Err- what's not entirely true? You actually made the next point I was going to make- that even a non-"Effects" film these days can have up to 100 effects shots and most of those are invisible.
In my above comment, I was talking about CG characters, vehicles and environments since that's what the OP seemed to be referring to- my closer was going to be your comment, that what he thinks of VFX is actually pretty narrow.
If I had a dash cam and wanted to make that blurry driver who hit me look like he had a cellphone in his hand, it wouldn't exactly be the most challenging thing I've done.
The crummier the original source (dash cam, web cam, etc) the easier it is to blend in CG elements perfectly.
The higher quality the source (35mm film, RED 4k Camera, IMAX) the harder it is.
And, just FYI, Hollywood is easily capable of creating photo-realistic CGI- but most movie companies aren't interested in paying or scheduling for it. And that's not even considering the fact that all CGI has to be approved by the director- who many times DOES NOT know what looks right in the scene and says it looks too blue or too orange. The end result is that most VFX shots are "good enough" for the money and time allotted.
Lastly, there are many talented individuals out there who given enough time can do photoreal effects.
"Radios were sent to -Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (Ottawa, ON Canada)"
Dear god. What are we going to do when we go to war with those french speaking queen loving northerners?! They will even be able to listen in on the Department of Defense frequencies! They will know our every move!
I demand that only DEFECTIVE radios are sent to Canada.
For maximum effect, I recommend that the radios only receive communications in the form of a poor impression of a Canadian accent- notably every word should be "Ay?"
As a compositor, it's probably just me, but it seems like every article on post production effects (for movies, games, commercials, etc) spends so much time on modeling, effects and lighting that by the time the writer has hit the compositing part of the pipeline they've- oops! run out of time.
There are fantastic modelers, trackers, texture artists, lighters etc in the pipeline, but here's the thing- all of us share the burden of producing a good looking shot equally.
Without a good model, no amount of work by the texture artist lighter and compositor can make the shot look good. Without good texture art, the lighter will never get good light play off the model. Without good lighting, the compositor's workload increases 100 times as he now has to "fake" lighting and shadows in 2d. Without good compositing, excellent lighting, modeling and texturing will still scream CG to any audience.
Personally, I find it very cool to be at the end of the pipeline- things come to me and I get to throw them into the pot; stir and make the entire shot come together. I feel bad for the modelers and animators who don't get to see their final product- what I send to the client is what I see on the big screen in another month.
Of course, being at the end of the pipeline would be cooler if all the magazine editors didn't run out of space at the end of the article:(
Los Angeles here. Lived in 5 different places in this city and with the exception of the one I just moved into (which now gets FIOS and Time Warner) all have only had 1 option. Unless New York is someone the opposite, my experience hasn't taught me that:/
Where do you live where it is possible to just "switch" to a different ISP?
Everyone I have lived (save one place) has only had one option for high speed internet. One cable company which was granted a sanctioned monopoly to service the area. If you didn't like the way they did business your options were limited. DSL for a majority of locations is not nearly as fast as cable- if you live close enough to the service station at all. If the only other option is dialup and you are protesting slow speeds on non-affiliated sites.. what's the point? The entire internet will be as slow as the original ISP throttling (if you do this solely to make a point to the ISP and can live with those speeds- kudos to you).
The problem is these ISPs have been given sanctioned monopolies over certain areas. The consumer does not have a choice. The unfiltered internet will not win because consumers cannot switch to it. The unfiltered internet can not win because it won't have the budget to break into those monopolies, because the monopolies will be collecting money from their affiliated preferred business partners, and the unfiltered internet will not be.
And finally, the unfiltered internet will not win because it will be more expensive than the filtered internet- and Americans refuse to pay an extra 2 cents for a safety airbag that will save their lives.
People knowledgeable/with degrees in math and science find themselves in high demand in a field where you spend an entire year trying to figure out how to properly generate and render the materials composing of Iron Man's suit.
