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A VFX Shot Every Day - Pete Breakdowns

🕑 Added 2022-01-26 04:10:11 +0000 UTC

Comments

Ian Hubert

Totally depends! I like 4k for exactly that reason- it lets you get a nice high res greenscreen element you can get really close to (and get a more detailed key)- and even higher res (5-6k) can give you even more flexibility, but it can fill up hard drive space really fast. I know that's not really answer, but it really is all just about tradeoffs :D

Fransoa

One thing I am not clear about is: what should be the resolution of the green screen video. Is it better to always shoot on 4K for zooming effect for instance?

Sam Goldwater

Flare Wizard the Blender addon is also neat for this kind of thing :)

Video Copilot is still in business, but they haven't done anything new in at least a couple years.

Its a pleasure watching your breakdowns !!

Thank you. it's still available little pricey but seems like a good investment.

Ian Hubert

Oh! That was using a plug-in for After Effects called Optical Flares by VideoCopilot- it came out like 12 years ago but it's probably still available?

would love o know how to add those nice camera flares at 7:40 if anyone knows?

Ian Hubert

I *completely* agree. One of those shots where I looked at the render like, "this looks way better than I expected. I wish I had the slightest idea why so I could do it again..." Regardless it's gotten me way more invested in playing around with color, maybe pushing stuff around in more interesting ways than I have in the past. I've been obsessed with Ismail's colors- I'd love to figure out how to think like that. https://www.artstation.com/seventeenth

Ian Hubert

Ahhh! I hope I get to see it when it's done, though!

I've been working on a video that has a few cg timelapses in it and I find it so funny that you happened to make a timelapse shot for the Pete episode. I feel both excited to see I had basically the exact same ideas for how to do it as you and a little disappointed that I didn't finish mine first! haha

Hermokrates

This is what you call Mastery. The ability to use your knowledge to execute these insane and wonderous ideas. Unfortunately, mastery can't be taught.

Nickolai bauer

Funny story.. I once wrote to Ian asking him about vocal lessons, because i mistook him for another patreon xD Im glad he chose to ignore that one.. that was embarresing :D

Love it a lot, great insight on some things that I should do when it comes to cinematography. With these digital extensions and framing of videos such as time-lapses can give us much greater control over the entire meaning of the shot, as well as someone like me who is a one-man person.

David McSween

It might be the rhythmic nature of the camera wobble Ian introduced, as he points out it repeated unnaturally. However in my experience timelapse shots are already unnatural and manufactured, if you had a track laid down to dolly back on its very likely to have a number of bumps in it that repeat.

Chris Alldridge

The time lapse shot at 9:05 is one the most striking you’ve ever made. As with all the other shots you create, it’s visually arresting… but there’s something else going on and I can’t for the life of me work out quite what it is. Maybe it’s a slightly uncanny feeling brought about by the warping of time. Either way, fantastic video!

Mark Miller

"Rotated HDRI sunrise" is a neat trick. I'm torn over when I'd want to use that vs. using the amazing Nishita sky texture which already does the right "reddish at sunrise" trick without the extra steps. I guess the HDRI gives you a "sort of works in eevee" as opposed to "doesn't work in eevee" solution, and maybe that's enough? Any other thoughts?

Noneya D Biznazz

Or just work the story to include rampant cloning :)

Pete is the greatest ! After Ian of course

Ian Hubert

Oh! It's a bunch of photoscans of various pieces of ground/rockeries around my town! Not quite as high tech as geometry nodes, but quick-n-easy, and work really well! I've got em all uploaded here on the asset tier, if that's ever useful :D

Hey Ian, I love how you scattered the rocks in that starry night environment - how'd you do it? Were they hand placed, geometry nodes, or something else?

Ian Hubert

Ah, probably just missed it! I have 3 "finish-by-the-end-of-january" projects happening right now, so I'm losing my mind a little and falling behind pretty good on messages, sorry about that :(

I caught that guitar fight when you shared it in your insta story a week or two ago and just lost my mind at how great it looked. I've been thinking about commenting somewhere there or here asking for a way to see it again every day since. 100% better looking than any other super fight/live action dragonball kinda thing I've maybe ever seen. When I get an e-mail that you've shared something new here it seriously makes my whole week. Been learning from you for about half a year now and I can't thank you enough for everything.

Nikita

Hey, Ian. I DM'd you here on Patreon a while ago. Did you miss it or just chose to ignore? The latter is fine, honestly. You're a busy dude. But it would be nice to know

Jourdan Biziou

Super fun and awesome as always Ian :) yay

Doug Brown

wonderful stuff!

