If you’re involved in 3D animation, you know how much work is involved to create even the shortest of projects. First you’ve got to model and texture the characters, set up the rigs, make all the props, light the scene and then of course animate it all. That’s a tall order for anyone to do, even seasoned pros.

For those who have a story to tell and would rather not spend months, or even years cloistered away behind a machine painstakingly creating the worlds and characters that will bring their tale to life, there is another option: iClone 5 from Reallusion.

With iClone, you have a remarkable abundance of tools to create your own animated movies in a fraction of the time it would take to cook everything up from scratch yourself. Available in the program are fully rigged customizable characters, sets, backgrounds, terrains, props and much more.

The iClone 5 user interface.

Content is King

Think of iClone as offering up a major Hollywood studio on your PC. Often, large studios have backlots with pre-constructed stages and environments. Does your movie take place in New York? Just go to the studio’s New York lot. Need a prop for that location? Just pay a visit to the props department. iClone is a virtual version of just that approach.

iClone comes with enough content to get you started. You simply drag characters, props and sets onto your stage from the content manager. When your production calls for something more, you can visit Reallusion’s online Marketplace where you can purchase much, much more. Want more specific collections? You’ll find all sorts of useful content packs available, such as a range of different characters with many different hair styles, clothes, shoes, faces and costumes. Need a superhero? Not a problem. What about a policeman, fireman, wizard, witch, monk, or 3D cartoon character? You can have that, as well as extensive ‘environments’ such as a medieval castle or even a virtual Times Square.

What’s interesting here is how far Reallusion has gone to develop its online marketplace. Its easy to use City Marketplace Service allows users of iClone (as well as their other products such as CrazyTalk Animator PRO) to surf, download and insert a complete trial version of the content into their movie scenes on a “try before you buy” basis. This includes content that’s been created by iClone users around the world, so if you’re good with design, you might have a bit of an income stream from that alone.

One of the many sets available in the online marketplace.

Aside from all of this, there are libraries of motions available online that you can apply to your characters. There, you’ll find many pre-made motion files for all kinds of movement. For example, the Adventure Movies Motion Pack contains motions based on common movements that are found in adventure movies such as creeping through a cave, the movements of a hero, overcoming obstacles and so on. Other motion packs include communication, lovers, rock band, comedic clowns, dog motion, kung fu, dancing, combat, fantasy and many others.

I highly recommend you visit the online content store for yourself and spend some time browsing through that is available for iClone. Not only is it a lot of fun, it will also spark your imagination and might inspire you to create deeper and more visually rich stories.

Characters and props

iClone actors can be customized in many ways. Want your actor to be thinner, fatter, taller or shorter? How about a bigger nose or stronger chin? Need the eyes further apart or perhaps you’d prefer a darker complexion? All of these parameters can be changed to suit your needs in the Modify window.

Compared with all the nose-to-the-monitor work that goes into creating characters in a typical animation package, here it’s actually a lot of fun playing around with the different settings and watching the character instantly assume different looks. You can even randomize the settings. A nice touch to iClone’s approach is that by modifying one actor, you can form many different characters from that one instance.

Of course, you might want to change the actor’s clothes too. You can’t have him or her showing up at the opera in jeans and a tee. Changing attire is easy too. Simply double click to change pants, shirts, jackets, hats and even hair styles.

Changing the attire on iClone actors.

Props and sets often come with behaviors built into them. I was surprised to discover upon dragging a tree from the content manager to the stage that when I pressed the play button, the leaves and branches began to subtly sway as if they were affected by the wind. Water also comes with a built in wave motion. Simply add water to your scene and it not only starts to move up and down, but it takes on real time reflections.

Interactive Props are new in iClone 5 and feature the new Lua (lightweight multi-paradigm programming) language. This means that you can command your props to animate automatically.

Motion

While the online market place contains scads of motion files for you to use in your projects, you can also animate your character manually. Especially noteworthy is that in Reallusion v5 the company has licensed the Human IK (inverse kinematics) system from none other than Autodesk. Human IK forms the core technology behind AutoDesk’s professional Motion Builder software and contains a very high level rig with many advanced features such as pinning, reach targets and full-body inverse kinematics. With the advanced Human IK system, you can create sophisticated character animation within iClone for yourself.

But one of the most fun and interesting new developments in iClone 5 is its ability to use Microsoft’s Kinect motion sensor to allow you to do your own motion capture in your home or small studio. With the Mocap Device Plug-in and two Kinects, you can turn your iClone 5 setup into a mini motion capture studio and use your own body to control virtual actors and record their motion in real time. While this isn’t traditional, high-end mo cap which requires pricey multiple cameras along with a fair-sized studio, the results are still pretty impressive. Look for further developments in this capability in future versions.

Using your body to create motion with a Kinect.

More control over motion comes from stringing together different motion files and then applying the MixMoves system to automatically generate natural transitions between them. For example, you might apply a motion to your character that makes her dance, then you apply another one that makes her sit on the floor. MixMoves will automatically sequence motions and blend them together in a natural, believable manner.

Another way to control motion: puppeteering controls that you can control in real time with your mouse. By layering these puppet motions on top of each other, you can create effective animation quickly and effectively and in less time than keyframing.

Physics and particles

iClone 5 contains rigid and soft body dynamics which allow you to simulate the falling, collision and bouncing of objects; options allow you to control mass, friction, damping and other parameters. You can apply physics to both props and characters.

Need your character or prop to smash through a stack of barrels? What about a brick wall? Just use the dynamics system. The physics engine can also handle cloth simulations: vary parameters such as material stiffness to simulate anything from wispy silk to thick linen.

Using physics to create a dynamic car crash.

Traditional VFX are also included. The iClone 5’s particle generator creates fire, smoke, sparks or other particle driven effects such as a wizard’s magic dust. Attach the particle generator to the end of a log, for example, to make your character look like he or she is holding a flaming torch.

Other enhancements

iClone 5 now has Ambient Occlusion when rendering. You might think of them as shadows, but ambient occlusion, or AO as it is sometimes known, simulates the natural way objects diminish the amount of light they receive the closer they are to each other. Meanwhile a new toon shader will give your renders a unique flair. iClone 5 also has a new camera gizmo that allows you to control multiple cameras more easily.

Other useful developments in the new version include the multiple duplicate dialogue; this allows you to duplicate objects while transforming their rotation and scale. These cloner-type effects are useful when constructing things like spiral staircases or other repeating structures. You can now also edit the position of the pivot in your objects giving you better control over its rotation and scaling.

A tree and a car from iClone's included content.

In Conclusion

Reallusion has done an impressive job with iClone 5. Not only is it just the thoughtful engineering and sheer scope of the software. I appreciate the considerable development that has gone into creating content and the online marketplace.

iClone has many more interesting features than I’ve covered here. As mentioned before, it’s a bit like having a movie production studio at your fingertips complete with backlot sets, a stable of actors, a props department, pre-choreographed motion and more.

Large 3D productions often require teams of artists and animators who might toil away for months or even years. At some of the larger studios a single animator’s average output for one week can result in only two or three seconds of work. He’s not even involved in modeling, rigging, texturing or lighting. However not everyone with interesting ideas for animation has access to an army of talented individuals or the time to spend.

That’s when you’ll appreciate iClone 5. It simply gives you a tremendous head start in making your next project. If you’re new to 3D animation or just don’t have the time or the patience to start from square one, think of iClone as the fast track way for getting your story out there.

The cost to get involved? It’s minimal: iClone Pro v5 lists at $199. More information can be found on Reallusion’s website.

iClone runs on Windows 7 / Windows Vista / Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later. There’s support for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. Mac users need to run from a clean Windows install via BootCamp.

As is readily apparent from some of my past writings and reviews, CINEMA 4D is a very sophisticated, deep and multifaceted 3D animation and design package with such features as high-end subdivision modeling, advanced rendering, dynamics, and animation capabilities.

But that’s only the beginning. Let’s not forget the endless creative possibilities of MoGraph and state of the art character tools. I haven’t even mentioned hair, particles, 3D painting, and UV mapping options. And there’s more. Much more.

With one program offering so many capabilities, an important question becomes: how does one effectively learn, let alone master, all of the facets of an app as deep as CINEMA 4D? True, it does come with reference documentation accessible through the help menu. This is, in fact, done well. But, similar to many other large packages, the standard help menu doesn’t go deep enough in addressing the intricacies of the program or discussing higher level approaches like best practices.

That’s why Maxon created Cineversity. This online repository of video tutorials will take you through all aspects of the program. New users and aspiring gurus can dip into Cineversity’s vast warehouse of knowledge to learn new things, brush up on what they already know or venture into areas that they don’t.

The news here is that Cineversity has recently undergone a major redesign that makes this “University of CINEMA 4D” much more of a treat to dive into.