Oooh, scary. Did you even read the summary? "A bit of snooping tells me that Vodafone is the only network from which it is possible to send SMS to a Chinese registered mobile phone." If it's already possible via Vodafone, that indicates it's a business rather than government issue.
Obviously, the fact that google is searchable from inside china indicates that it's a business rather than government issue there too.
Can anyone tell me why this situation has come about and when we can expect this sort of service to be enabled?"
Here's an answer to your second question: NEVER
Here's an answer to your first question: Why the hell would the people's republic of china suddenly want to let unfiltered, uncensored text messages into the country while it keeps an iron fist on what their citizens see and hear even over the internet?
Perhaps a more pragmatic answer would be that China will allow text messages to enter into the country when it's able to monitor and censor every text message, and connect a sender to a recipient with their name and current location (to allow for quick and easy arrests), and know who to detain when they enter the country.
One of the worst control schemes I've ever used, that's what I didn't get. I was semi interested in Norse mythology in space, and the visuals were good, but the control scheme was so bad I gave up on the demo in frustration- when my grenade launcher kept auto targeting objects flying towards me that I had no chance of hitting instead of the monster lobbing them at me.
It varies wildly. Very, very wildly. Sometimes editors will get paid more, sometimes actors will get paid way more. At the professional film level, they're both unionized positions, unlike effects workers (sad face).
I understand what you mean with unexpected problems that you encounter after the shoot day, but "Fix it in post" is a term most often used on set to avoid working on issues BEFORE or DURING a shoot. For instance, instead of doing prep work before the shoot for a monitor inlay, they'll spend 4 times the money and time to do it in post. Instead of finding a smart way to break glass, they dress some wacko up in green and have him stand between the glass and the camera to break it- green is apparently invisible to the camera, and the camera will just shoot through it.
As a professional at the end of the production chain, I spend an inordinate amount of time fixing laziness that piles up in the chain because someone said: "Fix it in post"
Perhaps I wasn't blatant enough in my original post, but what I was saying (while trying to not be antagonistic) was that none of this is new stuff. There are thousands of little post shops that do this stuff everyday. If they put it in a small package that is able to 3d track standard def footage quickly, accurately and automatically and easily do the resolution adding, area replacement, etc; that's slightly new- but I see very little proof that they've done that.
I apologize if I didn't make that clear enough. To summarize: Is there anything new here? We do this stuff everyday, here's how.
And then I put in a little bitch on people saying "Fix it in post";)
This is a 3d track of the shot (which generates a point cloud of 3d points, which can then be used to generate an automatic 3d model of the scene). They then project (a method of texturing that paints a model based on points of projection.. what happens when you stand in front of a projector- you get projected onto) the still photos onto the 3d model, recreating all aspects of the texture and geometry, but instead of SD resolution, you now have gigapixel resolution built into the model.
The reason it looks like a cheap video game is exactly that, they're trying to prove how sharp it is, so instead of anything being anti-aliased etc it's all crisp- which doesn't look like real life.
Solution: get a better video camera, learn how to expose your shots properly.
Oh? And the tree thing? same thing, except instead of projecting the texture on, you just place the texture in the 3d scene where the tree is, and render- it's even easier.
Solution: Don't film a beat up tree. Don't film flowers with a giant sign in the middle of them.
This wasn't at SIGGRAPH this week. As a paper or as a poster- of which there are PLENTY of student posters.
The solution is NOT to fix it in post. The solution is to spend 5 minutes, think it through, and fix it while you're filming.
Flint Flame and Inferno are all pretty much the same node based compositing system- Autodesk adds in some arbitrary "you can't use that function" to the lower end models (Flint and Flame) that the inferno has, but it's nothing you really need. Flame is the dominant of the three in North America, while the Inferno is bigger in Japan because clients INSIST on it because they think it's better.
