A pet peeve

April 2nd, 2007

I’m writing this while working on a project for Proeye Visual Productions. I’m to make their corporate showreel. Cool, I’m totally into it.

So I’m looking at all the companies that we have produced content for and trying to find their hi res corporate logos on the internet.

Now. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do this. At Burbank, and with free lancing, it was a pretty common thing. Needing a high res copy of a logo to use.

So, note to companies: a media/ press page on your website with high res downloads of your logo would be the coolest thing ever.

Dim Rooms - Update

February 8th, 2007

We have just submitted our short film Dim Rooms to the St Kilda Film Festival.

The short film formerly Heaven and Hell has just had its name changed to Dim Rooms. Heaven and Hell was just a working title before we could come up with something a little bit cooler.

So here is one of the promo posters::

Teaser Poster 1 - Dim Rooms

Stay tuned for more updates…

Expressions, part 3

February 5th, 2007

So then, the expression to make a layer’s (Jedi) opacity to the distance that a roving camera is away from it is…
a = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[0];
b = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[1];
c = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[2];

d = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[0];
e = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[1];
f = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[2];
g = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[0];
h = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[1];
i = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[2];

x = Math.pow(a-d, 2)+Math.pow(b-e, 2)+Math.pow(c-f, 2);
x = Math.sqrt(x);
m = Math.pow(d-g, 2)+Math.pow(e-h, 2)+Math.pow(f-i, 2);
m = Math.sqrt(m);

x = x / m;
x = x * 100;
x = 100 - x;

if(x<10){
x=10
}

Expressions, part 2

February 2nd, 2007

View from top of virtual 'world'

Alright.

What we know is where the camera starts and ends. In After Effects, all the elements in 3D space have an x, y and z position, which is written like this

thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").position[0, 1, 2]

thisComp —the selected composition
layer("Roving Camera") — name of layer (which was actually a “virtual camera”)
position — the attribute we are editing
[0, 1, 2] — the three elements in a position attribute, that is, x y and z.

So, if I have a layer named ‘Han Solo’ and i wanted to make the variable ‘t’ its y position I would write

t = thisComp.layer("Han Solo").position[1]

Or, if I have a layer named ‘Ghengis’ and i wanted to make the variable ‘t’ its z position I would write

t = thisComp.layer("Ghengis").position[2]

So now we want the opacity of a layer (lets call it Jedi) to be proportional to how far away the Roving Camera is. We know the start point of the Roving Camera (an x, y, z coordinate) and we know its end point (and x, y, z coordinate in front of layer Jedi)

Now how to we find the distance between two points?

Finding distance between two points.

And so what about a z point? Well, the equation for that is

Distance between two points in 3D space = equation.jpg

So now we know the distance between the Roving Camera and layer Jedi.

in After Effects expression language this is:

a = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[0];
b = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[1];
c = thisComp.layer("Roving Camera").pointOfInterest[2];


d = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[0];
e = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[1];
f = thisComp.layer("Jedi").position[2];


x = Math.pow(a-d, 2)+Math.pow(b-e, 2)+Math.pow(c-f, 2);
x = Math.sqrt(x);

(I’m using the Camera’s Point of Interest value instead of position as I what the layer Jedi to be fully opaque when the camera is in front of it rather than being on top of it. )

Now, what i did next was do another pythagorean distance equation, this time with a layer at the start position and the layer Jedi

g = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[0];
h = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[1];
i = thisComp.layer("Start").pointOfInterest[2];


m = Math.pow(d-g, 2)+Math.pow(e-h, 2)+Math.pow(f-i, 2);
m = Math.sqrt(m);

Now I’ve got two distances, the total distance (m) and the distance of the camera to the final layer Jedi (x)

I can express the camera distance as a percentage of the final distance

x = x / m;


x = x * 100;

And because I want the end to be 100% opaque, I subtract the total amount by the traveled distance.

x = 100 - x;

Now what we found was that we wanted to slightly see all the objects at the start, so I made a condition that the layer Jedi is always 10% opaque.

if(x<10){
x=10
}

Expressions, part 1

February 1st, 2007

For the new promo dvd for Proeye Video Production, we decided to totally revamp the menu design.

Going from a static look to a 3D environment was a pretty big leap, and meant that we would have to look in to using software capable of dealing with it. I decided on After Effects, as I’m pretty familiar with it and have used its 3D tools in the past.

What is really cool about it, that i only really discovered recently was Expressions. Expressions are like little scripts that changes a layer’s property. You can reference other layer’s properties and there is a whole range of math tools to help you out.

For instance, I had a whole bunch of buttons for the DVD which I needed to see when designing, but then turn them off when I output. So I put an expression on each button-layer’s opacity that referenced the opacity of an adjustment layer. I could then change one variable instead of 30.

So thats a pretty simple example. What was more complex was my next brain-wave.
The DVD menus are designed so that when you go from one to another, its like you are going though into a different part – See this example on Youtube

What we wanted to do was, as the “camera” moved towards an object went from transparent to opaque. The way we did this was through an expression (special thanks to an old friend Stuart Evans, a math teacher at Heathdale Christian College).

Stay tuned for part 2…

Back again

February 1st, 2007

We’re back from holidays and a big early-year project. Yarrawonga, wakeboarding, skiing; it all was fun.

ford + mum

Some big news is that we’ve just been working on the Proeye Visual Productions promo dvd. The showreel is for the upcoming Bridal Show. We totally revamped the menu design and interactivity. It was a real lesson in intergrating the Final cut pro suite and After effects, and managing all the assets that resulted from the production. Expect a big post about my new favourite tool- Expressions…

Away for a little while

December 17th, 2006

Hey all.

The funklab is closing down for a little while over christmas. I will be away from email until Wednesday the 27th, spending some time with the family in yarrawonga.

Have a fun, happy and safe holidays.

mixing things up

November 9th, 2006

Things have really changed here at the funklab. As of last week I have finished the comfort of full time employment, and commiting all my time here. Some of the great clients we’re working with include

Ever awesome Sons of Korah

Visualboards

Proeye Visual Productions

Sons of Korah LIVE

September 15th, 2006

We’ve gone and updated the promo for the Sons of Korah LIVE DVD. I really think its a huge improvement. Adding in some soundbites of Matt’s interview really enhances the experience and using the footage from the DVD (Psalm 137) polishes it up.

Check it out on vimeo or youtube

Heaven and Hell Update

August 26th, 2006

A screenshot of the edit-in-progress

A little progress report on the Heaven and Hell Production. We’re currently two thirds of the way through editing. We’ve colour corrected the first third and are debating on using Matts in the second third (Matts are used to hide a certain bit of image. We’re using them to help us out with adding mood to a shot).

Next challenge comming up is the getting the actors to jump in the recording studio, as we had problems with our on set sound setup.

Things are finally comming together.