Users can access tutorials either as free users or as Premium members (which requires a paid subscription). Many of the free video tutorials will help newcomers get started and introduce them to important concepts. However, if you want to go deep, many of those lessons are only available to Premium users.

Another handy feature for Premium users is the ability to make your own playlists, placing the videos in whatever order you like. You might make a playlist about rigging, for example. Watch it whenever you like, and pick up where you last left off since Cineversity keeps track of which videos you’ve already seen and those you haven’t got to in the playlist. Want to brush up on the subject later? Simply resurrect the playlist and watch it again, since it is saved with your account.

However, one of the coolest things about the new playlists is that you can share them with others or even search other people’s playlists. This brings curation into your learning, which is a good way to discover more about a certain subject and find things you may have missed. For those who want a more regular learning experience, Cineversity also pre-curates “official” playlists.

Want to follow along? A number of tutorials offer associated lesson files, and you can download them right from the Cineversity site.

Searching tutorials in Cineversity

If you’re a teacher at a school that offers CINEMA 4D, you might like to set up a “teacher account.” This can allow you to add some structure to the lessons via custom playlists that students access via coupons made available to you. You could then monitor which tutorials your students watch, and make sure they view all the videos in the assigned playlist.

The Cineversity website also offers Cineversity Live, Maxon’s bi-weekly webcast with tips and other info about Cinema 4D. The updated site also features a Wiki knowledge base where premium members can contribute to and share information relevant to CINEMA 4D users and digital artists in general.

Wikis and curated playlists are just some of the up-to-date approaches to know-how on the site. Paul Babb, president and CEO of Maxon, U.S., expressed enthusiasm about the changes, and noted in a prepared statement that the site’s approach will increase “the artist’s proficiency and productivity.”

While CINEMA 4D’s user interface is very intuitive, any one working professionally in the industry knows that regular learning needs to be part of your schedule if you hope to stay current to today’s dizzying pace of tech changes.

Of course knowing a few more tweaks or a better way of working than the next guy can be a critical asset, giving you a competitive edge.

So what’s it cost? Premium membership starts with a one-time fee of $295; you can renew annually for another $95. Not bad if you compare it to the cost of courses at specialized institutes or universities, and a pretty good deal if you want to grow your career.

Cineversity is located at www.cineversity.com

Our take on the best, or at least most interesting…
recent tech.

Written by Joe Herman & Dan Ochiva

Avid’s new Avid Artist Color interface

Avid Media Composer 6

As the pro media community has remarked online–and even Avid owned up to in its recent press conference in New York–with the release this month of Avid Media Composer 6 (MC6), the Tewksbury, Mass-based company has now embarked on a new phase of its existence: actually listening to its clients and implementing what they want as best as they are able.

That shouldn’t be so extraordinary, but it is, or has been, the case. From its early years until quite recently, Avid had a rep as a company that had all the answers a user might want in an NLE, down to what drives they might buy (of course only pricey storage arrays that they themselves sold fit the bill) and what I/O could breach its ‘black box’ architecture (at one point hackers garnered kudos for figuring out how to splice and solder the right I/O components to allow 3rd party gear to be attached to the NLE).

Okay. So it took more than 20 years since the first release of Media Composer and a few near-death experiences as the company teetered near the edge of bankruptcy. They made it.

The software is still the favorite of the vast majority of feature film editors, notwithstanding Final Cut Pro’s chewing into the lead over the past decade. Of course we all know how that ended.

But the important news for anyone who edits for a living is that the pieces have all come together, finally, and the result is real good. The app has moved to 64 bits (along with Symphony version 6, and NewsCutter version 10, which were also part of the recent announcement). That brings a lot more real-time responsiveness to scrolling, tweaking edits, and just life in general. The sleek, new UI looks much more up-to-date, while the updated color correction capability, Avid Artist Color, gets a sturdy if rather utilitarian hardware interface, courtesy of Avid’s purchase of sound mixer company Euphonix.

The new Avid Marketplace gives in-system access to stock footage from Thought Equity Motion. That’s a good idea that offers an easy-to-use solution for busy editors on deadline (you’ll also be able to purchase a number of video and audio plug-ins as well as other products). Other items of note include a new codec, DNxHD 4444 (i.e. a full 4:4:4 codec as per ProRes) and a solid 3D editing capability that really makes MC6 the only solution to consider.

Avid Symphony, for full on edit suite finishing, will now be available as a software only option. It too handles all third party capture cards.

Meanwhile, Avid’s new regime of community inclusiveness is bearing fruit. For example, now, upon the debut of MC6, important industry players are offering new MC-specific gear.

Longtime NLE effects developer Boris offers a 64-bit version of its popular Continuum Complete 8 AVX with some 200 VFX and compositing filters for MC, NewsCutter, and Symphony. Moving beyond 32-bit computation pays off for graphics-intensive production, as more RAM is addressable.

If you’re a user of Blackmagic Design gear including DeckLink, Multibridge, Intensity and UltraStudio, the Australian company’s new Desktop Video 9.0 software update enables MC6 users to take advantage of high-speed connectors on the Blackmagic devices such as Thunderbolt, USB 3.0 and PCI Express video capture and playback devices. The throughput speed reached with such setups enables work with uncompressed 10-bit YUV and RGB, Avid DNxHD, Panasonic DVCPRO HD, and Sony XDCAM.

Avid’s Open I/O SDK also enables MOTU to offer its HD/SD video capture and monitoring gear to Avid users of Media Composer 6, Symphony 6, and NewsCutter 10. Like Blackmagic Design, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company’s products—such as the HDX-SDI and HD Express–are noted for their combination of rugged builds and cost effectiveness.

Finally, ARRI added capabilities to its popular Alexa camera line by enabling in-camera support for Avid’s open standard DNxHD codec.

Canon EOS C300

Canon cameras are practically synonymous with DSLR filmmaking, having played a key role in its inception. Because of this, many people have been waiting eagerly to see what future course Canon would chart.

Some of these questions have now been answered with the Canon EOS C300, their entry into the world of professional digital cinematography. It’s an interchangeable-lens digital camera that meets the demand of professionals, particularly for motion picture production.

The camera, which features a new Super 35 mm 8.29 megapixel CMOS sensor, is available in two models. The C300 has an EF lens mount compatible with Canon EF lenses while the C300 PL comes with a PL mount for use with industry-standard PL lenses. The mount isn’t interchangeable, if you wanted to know.

The pixel size on the sensor is larger than that of other professional camcorders which results in better sensitivity, no doubt useful for low-light shooting, and reads full HD (1920 X 1080) pixels while keeping unsightly moiré problems to a minimum.

The C300 also has a heightened signal readout speed, which reduces rolling shutter skews. It employs 4:2:2 color sampling and records at a maximum rate of 50 Mbs to the industry standard MXF format onto versatile, readily available and cost efficient CF Cards. In addition, the C300 is equipped with two CF card slots allowing you to record your footage to two CF cards simultaneously — a great way to guard against unexpected problems during recording.

The camera is compact and maneuverable and includes an HD/SDI video output port. It can be controlled remotely by smartphones or tablet PCs so you don’t have to squint into tiny viewfinders.

The C300 offers Canon Log Gamma, enabling you to record flat image quality with for maximum freedom in postproduction. Besides recording in 59.41i, 50.00i, 29.97P, 25.00P and 23.98P, it also records in 24.00p for high compatibility with film production workflows.

The camera will be available early next year for an estimated price of around $20,000, though it’s possible that a more realistic price will be around $17,000. Some have commented that for that price a RED Scarlett-X may be a better bet since it is more “future proof” due to the fact that it records at 4K. Others say that working in 4K is uncommon (and unwieldy) and the C300 will fit in easier and better with today’s workflows. Both arguments make sense.

You might want to check out Philip Bloom’s initial take on Canon’s effort by clicking here.

DaVinci Resolve Lite 8.1

There’s very exciting news from Blackmagic Design, so you might want to brace yourself for this one. DaVinci Resolve Lite 8.1, the new version of the free version of DaVinci Resolve now includes unlimited color correction nodes!

This allows you to use multiple color correctors for complex color grading and dramatically boosts the power of Resolve Lite which previously was limited to only two nodes. DaVinci Resolve Lite includes all of the same high quality processing of the full version except it limits projects to SD and HD resolutions, a single processing GPU and a single Red Rocket card. Stereoscopic features, noise reduction, power mastering, remote grading and sharing projects with an external database server are features only available in the full version.

However, image quality is never limited, and DaVinci Resolve Lite can still accept high-resolution source footage in 2K, 4K and 5K from digital cameras such as RED and ARRI, so users will find the added benefit of getting a great digital camera utility.