Smoke is a flame like editing system that can do basic effects, but is primarily used as a high end commercial editor- kind of like an Avid Nitro. I think Fire is the same thing, but either a higher tier or a lower tier. I'm not sure if they sell many.
Combustion is a low end layer based compositing system that most closely resembles After Effects but gets a lot of hand me downs from the Flame.
I was a big Adobe fanboy too. The man thing to remember about After Effects vs Shake/Fusion/Flame is that After Effects is a layer based compositing system (the workflow is built around a layer list, you add filters to layers, etc) while Shake/Fusion/Flame are node based systems- where your footage are inputs to a flow of nodes, and every filter or 2d move or track or gmask is a node along a chain, starting with multiple inputs and (usually) culminating together in one output. Node based is (in my opinion) the only real professional option, but I believe almost all motion graphics are done with a layer based system (mostly After Effects) since it's very nature allows you to generate a look in Photoshop, bring it in, then animate the layers- very handy.
Sometimes I've wished for a node based Photoshop, but thats just overkill and silly. As far as everything on the internet is free, just remember it's all fun and games until you start making money off it.
I asked about the engineering because you never really can tell what someone wants to do or their specialty off their stated major alone. I'm not really sure that your chosen specialty (things liek chip design) would be needed- as I'm not that knowledgeable about the field of engineering. I believe most of the 3d plugins etc are written in C++, Python, or MEL (a maya scripting language I think). It's a long way off from compositing. I don't really know of any resources to help you get started here, as it's just too far away from my chosen fields (I'm a 2d compositor with a heavy 3d overlap).
I went to college for Film Production (Loyola Marymount University). While there I TA'd the effects and editing class, and got a job part time at one of the corporate places I mentioned as an editor/motion graphics guy/effects. Following college I got a roto job at a small VFX house, and now I'm a compositor. My program journey went like this: Premiere (High School), After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Combustion, Flame.
Sorry for not addressing your previous question of machinina and game videos. I know that the Unreal engine is used by one of the major effects houses to do a lot of previs (basically moving storyboards) work, but overall I'd probably recommend against putting that stuff on your reel- I think most of Hollywood still doesn't "get it" when it comes to how hard some of that stuff is, and how much work is put into it. Sorry.
Typography, after effects, motion graphics studies would be good to have. General CG is probably less important, as if you're going the motion graphics route you're going to have people who KNOW KNOW CG providing you with CG.
Absolutely there are companies that focus on opening and ending credits. An opening sequence is a lot more motion graphics intensive than most Visual Effects houses deal with on a day to day basis, as well as sometimes requiring a lot more practical element photography than a lot of effects houses use. While it wouldn't be unusual for a mainly film VFX house to do opening or closing titles, there exist many companies that focus exclusively on producing awesome title sequences. Here are a few examples:
If you start doing compositing more heavily, I recommend downloading the Personal Learning Edition of Fusion. It's a great way to migrate to a node based (rather than a layer based like After Effects) interface (http://www.eyeonline.com/) and it's fully featured and relatively cheap compared to some of the other solutions out there. Also fully featured, but now unsupported, is Shake, but I always found Shake to be a lot less user friendly- but Apple keeps slashing the price on a license so it's getting very, very cheap.
Major post houses and smaller post houses don't really look for part time people unless you're an old hand. Smaller post houses especially can't afford that, as the smaller number of people means everyone has to wear more hats and do generally more jobs.
Now, what sounds ideal for you right now is to find a small company that specializes in corporate videos/weddings etc. Every now and then some kind of effects shot comes up (it might be changing the logo on a jet, doing a quick green screen comp to place the CEO inside an architectural model of their new building, etc) when those shots aren't there, you could do motion graphic design work (DVD menus, titles, lower thirds, etc). This is pretty much the path I took.
What kind of engineering are you studying? System administrators are always needed, programmers are always needed, people who can write complex shaders for 3d work are always needed.. etc etc. At a smaller house, someone who can do those tasks AND composite are very valuable- more valuable than a person who just does one thing. A larger house on the other hand, is going to have more use for someone who only does something like that. For Speed Racer, Digital Domain spent a long, long time just researching how to render 3d cars correctly and built a bunch of new stuff for it.
