Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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Hmm, the lights in AE aren’t that processor intensive, are you using an older machine (specs, please)? Also, what version of AE are you using?
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
All of the Terminator liquid metal was done via 3D apps like Maya. Good luck getting this effect without extreme 3D and visual effects skills.
You could cheat it by shooting the person on greenscreen and apply effects to them that simulate metallic skin or something, but it won’t look like T2…
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
The most important thing in a key backdrop is the purity of the color. Ideally you want your final footage to have a background that is pure green (000,255,000 in photoshop or AE) or pure blue (000,000,255). Deviations in lighting, backdrop color etc. will affect this, and as conditions worsen so do your chances of pulling an awesome key.
As for selecting a backdrop, don’t buy anything from Joe Filmmaker on EBay, and if possible buy from a reputable dealer like B&H. They don’t tend to carry total crap products, so you are more likely to get a good product.
As a side note to this, lighting the greenscreen is far more important than most people pay attention to. It mustn’t be understated that your ability to properly light the screen is 80% of its effectiveness. There are tricks that help, like buying a pure green camera filter. When you hold a sheet of white paper up to your lit greenscreen and look through the pure green lens, the paper and greenscreen should be indistinguishable (in an absolutely perfect world). This will tell you how far off the mark you are, and serves as an accurate yet simple visual measurement tool.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Green originates in the luminance channel of YUV video signals (i.e. any modern digital video) but that doesn’t matter much when you think about how most keyers work. Keylight, Primatte etc. are all difference keyers, in that they look for the difference in luminance and chrominance (brightness and color, respectively) between pixels. Therefore, if you use a greenscreen your keyer still compares it to a mucky color channel (blue and red) to determine the key. If you use a bluescreen, it will be compared against green and red, so you still benefit from the green channel’s ever-so-slightly improved sampling values.
In short, the keyer uses all channels to create the key, so it isn’t a significant factor in choosing the color of backdrop. What IS significant is on-set factors, per my post below.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
People will tell you that green works better with DV footage, but it’s an old wive’s tale.
The choice usually comes down to on-set factors – will the actor be wearing colors containing green or blue hues? If the clothing might lean towards green, use a bluescreen. Blonde hair can tend to key better when using bluescreen (since blonde hair has a fair amount of green component in it).
Both are equally well suited for keying work, but since the choice is dependent on factors you won’t know in advance, you may want to get both.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
The video card is unnecessary, so I would trim that out of your estimate. After Effects has never used video cards very effectively, unless you have an NVidia Quadro or equivalent (which is very spendy).
The processor you listed would be great.
If Windows is a must, use Windows XP (ideally 64-bit), AVOID Vista.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Moving/sharing render settings is easy. When you add an item to the render queue, click the triangle next to each render option (Settings and Output Module) and choose Make Template. It automatically creates a new template called Untitled, so just hit the Delete button to clear that. Then, in the lower left corner select “Save All.” this allows you to save the settings as a file that can be imported back into other AE machines, Mac or PC.
As for the workspace settings, not sure how to do that. Sorry!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Wow. That is one scary story.
I must say, however, that I can’t believe you continued to offer discounts, breaks, compromises etc. much less communicated at ALL after he physically assaulted you. You should have immediately called the cops, filed a report, and sued the living $%%# out of him.
Hind site 20/20 and all of that…
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Needless to say, one of the primary advantages of a farm is being able to offload renders while continuing to work. If you are talking about having your existing artist workstations double as the render farm, rendering will have to be done after hours (or on unused stations) since it consumes that machine’s resources and eradicate the farm’s usefulness.
With regards to the farm itself, you should avoid the “Watch Folder” technique and invest in some actual render farm management software. My studio uses Smedge, which is only $89 per license and has most if not all of the features of way more costly solutions. You can install the render node version of AE on all of the render machines (if they don’t already have AE installed) for free, which will be required for the farm to work properly.
Also, maybe I misread your post but it sounds like you are weighing setting up a farm vs. upgrading one or more machines. The difference in cost and complexity can be substantial unless you already have dedicated render boxes available. If cost truly isn’t an issue I would highly recommend a farm, but only if the machines you are planning to use are somewhat dedicated to farm use, and are not production machines that artists use frequently. Also bear in mind that there are technical considerations. An After Effects farm can only render frame sequences, not Quicktime files, and this can throw some people’s work flows for a loop.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
My studio archives projects and associated media for 6 months for free, as part of our service. These archives do not include final output files (such as master Quicktime files etc.) but it does include all source media (video captures, After Effects renders etc.). After 6 months source media are deleted but all project files are kept for 2 years.
We too face the endless crunch of storage needs, but we generally back up to external drives because they are so cheap. This way we can get the media off of our central storage and free up space for current projects. With most projects we also back up to data DVDs and take those off-site for protection against disasters. We don’t use tape backup (though that will change soon) simply for economic reasons, but it is highly recommended.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com