Other notable features in DaVinci Resolve Lite include high quality optical resizing, curve grading, XML import and export, 32 bit float processing, YRGB image processing, multi-later timelines, motion stabilization, window tracking, primary and secondary color correction, real time processing, capture and playback with deck control, compatibility with third party control panels and much more. This is high-end professional color correction, folks.

Did we mention that it is free?

So whether you want to use it on your own projects, give it a try to see how it works or learn it to get a job at a color correction house, go over to their website and download a copy for yourself. If you need the features of the full version you can upgrade to the full version for $995. To read our close look at DaVinci Resolve see our story here.

Poser Pro 2012

Aside from being useful for illustrators, Poser Pro is a valuable tool for pre-visualization such as developmental artwork, storyboarding, and animatics. Much more than just posing, Poser can be used to generate complete 3D character animations complete with lip-sync, walk/run cycles and dynamic simulations. Smith Micro has recently released Poser Pro 2012, an impressive upgrade to its flagship product.

Some of its enhancements include a node-based material system, dynamic hair, dynamic cloth and morph creation brushes. It can also do automatic lip syncing on imported sound files. With the included PowerFusion plug-ins, you can integrate Poser characters and scenes into 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D and LightWave. You can also import and export COLLADA content for interchanging data between game engines and other 3D tools.

Poser Pro 2012 is fully optimized for 64 bit and multi-core systems and takes advantage of graphics cards, which support OpenGL to provide realistic light and shadows. It’s Queue Manager allows you to distribute renderings across a cross platform network and Poser Pro’s improved Firefly render engine now supports indirect lighting and global illumination as well as Ambient Occlusion.

New shaders now include sub-surface scattering and a tri-specular hair shader for improved hair highlights. Poser’s lights now support physically correct light fall off and you can use normal maps for increasing surface complexity without increasing geometry.

Naturally Poser comes with a library of characters and contents, which can be customized to create a wide variety of looks. However, if you want to create your own characters there’s a suite of weight map editing tools enabling vertex-by-vertex fine painting of joint bends and bulges. This allows you to generate well performing 3D characters that can be more easily posed with natural joints.

There’s a lot to like about the new version of Poser. As noted above, it’s a useful tool for pre-viz, however it also allows you to create high-end character animation quickly and easily without having to learn complex 3D modeling and rigging skills that can take you years to learn. In addition, its a great introduction to the world of 3D character animation. More information can be found on their website.

Red Scarlet-X

Red Digital Cinema released Scarlet-X, its lower cost version of the Red Epic. While the basic part of the system, the camera body (or, as Red has it, “The Brain”) prices at under $10k, it’s not really usable until you get the rest of the kit such as the power adapter, 5-inch touch LCD, and hand grip, which brings it up to some $14k. The system does shoot in RAW, making it tempting for anyone capable of doing extensive post color work.

Scarlet-X uses custom ASICs that don’t make the cut of the top of the line Epic, according to Jim Jannard’s press briefing. Along with simpler support circuitry, that’s what allows the company to sell a 4K digital cinema camera for what is still a low price point.

While 4K video delivers at 1-30 fps, the burst modes of 5K resolution at 12 fps seem beside the point. While you can pull 4k at 30fps max, you can get other speeds out of the device (3k at 48fps, 2k at 60fps, 1k at 120fps max). But as Philip Bloom points out in his post on Scarlet-X, “only the 4k will give you the field of view of your lenses. 2k and 1k are just window crops of the sensor.” The unnerving result of this is that since these alternate resolutions are down sampled but crops of the sensor, all of your lenses turn into telephotos of some sort or the other. As Bloom notes again, “That is going to be a big pain.”

The sensor, following Red plans, will be upgradable to the Dragon chip in 2012.

Red Cinema continues to forge its own path, which is a refreshing move in the small, conservative world of high-end camera systems. While Scarlet-X will still take too much babying for productions who need to hew to a breakneck pace, the fact that an alternative exists-and that it bears a made in USA moniker-is still some pretty good news.

One of the most full-featured 3D applications around, MAXON’s CINEMA 4D contains all the necessary ingredients to create cutting edge 3D graphics and animations. Designers and motion graphics artists alike enjoy features such as Mograph (the simple, speedy Cloner toolset), and appreciate its many other attributes such as the robust physics and dynamics simulator, subdivision surfaces, straight-forward user interface and its collection of useful deformers.

CINEMA 4D is very popular here in the New York scene where you can see it at work in design boutiques, post-production companies and ad agencies. If you haven’t read my review of the the previous release of CINEMA 4D (R12), you can do so here.

Previous versions of CINEMA 4D contained many tools for character animation (such as joints, IK, and pose morphing). However, R13 makes giant strides in this area with the addition of the character object, an innovative new tool which promises to make the whole complex proposition of character animation radically easier.

I’ll talk more about the character object, as well as some of R13′s other new features later, but first we’ll begin with CINEMA 4D’s new rendering engine.

Let’s get Physical

While CINEMA 4D’s old standard renderer is still available and can be invoked to render your scenes, there is an important new and enhanced rendering engine in this latest version of CINEMA 4D known as the physical renderer. The name of this new renderer is an important clue to understanding what it does. It recreates true photo-realistic physical effects based on real camera properties such as motion blur, depth of field and lens distortion.

These physical camera effects are controlled with authentic, real-world camera parameters, which become available once the physical renderer is selected such as f-stop, focal length, shutter speed, and ISO — features you would expect to find on a physical camera.

Here’s what I like about this new capability: Rather than just dialing in arbitrary numbers to control things like motion blur and focal length, those with experience operating real cameras in the real world can now draw upon and apply their considerable knowledge within CINEMA 4D.

That means that CINEMA 4D artists and animators who are knowledgeable with how directors and DPs talk can take their comments and apply it to this latter stage of production, making for a more integrated workflow.

Working in the physical renderer, the artist will inherently know that different combinations of shutter speed (how long a frame is exposed to light) and f-stop (how much light is allowed to enter the frame) affect how much motion blur is apparent in a scene as well as what objects are in sharp focus or blurred out (otherwise known as depth of field). CINEMA 4D’s physical renderer enables users to think in terms of a “physical camera,” a concept more easily understandable to a producer, director or just about anyone else involved in production.

Motion blur is an important factor in creating convincing looking animation and is also key when merging live action and CGI. In past versions of CINEMA 4D, before the physical renderer, there were two ways to achieve natural looking motion blur. The first was to use scene motion blur (renamed Sub-Frame Motion Blur in version 13) which looks good, but is very costly in terms of render time. Another option is to use a technique called vector motion blur, or VMB, which is fast and offers decent results, but less realistic. VMB is often used in conjunction with After Effects and the ReelSmart Motion Blur plug-in from RE:Vision Effects.

The new physical renderer, however, now offers up accurate, motion blur in considerably less time than scene motion blur. In addition, shadows cast from moving objects appear naturally blurred, which was not possible with VMB. Below is a simple test that I set up of a physical camera rendered with a shutter angle of 180 degrees and subsequently with a shutter angle of 360 degrees. Notice the effect that the different shutter angles have on the resultant motion blur.

You don’t need to apply Global Illumination (or GI) separately to your render options when using the physical renderer since it’s built in — light gets bounced around indirectly in your scene automatically. Incidentally, you may still wish to use the standard renderer if you don’t need it since it can be faster in certain cases.

Getting into Character

R13′s innovative new character tools are very powerful. As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot more character animation created with CINEMA 4D in the near future. The most important of these character animation innovations — and one can argue perhaps the most important of all the enhancements to R13 itself, is the new character object.

Traditionally, before one could even think about animating a character, it was necessary to first construct a skeletal rig, bind it to your model and carefully weight the points of the mesh to the different joints in the rig.

This was no easy task, unless you’re highly skilled. A rig is a highly complex and detailed construction that is comprised of many hierarchies of joints, nulls, targets, expressions and controls. Skeletal rigs often implement an advanced technique called inverse kinematics (or IK) which allows you to do things like move a hand around and have the rest of the joints in the arm follow automatically. This spares you the need to animate each bone separately while also having the advantage of making the motion look natural.

Building a good character rig is an art unto itself and a properly designed rig should hide its complexity from the animator. It’s no surprise, therefore, that means building a complete rig from scratch can take a lot of time. Days, if not weeks, of careful planning and hard work are often needed, not to speak of the time it takes to fully understand all the intricate concepts involved in its construction. Of course this assumes that you have already gained a proper understanding of the mechanics of human anatomy and locomotion and have already cleared the considerable hurdles involved in learning how to model.

To help simplify the difficulties of rigging, MAXON has created the character object, which allows you to automatically add an expertly crafted skeletal rig to your model simply by drawing upon predefined templates for components such as spines, arms, legs, hands and fingers. In just a few clicks, voila! You’ve got yourself a fully built and articulated rig that would have taken a very long time to build yourself.

