Our After Effects professor is Mark Christiansen, author of "Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional Studio Techniques". Christiansen will provide intermediate users with insights on how to get the most of of the tools in a production environment -- breaking down many of the tools and showing the best way to use them in a production environment. The book shows techniques and approaches which are applicable across all platforms -- and helps users of other software packages feel right at home in After Effects.
Christiansen's resume includes work at the special effects studio The Orphanage on The Day After Tomorrow and films by Robert Rodriguez. He has also created graphics for documentaries produced by HBO, The History Channel, and other broadcast outlets. Adobe's After Effects development team named Mark its number-one beta tester and hired him to create tutorials and other materials for the 6.0 release.
His book, Adobe After Effects CS3 Professional Studio Techniques, is a required textbook for the course. While aspects of the book will be covered at fxphd, there will be much more than simply rehashing book content -- including several project-based classes which break down how to approach a shot.
Class 2 Creating a aerial shot on a budget with a 3D camera
Class 3: Interior Composite, Part 1 - Tracking
Class 4: Interior Composite, Part 2 - Finessing the previous week's work, keying, adding the exterior shot
Class 5: Masking and Tracking - Chimp
Class 6: Interior Composite Part 3 - Interactive lighting, dynamic range
Class 7: Oil Rig Composite, Part 1, 2 (double length class)
Class 8: Oil Rig Composite, Part 3
Class 9: Oil Rig Composite, Part 4, 5 (double length class)
Class 10: Oil Rig Composite, Part 6
AFX301 - A Guerrilla Filmmakers Guide to After Effects
One of the most popular articles in recent months over at fxguide was our story about Gareth Edward's work on Atilla the Hun. Edwards was one of the first traditional film students to combine live-action drama with digital effects. After graduating, he went on to work at many of the UK?셲 leading post-production facilities as a freelance visual effects artist. Eventually becoming frustrated with the ?쁣actory approach??to every project, he soon branched out on his own creating many high-end computer graphics for television clients including BBC and Discovery, all of which were completed entirely on own ?쁣rom his bedroom?? Some of his work went on to win various accolades, including a British Academy Award and Emmy nomination.
He has since returned to his filmmaking roots directing the BBC drama ?쁀ttila the Hun?? which contained over 250 HD visual effects shots, all of which were created by himself in less than five months. The post used After Effects, Premiere, Photoshop, Mocha, and 3dsMax -- all easily accessible tools for visual effects artists. Needless to say, we thought this whole experience would make a great "real-world" fxphd course and are excited to be adding this new course to the mix at the site. The course will cover a ton of techniques and approaches Edwards uses on the job, focusing on the art, the artist's eye, and the craft. If you're a compositor who doesn't use After Effects you'll still pick up a ton of useful information from the course.
Edward's course will begin by breaking down shots, techniques, and workflow used in the actual production of Atilla the Hun. This in-depth coverage of the real world project will then shift gears into producing a complex visual effects shot with footage shot specifically for the course. Members will recreate the techniques used in one of the signature shots of the project -- that of 30,000 Huns storming across an open field in an aerial shot.
Class 1: The Adobe postproduction pipeline, creating a shot a day, staying objective, working backwards, pre-visualisations, refining your work, putting shots in context, knowing when to let go.
Class 2: Matte Painting. Creating a fully tracked reference version, using mocha, updating the reference and refining the painting. Camera lenses, perspective, composition, speed painting, using simple 3D, photo reference, lighting, implying scale, photoshop, directing the audiences eye, animating details.
Class 3: Cutting corners. If you can?셳 paint it shoot it, tracking 2D v 3D, camera distortion, rotoscoping, set extensions, replicating crowds, difference between ?쁱eal??and ?쁱ight??
Class 4: Using a treadmill for greenscreen avatars, making drag and drop armies, chromakeying, refining matte edges, the advantage of crowds in after effects 3d space, using the MAX2AE plugin to combine 3D and 2D seamlessly.
Class 5: crowd simulation, ?쁯oor man?셲 massive?? creating particle system, rendering different passes, compositing the shot, Simpler approaches.
Class 6: Example project - Keying the avatars, 2D versus 3D, creating the background, compositing the background, lighting, dust and tricks.
Class 7: Example project - Compositing the Layers, Pre-visualisation, Tracking, Keying, rotoscoping, Compositing the shot.
Class 8: Example project - Creating the avatars, keying, roto, stabilising.
Class 9: Example project - Creating the various passes, dust, smoke, lighting.
Class 10: Example project - Compositing the passes, depth, light, camera movement.
BKD208 - Background Fundamentals April08
Back to Basics. The classes last term focused on the roles and structure of the industry and this term we are focused on the work. We'll be working on a variety of shots, returning to basics and showing how we film, post, and finish shots. Since this is part of Background, there will be a lot of material for your show reels and direct forum feedback on your shots.
Much of the time - but not always - these jobs will involve the applications we teach here at fxphd: RED workflow, Flame compositing, After Effects, Final Cut Pro editing, Scratch and DaVinci. We will try and discuss principles but also along the way there will be specific product tips.
The actual shots and the detailed structure will be left open so we can react to your requests, but they will include new projects such as a tattoo shoot with fxguidetv's Angie Richards, the lizard shoot from Alice, a stunt shoot, and a network promo. It also seems time to finish and polish scenes from past courses and shoots. All in all....our back to basics course aims to be focused on doing interesting shots and having some fun.