Fernando Sala

As my doctor once said: One vfx shot per day keeps the sanity away.... Jk man, I love your work and your personality

Lukas Sprehn

Well, if you watch the old Dynamo episodes, there are people with superpowers, and things get super weird and wacky!

Christopher Dunk

Speed runs are always rewarding 🎉

Jostein Lie Svalheim

All my best ideas come when I'm 3 hours into the render...

Ian Hubert

Hah yeah! Kind feels rear-projected into a miniature or something.

Gabrial Wolf

'Scott Pilgrim Vs the Dynamo' towards the end there

Phil South

The shot just being on a plane in the background is just old school, it turns your environment into a 3D matte painting. It gives you that Dynamation flavour for free. :) <3

Lukas Sprehn

I feel like you don’t look THAT much older than back then. And with make up and such you could make it way less noticeable too. Even maybe with some deepfake. Maybe soon we’ll have cheaper and more accessible and more convincing affordable de-aging CG through AI or something.

Ian Hubert

You do 2d animation?? That's awesome! And OH! It can be just as nerve-wracking on a Live Action set! At the end of a (potentially $25,000) shoot day, if you don't have all the footage you need, you just *don't have it*- shoot days are WILD that way; often expensive, ludicrously hard to schedule, and the moment you arrive on set you're behind on time- but when everything clicks and everyone's bouncing ideas off each other and doing their part and you get to improvise and problem solve with other talented people- it's an absolute high. Comparatively, as long as there isn't a deadline, I LOVE being able to mix and match stuff around in the edit when the stakes aren't as high (that's why I've started scanning everyone/thing, *just in case*) And actually yeah... I haven't done 'real production' in about a decade, so I'd like to think I've grown a lot since then, BUT on those old big productions, having to lock everything down by the shoot days definitely resulted in worse final products. FINISHED products, which I can't say about a lot of stuff I work on :P, but you can definitely feel the rigidity. And yeah- planning everything out to a T is what I'm *absolutely* trying to do right now for this big shoot coming up, but at the same time, so many ideas pop up in the moment, once you actually see everything together on set and it feels like it's coming to life- so much stuff becomes obvious in that moment, little idiosyncrasies and stuff- that you *never* would have come up with sitting alone at a desk writing a script, so being able to strike a balance is always great

Ian Hubert

That's what I'm hoping! Even if I haven't figured out how to implement them yet, I'm always really aware it all exists, and I'll stick it in *something*- maybe just a super weirdass music video? Actually along that same vein, I have hours and hours of utterly apeshit movies I made as a kid, that really capture that whole "childhood filmmaking with your friends" vibe (cardboard box robots and paper plate/tinfoil UFOs and all that stuff)- none of it's good, but I like it in a nostalgic sense, and I'd LOVE to remix it into something. As you say, redo the audio or whatever, kind of a collab with my younger self?? Especially all the claymations. I should back up all those old tapes asap, probably. And hahahaha, yeah I'm trying to figure out if this is cannonically Gage, and he just had a short stint as a restaurant manager (why not??) or if it's, like, Bizarro Gage. And dang yeah! Between that and the Starlight & Atmosphere addon, I really gotta check those out! It'd be great to not have to deal with whatever trees happen to be sticking above the horizon of whatever HDRI I pick :P

Urban Exile

Full FLCL? YES!!!

Theo

Because I'm from the 2d animation world seeing the sorta 'figure it out in the edit' approach to making a film is kinda nerve-wracking. Not in a bad way though, I'm always a little jealous of live action because it feels really natural and spontaneous, I'm just curious if it has been mostly the limitations of not having a 'real production' that has lead to that approach or if that's just the way you like to work? Like would you ever want to plan everything out to a T beforehand?

Zeke Faust

So glad you're able to finish one of those old episodes. The idea that hours of this great material will never be released is kinda heartbreaking. Although to look at it a better way, you're also sitting on a gold mine of scenes that could be totally repurposed with just a bit of ADR or vfx tweaks to recontextualize them or make them work with new narrative connective tissue. p.s. It's fun to see Gage rocking your goatee :P p.p.s. Nishita is also a great way to do timelapse as it handles the color tinting automatically.

Love this, I share some your work with a select few of my private students over zoom.(younger than 13) and they are on the edge of their seats

Ian Hubert

Thanks man!! Yeah the satellites are my absolute favorite part of that shot. I think the idea of people being able to look at a shot of the night sky and accidentally see a satellite- kinda like in real life- is really fun :D

Kai Christensen

I can totally relate to the "hit render, OH WAIT i should change this, let me cancel that" over and over and then looking up at the clock and seeing "oh, it's been 7 hours". feels like as soon as i finally get into my creative flow, time starts passing *way* too fast and before i know it it's time for sleep!