After creating the rig, you use handles to customize and adjust it to fit the proportions of your model. During this process, any adjustments made to the rig will automatically be reflected symmetrically on the other side with the ability to turn it off. To bind the mesh to the rig, you simply drag the icon of the mesh into the binding area of the rig — CINEMA 4D will apply intelligent auto-weighting to the points on the mesh (which you are free to customize later). Once done, you will be off and animating in a fraction of the time it would have taken you traditionally.

Bipedal rigs often share similar characteristics, differing mostly in where the joints are placed. However, as you might expect, significant differences exist between bipeds, quadrupeds or millipedes. Therefore, the character object contains templates for many different kinds of creatures such as bipeds, quadrupeds, fish, insects, birds and reptiles. You can create your own rig templates for others to use. Additional templates are being created that will be implemented in the future by MAXON and others. Components can be combined as well, so if you’re working on a model of the winged horse Pegasus, you can add the wings component to a quadruped rig.

There are also rigs in CINEMA 4D, which are compatible with common motion capture and animation interchange formats such as BVH, FBX and Mixamo.

Once a character rig is set up, you may want to make use of the exciting new CMotion object. CMotion is great to create walk cycles and, in fact, many different kinds of cyclical motion. With CMotion you can create a customized walk cycle for your character by adding hubs and targets. Once you finish, you can apply that motion to the character and make it follow a spline path through your scene. This is all done without having to worry about the massive amounts of keyframes and f-curves that are ordinarily necessary when doing this kind of work.

There’s also a new muscle system in R13: muscle objects can be placed in your model and anchored to its rig. The muscles are used to deform the mesh or skin of the character and by default, they are set to render. Their visibility can easily be turned off since, most likely, you will only use them to affect the mesh. Here’s an example of how to use muscles: You can place one where the bicep should be and tell it to grow when the forearm curls while lifting a heavy object. In this way, you can simulate the effect of that part of an arm enlarging as the muscle flexes under the skin. An effective example of using muscles in R13 can be seen on this render of a walking dinosaur.

Sub Surface Scattering

CINEMA 4D R13 now includes an advanced Sub-Surface Scattering (or SSS) shader. SSS is useful in accurately rendering surfaces that absorb and diffuse light within their interior. Did you ever put your hand over a flashlight? With a powerful enough flashlight, you’ll notice that the light is absorbed to some extent by your flesh such that your hand seems to almost glow with the light. Why’s that? Since some of the light penetrates the surface of your skin, it is then diffused or scattered within your hand. That is an example of what SSS achieves enhanced realism; it can be seen on many surfaces including plants, marble, milk and thin-skinned aliens.

XRefs

R13 has made considerable improvements to XRefs (external references) which are very useful, especially when working in a collaborative environment on large-scale projects. Imagine the project is a science fiction movie that takes place on a space station. You might have someone working on the furniture while another artist creates a robot that moves around in the scene. Still another person might be working on the instrument panels and so on.

But exactly how would you work concurrently on a project with a tight deadline? Well, you could pass the files around to all the team members so everybody could do their part, but as you can imagine, that would be an extremely inefficient way to do it. Merging various projects into one is also time-consuming with the added potential to backfire if the wrong files are mistakenly incorporated.

As you might have guessed, XRefs are the way to go. Simply put, XRefs are references to other Cinema 4D projects that are embedded inside of a “master project”. (Other design programs use the same term.) For example, the person building the robot can make his file be an XRef inside of the master space station project. In this way, he can continue working on the robot, even as the rest of the project is completed. Inside the master project, it will be constantly updated whenever the XRef is changed or saved.

You can work with an XRef just as you would any other object, by animating its components, adding materials to it or applying expressions to it. Similarly, the furniture, instrumentation and even the lighting rigs and textured objects can all be XRefs, all coming together in one grand file where one could check out how the scene is coming together just by opening it.

When importing an XRef from an outside source, you can decide whether you want to import its animation or materials. For instance, suppose the robot has a little antenna that twirls around on the top of its head. The person who created the XRef could set this up externally, but you may decide to ignore it, as well as any materials that were applied to it, and choose to import a stripped down, untextured version of the XRef instead. You can also decide whether any changes made to the XRef inside the master project will affect the reference or remain only inside the master project.

When Objects Collide

R13 also includes a new Collision Deformer which, when applied to an object, will deform its mesh accordingly when it collides with another object. This can be useful when making things like mattresses and cushions. For example if something heavy is set down on a bed, such as a bowling ball or a character’s rear end, the collision deformer will cause the mattress to interact with the collider and its mesh will be deformed accordingly. Within the collision deformer’s parameters, there are options to make an object bounce back to its original shape after a collision (as it would in the case of a mattress), or maintain the new deformed shape — useful in making things like footsteps or tire tracks in the snow.

Incidentally, the collision deformer is not based on soft body dynamics, but rather on geometry. This means that its effect does not require you to set up physics simulations.

There’s More

There is a lot more that is new in CINEMA 4D R13. Here are some other features that I think are key improvements.

There are numerous stereoscopic enhancements, so if you’re doing 3D you’ll definitely want to upgrade. These include the ability to convert any camera to a parallel, on-axis, off-axis or radial stereoscopic camera. Stereo images can also be previewed directly in the 3D editor and can be rendered as merged stereoscopic images or separate images for each camera. The picture viewer now also supports the playing of stereo renders.

New Anti-Aliasing filters now allow you to achieve higher quality results by using the advanced Mitchell and Gauss algorithms.

Already known for its intuitive user interface, R13 includes a number of improvements. New cursor-based navigation uses the position you click as the point of interest when zooming and rotating about your model. In the past, the viewport would pivot around what was selected and if this happened to be far from what you were viewing, navigating around the portion of the model you were looking at could be difficult and confusing. So far, I think this cursor-based navigation is good way to go and much easier to use.

Python and COFFEE scripting language integration has also been improved. Scripting languages offer users immense power in customizing and extending the capabilities of Cinema 4D so that savvy programmers and developers can create customizable solutions for specific tasks and implement them into their pipelines. Notably, Python plug-ins and scripts now appear alongside those created using C++ and COFFEE APIs.

CINEMA 4D was already adept at exchanging data with After Effects. Past versions of the program allowed you to output entire AE compositions complete with 3D camera motion, lights, object buffers as well as 3D coordinates of planes that can be swapped out for After Effects layers. Version 13 adds to this by adding support for CINEMA 4D’s stage object, time marker export and support for 29.97 frame rates.

Conclusion

CINEMA 4D has become a mature and capable product that steadily adds improvements. The new features such as the physical renderer, character object, CMotion, SSS, XRefs are all innovations that are useful, important and will save you time.

Depending on the work you do, you can choose from several flavors of CINEMA 4D. Prime has the basics to get you started. Then there’s Broadcast and Visualize and finally the Mother of all CINEMA 4D packages, Studio, which has everything the other packages include and more, such as the character tools. If you are thinking about doing character animation, you should get Studio.

For those thinking of doing motion graphics and broadcast design, however, CINEMA 4D Broadcast should cover all the bases. It retails for $1,695. Upgrades from CINEMA 4D Broadcast Version 12 are $695. Studio sells for $3,695 and the upgrade from Version 12 is $995.

You should consider getting the Annual Licensing option, or MSA. It’s basically a yearly subscription, which entitles you to all upgrades. It costs $650 for Studio, so you end up saving around $350 on the normal upgrade price.

No matter what version you get, CINEMA 4D has certainly earned its place among the most respectable 3D software suites out there. In fact, it has recently been named a recipient of the Computer Graphics World SIGGRAPH 2011 Silver Edge Award.

It’s also a lot of fun to use.

This review was conducted on HP’s powerful Z800 Workstation (2 six-core Xeons, Quadro 5000 GPU and 25GB RAM) and ZR30w high performance display. See our review of this potent workhorse here.

Held annually in Amsterdam, the IBC was among my favorite conventions back in my days when I covered the show regularly. Of course part of that draw was Amsterdam itself; this vibrant, walkable city wears its history lightly and makes sure daily enjoyment is always on the schedule. But IBC has become a big draw over time too. It offers a much more relaxed pace than NAB, allowing the visitor to catch up with all the new technology released in April in Las Vegas but that often gets drowned out in that show’s frenetic scene.

Among the usual spate of PR at the show, Sony’s F65 camcorder and Adobe’s announcement of the purchase of the Iridas IP stand out as bellwether developments. Sony’s true 4K camera system–that’s how they describe it–would be just another piece of high-end kit but for its near bargain basement pricing. Meanwhile Adobe’s buyout emphasizes that the San Jose-based company is dead serious about making Premiere Pro the most desirable and widely used NLE in place of Final Cut Pro’s fading glory.