C4D201 - Cinema 4D and Design
One of the most popular courses in our January08 term was Tim Clapham's After Effects Broadcast Design course, and we're extremely excited that he has signed up to teach another design course for us this term. If you missed last term's course you certainly don't want to miss this one.
The main focus of the course will be using Cinema4D to create motion graphics. Through all the classes, general workflow and project management will be discussed, including organising the object manager, use of layers, XRefs, and managing layouts. We will look at practical uses for many of the available modules, including MoGraph, Thinking Particles, Hair, Cloth and Sketch and Toon. This will also involve use of Xpresso, materials, some post effects and lighting and rendering techniques. Throughout the term we will work on both tips and techniques, as well as project based motion graphics classes. Specifically taking a concept and developing the project, outputting various render passes and compositing these in After Effects.
A projected outline will be posted when it is completed after input from fxphd members. As part of the course development, Clapham is currently getting input in the forums from January08 postgrads as to what the course should include. This involvement worked out brilliantly last term and is certain to do the same this term.
Clapham owns and runs his own Motion Graphics and animation company, www.HYPA.tv, which is based in Brighton, UK.
CMB201 - Intermediate Combustion
Autodesk's Combustion product has been a favorite for compositors over the years. Professor Gary M. Davis has been using the product since before version 1.0 and is the author and contributor to several Combustion books. In this course, he'll apply his knowledge to real world situations as well as dive into intermediate features of the software.
Class 1- Multi-Pass Compositing (2D compositing options) Introduction and preferences, loading multiple clips to workspace, checking aspect and bit depth via Footage, multiple viewports, View modes and hotkeys, four ways to add operators, Schematic workflow, creating composite from ?쁬aster??file, 2D composites, Merge op workflow.
Class 2 - Selection types and selective operations Draw selections, Keyer as selection, Feather Selection, Invert Selection, Remove selection, Compound Channel Selection, Object and Material ID Selections
Class 3 - Particle operator overview Emitter types, Libraries, Globals, Locals, Switching out particle sprite, Timeline, Applying the operator to footage, applying the operator to transparent solids, Downloads
Class 4 - Capsules and Expressions How to create and edit capsules. The rules one must follow when creating capsules. Naming and saving capsules for repurposing and exposing elements of the UI to artists (as a technical director might do). Animation Channels, creating and editing expressions, Expression browser, one point expressions, randomizing values, two point expressions, creating basic expressions with Quick Pick, absolute and relative paths, exporting expressions, virtual keyframes and converting to keyframes
Class 5 - Tracking Discreet tracker breakdown, one and two point stabilizing, tracking vector objects paint objects, masks, and particle emitters, 4 corner pinning.
Class 6 - 3D compositing ??Part 1 (The Disappeared) Working with ultra-high resolutions images. Proxies. Photoshop reduction (layers). Splitting a PSD into more than one PSD based on layers. Photoshop memory use considerations. Bringing in PSD files ??options for importing. Creating proxies. Working with different display quality(s). Multiple viewports and 3D space. 3D transformations. Layer view. Isolating layers and working with local operators. View modes ??viewing alpha, overlay, etc. Setting up views like a 3D application. Additional ways to work BIG. Splitting image up using Photoshop xxJavaScript for exporting layers to single raster files. Installing and editing the xxJavaScript for Photoshop. Running scripts for automation. PNG options ??bit depth of current, trim layers and the reposition cause/effects (and reasons to use them). Creating empty 3D comp. Importing with DRAFT (reminder). layer order. OpenGL hardware
Class 7- 3D compositing ??Part 2 (The Disappeared) Creating a project animatic using quick comps and the Edit operator. Audio. Grading FX. Titles. Transfer modes. Working in context. Optimizing viewports. Layer resolution. Options for 3D transformations. Animating layers and editing keyframes. Light, shading and shadows. Layer options. Reflections. Nested motion blur and color ?쁤rading??
Class 8 ??Keying WorkflowWorkflow with Discreet/Diamond Keyers, Degrain, G-Mask. Diamond keyer and Discreet Keyer. Paint on alpha ??clean up. CC matching. Difference Keyer. Luma Keyer
Class 9 - Paint for Visual Effects What?셲 the deal with vector paint? Painting gradients with transfer modes (skies). Dust busting and Blemish removal. Clone and Reveal - Wire Removal, etc. Painting in time.
Class 10 ??Rotoscoping Mask types. import/export to IFF. Animation. Paint for roto? Dealing with motion blurs. Dealing with fields (interlaced footage).
DOP201 - Digital Cinematography
With the march of technology, high quality digital cameras capable of producing brilliant imagery are making it into the hands of more and more users. But as more and more users get their first cameras, there isn't a place in which to turn to get solid information about how to use them. This course aims to inform and educate cinematographers about the process from both a technical AND creative angle. Classes in the course will include subjects such as the following:
Camera Testing: Following the process of testing a new camera before using it on a real job. How to compare different settings (as opposed to what settings to use), how to test various ASA equivalents and how all this plays out through post. How to then assess the results and make an educated choice for your project. The main focus will be how to test the whole technical chain systematically so that decisions are based on the final outcome as well as process.