The job you're talking about is a visual effects artist.
Special effects are on set, visual effects are post production. A visual effects editor is an editor whose job is not to edit the movie, but to edit the VFX shots from different post houses into the cut. On a big budget effects driven flick, you might have multiple houses (ILM, DD, and 5 smaller houses) working on the same movie. These houses will be sending editorial updated composites all the time, and it's the job of a VFX editor to manage the cut, and place in all the updated version of these shots into the cut in a timely manner so that the director and the effects supervisor can review the cut with the effects in place, and send notes back to the effects houses on the effects shots (IE, too blue. Explosion bigger. Needs less asslike work).
A visual effects artist can be multiple things. The two most common things are a compositor or a 3d artist.
A compositor will take things (green screen elements, CGI, background plates, etc) and composite them to form a seamless shot that ideally looks as real as possible. They work in After Effects, Shake, Nuke, Fusion or Flame.
A 3d artist can be further specialized in a bunch of categories (are you a rigger, a texturer/lighter?, a modeler?) but you're usually creating CGI to be used by the compositors. They work in 3ds Max, Lightwave, Cineon 4d, Vue (really more of a matte painting tool though), and Maya.
It sounds like you're doing the work of a compositor and the work of a 3d artist, in which case it IS very hard to generate realistic looking footage because it's almost impossible to be pros in both of these fields.
It is very hard to get many of the things you've mentioned to look clean and professional without the support of a qualified 3d team. If you were looking to get into compositing effects, I would recommend doing more simple things as professional as possible. These would include muzzle flashes (you can make these look perfect even in After Effects), green screens, reflection elements, removing people/items from shots using clean plates, etc. Show you have a working knowledge of the job, and you could get hired doing rotoscoping for a while, then get bumped up to basic compositing, etc.
A possible way to get demo reel stuff is to sign up for fxphd (www.fxphd.com) they're train you, and give you tons of stuff to use on your demo reel that was professional shot, and CG elements professional done. Fxphd is the training division of the site fxguide, which is a great resource for any VFX artist- there's a ton of tips, tricks and tutorials at www.fxguide.com too;)
This is the last nail in the coffin for E for All. With the success of PAX growing exponentially, and the amount of companies involved in E for All decreasing just as fast, it reeks of desperation to try and schedule E for All on the same weekend of Pax,
Or does it? E for All is already dead. It is basically going to be a local convention now. If you already live in LA, whats a little traffic congested drive for a day full of some free cool swag and games?
Perhaps by changing the weekend to the same weekend as PAX, they hope that all the hardcore gamers will be at PAX, leaving E for All to be for the less hardcore, the very very casual gamers. Expect a lot of second life and sims players from Southern California, and very little else.
I'm still debating checking out E for All this year. I'm in the area, so why not?
And they probably have the same amount of objectionable material in them, since ESRB ratings are tougher than MPAA. It's interesting that both are directed at different age groups rating wise, have the same content and sell the same. Of course, I stood behind a parent pre-ordering 5 M rated games for their 6 year old, so why am I surprised?
When you push the button at the top once, it puts the phone to sleep. When you hold the "sleep" button down for 3 seconds, it actually turns off- totally off.
Maybe they should have done that- instead of wondering why their "off" phones were still "turning on" to ring.
Slashdot Mirror
Err- what's not entirely true? You actually made the next point I was going to make- that even a non-"Effects" film these days can have up to 100 effects shots and most of those are invisible.
In my above comment, I was talking about CG characters, vehicles and environments since that's what the OP seemed to be referring to- my closer was going to be your comment, that what he thinks of VFX is actually pretty narrow.
If I had a dash cam and wanted to make that blurry driver who hit me look like he had a cellphone in his hand, it wouldn't exactly be the most challenging thing I've done.