Here’s our quick overview of what I consider some of the more interesting technology introduced at the Amsterdam event.

Cameras and the Support They Deserve

Arri Alexa Studio

Arri announced the Alexa Studio, which features an optical viewfinder with a spinning mirror shutter like a traditional film camera. With its taller sensor sensor (4:3 aspect ratio), it works with anamorphic lenses. The sensor section of the split-head Alexa M connects to the rest of the camera (with the signal processor and recording section) by way of a fiber cable. This makes it ideal for use in the copter mounts, car interiors and 3D beamsplitter rigs.

Ikonoskop A-cam dII

Swedish company Ikonoskop showed the latest version of its A-cam dII, described as a “16mm digital motion picture camera.” That refers to its Aaton-like form factor as well as its 16mm-sized sensor and ability to use 16mm/Super 16 cine lenses. It shoots uncompressed 1920 x 1080 RAW in the CinemaDNG format.

Ikegami presented more of its proposed “lower cost” HDS-F90 camcorder, which still doesn’t have a specific release date. The single sensor camcorder will use a 4K 4/3-inch CMOS sensor, use PL-Mount lenses, and record at 100Mbps to Ikegami’s GFCAM solid-state recording system.

JVC’s GY-HM150 optionally records in both SD and HD formats and features dual SDHC/SDXC card slots for simultaneous recording to both cards for instant back-up or seamless relay recording between cards for continuous shooting.

P+S Technik PS Cam X35

German company P+S TECHNIK, long known for its camera mods, recently got into the camera business with its film-style PS-Cam X35. The company notes that the project started out creating a high-speed camera–it runs to 450 fps–then added standard sync speeds. The camera features a 35mm-sized CMOS imager, speed ramping and a global shutter.

Panasonic AG-3DP1

Panasonic shows it’s serious about staking a position as a 3D market leader by giving the crowds another look at its new shoulder-mounted AG-3DP1 camcorder. Shown originally at NAB 2011, it builds on their prior 3DA1 camera but moves it into a shoulder-mounted form factor with larger chips. Featuring two 1/3-inch 3MOS chips and a twin-lens system, convergence point information is now easier to adjust: The camera will display different color blocks over areas of the image that are either too close to the camera, or too far based on the convergence point. Pricing was also announced: $34,950 when it’s released in December.

Panasonic announced a bit more news about its AVC Ultra recording format, which was announced some time ago. The AVC Intra 4:4:4 format will feature 12 bit 4:4:4 color at 400 Mbps, AVC Intra 4:2:2 10 bit at 200 Mbps, while AVC Long-G (Long GOP) is 10-bit 4:2:2 at 25-50 Mbps. Support will go to 4K at some point.

Head for Sachtler Ace Tripod

With its roots in Munich, Germany, Sachtler is as well regarded in the camera support business as neighbor Arri is in the camera business. Usually there well-built tripods don’t come cheap, but now the company is addressing the compact HD camcorder and Cine DSLR markets with its Ace tripod, a complete set up of sticks and fluid head weighs less than 4 pounds with an expected price around $500.

Sony F65

Sony’s F65 with its newly developed 8K sensor–said to be in the first imager to offer “true 4K resolution”–made even bigger news when its proposed starting price of around $50K was announced, making it a direct competitor with Red’s Epic and Arri’s Alexa. With a 16-bit linear RAW output, ISO800 sensitivity, and 14 stops total latitude, it draws a formidable line in the sand.

Zacuto Scorpion

Chicago-based Zacuto makes some of the slickest camera support systems for DSLRs, and that’s the case for their new Scorpion DSLR rig. Gel padding is used throughout the its form-fitting shoulder pad. Since it offers flexible articulation, you should be able to find just the right angle to fit Scorpion to your own dimensions, a crucial point if you shoot more than a hour or two during the day.

A Great Name in Lenses Goes Cine

Leica Summilux-C

Leica’s Summilux-C lenses are the first cine lenses from famed Leica Camera. Based in Solms, Germany, the legendary imaging company must have sensed an opening for another high-end line of glass with impeccable credentials to take on Zeiss. Leica’s “new generation of lens design” offers “unique” physical characteristics including ultra high resolution and optimization for new digital sensors, which reveal more lens imperfections than traditional film.
According to cinematographer Florian Ballhaus who was involved in tests of the lenses, “The Leicas have a wonderful character while being perfectly predictable with their gentle Leica look that one expects from the still lenses we all know and love. They are as sharp as you want them to be but the focus falls off quite gently.”

Go Towards the Light

LED-based lights have become bright enough to replace HMI and halogen in many situations. While important new models turned up at the show, expect to see LED-based lighting grow quickly over the next 12 months as the technology continues to mature.

Arri L7-C Fresnel

Arri introduced three new fixtures to its L7 series of LED-based Fresnels. Among them, the L7-C looks most interesting as it allows you to throw all those messy gels away: the rig can be adjusted with a spin of the dial from 2700K-10,000K with an additional green/magenta control that helps when you’re trying to match florescent lighting. The L7-C acts like a typical Fresnel with a wide range of beam control while delivering single, sharp shadows. Each of the fixtures use less than 250w; that’s not even 1/4th of the power drain of 1000w tungsten Fresnel fixtures to which they are said to be equivalent.

Litepanels offered three new lights: Croma, an on-camera bi-color LED; Sola 4, the latest in its Sola Fresnel range; and Hilio, a high output fixture.
Croma will be most interesting to camcorder users with its variable color 9W lamp (from 5600K to 3200K). It delivers 90 minutes of light from six AA batteries.

Litepanels Sola 4

Litepanels 5600K Sola 4, however, might attract with its claim to be “the world’s smallest fully dimmable LED Fresnel.” The petite lamp includes a 4-inch Fresnel lens, is DMX controllable, and delivers light equal to about a 250W lamp although drawing only 30W.

In & Out

AJA’s first Thunderbolt-enabled pro video I/O device, the Io XT, will “unify disparate formats” as its 10-bit hardware offers up/down/cross conversion capability.
 The Grass Valley, California-based company heralds a new age of on-the-go editing since combining the Io XT with Thunderbolt-enabled storage gear and the latest MacBook Pro will enable you to edit uncompressed HD on the road.

Atomos offered up its line of pocket-sized, battery-powered Connect converters, which connect HD-SDI to HDMI (Connect S2H) or HD-SDI to HDMI (Connect H2S). They’re versatile, removing 3:2 pulldown where necessary, and pack in test pattern and audio tone generation.

Blackmagic Design Intensity Extreme

Blackmagic Design adds Intensity Extreme, a new low-cost video capture and playback device, to its line-up. The device, machined out of a block of aircraft grade aluminum, features HDMI and analog video I/O and connects to recent Mac laptop models via the Thunderbolt connector. Intensity Extreme can capture directly from an HD camera’s image sensor, thus bypassing the video compression circuit for uncompressed video quality.

Remember This

Active Storage has configured its ActiveSAN and ActiveRAID storage systems to work more easily out of the box with Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. Users can collaborate at the file-level in mixed-platform, media-optimized shared environments without dealing with complex setups and configuration, says the Torrance, California-based company.

Cinedeck RX

New York-based Cinedeck launched Cinedeck RX, a rack mountable multi-format, multi-channel HD-SDI recorder, monitor and playback system. Spotted for mobile broadcasting, it records all Avid DNxHD formats, all Apple ProRes formats including 4444, CineForm and uncompressed 444 (10-bit) or 422 (8- or 10-bit). Cinedeck RX’s “double dual-stream” feature provides two stream simultaneous file capture to a pair of disks with backup copies for redundancy.

Codex’s Vault series recorder made its European debut. Codex Vault, spotted for use on the set, offers dailies review, deliverables production and archiving for cinema cameras. A fully tricked out is a standalone solution that requires no external drives since it utilizes Codex’s new Transfer Drives, which are also being introduced at IBC 2011.

Sound Devices PIX 240

The compact Sound Devices PIX 220 and PIX 240 video recorders created a stir at the show after their NAB introduction. These small, well-built devices now handle 10-bit QuickTime recording using Apple ProRes or Avid DNxHD for any HDMI-or HD-SDI equipped high-definition video camera. They also offer quality audio handling, something Sound Devices is known for: the low-noise (-128 dBu equivalent input noise), high-bandwidth inputs are mic/line switchable and include limiters, high-pass filters, and 48V phantom power.