Camera Movement: An introduction to the tricks and techniques of camera movement. Everyone knows that camera movement, whether real or virtual, adds a lot to a film. But why does some camera movement "wow" and some go unnoticed. Why does some feel completely natural while a similar move might feel incredibly awkward. This class will look at motivation, pacing, moving with the subject, counter-moves and moving with a static subject. By the end of the discussion, course members should be able to create camera moves that will work the first time.
The Secrets of Colour Grading Digital Footage: We focus on how to grade images and what the basic elements of the process are. While this will touch on various systems including The Grading Sweet, that Ben wrote ,the main focus would be on the concepts and techniques which carry across all the systems. It will also focus on ways of communicating about colour grading in practical terms so that even if you're not hands on with a grade you can still understand what's going on and talk effectively with the colorist.
DVR201 - DVRebel
We've been huge fans over the years of Stu Maschwitz's work at The Orphanage, his prolost blog, and more recently his The DV Rebels Guide: An All-Digital Approach to Making Killer Action Movies on the Cheap. That's why we're pleased to be offering a DVRebel-inspired course here at fxphd, with a bit of help from Maschwitz. Each week, Maschwitz will introduce the class which is structured around a chapter or two from his book. We'll then dive into the meat of the class with a look at supporting real world examples putting the concepts to work, as well as providing fresh new insights from a variety of independent filmmakers. Maschwtiz's The DV Rebels Guide is a required text for the course.
Class 1: The Approach The DV Rebel approach is outlined, what it takes, how to work and what production value really means.
Class 2 Planning To achieve a great production you need to be smarter and more adaptive as a DV Rebel. Your script, storyboards and turning storyboards into a schedule. Putting the ?쐅uer??in guerilla.
Class 3: The Camera, Part 1 Camera technology is explained and how to make camera choice produce the most filmic results without the expense of a full professional camera kit.
Class 4: The Camera, Part 2 Selecting a camera, settings, accessories and the key concept of manual everything!
Class 5: Shooting, Part 1 Making memorable shots, moving the camera, playing with time
Class 6: Shooting, Part 2 Lighting and how to achieve filmic results.
Class 7: Effects, Part 1 Special effects vs. visual effects, realism schmealism, keep ?쁢m guessing, treat the fake like it's real
Class 8: Effects, Part 2 Effects basics, miniatures, POV shots, guns guns guns, shooting things, stunts and cars
Class 9: Editing Editing like a pro and prepping for effects.
Class 10:Online The rules. Getting your movie in to After Effects, color correction, output and your digital master.
FCP212 - Final Cut Studio 2: In Production
Classes are based around the creation and distribution of a trailer for the fxphd film 'I Love Sarah Jane'. The course will touch on the components of the entire FCP Studio package, taking a look at how the entire project would be approached.
Professor Doug Suiter is a Promo Producer, live action Director and Final Cut Pro specialist. He as worked for the Disney Channel Australia, XYZ Networks and his clients include The Weather Channel, MTV Australia, and the Lifestyle Channel.
Class 1: FCP Part 1 - Back to Basics Project prep and the relationship between Final Cut and The Finder. Review of FCP and a discussion with an Avid Editor.
Class 2: FCP Part 2 - "...but have you Thought of Cutting it this Way?" Advanced and alternative Cutting Techniques
Class 3: FCP Part 3 - Base Cut of 'I Love Sarah Jane'
Class 4: Motion 3 Part 1 "Patterns versus Puppets?" Two different Approaches to Motion 3
Class 5: Motion 3 Part 2 Continuation of previous week, then "You are Entering Another Dimension: Motion in 3D"
Class 6: Motion 3 Part 3 - "Make it Look as if you Aren't Wearing Any, Part 1" Leveraging the presets to make them your own, including Soundtrack Pro.
Class 7: Color - "Make it Look as if you Aren't Wearing Any, Part 2" Digital makeup for your movie.
Class 8: General Final Cut Studio - "I Love You just the Way You aren't" Customization and Automation of FCStudio2 and OSX
Class 9: General Final Cut Studio - "Master of all Trades, Jack of None" Tips on audio, cutting, motion graphics and color grading that will hide the fact that your strengths lie elsewhere!
Class 10: DVDSP/Compressor - "So many Screens so Little Time" Pixel wrangling with Compressor 3: Creating a podcast.
FLM202 - Flame in Production
One of our most popular flame courses returns for an encore presentation this term at fxphd. This production-based offering covers work done for the fxphd short film "I Love Sarah Jane", which was accepted into the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. When the course first ran at fxphd, even members who weren't using flame found the course to be fantastic, since it covers techniques applicable across many applications. There will be a lot of high quality HD footage distributed with the course, so members can work on the shots and add them to their reel.
The course includes classes on wire removal, combining multiple takes into a single shot, matte painting, projector techniques, label replacement, and integrating 3D renders into a scene. If you're a visual effects artist and haven't taken this course --- you need to.
FUS101 - Introduction to Fusion
Matt Leonard leads our Fusion course at fxphd. His sphereVFX company has been doing Fusion training for years, including creating an intermediate level DVD for the app. Leonard has worked in the animation and visual effects industry for over sixteen years producing state-of-the-art work for feature films, broadcast and commercials in the UK and US markets.. He has set up and run animation divisions in five companies, overseen animators and compositors, worked as a CG Supervisor on various projects and has overseen live-action shoots.