The crummier the original source (dash cam, web cam, etc) the easier it is to blend in CG elements perfectly.
The higher quality the source (35mm film, RED 4k Camera, IMAX) the harder it is.
And, just FYI, Hollywood is easily capable of creating photo-realistic CGI- but most movie companies aren't interested in paying or scheduling for it. And that's not even considering the fact that all CGI has to be approved by the director- who many times DOES NOT know what looks right in the scene and says it looks too blue or too orange. The end result is that most VFX shots are "good enough" for the money and time allotted.
Lastly, there are many talented individuals out there who given enough time can do photoreal effects.
Here's just one example:
http://vimeo.com/5407991?hd=1
"Radios were sent to -Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (Ottawa, ON Canada)"
Dear god. What are we going to do when we go to war with those french speaking queen loving northerners?! They will even be able to listen in on the Department of Defense frequencies! They will know our every move!
I demand that only DEFECTIVE radios are sent to Canada.
For maximum effect, I recommend that the radios only receive communications in the form of a poor impression of a Canadian accent- notably every word should be "Ay?"
(This post was a joke)
As a compositor, it's probably just me, but it seems like every article on post production effects (for movies, games, commercials, etc) spends so much time on modeling, effects and lighting that by the time the writer has hit the compositing part of the pipeline they've- oops! run out of time.
There are fantastic modelers, trackers, texture artists, lighters etc in the pipeline, but here's the thing- all of us share the burden of producing a good looking shot equally.
Without a good model, no amount of work by the texture artist lighter and compositor can make the shot look good. Without good texture art, the lighter will never get good light play off the model. Without good lighting, the compositor's workload increases 100 times as he now has to "fake" lighting and shadows in 2d. Without good compositing, excellent lighting, modeling and texturing will still scream CG to any audience.
Personally, I find it very cool to be at the end of the pipeline- things come to me and I get to throw them into the pot; stir and make the entire shot come together. I feel bad for the modelers and animators who don't get to see their final product- what I send to the client is what I see on the big screen in another month.
Of course, being at the end of the pipeline would be cooler if all the magazine editors didn't run out of space at the end of the article :(
Los Angeles here. Lived in 5 different places in this city and with the exception of the one I just moved into (which now gets FIOS and Time Warner) all have only had 1 option. Unless New York is someone the opposite, my experience hasn't taught me that :/
Where do you live where it is possible to just "switch" to a different ISP?
Everyone I have lived (save one place) has only had one option for high speed internet. One cable company which was granted a sanctioned monopoly to service the area. If you didn't like the way they did business your options were limited. DSL for a majority of locations is not nearly as fast as cable- if you live close enough to the service station at all. If the only other option is dialup and you are protesting slow speeds on non-affiliated sites.. what's the point? The entire internet will be as slow as the original ISP throttling (if you do this solely to make a point to the ISP and can live with those speeds- kudos to you).
The problem is these ISPs have been given sanctioned monopolies over certain areas. The consumer does not have a choice. The unfiltered internet will not win because consumers cannot switch to it. The unfiltered internet can not win because it won't have the budget to break into those monopolies, because the monopolies will be collecting money from their affiliated preferred business partners, and the unfiltered internet will not be.
And finally, the unfiltered internet will not win because it will be more expensive than the filtered internet- and Americans refuse to pay an extra 2 cents for a safety airbag that will save their lives.
People knowledgeable/with degrees in math and science find themselves in high demand in a field where you spend an entire year trying to figure out how to properly generate and render the materials composing of Iron Man's suit.
Oooh, scary. Did you even read the summary? "A bit of snooping tells me that Vodafone is the only network from which it is possible to send SMS to a Chinese registered mobile phone." If it's already possible via Vodafone, that indicates it's a business rather than government issue.
Obviously, the fact that google is searchable from inside china indicates that it's a business rather than government issue there too.