Odds & Ends

As previously reported here, Adobe shows it wants position as heir apparent to all those miffed Final Cut Pro users who have balked at FCPX. At the show Adobe announced the purchase of Iridas, the Munich-based company with a good rep for creating tools for digital color grading and enhancement of film and video content. Iridas’ main program–SpeedGrade – includes toolsets for stereo 3D, RAW processing, color grading and finishing of digital content. Expect it to be incorporated into Adobe’s Creative Suite Master Collection for the benefit of Premiere Pro and After Effects users. This will probably debut at NAB 2012. You may also see some of Iridas’ work on High Dynamic Range (HDR) video in the Suite.

Avid introduced Avid Motion Graphics with a real- time 2D/3D graphics-rendering engine. The system includes a bridge to the Deko product family, with the whole idea apparently designed to the easy for editors to learn and use in order to lessen the need to hand things off to a separate graphics artist.

More a play for the broadcast market, features include live-to-air playout, workflows sped up by the use of templates, and automated playout.

DaVinci Resolve 8.1

Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 8.1 software update belies the minor dot one from this year’s earlier introduction as it lays on the improvements: new layer node composite effects, ACES colorspace support, compatibility for Avid AAF and round trip with Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro 7 clip size and position support, new copy commands for grades, upgraded EDL features, support for UltraStudio 3D for Thunderbolt and compatibility with the 2011 MacBook Pro 15-inch.

Sony Professional announced further additions to its OLED range of monitors, with the launch of the BVM-F series, which adds to the BVM-E and PVM line of OLED monitors. If you haven’t seen one of these yet, the OLED technology is a knockout, delivering subtle color and blacks that go beyond the best a CRT delivers. But it ain’t cheap. In any case, the BVM-E is Sony’s high-end line designed for DITs and post color correction while the PVM line is “less expensive” and designed for more regular on-set use.

The BVM-F line–available in both 17-inch and 25-inch models—is a 10-bit system that uses less costly electronics. It comes in at a lower tab (no prices were yet available at the show) than the 12-bit E version.

Sony’s 3D binocular

At first, Sony’s 3D binoculars seem an odd development, with the famed pro products company traipsing into a minor area of the consumer realm. But if you think about it, the concept might offer a real way for consumers, documentarians and others to get into real world 3D via a straight-forward piece of technology. Two models were announced a month ago and on display at the IBC – the DEV-5 and DEV-3. Each offer HD video recording, 7.1 megapixel still capture, optical image stabilization, 3D recording, HDMI output and (on the pricier DEV-5) geotagging via an in-built GPS receiver. Dual back-illuminated Exmor R CMOS sensors should offer good low-light recording.

I hope this quick look at just some of the more important product debuts and upgrades at IBC 2011 caught your interest. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything you think deserved inclusion by commenting below.

(Image: George Kuchar and Marion Eaton in Kuchar’s “Thundercrack”. The filmmaker passed away on September 10, 2011.)

The Past Week in Review: posted on September 14, 2011

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we check out new technologies that could topple leading companies, consider if New York production incentives are fair, and bid farewell to two pioneering filmmakers.

Sony’s F65 CineAlta

Sony Kills Arri & Red?

One reviewer on the EOSHD site wonders if Sony “just killed the (Arri) Alexa?” with its announcement at the IBC last week that the new Sony F65 CineAlta will deliver with a list price of $65,000. While that question brushes aside the great popularity of Arri’s digital camera system, it’s not a fatuous remark. Sony has instantly reshaped the high-end of digital cinematography via this relatively low-ball pricing strategy.

The successor to the Sony’s CineAlta F35–which cost in the vicinity of $250,000 on up–the F65 bests it in many areas, including its ability to record 16bit RAW from an 20MP 8K sensor and a claimed higher-than-film dynamic range of 14 stops. The F65 offers true 4K resolution too–not available on the $50,000 Arri Alexa. Meanwhile the “4K” $55,000 Red EPIC isn’t a full 4K camera since it lacks the F65 imager’s dedicated green photo sites (pixels).

Meanwhile, Andy Shipsides over at the AbelCine blog notes that not only will a rotary shutter version of the F65 be available (this removes the potential jello effect of the CMOS imager) but that the company will be selling a discounted bundle of the camera and its support system until the end of the year.

Wim Wenders used Iridas’ 3D technology to do post on his tribute to Pina Bausch. Photo credit: Laurent Philippe

Adobe Ups the Ante

You can’t say Adobe isn’t serious about taking its NLE Premiere Pro to expanded markets. Would it be to capitalize on the decidedly mixed response to Apple’s Final Cut Pro X? Yup. To many users, Apple turned away from the pro market with this completely reworked NLE.

At the IBC convention Adobe said that demand for professional video creation tools helped its creative suite package to grow 22-percent year-over-year. Growth on the Mac platform meanwhile grew 45-percent over the past year, “in part fueled by the large number of Apple Final Cut Pro customers switching to Adobe Premiere Pro.”

At the Amsterdam convention Adobe backed up this news when it announced the purchase of the IP assets of Iridas. The Munich-based company has been a well-respected name in digital color grading tools over the past decade. Iridas also developed tools for stereoscopic post as well as HDR video.

Enhanced color grading, says Adobe, is a “top requested feature by our Production Premium customers” and that’s where the technology will be appearing, probably by NAB 2012 if the company keeps to its regular series of Creative Suite upgrades. This blog post by Peter Salvia gives a good sense of what the pro world is thinking about this move by Adobe. Not too much guessing to Salvia’s feelings: his blog is titled adobe + iridas = fcp dead.

I’m also including comments that Iridas founder Lin Sebastian Kayser sent out in a letter after Adobe’s IBC announcement. I think it gives a good sense of how exciting this development is for Kayser, an innovator who stuck with his concept when few thought he could take on heavyweights in the color grading industry, the team at Adobe and for future Premier Pro users:

Over the years, many companies have offered to acquire IRIDAS and we always said no; successful acquisitions are a challenge to execute, so when Adobe approached us I thought “We are doing fine, we have a plan, why should we be interested?” But there are a couple of things that are different about Adobe as a company.
First of all, Adobe is a company that has indeed successfully integrated products from many companies it bought ≠ products like After Effects are central to their leadership. Also Adobe is a true engineering company not only investing massively in pure research, but also bringing it to market ≠ Premiere’s Mercury Playback Engine and After Effects Warp Stabilizer being only two examples. Many recent research results in HDR or new camera concepts coming from Adobe research truly impressed our team.
We also see a convergence of trends, as RAW High Dynamic Range image capture comes to the broader market the need for tools such as those IRIDAS developed is exploding; but our company was sized to service a specialist market.

All the best,
Lin Sebastian Kayser

Director Engineering, Adobe

Founder of IRIDAS

Scorsese releases his 3D version of Brian Selznick’s graphic novel ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’ later this year.

Will Better 3D Save the Studios?

Dave Kehr in the Times notes that the future of 3D movies remains uncertain, as audiences are not flocking to 3D movies like they did previously. But unlike the feared replay of the death of 3D that went down in the 1950s, directors are better adapting to shooting with that extra dimension because of improved technology such as the Cameron-Pace Fusion 3D camera system.

Kehr also notes that 3D may not fade this time as big-name directors including Scorsese and Spielberg will soon release films employing the technology. Meanwhile major TV manufacturers including Samsung, Sony and Panasonic are pushing the technology by building it into their high-end units by default.

However, nothing much seems to be stopping the slide in North American movie attendance over the summer, according to an article by Brooks Barnes in the Times. Films led by A-list stars flopped again and neither the Smurfs or Harry Potter were enough to push projected domestic box-office revenue beyond 1-percent of last year’s total according to Hollywood.com’s stats. Overall, sales were projected to lag 4 percent for the year.

Only solid sales from foreign box offices made the current season less than a debacle. As Barnes has it, “Hollywood has now experienced four consecutive summers of eroding attendance, a cause for alarm for both studios and the publicly traded theater chains.”

DSLRs Go Anamorphic

Ever consider shooting anamorphically with your DSLR? Andrew Reid, who runs the website EOSHD.com, thinks you should. Reid calls his e-book a “comprehensive cookbook for achieving a epic anamorphic look to your DSLR movies.”

This 2nd edition of Reid’s $20 downloadable book includes information on shooting 4K (3840 x 1080p) anamorphic DSLR footage and a comprehensive anamorphic lens buyer’s guide based on “real hands-on experience and testing”. The author claims the information is applicable to DSLRs from all the major players as well as video cameras such as the Sony FS100 and Panasonic AF100.

Selling Film, Not Souls

Film Courage is the oddly named website out of LA that features “film interviews that inspire”. This weekly mix of filmmakers and producers–you can hear it live on LA Talk Radio–takes you through the trials and travails of creatives as they produce and distribute production their work.

What may be most interesting for anyone hoping to make their own independent work is a recent show featuring Jon Reiss, Sheri Candler and Jeffrey Winter from The Film Collaborative, a website of a nonprofit group that’s “committed to distribution education and facilitation of independent film”.