Class 1: UI Overview and Understanding the Workflow of Fusion This class covers the user interface, building the first simple composite and help to build an understanding of how Fusion deals with footage, channels, masks and nodes (colour correction, blurs, etc).
Class 2: Creators and Images Manipulation This class covers the main nodes used to create backgrounds, gradients and fractals. Alongside these ?쁟reators??we also cover the transformation nodes such as Scale, Crop and DVE. Finally we will look at some of the warping tools such as Displace, Corner Positioned and Grid Wrap.
Class 3: Colour Correction and Additional Colour Channels This class will focus mainly on colour correction inside of Fusion. We will also be covering the use of addition channels such as z-depth, normals, UV, motion vectors, etc.
Class 4: Effects and Filters This class will look at various effects and filters which ship with Fusion and how best to use them in a production environment. Included will be the blurs, sharpens, camera effects, and custom filters.
Class 5: Masks, Mattes and Keying This class will focus on the four main keys inside Fusion (Chroma, Luma, Difference and Ultra). We will be covering matte manipulation and gaining an understanding of premultiplied alpha and how it affects our compositing. We?셪l also be looking at Masks including double-poly lines and spline animation.
Class 6: Tracking, Stabilisation and Corner Pinning This class will look in-depth at the Tracker in Fusion which covers multi point tracking, stabilisations, corner pinning and perspective positioning.
Class 7: Paint, Wire Removal and Time Wrapping This class will cover the multi faceted Paint tool inside of Fusion. We will look at retouch, cloning and wire removal. Also in this class we will cover the time manipulation nodes.
Class 8: Getting to Grips with 3D in Fusion This first class covering the 3D aspect of Fusion will focus mainly on the UI and controls. We will be building a basic 3D composite and looking at the key nodes for build a 3D system, including Camera, Merge, Render, Image Plane and some Lights.
Class 9: A Greater Understanding of 3D in Fusion This second class will be covering some of the more advanced aspects of 3D inside of Fusion. We will look at importing animation data for use with camera and geometry, camera projectors, point cloud data, displacement nodes, fbx files and look more at lighting.
Class 10: A First Look at Particles This class will be a basic introduction into Fusions powerful particle generator. We will cover the main Particle Emitter and both 2D and 3D Rendering. We will also look at how fields and forces control and manipulate the particles once emitted and how to build basic systems such as fire and rain.
MAX201 - Advanced Rendering and Mental Ray
Professor Gary M. Davis returns with a 3ds Max class focusing on advanced rendering techniques and Mental Ray. This class is for current users of 3ds Max who might be apprehensive about transitioning to (and embracing!) the Mental Ray pipeline. This course will be taught in 3ds Max 9, but the specifics and focus on Mental Ray do carry over to applications including XSI and Maya. The course will collaborate with the other professors who are working on the Zombie shoot.?
Class 1 - Mental Ray Fundamentals: Switching to MR from default Scanline rendering engine, task presets, antialiasing basics, photons and raytracing
Class 2 - Shaders 1: Arch Design shader, Mental Ray map types
Class 3 - Shaders 2: SSS shaders, Ink and Paint vs. Contour shaders
Class 4 - Lights: Photometrics, Mental Ray lights
Class 5: Global Illumination and final gather
Class 6: Outdoor lighting
Class 7: Caustics
Class 8: Displacement mapping
Class 9: Motion blur and depth of field
Class 10: Setting up render passes, material override, ambient occlusion as render pass.
MYA101: Introduction to Maya
Taught by Matt Leonard, this Maya course is aimed at those who have little or no experience in 3D, or post-grads who know another system, such 3DS Max or Softimage|XSI but want to expand their software skills. The course is designed to cover almost all the main areas of Maya?셲 vast toolset including modeling, animation, dynamics, shader building, lighting and rendering. The aim of the course is to keep it as project focused as possible and although we won?셳 be producing a full animation every week the course is designed to get you full up and running and able to start producing greats shots for your reel as soon as possible.
Matt has been in the 3D and visual effects industry for 17 years and has produced work for feature films, commercials and large corporate projects. He has been involved in setting up post production departments, overseeing small teams of animators and compositors, along with acting as CG Supervisor on a number of projects. He has spoken at various events and shows on behalf of Autodesk and eyeon, had various articles published in magazine and journals and has beta tested Maya, Nuke and Fusion. He currently runs his own company in the UK.
Class 1 : Maya Overview This class will look at setting up a Maya project, getting to grips with the user interface, creating, manipulating and organising objects, and working with objects, components and attributes. We will also touch on the basics of texturing, cameras, lighting and rendering as we seek to build our first animation. All this is wrapped around our first project, creating an fxphd animated logo.
Class 2 : Maya Modelling: Curves and Surfaces This class will look at Maya?셲 tools for creating curves internally along with how to import curves from third party software packages such as Adobe Illustrator. The class will then go on to cover the various ways of creating 3D objects from the 2D curves including tools such as Revolve, Loft, Extrude, Birail and Sweep.