Can anyone tell me why this situation has come about and when we can expect this sort of service to be enabled?"
Here's an answer to your second question: NEVER
Here's an answer to your first question: Why the hell would the people's republic of china suddenly want to let unfiltered, uncensored text messages into the country while it keeps an iron fist on what their citizens see and hear even over the internet?
Perhaps a more pragmatic answer would be that China will allow text messages to enter into the country when it's able to monitor and censor every text message, and connect a sender to a recipient with their name and current location (to allow for quick and easy arrests), and know who to detain when they enter the country.
One of the worst control schemes I've ever used, that's what I didn't get. I was semi interested in Norse mythology in space, and the visuals were good, but the control scheme was so bad I gave up on the demo in frustration- when my grenade launcher kept auto targeting objects flying towards me that I had no chance of hitting instead of the monster lobbing them at me.
It varies wildly. Very, very wildly. Sometimes editors will get paid more, sometimes actors will get paid way more. At the professional film level, they're both unionized positions, unlike effects workers (sad face).
Hi Lincoln,
I understand what you mean with unexpected problems that you encounter after the shoot day, but "Fix it in post" is a term most often used on set to avoid working on issues BEFORE or DURING a shoot. For instance, instead of doing prep work before the shoot for a monitor inlay, they'll spend 4 times the money and time to do it in post. Instead of finding a smart way to break glass, they dress some wacko up in green and have him stand between the glass and the camera to break it- green is apparently invisible to the camera, and the camera will just shoot through it.
As a professional at the end of the production chain, I spend an inordinate amount of time fixing laziness that piles up in the chain because someone said: "Fix it in post"
Perhaps I wasn't blatant enough in my original post, but what I was saying (while trying to not be antagonistic) was that none of this is new stuff. There are thousands of little post shops that do this stuff everyday. If they put it in a small package that is able to 3d track standard def footage quickly, accurately and automatically and easily do the resolution adding, area replacement, etc; that's slightly new- but I see very little proof that they've done that.
I apologize if I didn't make that clear enough. To summarize: Is there anything new here? We do this stuff everyday, here's how.
And then I put in a little bitch on people saying "Fix it in post" ;)
This is a 3d track of the shot (which generates a point cloud of 3d points, which can then be used to generate an automatic 3d model of the scene). They then project (a method of texturing that paints a model based on points of projection.. what happens when you stand in front of a projector- you get projected onto) the still photos onto the 3d model, recreating all aspects of the texture and geometry, but instead of SD resolution, you now have gigapixel resolution built into the model.
The reason it looks like a cheap video game is exactly that, they're trying to prove how sharp it is, so instead of anything being anti-aliased etc it's all crisp- which doesn't look like real life.
Solution: get a better video camera, learn how to expose your shots properly.
Oh? And the tree thing? same thing, except instead of projecting the texture on, you just place the texture in the 3d scene where the tree is, and render- it's even easier.
Solution: Don't film a beat up tree. Don't film flowers with a giant sign in the middle of them.
This wasn't at SIGGRAPH this week. As a paper or as a poster- of which there are PLENTY of student posters.
The solution is NOT to fix it in post. The solution is to spend 5 minutes, think it through, and fix it while you're filming.
Flint Flame and Inferno are all pretty much the same node based compositing system- Autodesk adds in some arbitrary "you can't use that function" to the lower end models (Flint and Flame) that the inferno has, but it's nothing you really need. Flame is the dominant of the three in North America, while the Inferno is bigger in Japan because clients INSIST on it because they think it's better.
Smoke is a flame like editing system that can do basic effects, but is primarily used as a high end commercial editor- kind of like an Avid Nitro. I think Fire is the same thing, but either a higher tier or a lower tier. I'm not sure if they sell many.
Combustion is a low end layer based compositing system that most closely resembles After Effects but gets a lot of hand me downs from the Flame.
Stay away from Toxik.