The trio are on Film Courages’ episode number 128 to discuss their book “Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul”. As a book it probably doesn’t have very many surprises for anyone who’s been plowing in this field for any length of time–why filmmakers should be paying attention to Kevin Smith and Ed Burns and whether VOD is a viable source of income for filmmakers–but it seems like a good introduction to the services of the not-for-profit group The Film Collaborative.

Upstate Getting Left Behind?

The large recent state tax incentives passed by Albany might bring joy and some additional production to New York City, but that doesn’t ring such a happy tune upstate according to this recent article by Joseph Spector, Gannett’s Albany Bureau chief.

In his article Watchdog report: Critics rap film tax breaks which appeared on the Democrat and Chronicle website, Spector says that “upstate business groups have questioned the effectiveness of the film-tax credit”, an issue that becomes an issue since there is competition for those funds.

Spector quotes Brian McMahon, executive director of the state Economic Development Council, who said that “It’s an extraordinarily lucrative credit for the businesses, but it is benefiting primarily out-of-state companies that come into New York state, primarily New York City, for a few months, make a movie and leave.”

The amounts of the tax breaks are difficult to pin down South reporter since Empire State Development, the agency that manages the program, hasn’t disclosed the amount of “taxpayer-funded breaks that each project has gotten” even after Gannett says that it “filed a Freedom of Information request in May seeking those details.”

Governor Cuomo as said upstate business development would be a key effort of his administration, but the article notes that tax breaks for beleaguered businesses from the state’s Empire Zone program–revamped in 2010–provides only $50 million in new money each year compared with the $420 million annually for the film program.

You can read the rest of Spector’s investigative report here.

Andy Lampert (left) in a post-screening talk with Joel Schlemowitz at UnionDocs.

Take Me to the Cinemateque

We go to the Times again for a Dennis Lim article on Choosing Cinematheque Over Cineplex. Lim is a good example of a committed writer who straddles the worlds of the “engaged, site-specific programming” of alternative spaces to the studio distribution scene. He urges us to trace the history of the movies by noting how alternative cinemas evolved, “to consider, in other words, how an inventive approach to showing films can foster a new way of understanding them.”

The reporter gives a quick overview of some of the rich history of alternative cinema spaces in the city while touting the continued excitement engendered at venues such as Light Industry and UnionDocs.

An image from Jordan Belson’s Allures
Pioneers Passing

Two filmmakers who passed away recently embodied the DIY style of independent filmmaking key to making Indie cinema in the 60s, 70s, and beyond. The earlier range–let’s say up to the mid 70s–was the golden age of American underground cinema in which both played key roles.

George Kuchar worked in 8mm and 16mm with his twin brother Mike to put the Bronx on the map as a hotbed of camp cinema. Acknowledged by John Waters and David Lynch among others, the two came up with intriguingly off-kilter films such as Moshulu Holiday, I Was a Teenage Rumpot, and Hold Me While I’m Naked. As John Waters wrote in the introduction to the Kuchars’ memoirs “Reflections in a Cinematic Cesspool”, “The Kuchar brothers gave me the self confidence to believe in my own tawdry vision.”

George passed away at 69 in San Francisco, where he taught at the Art Institute. Here’s a recent appreciation of George’s work. You can read his obit here.

The much more abstract work of Jordan Belson will be remembered for his development of a cinema based on hypnotic use of light color and movement. Belson, who also lived in San Francisco, was 85 at his death. Belson’s work was celebrated on the site Center for Visual Music. You can read his obit here.

(Image: Kerry Bishé is one of the actors in Kevin Smith’s film “Red State”, which debuts via a one-night only screening later this month.)

The Past Week in Review: for September 6, 2011

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This week we watch NYC TV’s getting hacked, learn about cool new gear, and find out that Kevin Smith is really good about coming up with ideas that keep him in business.

The (Hacked) Future of TV in New York

A push for innovation in the online video and connected TV market in New York lies behind Hackday.tv, a two-day event to occur this coming weekend.

Created by start up Shelby.tv, Hackday.tv plans to bring together startups and developers to create “new applications for the digital living room”, according to Ryan Lawler on GigaOM. Developers, working in teams, will have 24 hours to create the apps. Crews have been hired to create video trailers for each hack, to document the process and also presumably to use in promoting the hack fests for planned roll-outs in other cities. Shelby.tv, a recently launched start-up, employs Twitter and Facebook to create a personalized streaming video site that leverages video choices by friends and others.

Share Your Sketches Instantly

While sketching out some ideas seems like a pretty solitary action, a recent project by researchers at the University of California San Diego allows you to upload drawings to Twitter, Facebook, or your email.

As reported in new scientist, Lisa Cowan and colleagues at the University have developed a paper-based system called UbiSketch that converts the output from an Anoto digital pen to images on a smart phone. While you do have to use paper printed with light dots that allow the digital pen to track its position as you draw, a standard Bluetooth connection is enough to send the data on its way to your phone.

You can read more at the New Scientist website, or go directly to the UbiSketch page on the UCSD website.

Blackmagic Does 3D

There’s more new technology from Blackmagic Design, which announced this past week that its portable capture and playback device
UltraStudio 3D is now shipping. Claimed as the world’s 1st video product integrated with Intel’s high-speed Thunderbolt connection technology, the tool link device connects via 3 Gbs SDI, HDMI 1.4a and analog video, AES/EBU digital audio capture, 10 bit video and dual stream 3D.

The dual stream, 3D SDI connection allows capture and play back of two streams directly from the camera, with one stream dedicated for the left eye and the other for the right eye. In all, the device features interleaved, side-by-side, frame packed and dual stream capture and playback. The SDI connection also enables 1080p/60 and 2K capture.

While dual stream 3D recording isn’t incompatible with much of the current NLE software, Blackmagic Design upgraded its Media Express 3 app to allow users to work with both interleaved and dual stream 3D for capture and playback. The app works with Blackmagic Design DeckLink, Multibridge, Intensity and UltraStudio Pro products. At less than $1000 list, Blackmagic Design again offers a useful tool at a strikingly low price.

Better Cameras, Better Recording

Mirror-less compact cameras have been gaining fans, since their low profile makes an even easier to work with than DSLRs like the Canon 5d. Video capabilities on the new cameras are also being improved, making them viable alternatives to their larger cousins.

Sony’s NEX 5N is a good example. It offers manual control when in video mode, which even includes 24p shooting. Since the body costs less than $600 and can handle PL-mount lenses such as the soon-to-be released Zeiss 24mm F1.8, more alternatives for fast, quick shooting keep coming.

The reviewer on EOSHD says the new camera “offers the biggest amount of bang per square inch and per dollar that I have ever seen.”

Recording HDMI output has become an accepted way to pull a good video signal from a camcorder before it degrades as it hits the built-in codec circuitry. (Watch for an upcoming review by Joe Herman on Blackmagic Design’s HyperDeck Shuttle to see what we mean.)

While we recently posted an Abelcine blog about taking HDMI output from Sony’s new NEX-FS100, that message actually drew additional comment from Juan Martinez, senior product manager at Sony.

Abelcine’s Jeff Lee posted excerpts from Martinez’s email, which offers a brief yet concise explanation of just how the HDMI output on the camcorder works. Useful info—including the cool amount of auto negotiation that goes on between the FS100 and an attached recording device—and key for anyone who’s considering using this stand out new camcorder.

More HP, TV Online, Unsinkable Kevin Smith

While we recently headlined an article with the dramatic query “Will HP Fail?”, A variation on this question has caused HP to make some fast moves in to take out some advertising to convince people that the computer division won’t just be dumped or sold ignominiously to some overseas company, but will thrive and stand on its own.

The San Jose Mercury News documents how HP is trying to assure customers of its PC division that they can ” count on HP” in a campaign that seems to be aimed at stopping some sort of panic that would radically drive the company’s share price down.

Over at GigaOM, reporter Stacey Higginbotham states that online video is “finally chipping away at broadcast TV.” According to recent survey data there’s been at the decrease in the the numbers watching broadcast TV, while Internet-enabled options are all on the rise. Read more here.

While he receives less support from the major studios for his films these days, that doesn’t stop director/actor Kevin Smith from cooking up new release strategies for his ventures. While a version of his latest, Red State, screened at Sundance, a re-jiggered cut will debut via a one-night-only nationwide simulcast on September 25. It spools out from the New Beverly Cinema in L.A., which is owned by none other than Quentin Tarantino.

Smith is partnering with Ira Deutchman‘s opera-oriented Emerging Pictures theater network. The setup will enable Smith to hold a Q&A session after the screening–something he seems to thrive on–with the whole event streaming live from the LA-based cinema to all of Emerging’s participating theaters.