Class 03 : Maya Modeling: Polygon, Subdivision Surfaces and NURBS This class will cover the differences between Polygons, Subdivision surfaces and NURBS, when to use them and what their strengths and weaknesses are. The class will then go on to look at each surface type in more detail, including modeling and editing tips and tricks.
Class 4 : Maya Animation This class will look at the basics of keyframe animation, adding an object to a path, working with deformers, and the various tools for previewing your animation including ghosting, motion trails, turntables and Playblasts. The class will also cover the two main animation editors, the Dope Sheet and Graph Editor.
Class 5 : Maya Character Animation This class will look at all the basics for setting up a character for animation including setting up a skeleton, skinning (having the skeleton deform the skin), animation deformers (for muscle bulges, etc), constraints and blend shapes. The class will also cover the use of Trax, Maya?셲 non-linear animation editor.
Class 6 : Maya Particles This class will look at the different types of particles available in Maya and their uses. We will then move on to look at setting up particle emitters, defining and editing the particles once created, and controlling the particles once emitted using various fields such as gravity, wind and turbulence. We also look at particle collision events, instances and discuss goals.
Class 7 : Maya Rigid Body and Soft Body Dynamics This class will look at creating soft bodies, used for cloth, skin, etc, and active and passive rigid bodies used for hard surface collisions such as disintegrating robots or shattering glass. We will also cover springs, which are used to help define the structure of soft body objects helping them to remain roughly their original shape. And finally we?셪l cover rigid body constraints, which are used to restrict the movement of objects through the use of hinges, nails, pins, etc.
Class 8 : Maya Shaders and Texturing This class will look at creating and applying Maya shaders to objects and the use of texture maps and mapping co-ordinates along with various utility nodes.
Class 9 : Maya Lights, Shaders and Texturing This class will cover the basics of lighting, looking at all the main lights including Ambient, Point, Area, Spot, Volume and Directional. We cover how to setting up volumetric lighting effects and light linking. Final we cover the three main camera types, motion blur, depth of field, Z Depth render passes and camera projections.
Class 10 : Rendering: Software, Hardware, Vector and mental ray This class will mainly focus on setting up a project for rendering. We will cover the main Maya software renderer, the hardware renderer, the vector renderer, and a brief look at mental ray including Caustics, Global Illumination, Final Gather and the use of HDRI for lighting techniques. The class finishes by looking at setting up render layers.
MYA211 - Maya Rendering and Lighting
Matt Leonard has been signed up again to lead a new Maya course....this one based upon popular requests from fxphd postgrads. Maya2008 will be provided for non-commercial use on the fxphd VPN, and with this comes the new mental ray 3.6 Core. It fits in brilliantly with the planned content this term.
Leonard has worked in the animation and visual effects industry for over sixteen years producing state-of-the-art work for feature films, broadcast and commercials in the UK and US markets.. He has set up and run animation divisions in five companies, overseen animators and compositors, worked as a CG Supervisor on various projects and has overseen live-action shoots.
Class 01: Light Theory for 3D This class will cover the use of different types of lights, light positioning, light colour temperatures, light and shadow settings and light linking.
Class 02: mental ray Shaders, Part 1 This class will look at many of the mental ray nodes available in Maya including various materials, lighting nodes, camera nodes, environments nodes and contour nodes. This will be the first of two classes cover this material.
Class 03: mental ray Shaders, Part 2 This class will look at many of the mental ray nodes available in Maya including various materials, lighting nodes, camera nodes, environments nodes and contour nodes. This will be the second of two classes cover this material.
Class 04: mental ray Render Settings This class looks in detail at mental rays render settings and includes anti?aliasing quality, ray tracing, shadows, motion blur, caustics (basics), global illumination (basics), final gather(basics) and image based lighting (HDRI) and environments.
Class 05: Render Layers, Mattes, Buffers and openEXR This class looks in detail at how you setting up render layers, object and component passes, mattes, buffers and the openEXR format.
Class 06: Integrating 3D and Live Action This class covers the integration of 3D into a live action plate. It will cover the use of point cloud data to position objects, shaders / textures, simulation the lighting on the set, and multipass rendering specifically for use with compositing packages.
Class 07: Light Environments and Architectural Models This class looks at setting up lighting specifically for architectural models and focuses in detail on Caustics, Global Illumination and Final Gather. We will look at simulation both artificial lighting and natural lighting along with cheats to speed up rendering times.
Class 08: Camera Theory for 3D This class looks specifically at camera and how best to create realistic moves and effects. We will cover the theory of camera angles, continuity and composition, along with the technical aspects such as depth of field, bokeh, f?stops, motion blur, lens, film backs, shutter angles and the like.
Class 09: Texturing and Rendering Particles This class looks at textures and shaders specifically for working with particles, along with how to render particles using the Software, Hardware and mental ray renderers.
Class 10: Renderman for Maya 2.0 (For Maya 8.5, or 2008 if release in time) This final lesson gives an overview of Renderman for Maya 2.0. The lesson will look at global illumination, subsurface scattering, deep shadows, caustics, multipass outputs and the like.
NUK201: Intermediate Nuke I
Taught by Sean Deveraux, this course picks up where the 101 level course left off. Deveraux will be diving deeply into the 3D compositing features of Nuke over the term.