I was a big Adobe fanboy too. The man thing to remember about After Effects vs Shake/Fusion/Flame is that After Effects is a layer based compositing system (the workflow is built around a layer list, you add filters to layers, etc) while Shake/Fusion/Flame are node based systems- where your footage are inputs to a flow of nodes, and every filter or 2d move or track or gmask is a node along a chain, starting with multiple inputs and (usually) culminating together in one output. Node based is (in my opinion) the only real professional option, but I believe almost all motion graphics are done with a layer based system (mostly After Effects) since it's very nature allows you to generate a look in Photoshop, bring it in, then animate the layers- very handy.
Sometimes I've wished for a node based Photoshop, but thats just overkill and silly. As far as everything on the internet is free, just remember it's all fun and games until you start making money off it.
I asked about the engineering because you never really can tell what someone wants to do or their specialty off their stated major alone. I'm not really sure that your chosen specialty (things liek chip design) would be needed- as I'm not that knowledgeable about the field of engineering. I believe most of the 3d plugins etc are written in C++, Python, or MEL (a maya scripting language I think). It's a long way off from compositing. I don't really know of any resources to help you get started here, as it's just too far away from my chosen fields (I'm a 2d compositor with a heavy 3d overlap).
I went to college for Film Production (Loyola Marymount University). While there I TA'd the effects and editing class, and got a job part time at one of the corporate places I mentioned as an editor/motion graphics guy/effects. Following college I got a roto job at a small VFX house, and now I'm a compositor. My program journey went like this: Premiere (High School), After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Shake, Combustion, Flame.
Sorry for not addressing your previous question of machinina and game videos. I know that the Unreal engine is used by one of the major effects houses to do a lot of previs (basically moving storyboards) work, but overall I'd probably recommend against putting that stuff on your reel- I think most of Hollywood still doesn't "get it" when it comes to how hard some of that stuff is, and how much work is put into it. Sorry.
Typography, after effects, motion graphics studies would be good to have. General CG is probably less important, as if you're going the motion graphics route you're going to have people who KNOW KNOW CG providing you with CG.
Absolutely there are companies that focus on opening and ending credits. An opening sequence is a lot more motion graphics intensive than most Visual Effects houses deal with on a day to day basis, as well as sometimes requiring a lot more practical element photography than a lot of effects houses use. While it wouldn't be unusual for a mainly film VFX house to do opening or closing titles, there exist many companies that focus exclusively on producing awesome title sequences. Here are a few examples:
PIC agency (http://www.picagency.com/) (The Kingdom opening credits) Article on their opening credits for the Kingdom: http://www.fxguide.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=435
Picture Mill (http://www.picturemill.com/) Article on Picture Mill: http://www.fxguide.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=435
These are just two of many. Hope this helps.
If you start doing compositing more heavily, I recommend downloading the Personal Learning Edition of Fusion. It's a great way to migrate to a node based (rather than a layer based like After Effects) interface (http://www.eyeonline.com/) and it's fully featured and relatively cheap compared to some of the other solutions out there. Also fully featured, but now unsupported, is Shake, but I always found Shake to be a lot less user friendly- but Apple keeps slashing the price on a license so it's getting very, very cheap.
Major post houses and smaller post houses don't really look for part time people unless you're an old hand. Smaller post houses especially can't afford that, as the smaller number of people means everyone has to wear more hats and do generally more jobs.
Now, what sounds ideal for you right now is to find a small company that specializes in corporate videos/weddings etc. Every now and then some kind of effects shot comes up (it might be changing the logo on a jet, doing a quick green screen comp to place the CEO inside an architectural model of their new building, etc) when those shots aren't there, you could do motion graphic design work (DVD menus, titles, lower thirds, etc). This is pretty much the path I took.
What kind of engineering are you studying? System administrators are always needed, programmers are always needed, people who can write complex shaders for 3d work are always needed.. etc etc. At a smaller house, someone who can do those tasks AND composite are very valuable- more valuable than a person who just does one thing. A larger house on the other hand, is going to have more use for someone who only does something like that. For Speed Racer, Digital Domain spent a long, long time just researching how to render 3d cars correctly and built a bunch of new stuff for it.
