Joseph W. bourke
Forum Replies Created
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I’m with you David – they’re both a tool to do a job. You like the Mac? Use it. You prefere the PC? Use that. How about using both for their strengths? I’m writing this on my 7 year old PC, and it’s still running like a champ! That doesn’t make it better or worse than a Mac – it’s just working.
I don’t trust evangalists for either platform; they’re usually just trying to pick your pocket.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
And what is Sears acquired Adobe – man…there’d be an NLE in the video panel of every Kenmore refrigerator. I could edit while I browsed the fridge for yesterday’s hot dogs!
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
My general experience has been to run the other way unless you’ve got a camera which will shoot 4:2:2.
The other side of the equation is the lighting. Two separate lighting setups – flat softlights to evenly light the greenscreen, and stretch the greenscreen as tight as you can (spring clips and sandbags) then whatever you need (3 point lighting works pretty well to burn out the spill from the green screen) to match the lighting of the background you intend to use after you’ve pulled the key.
Distance is your friend – get the talent as far away from the green screen as is practically possible with your setup. Then rent a camera which will shoot 4:2:2 (which is akin to BetaSP tape quality). And if the talent wears glasses, do your best to lose them – it can be a nightmare if their head moves around at all, catching bright green reflections which are all but impossible to remove.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Walter –
In a way, it’s the same with Max – there are so many third party renderers to bring photo-real capabilities to Max, but it’s really easy to use the default render engine, which is ok. The good news is that Mental Ray, a high-end, photo-real render engine, comes with Max.
I guess it’s just like any tool. Without the talent and experience, you can get garbage out of even a 2500 dollar software package. What I really like about Max, and Autodesk, is the wealth of free tutorial materials, and a beautiful website dedicated to teaching and information:
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hi Walter –
I stand corrected about C4D’s “plastic” look. I had a feeling it was due more to the rushed nature of broadcast TV, where C4D seems to be most used, than to the actual capabilities of the package.
I’ve been working on a workflow to get as many options as possible into Element 3D, and I’m finding that I can take a whole bunch of CAD formats into Max (freeCAD – needless to say, free – also works with translating on a bunch of CAD formats), then output them as .obj files, and have them show up in Element 3D ready to be textured. It’s a pain in the neck that texture maps don’t just flow in to Element 3D, since the .obj format has the ability to save a .mtl file, which goes into a “maps” sub-folder, ready to go. That will be a request for the next major upgrade to Element 3D. There’s no reason to have to remap all your textures.
As far as my Max workflow to get .obj files with their material ID’s intact, I have to import the CAD file (I prefer .stl or .ipt, but many others work), then go into Polygon mode, select by material ID, then detach the parts I want to show up as separate map channels in Element 3D. It’s a royal pain, but not rocket science. There is a “select by material id” in the Max materials tab that makes pretty quick work of it, as well as a few script out there that will detach by material id – pretty handy.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Tom –
By “CS6” do you mean AE CS6? I have not checked to see if the import capability is there, but it’s surely still there in Photoshop. I personally did not use any of the 3D interactivity between PS and AE because I use Max for that workflow, but the ability to save as .u3d gave me the road to interactive 3D PDF files, which is pretty cool.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Dave –
I don’t get what you’re talking about. I just opened Photoshop CS6, imported a .3ds file, and also had the option – under the 3D pulldown, which is still there, to export the 3D file with a couple of options (.u3d, and .dae, if I remember correctly).
Are you saying that these are “vestigal” capabilities, meaning they’re available, but development is EOL’d, or that they aren’t there, in which case, you’re wrong.
Granted that the 3D capabilities of Photoshop were always pretty lame – I’m a Max user, but there were some capabilities (the .u3d export, for example) that allowed a user to get 3D into PDF files and be interactive, which was waaaay useful. I used it to get client CAD files from Max to Photoshop to a PDF.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
I’d be careful with the Koss headphones – it says right in the copy:
“Ideal for use with racing scanners and metal detectors”
That would scream to me “not likely to be any good”. But Steven has a positive take on them, so I may be wrong.
Here’s my take on a good set, although they’re not noise cancelling, other than the fact that they’re closed muff headphones:
I purchased a pair recently, and love them! I’ve used them to monitor levels when field recording with my Tascam DR-40, and I use them when I’m editing voice-overs with Adobe Audition. For the price, the quality is amazing! Plus the cable to the headset can be disconnected, and it comes with a short, 50 inch cable and a long, heavy duty 11 foot cable, plus an adapter to give you quarter inch stereo capability if needed.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Here’s a set of new freebies (the full set is $19.99, but there are 4 which are free) that add some nice, if common, transitions:
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
It depends on what you want for a learning curve. 3D Plugins for AE have the shortest curve, and you would want to consider Element 3D, a brand new release from VideoCopilot, as well as Zaxwerks Invigorator Pro. I don’t know anything about the Boris product, but I assume that it also has some 3D extrusion capabilities within AE.
Now you really hit the learning curve! I’ve been a 3DS Max user for upwards of 10 years, and I’m lucky if I know 30 percent of the features. That said, it has incredible depth and capabilities. If you want to dip your toes in the waters of full 3D packages, you can get Blender for free, although I find the interface pretty arcane and non-intuitive. But the same could be said for Max I suppose, to the new user. There’s also Cinema 4D, used a lot in the broadcast world for flying titles and such – I find it to be not as high quality looking as Max, but it’s probably because many of the users are under tight deadlines, and don’t use it to its full extent. It gets used a lot in multi-layer composites.
If you really want to scratch your head, look at what gets listed in Wikipedia for 3D packages:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics_software
But I would say that Max, Maya, and Softimage are the big three as far as capabilities go.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com