Note: This repeat course was recorded using Nuke version 4 (current release is version 5). However, the principles and techniques shown in this course are still fully applicable to the new release. The NUK301 course will be using version 5.
Class 1: Warping Nuke has several tools for image distortion and this week we will tackle the grid warp and the spline warp which use shapes to distort an image as well as the iDistort which drives the distortion using an image.
Class 2: Advanced Roto and Plate Clean-up Although explored in nuk101, nuke has a lot more control over rotoscoping then previously discussed, such as tracking specific points and importing data from other applications.
Class 3: Gizmos The "macro" system in nuke is called gizmos. We will create a gizmo utilizing expressions and user controls and learn how to add that gizmo to our nuke menus for others to access.
Class 4: Nuke Customization Building on last week's course, we will further customize nuke by adding and setting default working resolutions on launch, setting up shot specific working directories and other tasks that nuke can automate.
Class 5: Nuke Shell Commands We'll cover some common and intermediate shell commands such as rendering without launching the UI and building a script right in the shell.
Class 6: 3D: Locating a point in 3D Space It's relatively simple to load camera tracks in nuke but how do you know where to place objects in the scene if you don't have a point cloud or tracking geometry as reference. This week we will go over finding points in Z-space and reconciling 3D track data in 2D.
Class 7: 3D Projections One of the key powers to nuke's 3D system is it's ability to project textures onto geometry. This will be our focus this week and will help set up the rest of the semester.
Class 8: 3D Set Extensions We will use what we learned in our previous course work to extend a practical set using nuke's 3D system.
Class 9: 3D: Set Replacement One of the most challenging and time consuming tasks can be removing some unwanted foreground elements to create a clean plate. The technique we will learn this week has been used in hundreds of shots and saved thousands of hours.
Class 10: 3D Multi-Planing Using a single layered frame we will create a camera move and turn our 2-Dimensional image into an active sequence and move through it with our nuke camera.
NUK301 - Advanced Nuke I
Our advanced Nuke course will be our first using the recently released Nuke version 5. This is going to mainly be a project-based course, with shots being examined and finessed over several classes. Sean Devereaux will be leading the charge as prof for the course, with a few special guest speakers.
Class01: What's NEW! The first class will not be just the new interface but a detailed look at all the major new features of nuke 5. By the end of the first class every user will have a in-depth knowledge of the interface but also an in-depth knowledge of stereoscopic compositing and a good handle of all the new 3D lighting tools. The stereoscopic tools being the majority of the class time.
Classes 2 through 5 A shot so big it will take 4 classes to complete. This shot will encompass the workload of a typical feature film shot and the class will follow the same workflow as a feature film and you will receive ALL the elements and assets!
Class 2: Will start off as I do when I am first assigned a shot. We will get a text description of the goals, a style frame and camera data. Based on our task list we will start the shot just like in production and week 1 will include advanced IBK use, intensive plate cleanup using camera projections/set extensions and a full 3D scene setup.
Class 3: Continue the work with camera manipulation. We will add 100 frames to the head of our shot and match the animation curves to align with the plate, we will also create and render a 3D scene completely in nuke and continue our set extension work. If you want 3D, this class is for you.
Class 4: CG! We prepped our shot for cg by cleaning up the plate in the first class, and it's finally time to start plugging in the rough stuff. Just as in actual production we rarely get final CG in the first pass and this will be no exception, the CG will be a decent first pass, but will need more work and the only way to determine what needs to be changed is to comp it. We will also continue to add to our set extension which will take all 4 weeks to complete.
Class 5: FINAL! We're getting down to it now. Week 4 will be final CG comping and tweaks that span everything we have done in previous weeks to make this shot deliverable. This is not a shot spread out among four classes to kill time, we will be rushed in every class to accomplish all our goals and for those of you that want to complete the shot on your own and not just follow along can expect a serious time commitment.
Break Week: If you kept up with the work, you'll need a week off to chill and if you're a bit behind you'll need the break to catch up!
Class 6 - 8: Details of these three classes are still in the works but will most likely be project based with 1-2 shots to complete. Special guests are likely.
Class 9 & 10: Special Guest: Frank Rueter Ladies and gentlemen it is my sincere pleasure to announce that Frank Reuter, the worldwide king of nuke tools and customization will be our guest speaker for the final two classes where he will cover nuke 5 customization, tcl and python scripting as well as advanced gizmo creation with expressions galore! Frank faces difficult production challenges everyday and comes at nuke with that vital problem solving background. No other person on the planet has as much production experience as a nuke technical director and these two classes will crack the mysteries and tricks of custom nuke wide open.
PFT301 - Advanced PFTrack I
Victor Wolansky's intermediate PFTrack course has been a continual favorite at fxphd and he'll be building upon it with an advanced 3D tracking course. In this term we will take 3D tracking beyond the basics, we will see not only camera tracking, but also motion capture, plus even more "impossible to solve" tracks. This will be combined with a lot of practice and advance techniques.
We will do object tracking, putting a 3D car over an existing car shot and track it. The course will also cover tracking a face and then using the point cloud to help modeling the replacement face. The insanely complex Sarah Jane "bike shot" will be solved -- this is a shot that drove several fxphd professors crazy for almost a whole week. The VPN will use PFTrack 4.1 and whow how to use objects to track shots that cannot be tracked with conventional methods, as well as how to use the new i/tech files from Cooke Lens with PFTrack.