Wish you luck.
The job you're talking about is a visual effects artist.
;)
Special effects are on set, visual effects are post production. A visual effects editor is an editor whose job is not to edit the movie, but to edit the VFX shots from different post houses into the cut. On a big budget effects driven flick, you might have multiple houses (ILM, DD, and 5 smaller houses) working on the same movie. These houses will be sending editorial updated composites all the time, and it's the job of a VFX editor to manage the cut, and place in all the updated version of these shots into the cut in a timely manner so that the director and the effects supervisor can review the cut with the effects in place, and send notes back to the effects houses on the effects shots (IE, too blue. Explosion bigger. Needs less asslike work).
A visual effects artist can be multiple things. The two most common things are a compositor or a 3d artist.
A compositor will take things (green screen elements, CGI, background plates, etc) and composite them to form a seamless shot that ideally looks as real as possible. They work in After Effects, Shake, Nuke, Fusion or Flame.
A 3d artist can be further specialized in a bunch of categories (are you a rigger, a texturer/lighter?, a modeler?) but you're usually creating CGI to be used by the compositors. They work in 3ds Max, Lightwave, Cineon 4d, Vue (really more of a matte painting tool though), and Maya.
It sounds like you're doing the work of a compositor and the work of a 3d artist, in which case it IS very hard to generate realistic looking footage because it's almost impossible to be pros in both of these fields.
It is very hard to get many of the things you've mentioned to look clean and professional without the support of a qualified 3d team. If you were looking to get into compositing effects, I would recommend doing more simple things as professional as possible. These would include muzzle flashes (you can make these look perfect even in After Effects), green screens, reflection elements, removing people/items from shots using clean plates, etc. Show you have a working knowledge of the job, and you could get hired doing rotoscoping for a while, then get bumped up to basic compositing, etc.
A possible way to get demo reel stuff is to sign up for fxphd (www.fxphd.com) they're train you, and give you tons of stuff to use on your demo reel that was professional shot, and CG elements professional done. Fxphd is the training division of the site fxguide, which is a great resource for any VFX artist- there's a ton of tips, tricks and tutorials at www.fxguide.com too
Hope this was helpful.
Oh.
Well forget that.
Excellent insight Rallion!
This is the last nail in the coffin for E for All. With the success of PAX growing exponentially, and the amount of companies involved in E for All decreasing just as fast, it reeks of desperation to try and schedule E for All on the same weekend of Pax,
Or does it? E for All is already dead. It is basically going to be a local convention now. If you already live in LA, whats a little traffic congested drive for a day full of some free cool swag and games?
Perhaps by changing the weekend to the same weekend as PAX, they hope that all the hardcore gamers will be at PAX, leaving E for All to be for the less hardcore, the very very casual gamers. Expect a lot of second life and sims players from Southern California, and very little else.
I'm still debating checking out E for All this year. I'm in the area, so why not?
And they probably have the same amount of objectionable material in them, since ESRB ratings are tougher than MPAA. It's interesting that both are directed at different age groups rating wise, have the same content and sell the same. Of course, I stood behind a parent pre-ordering 5 M rated games for their 6 year old, so why am I surprised?
When you push the button at the top once, it puts the phone to sleep. When you hold the "sleep" button down for 3 seconds, it actually turns off- totally off.
Maybe they should have done that- instead of wondering why their "off" phones were still "turning on" to ring.
Special Effects are on set. Visual Effects are post production CGI, compositing, etc.
A special effect is a car being rigged to explode on set. A visual effect is a giant 4 story CG robot kicking that car.
We're two entirely seperate industries. Thanks for your interest however!
Because if not, the amount of time you spend on the first chapter, and ignore the rest, seems a little disproportionate and uninformative.