[Erik Pontius]

Ok…it’s just a short paragraph:

The Ephors consult their Oracle, a young Spartan woman who undergoes an orgiastic trance caused by inhaling hallucinogenic smoke. Production shot the Oracles’s trance at 150 frames per second, ‘wet-for-dry’, with the performer submerged in a water tank in Montreal, backed by bluescreen. “The water tank gave the Oracle a very ethereal look,” said Hunt. “We had to solidify the look between when she was in the water and when she was out of the water, matching skin tonality and specularity.” Sinuous, coiling smoke-trails involved digital cloth simulations generated in Newtek’s Lightwave 3d 8.5. “We morphed geometry through an animated bone chain. That gave us a random smoky look while allowing us to control placement. We rendered multiple passes and used Eyeon’s Digital Fusion to put them together with glows, dissolves and practical smoke elements.”

-Cinefex number 109 April 2007

[Erik Pontius]

Might want to see if you can locate a copy of CineFex magazine issue 106, there is an article on creating the visual effects of 300, including the oracle scene you’re referring to.
I’ll dig out my copy and see if I can give you a recap….

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Tried that. Might be fine for a box or something with straight edges. With the curved edge of the side of the boot and the toe of the boot, once you get the back edge of the heel and front edge of the toe lined up with skew, you cover the portion in the middle that is curved inward.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I like a lot of Stubbings work. Also done primarily in AE.
https://www.stubbings.ch/

Check out the Motion Design section. If you want to see AE in action, check out the “6er Gascho clip” music video…then watch the behind the scenes clip that shows how he built it all in AE.

Vegas might have a hard time doing that…

I’d also recommend the “After Effects in Production” book by Trish & Chris Meyers, for real world examples of using AE in more broadcast uses. It’s a little dated, but still applicable.
“After Effects Studio Techniques” by Mark Christiansen also has a lot of real world application of AE…certainly beyond panning and cropping photographs.
If you want new ways to create more engaging better looking motion graphics, start experimenting more with AE. It’s a whole new toolbox to work with.
Years ago, I thought that the built in effects and capabilities of various NLE’s were fine…then I started experimenting with AE, first with simple things that I could have done in the NLE and then into more advanced things as I got more familiar with AE and it’s capabilities. Try it you’ll like it.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Premultiplied and Straight are different ways of generating the alpha channel. Problem with Premultiplied alpha is that it includes the background in with the RGB channels and then information about how to remove that background. Problem comes when you have subtle semi-transparent areas like drop shadows, the background color is not always completely removed, causing obvious quality problems. Try changing your background color in AE to a gawdawful pink color (composition, background color), then export and import into Avid, you’ll probably notice that some of the nasty pink color wasn’t removed from some areas.
Straight includes alpha information on a separate channel and can be removed cleanly since it doesn’t include the background mixed in with the rest of the image.
When you are finished with your comp and choose to add it to the render queue, under your output module settings there are options for Channels where you would choose RGB + Alpha and a pull down for Color, in it are two options: the default “Premultiplied (matted)” and “Straight (unmatted)”. Choose “Straight (unmatted)” from the pull down and render out your file. Import it into Avid and look at the results.

There is also a video tutorial here at the COW on it:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/straight_vs_premult.php

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

You can see the state of your alpha in AE by clicking on the “show only alpha” button (a white button) in the comp window. If the screen is completely white, your alpha when imported into Avid will lack an transparency.
Some effects, such as AE’s Lens Flare effect, will need to be “unmultiplied” to create a proper alpha channel.
Walker Effects has a “Premultiply” plugin that will do the trick by choosing the “unmultiply” option (the plugin is included on the companion CD of the Meyer’s “Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects” books).
There is also a free “Unmult” plugin available for download at Red Giant Software:
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/unmult.html

I’d also recommend exporting “straight” alphas from AE instead of the default “premultiplied” option in the render queue output module.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

I read a quick article in Television Broadcast News magazine (Jan 2007) about “Television, Computers, & Sports” they mentioned the virtual lines of play and that SportVision is one company that provides the technology.
Their website has some cool information about the technology.
https://www.sportvision.com/
It looks to be quite a bit more complicated than one would think using lasers to get field elevation data to generate a 3d map, 3 cameras are outfitted with special gear, and computers that feed it all back to one camera.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Not free, but Trapcode LUX is a great plugin creating for volumetric lighting. You can download the demo and try it out.

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

Nope. I’m a PC user…
got to:
https://www.senkou.com/
Click on the “download current version” link in the upper right corner.

MDV is newer and more up to date, with support for MXF as well as OMF files (mediasift isn’t aware of MXF). You can download the latest version here:
https://fiool.nm.ru/progz/
Click on the “Build 23” link..

Erik

[Erik Pontius]

These particular tools were created to fill a gap in functionality with the Media Tool. The Avid media tool is great for some media management and is a necessary and invaluable tool for managing your projects. It is great for locating the media files for a particular project for purposes of cleaning out old precompose files, unused clips, etc… It is a tool you should be very familiar with.
MDV and MediaSift are extremely easy utilities (and FREE) that provide a quick and efficient way of collecting and copying the media files for backup or moving to a different drive. I use them regularly for copying media from one system to work on it on a different system (say from a desktop to a notebook and external drive) or if you need to give the project and media for that project to someone else to work on.

Erik