PHT202 - Digital Photography for VFX
PHT202 examines straight photography and this term we are joined by Steve Anderson who will focus on photography for VFX artists. The course will cover generating textures, HDR, shooting for matte paintings, timelaspe, how to photography normal mattes, and much more. This terms focus is really on specialist photography and showing how a DSLR can be the number one tool for a VFX supervisor on set. If you do on set work and provide assets to other members of your team this course will show you a number of ways to provide better material and speed up both workflows and render times on larger projects.
Steve is a highly award visual effects supervisor with a very strong 3D background. Many of the classes will be relevant to people with 3D skills, as well as 2D. Steve is also a very accomplished stills photographer in his own right.
PHT203 - Digital Photography: Photoshop and the Photographer
There are a lot of aspects and approaches to photography, but many of them end up in Photoshop. Professional photographer Tim Wheeler and our own Mike Seymour will show how to shoot high-end professional photographs and then post them in Photoshop. Half of the classes will be in the field or in the studio with Tim and the other half Mike will be tackling the work in Photoshop with help from fxphd professor Rose Draper.
While most of the course will use Photoshop, other image processing tools and plugins will be used. The course aims to cover grading, HDR, tone mapping, panoramas, and more. SInce this is a 200 level course, it will assume a base level of Photoshop knowledge. Access to a digital stills camera and Photoshop is highly recommended. Post-grads will be encouraged to post their work for review. We have some exciting shoots planned, including a shoot with Jeff Heusser at the neon graveyard in Las Vegas where we pit Canon against Nikon.
Class 01: Studio layers(location PSD) Our creative piece filming models in the studio.
Class 02: Shoot out at the OK Neon Graveyard (location) Shot in the Nervada Desert we pitch Canon vs Nikon.
Class 03: RAW Fun A look at Aperture 2- and the issues of getting a great shot ... at a Dog show.
Class 04: PSD HDR construction We take shots from the desert and show how to get the most from them and make HDR
Class 05:Tone Mapping, Part 1 (PSD). We stitch together landscapes and show how to use tone mapping to improve the shots in Photoshop.
Class 06: Shooting Panoramas and Bracketing (location) Tim and Mike head out to shoot some beautiful landscapes.
Class 07: Tone mapping, Part 2 (PSD) An in-depth look at tone mapping and a comparison with other applications.
Class 08: Shooting textures (location) You often need to shoot textures and elements, both as backgrounds and for CGI. We go into the bush to photograph some interesting textures.
Class 09: Layering and layers (PSD) Making our models look great with retouch.
Class 10: Wrap party Life can be a zoo.
RED101: Introduction to RED Workflow I
This course is designed to give you everything you need to know to post a RED project. If you have done RED201 and RED202, you may not need this course and we would recommend the Scratch 201 course instead. This course will be new and up to date. bit it will cover ground that was also covered in RED201 and RED202. As the RED landscape is changing so fast, it is important to have one serious workflow course that explains RED and how to post it -- and this is it.
This course will not be on camera operation other than how it affects on-set monitoring and workflow. The course will build from the basics of RED to the more advanced scripting and also cover briefly the new Scarlet camera and how it will fit into the Red landscape. All modules such as RedCine and Red Alert will be completely revised from previous courses, to accommodate the latest releases of that software.
Class 01: Basics of RED We run through how .r3d files are created, what you are looking at, and how the system works internally. Quick overview of debayering and compression.
Class 02: Summary of Scarlett From NAB 2008, an update on RED ONE and the new Scarlett camera.
Class 03: On set review and file handling How to structure work on-set and how to advise on monitoring and setting levels. Aimed at the VFX or post professional on-set and not the DOP. Special cases of green screen and high speed levels and settings.
Class 04: Logging Material and Scripting How to manage data from CF card to drive to final archiving. A look at both RAID and LTO 4 tape robots and setting up a Mac with .r3d spotlighting and Excel data logging. Some scripting using RedLine will be included in this class.
Class 05: Editing and Post Options Workflow aimed at post supervisors and people managing the path. Also invaluable for someone budgeting a project.
Class 06: Red Alert A full training class on using Red Alert, including the latest tips and tricks.
Class 07: Red Cine A full training class on using Red Cine including the latest tips and tricks .
Class 08: AVID and FCP Tips and Tricks The current Crimson and XML workflows for offline
Class 09: Scratch and General LUTS A summary training class on using Scratch including the latest tips and tricks (also see our full Scratch course).
Class 10: General Grading and Effects How to get the most out of your DPX files and a comparison of log and lin solutions. We take a set of shots into key boxes in different formats and see how robust or different it is to finish your projects in various bit depths from 1K, 2K, and 4K downres extractions in both Log and Lin. This class will end up as a shoot out of the benefits of each of the main RED file format exports to normal post production file formats.
RED202: RED Project - Shoot through Post
This course takes a practical look at using the RED camera, from filming a piece, to editing that piece and doing some effects for it. The aim is to simply do a job and along the way discuss the latest approaches to using RED. We will do it completely for real as if it was a real job, but also highlight any tips and tricks -- and bugs -- we have found with the RED camera.