Read more in Jason Guerrasio’s Filmmaker Magazine article by clicking here.

Want to learn a little about 3D, especially the editing angle?

I recently had the chance to attend an evening long seminar given at Sony’s New York headquarters on that very subject. Well, more like 3-D production in general, as taught at Sony’s 3-D boot camp at the Sony Pictures Studio in Culver City.

I had the added angle of wondering about what went in to editing 3-D, as I was writing up the evening for the Editors Guild website. Editing 3-D, it turns out, is a whole topic in itself that requires a serious re-thinking on the part of the director and editor.

For more on this topic, click here for the full article.

The Past Week in Review, for May 17, 2011

While you won’t find the music to this Dickson Experimental Sound Film (circa 1894) on the new National Jukebox site, you can still pick among some 10,000 recordings for free.

We search for the more interesting and provocative news and views of the past week…just so you don’t have to.

This look at the past week’s news includes a look at trends in 3D production, tips on what goes into making a successful start-up, and the debut of a national jukebox service.

Technicolor’s DSLR Love, Zacuto’s Rig

This past week I visited with Domenic Rom, senior vice president of Technicolor Creative Services at the company’s Leroy Street offices. Domenic wanted to discuss new products Technicolor released at the NAB last month. With him was Bob Herman, Technicolor’s PR manager, in from the West Coast.

I’ll write about these new services in an upcoming article. The new services include Technicolor’s CineStyle, which is become an instant hit. No surprise, as it offers the ability to integrate the output of Canon’s DSLR cameras into Technicolor’s full DI workflow.

But if you do want to keep up with what’s happening with DSLRs for video production, Philip Bloom’s site regularly offers up good reviews and opinion pieces about the latest production gear and software.

In a recent posting, London-based Bloom reviews the Zacuto Scorpion Rig. Zacuto, out of Chicago, moved quickly to become one of the leading gear makers for the DSLR market. Their latest high-end production rig that offers a much more usable approach for employing these small cameras within a more or less traditional film style shoot.

Sony 3D, Indie 3D, Even Small Objects Get 3D

With 3D production now becoming a serious alternative for filmmakers, educational resources that can shed some light on what actually is required to create usable 3D content becomes a clear need.

Last week I attended an evening seminar by Sony’s team from its 3D school in Culver City, California. I’m writing up that story for the editors Guild website. I’ll post a link to it here shortly for anyone wanting more info about what this free seminar offers.

Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that Hollywood directors with huge budgets can pull together the resources to do a 3D production,

However, for an indie to take on 3D production has seemed an exercise in fiction. High-end 3D gear is well beyond what most folks with meager budgets could ever consider.

But in her recent Variety article “Indies embrace cheaper 3D”, writer Karen Idelson notes that lower costs for 3D production gear and new post solutions have joined with the promise of a bigger box office to attract indie filmmakers.

Here’s one rather eye-popping example: With an average screen pulling in some $27,820 in its debut weekend, Werner Herzog’s new 3D film Cave of Forgotten Dreams (IFC) is not only making the most money of any film in his career but also came out on top of the total US box office–yes, that includes beating out Fast Five--according to website Box Office Mojo.

You can read more of Idelson’s article here.

Another type of 3D can also be important to a production–Indie or otherwise–and it too is coming down in price due to improvements in technology. The Times’ Melena Ryzik writes about MakerBot; the Brooklyn-based start-up has designed a consumer-grade, desktop-size 3D printer that uses melted plastic to build models of your designs.

The ability to easily and relatively inexpensively create 3D objects is a welcome tool. Graphics artists and those doing models for movies and commercials often need a real-world version of their creation to produce molds for final art. Meanwhile, creating your own movie props from scratch could solve production headaches. The MakerBot device was recently demo’d at a weekend Make-a-Thon which the reporter covered in an article you can find here.

The most recent iPhone and iPods have garnered kudos for their high res screens that reach 326 ppi (pixels per inch). Here’s a report of a company–Ortus Technology–which had recently developed a 4.8-inch color liquid crystal display with the pixel density of 458 ppi.

While a display like that might in itself be useful for production or post, a further interesting point is that the company now offers a similar sized screen that can deliver some 229 ppi when used in a dual-screen 3D mode. Ortus spots the development as an ideal viewfinder for use in 3D camera systems.

Cloud Services, Encoding and Video Delivery via the Web

More developments keep turning up to offer low-cost, or often free, production services that rely on cloud computing to deliver the goods.

In January, Vid.ly, a new website and service from Encoding.com, began a public beta. Users need only upload a video once; the service then transcodes it into 14 popular web and mobile formats, according to this article in VentureBeat.

Once the video has been encoded, you also get a short URL link. Once clicked on, that link automatically provides the video file that’s compatible with the device that’s just been connected.

It’s not just for those uploading cute animal videos either. If you have a number of video files, you can point to the source files stored via FTP, HTTP, Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) or other cloud storage services.

What’s it cost? Well, who can keep up with free (at least for now)?

VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi also writes about Zixi, a cloud video start-up that recently raised $4 million in a to fund its web video broadcasting business.

Zixi is completing the build out of the system to deliver HD video via the cloud for broadcast, enterprise and video-on-demand services. Current customers include CNN, Reuters, and CBS Sports.

While Cisco, Polycom and others already offer some form of HD video delivery via the cloud, Zixi claims it has developed methods of making the best use of available network bandwidth, as well as minimizing start-up delay.

At NAB 2011, hardware company Haivision announced it collaborated with Zixi to create its line of low-latency Makito encoder and decoder HD H.264 appliances. Haivision spots the devices as ideal for field use in breaking news (to replace pricey satellite uplinks) and connecting production facilities over low-cost and readily available Internet connections to save “thousands of dollars every month” when compared to managed-performance network services.

More on the Makito product here.

But the actual delivery of movies and other entertainment en mass over the public Internet is hitting a snag as we move further into our age of digital distribution.

A company like Netflix, of course, relies on the Internet to build its fast growing business of delivering movies and TV shows directly to viewers’ homes. But as Netflix’s CEO makes clear in the following article, anti-competitive action by ISPs via new broadband caps and other controls on video traffic might just quash all this as the ISPs fight to keep more of your money and not be tossed aside as nothing more than just the “dumb pipes” as some disparage them.

ISPs also fight the implementation of network neutrality as planned by the chairman of the FCC and Obama’s appointees. A number of members of Congress are siding with the broadband industry, and plan to limit how much control the FCC has over this new growth in network traffic. You can read more in this article from GigaOM here.

Last month, there were a number of reports that Apple was putting the final touch on its huge new data center in North Carolina that will actually be key in the company’s cloud-based video service. While this is speculative, the timing is right as Apple’s new OS Lion is said to move much of its capability to the web.

Check out this article from Business Insider for more on Apple’s purported plans.

VC News ala Scoble

Here’s a short, fun read by the nonstop blogging engine known as Robert Scoble entitled “What I learned by interviewing 23 start-ups in past few weeks”. Scoble offers up videos of his meetings with a variety of successful launches. The hot start-ups turn out photo/camera apps to those who are building apps around non-Apple iOS smartphones. These latter, according to Scoble have, for the first time, the coolest apps out there.

The National Jukebox

Yes there is such a thing, at least after the Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment got together to announce it. Now anyone can access “the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online.”

That’s large as in “more than 10-thousand”. Not bad when you consider that this is only the beginning: only music from the archives of the Victor Talking Machine Company are included, which Sony controls.

Here’s an article from the NPR website that discusses the collection.

If you want to go directly to our new National Jukebox website click here

Sachtler introduced its Cine DSLR fluid head at NAB 2011.

Tomorrow, May 12th, will see the debut of the “first official online extension” of the April NAB convention using something called Virtual View.

Well that’s no more than online streaming to me, but if you didn’t get a chance to go to that hectic annual confab in Las Vegas, this is a chance to see and hear some of what you may have missed. It’s all free, which helps.

You’ll see the requisite product demos and showcases, see a few one on ones with folks like 3ALITY’s founder & CEO, Steve Schklair (the company is one of the leaders in practical, usable 3-D systems) as well as an interview with New York documentary legend Albert Maysles, who received a lifetime achievement award at the show.

Yes, you’ll have the chance for live chats with “industry thought leaders”, downloadable content within the interactive showcases, on-demand playback of recorded sessions from the NAB Show, even a “social media component” that is said to enable “seamless exhibitor and attendee engagement” if you so desperately seek such entanglements.

It’s an all day event too, that runs from 10am-6pm EST

Of course this will come across as a bit more sales pitch than the breathless result of a dogged reporter’s discovery, but you can’t dismiss that selling is the main reason that they hold the April show in the first place.

What to expect

The day’s schedule

Free registration