Newbie doing CGI for film, need help on tech. issue..

[Studev]

PM send. Check it

[biliousfrog]

Hi Studev,

I'm actually in a very similar situation, although I will be mostly working on the 3d side of things it would be good to know some of the compositing issues further down the line. Can you shed any light on the forum...or send me some info via PM too?

cheers.

[Studev]

What do you want to know ?

[Aneks]

1. if i start a task on combustion or after effects, is there anything i must click on rather than set the frame rate and saiz of the composition?. i heard something about 8 bit, 10 bit thing .. what is it exactly?

this is a very improtant issue in dealing with 'film' by this I mean scanned 35mm negative. It sounds like you are working using imagery shot on a sony Cine Alta, this is a HD. HD is either 10bit YUV or 8Bit RGB, basically colour depth issues common to film are not going to effect you as you are working on HiDef video colour space project.


2. What will be the final file for me to render and give it to editor for final online... is it quicktime non compress, sequence file.. or i need to ask the editor what is it? or theres any standard file that we use?


your post-production supervisor should have all of these answers. Don't have one ? Who are you delivering the material to ie a film lab ? They will be running it out to film (assuming its a film finnish). they will have a preferred delivery format. Yes ask the editor or post-prodcution supervisor.


3. Do i need to set anything at combustion @ after effects for color mode?
Probably not as it sounds like you are working with video colour space imagery. Just make sure this is the case. If you plan on doing final shots in your facility. Buy a RAID and a HD I/O card like a Blackmagic Decklink, you will also need to put down some money for a proper HD monitor. Like a Sony HR studio or similar. Welcome to the high-end.

Prepare to spend some money !

[RiKToR]

As far as final coloring goes, that usually done by DI (digital intermediate) or a Lab which will the final grading for the final film look. You just need to make sure your comps hold up in their current color space. You should really have an effect supervisor making sure that these questions are answered though, because each production pipeline is different.

[Studev]

Hi biliousfrog

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[biliousfrog]

thanks studev,

I don't have any specific questions as yet, I'm just looking out for pitfalls in the future.

Are there any books worth getting on working for film which covers formats, colour space etc?

[frozenspell]

Thank you Anex & RiKtor for replying me an answer..

ill talk with those guys who doing the offline editing of the movie and ask these question.
Thanks again for clear up things in my head.

i will ask more general technical things afterwards.

thank you....

[Aneks]

Are there any books worth getting on working for film which covers formats, colour space etc?

After Effect 7 : Studio Techniques
http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-After-Effects-Studio-Techniques/dp/0321385527/ref=pd_sim_b_1/102-2517525-0768941

DV Rebels Guide
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0321413644?tag=prolost-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0321413644&adid=10WCXTH7JQHWAGB7TB5M&

Digital Compositing for film and video
http://www.amazon.com/Digital-Compositing-Film-Video-Second/dp/024080760X/ref=pd_sim_b_3/102-2517525-0768941

the Art and science of digital compositing
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Compositing-Kaufmann-Computer-Graphics/dp/0121339602/ref=pd_sim_b_2/102-2517525-0768941

[frozenspell]

greetings.

Right now im creating a montage for the upcoming film i just said earlier. Im still in modelling phase.

i have question for rendering in MAYA 8.

i would like to render this files into separate layers with pass as i learn from the tutorials which include occlusion pass, color pass etc. Then i comp it on combustion... The render mode i may use either Mental Ray or just Maya Software.. depends on the shots.


in rendering tab, rather than set the settings to HD size from sequence and set it to 24p.

what else i should tick? espc. the 10 bit part.. im still confuse.. i saw the 10 bit column on combustion.. do i need to tick something in MAYA regarding on this?.

im still worried about the film process after this, if i did not tick any 'must tick' option.. i may encounter the blur and not so cool images on the cinema as i render and see it in my pc.

can u guys give me some tips about this??..

thanks...

[Aneks]

Maya software or mental ray will not render to a 10bit format. I think you need to check this, but like I said before I think you just have 8bit video space source footage. If this is the case then just use normal 8 bit per channel render files.

The film colour space issue only applies when you are using source material that is 10bit .cin or .dpx files that have come from SCANNED 35mm film.

