find anything from the web.. maybe it is too simple and obvious task? )

This is really simple. When inside the Smart Object layer file, do not change the pixel size straight from the pixel values, change the resolution value instead!! The important part here is the Document Size values must not change. Then just bring the high resolution version on top of the image (flattening might be a good idea too) and save. When you go back to the main composition, the dimensions of the layer are exactly the same than before but the low res layer is now high res. And of course, if you made any duplicate layers of the Smart Object they are updated too.

I can’t believe I didn’t find this out sooner!

Resizing a Smart Object

Scars by Phantom

Hannu Hoffrén — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 22:46:48 +0000

Got a quick assignment to edit & decorate some wonderful Delicode Visualizer Kinect material, which was recorded and created by Julius Tuomisto (Coordinator/Director) & Janne Karhu (Visualizer Programming) for music video “Scars” by Phantom. I think I’ve never had so many (14) simultaneous tracks in any of my edits before and it was quite a struggle at times to decide which was the best material for the cut.

Anyway, it still was fun to edit and even more fun to decorate it in After Effects with Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Suite. Also, some Trapcode Particular was used. Check out the video below, the track “Scars” by Phantom is really great!

Two thirds of raw edit done

3d tracking in Blender

Hannu Hoffrén — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 13:49:47 +0000

Tested Blender’s new tracking system available in tomato branch with the smoke simulation at the same time. While the whole tracking task from start to the end is not as automated and fine tuned (yet?) as in commercial trackers, the actual tracking data is already very good. One thing that is still missing is object tracking, so the smoke emitter was animated by hand.

I made the whole composition work in After Effects as it was more easy to remove the tracking markers there so didn’t want to jump between different compositions all the time.

Blender work going to big screen!

Hannu Hoffrén — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 11:34:07 +0000

While Snowblind’s 3d Blu-ray crowdfunding is nearing its end, some great news was received, it has been approved to Almeria Western Festival on September 9th, 2011!

Now YOU have a change to get your copy and even your name on big screen FOR FREE! Check out what this recent update by Kalle-Max says:

COMPETITION TIME! Yes Folks, it’s less than 24 hours to go now… Time to start a little competition All you have to do is use your IndieGoGo share tools for our campaign, the site keeps track and informs us of your progress. The person with the most referrals will get a FREE SNOWBLIND BLU-RAY – and if someone manages to raise $500 in funds, we’ll give them a THANK YOU CREDIT in the films’ end crawl

Oh and BTW, we’ll definitely make those Blu-rays, even if we have to hand-print them ;D

In other words: “OK, ramblers – Let’s get rambling!”

If you want to help the guys, go on and share your referral link. And if you feel sharing a link is not enough, go get your perk at Snowblind 3d – Disk Release page. Blu-ray is coming whatever the case is so now there’s a change to get a unique version with the personalized thank you message! Gogogo to IndieGoGo, there’s only 19 hours left!!

An easy method to view 3D Youtube content fullscreen

Hannu Hoffrén — Wed, 11 May 2011 19:43:39 +0000

First, the actual main reason of this post. If the movie in the following demo video seems interesting, go check this out http://www.indiegogo.com/SNOWBLIND. The guys need all the help possible so they can publish the movie in 3D Blu-ray.

The instructions for viewing the stereographic content in Youtube:

Go find a flat and clean mirror. If it’s not clean, wash it. If it’s not flat.. well.. try finding one.

When you got one, here’s the demo video for testing the method. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kHwTtAM0Aw

You should see two images side by side and the beginning text in the left image flipped. If not, change the Youtube player’s settings:

Find “3D” button next to the resolution button (which usually says 360p) and click it.
Choose “Other Options”.
Under “No 3D device”, choose “View video with no 3D device”.
Find the same “3D” button and now choose “Mirror split”.
Click “It works! Take me back to my video”.
Open the video in full screen (you may change to better resolution too).
Put the mirror’s edge on your nose so that the reflecting side is to the left.
Focus your eyes to the image on the right.
Adjust the mirror so that you can see the combined image clearly.
Enjoy full screen (or half screen actually) true colored stereographic video on your normal 2D screen!!