The classes will be more operational than the introductory course, with special attention given to Scratch. This course will be less theory and more practical tips and post production with Scratch, REDCine and REDAlert, combined with FCP and AVID. This course builds on the RED201 course and assumes some level of knowledge about the RED workflow.
SCR201: Scratch and Grading RED
Jeff Olm takes this course on colour grading with the Assimilate Scratch. Scratch has become extremely popular due to its unique position of being able to natively read RED's .r3d files. Jeff is an experienced Scratch artist with a very strong visual effects background in over 50 features. He has just finished doing a stereo 3D Scratch colour grade on Journey to the Center of the Earth as a Stereo Colourist. Jeff covers general Scratch workflow , grading Red footage and even gives an overview of Stereography issues using Scratch's stereo grading tools.
While this course uses a lot of RED footage, several classes will use non-RED material. Classes will cover the following subjects and more:
- Principles of colour grading: secondaries and primaries - RED .r3d workflow - How to approach a shot for balancing and standard grading - Building a look - Stereo grading - Creative colour grading: general approaches
SHK201: Intermediate Shake I
Shake is the main stay of feature film compositing and in this course Tahl Niran focuses on the detailed workflow you need for real world feature film style compositing - but which are also relevant to other work such as compositing for commercials. This term we will be compositing a range of material from Cineon to Panalog and even traditional animation files. As shake is often used for compositing 3D - special attention will be given to this important area this term.
Class 1: Car Ad Part One - Tracking, Roto
Class 2: Car Ad Part Two - Sky Replacement, Multiplane, Colour Matching
Class 3: A Romantic Night - Smoothcam, Quickpaint, Primatte
Class 4: 2D Animation Composite
Class 5: Advanced Multipass : Spaceship Part 1
Class 6: Advanced Multipass : Spaceship Part 2
Class 7: Intro to Expressions
Class 8: Removal and Plate Fixup - Lens Distortion, Clean Plate Generation
Professor Tahl Niran takes Shake to the next level -- rounding out our three levels of Shake courses. This term, we examine some of the more advance features in Shake. Starting with a basic introduction to command-line compositing in Shake, we progress to cover many of the most requested issues in day to day production such as utilizing z-depth and other 3d passes, compositing matte paintings, floating point compositing, and realtime re-lighting using normal maps
Other topics include wire removal, compositing in Shake's 3d environment and creating motion graphics in Shake. The course also includes a special 2 part class on set extensions, featuring stunning matte paintings and a host of cool tricks for making your composite look better.
Class 1: Using the Command Line The unix shell, command line functions, compositing from the command line
Class 2: Using Additional Channels Understanding z-Depth, Using id passes, vector passes and motion blur
Class 3: Chimp Shot and Logo Wire removal techniques, generating procedural mattes, using paint and other tools to patch mattes
Class 4: Introduction to Float Mathematics in Shake Understanding float, realtime lighting using normal maps, using float maths and normals
Class 5: The fxphd Logo Class Combining vfx and design elements, generating a complex logo in Shake, building a motion graphics background using multi-plane
Class 6: Chimp Scene Match-moving and integrating 3d render, creating a 3d element in Shake, Image treatments and final comp
Class 7: Motion Graphics Creating motion graphics elements, using expression for procedural animation, multi-pass compositing with unusual passes , using the 3d camera data, combining elements in 3d space , creating a realtime lighting effect using normal passes
Class 8: 2D Matte Painting Keying green-screen elements, layering the matte painting, colour matching
Class 9: 2D Matte Painting Comp Compositing rain and fog, creating grain and matching textures, shot finishing
Class 10: 3D Set Extension 3d body insert, roto and cleanup, keying and marker removal, colour-matching and interactive lighting, grain and overall look, environmental and atmospherics
SMK102: Introduction to Smoke
We've got a new introductory smoke course this term at fxphd -- and are very excited about it. Chicago-based smoke editor and flame artist Chris Kreynus will be taking us through the application. Chris is one of the top artists in the city and has been using the application for years in a commercial post environment. We'll be using the latest version of the software -- a major release -- so it's going to be exciting to show off the new features.
The course will follow the flow of a spot from start to finish. This is the best way to the learn the application, since we'll be able to see how the various modules are used and how they work together on a "real world" job. Beginning with an overview of the app, he'll quickly dive into assembling the spot via EDL, making sure it matches the rough cut, and then on to finessing and polishing the cut. This will include final color grading -- both in the timeline and in the DVE module, tracking, keying, cleaning up scenes, sky replacements, motion graphic titles, and more. It's the kind of work that Chris does on a daily basis so he'll be a perfect prof for the task.
SYN101: Introduction to Syntheyes
One of our fxphd professor faves, Victor Wolansky, returns after a term hiatus. He'll be taking course members through the economical but incredibly powerful Syntheyes 3D tracking application. The course will be using the new release of Syntheyes 2008.
More details to come....
TOX201 - Toxik and Maya Integration
We're excited to be offering our first intermediate level Toxik course at fxphd for the April08 term. A huge selling point of Toxik is the link it has to Maya via Python scripting. With integration of 2D and 3D worlds of CGI effects and compositing, this feature can be very useful to artists. This course will be a collaboration between two of fxphd's popular professors, Sebastien Jacob and Matt Leonard.
We're still working out the details on this late addition to the term....stay tuned!