[frozenspell]

ohh.. what u mean is that .. when i have a task which involves those digitize offline from shooting part.. then composite with CG elemets or filter effects from combustion.. must be set with 10 bit.

but for fully 3d animation.. just make sure what i see on pc is good.. then later when came to cinema.. will look exactly just like i render. And ofcourse.. fully CG also involve composite afterwards and just thick the 10 bit option.. it just give the same thing

i must make sure the size and aspect ratio are correct and comp it...

is that what u mean Aneks?

[Aneks]

The source footage you are getting, what has been digitised, is it 8bit RGB or YUV ?

If the footage is coming from a digital camera source, such as CineAlta or HDcam, or even from telecine then 8bit 3d renders will be fine.

If the footage is coming from a SCANNED 35mm negative or a DataCine with a Logarithmic encoding, then you may want to consider using 16 bit or 32bit per channel files to give you more colour range.

An easy way to tell If the material is coming from one of these sources. SCANNED 35mm Negative will generally be in .cin or .dpx format. It will looked washed out or very unsaturated when imported into Combustion, because of the logarithmic encoding.

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_archive.html

[ARTillery]

hello frozenspell,

I'm currently in a situation that resembles yours a lot, I read the above comments and guides and they gave me a good idea about the subject. I didn't start with the project yet, but I'm about to very soon, this thread already gave me some help.

It would help me a lot if you post your progress with the subject, and if you encounter any problems so I can make use of your experience, or if you like you can send me a PM or an email with the details.

thank you very much.

[frozenspell]

hello and greetings.

thanks 4 helping me previously regarding the 10 bit/ 8 bit issue. it really helps me on doing the CG.

some screenshot from what i did
http://www.petrakhus3d.net/antoofighter/mendentah.jpg

i have some question, i hope i post it on the correct thread :

4 this project im using after effects 7 for compositing and the 3d sequence from MAYA 8.

a. how do i link zdepth passes from maya into aftereffects?. do i need plugin?

b. im a bit tired of doing time remapping for looping graphics on my scene. what i do is.. copy and paste the keyframe to do the loop. is there any way i can do loop using expression or anything in aftereffects?


thats for now, sorry if this question is not suitable in this thread.:love:

[Hugh]

A lot of people have been saying that, because it was shot on CineAlta, it will be video colour space - does the CineAlta not give Log images too?

If you're interested in finding out more about a Log/Lin workflow, I wrote a long post on
my blog (http://www.brokenpipefilms.com/unframedvfx/2007/05/colour-space-and-the-many-pitfalls/) recently about all of this....

[Aneks]

maybe the new ones do but basically no. CineAlta always used to just be hi-res video cameras.

had a look at your blog post. good information. I think you more or less have the principles down. Remembering that 2.2 is not a magic bullet for gamma lookup. Really all this stuff relies on accurate calibration. Once you have a calibrated monitor then you can begin to rely on things like lookups and vLUTs

Another thing to note is that the Marcie LAD will not display properly on a 8 bit monitor, regaurdless of gamma, if you do not nominate a clipping black and white point. Looking at for example a Shake log-lin you have a the traditional 95,685 values. One of the main reasons so much noise has been made about Linear Floating Point or Gamma-Corrected Linear Floating Point, as we should probably call it, is that you promote images to float before doing a gamma correction and setting black and white points. Becasue shake will not clip vlaues in float then you are not loosing data.

Then you can use a vLUT to make the image 'look right'. Usually by nominating the calibrated gamma of your monitor.

I guess you already know this but it is a big part of the process and not mentioned in your blog.

I wrote a LONG, I mean 15 page long, document for describing a film pipeline in Shake for a facility I worked at with the help of a bunch of other folks and it was a really complex process. I wish I could distribute the final but it remains their property. Anyway. it took like a week and a lot of reading kodak white papers but basically, the eLin solutiuon that Stu Maschwitz proposes is pretty much a good way to go. Provided you are working with calibrated monitors. Truelight is very cool too. and free !

t.

[Hugh]

Interesting - would have loved to have been able to have a read of that....

I only really glossed over the whole gamma thing - more to give people who are working in video an idea of how it ties in. Most of my blog post was more aimed at people who are working on film, but don't quite understand why we have log and lin and when you should work in each one....

If you've got any thoughts specifically on the blog post, do chuck them in a comment on there...

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