Ps. So, did it look good? Just in case you forgot: http://www.indiegogo.com/SNOWBLIND

Matchmoving project

Hannu Hoffrén — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 02:10:34 +0000

Update Sep 17 2011 This video was chosen as The PFhoe Project of The Year by the http://www.thepixelfarm.co.uk staff!!! I really can’t thank them enough! Go on and check the other great entries here http://www.pfhoe.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=282!

Note: There’s spoilers about the video in the text below.

The idea behind this video was born when I was reading something about space shuttle’s size (~56m) and then compared it to Puijo Tower (~75m). Also, listening to Muse’s Exogenesis Part 1 gave a strong boost for the motivation and I wanted to practice with the tools I’ve got, so live the project went. Actually the Muse’s song was also dispiriting as I would’ve loved to use the song in this video, but all the hassle & possible costs with copyrights forced me to leave it out from this as this was just a practice without any income. Anyway, if you know the song, think about the part where the drums & Matt’s singing starts and match it with the liftoff. That part always gives me goosebumps. Then again, the mood of the song is pretty serious so it might be just a good thing I didn’t use it here. Ah well.. enough of babbling. Luckily there was some great songs at www.jamendo.com so I managed to finish this in a satisfactory way.

Happy new year to everyone!!

Sintel & Dogs

Hannu Hoffrén — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:06:47 +0000

Even though the dark one (Reetta) looks so very guilty, my guess is this was doings of the blond one (Maisa). I’m kinda speechless here so I let the photo speak for itself.

Blender -> Renderfarm.fi -> Wreckamovie

Hannu Hoffrén — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:46:07 +0000

A while ago, people at www.renderfarm.fi and www.wreckamovie.com made a significant update to their systems. It is now possible to attach a Renderfarm.fi session into a Wreckamovie shot, so the rendering progress and the final result can be viewed straight inside Wreckamovie tasks. A very nice addition I must say! I made short(ish) tutorial on how to send a scene from Blender to Renderfarm.fi and also, how to attach the session into a Wreckamovie shot.

Bike sled – composition breakdown

Hannu Hoffrén — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:11:15 +0000

A while ago, I had the privilege to work on some of the Snowblind movie’s visual effects. What I did mostly was 3d smoke simulations & 3d particle simulations and some simple 3d background elements. There was one a bit more complicated 3d scenery too though. I used Blender for all those of course. I did a lot of compositing in After Effects and below’s one example of the layers what those compositions usually did hold.

The workflow in the shots I was involved in went so that Kalle Max Hofmann sent the raw video layers or pre composited layers plus an alpha layer for them. Then I added the particles and such and sent the layers back to Kalle. It was great to see afterwards how Kalle used and merged the shots in the movie. For example the last color gradings to night that you can see in this video was done by Kalle.

Oh, I almost forgot. I found this task at www.wreckamovie.com, go check it out if you’re interested in participating in movie making.

A simple test image for anaglyphic (red-cyan) glasses

Hannu Hoffrén — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:03:54 +0000

A pair of red-cyan glasses for viewing anaglyphic stereoscopic images arrived just today and I noticed some ghosting in the images around the web. Quick googling didn’t give good results so made a simple test image myself so I can adjust my monitor’s colors to reduce the color leakage (not that it helped much.. a little but not much). Here it is, maybe now that this is here, quick googling will show it to others who need one. I’d be interested in hearing about how to create good anaglyphic imagery as at least for my current setup, the darker backgrounds seem to yield more ghosting than lighter backgrounds.

If you’re interested in filming in stereo, check you the on-demand webinar at NewMediaWebinars. Lot’s of valuable info there. The link is below.