FilmmakerIQ.com » 3D Graphics

Build a Planetary Scene inside After Effects

John P. Hess — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:00:35 +0000

VinhSon Nguyen walks through some basic tips on creating a earth or space scene using CC Sphere and a texture map.

Lego Millennium Falcon Stop Motion Assembly 3d

Dennis — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:05:31 +0000

Assembly of the Lego set 10179 from Star Wars Ultimate collector series in stop motion in 3d. Created using 3ds max and V-ray. It took Francisco Prieto over 3 years, modelling all the pieces by himself. and rendered frame by frame.

SxSW: Best Film Title Design 2012

John P. Hess — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:31:49 +0000

Need some inspiration? South by Southwest Film and Music Festival released a list of the finalists in the Title Sequence Category from Film and Television productions. The final awards will be present on Tuesday, March 13 at 8pm.

Which one of these is your favorite?

205 – Zimmer der Angst

Director: Rainer Matsutani
Title Design by weareflink/weareflink GmbH

What happened in Room 205? Why has no one lived there for over a year? Katrin couldn’t care less: the 19-year-old student has landed a room in the dorm, and that means freedom! Freedom from home and her over-protective father. The semester is just beginning, and it’s time to make new friends, go to parties, have sex, and, of course, go to classes. Then, strange things happen in her room, and she begins to understand why no one wanted to move into Room 205 before.

The Adventures of TinTin (Unofficial)

Director: Steven Spielberg
Title Design by James Curan

After discovering directions to a sunken ship commanded by Captain Haddock’s ancestor, Tintin and his friends decide to go on a treasure hunt.

American Horror Story

Director: Ryan Murphy
Title Design by Kyle Cooper/Prologue Films

A family of three move from Boston to Los Angeles as a means of reconciling their past anguish. They move to a restored mansion, unaware that the home is haunted.

Les Bleus de Ramville

Director: Derek Diorio
Title Design by Jay Bond/Oily Film Company Inc.

Les Bleus de Ramville follows the members of a small but fanatical senior hockey team’s fan club. For Gordie, Julie, Maureen, and Christian, the fan club represents more than just a promotional tool for the Ramville’s hockey team. It’s their passion – their way of life.

Boss

Director: Gus Van Sant
Title Design by Angus Wall/Elastic

A juxtaposition of Chicago’s inhabitants, reflective illustrations and hand-drawn lettering with an indifferent urban landscape and dispassionate sans-serif typeface. Together, these elements serve to introduce audiences to the oppositions and contradictions that drive the show.

Bunraku

Director: Guy Moshe
Title Design by Guilherme Marcondes/Hornet Inc.

A young drifter’s quest for revenge leads him into a bigger fight than he expected.

Eva

Director: Kike Maíllo
Title Design by Dvein

It’s 2041. Alex, a brilliant and irreverent machine designer, returns to his hometown to complete an unfinished project: create a boy robot. There he reunites with Lana, his old love, now married to his brother David. Eva, David and Lana’s daughter, winds up captivating Alex, who uses her as a model for his daring project.

Game of Thrones

Director: Angus Wall
Title Design by Rob Feng/Elastic

A Da Vinci-inspired map constructed on the inside of a sphere– each location a mechanical gear-works model fabricated as if by hand. At the sphere’s center a burning hot sun housed in a spherical astrolabe engraved with the history of Westeros serves as an introduction to familiarize the audience with the world they are about to be thrust into.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Director: David Fincher
Title Design by Tim Miller/Blur Studio

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a 2011 English-language thriller film directed by David Fincher, written by Steven Zaillian from the novel of the same name by Stieg Larsson. The film stars Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander and tells the story of a man’s mission to find out what has happened to a girl who has been missing for 40 years, and who may have been murdered. The film is nominated for five Academy Awards, including one for Rooney Mara for Best Actress.

Hell on Wheels

Director: Various
Title Design by Mark Gardner & Jeremy Cox/Imaginary Forces

AMC’s new original series, Hell on Wheels, tells the compelling story of the construction of the Union Pacific railroad across America… a process that irrevocably changed our nation.

Hephaestus

Director: Alexander Curtis
Title Design by Eric Dies

Hephaestus is an outdated, aging soldier. He was built to destroy, but he has found a new purpose in the care and protection of a young girl, Kaylee.

Herbst

Directors: Florian Eidenhammer & Patrick Gündera
Title Design by Clemens Wirth/Clemens Wirth Motion Design

First World War Drama about love, friendship and loyalty.

A History Of The Title Sequence

Director: Jurjen Versteeg
Title Design by Jurjen Versteeg/Synple

This title shows a history of the title sequence in a nutshell. The sequence includes all the names of title designers who had a revolutionary impact on the history and evolution of the title sequence. The names of the title designers all refer to specific characteristics of the revolutionary titles that they designed.

Magic Trip

Director: Alex Gibney / Alison Ellwood
Title Design by Karin Fong/Imaginary Forces

At the advent of the psychedelic 60’s, Ken Kesey took an LSD–fueled bus trip with his friends the Band of Merry Pranksters and caught the whole thing on film. Magic Trip documents this wild ride that defined the 60’s counter-cultural revolution.

The New Girl

Director: John Priday
Title Design by Veva Burns/Framework Studio

After a bad break-up, Jess, an offbeat young woman, moves into an apartment loft with three single men. Although they find her behavior very unusual, the men support her – most of the time.

Shameless

Director: John Wells
Title Design by Erin Sarofsky/Sarofsky Corp.

“Shameless” Showtime Original Series that revolves around a loving, but dysfunctional, south-side Chicago, lower middle class family. Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) is the proud single father of six kids… However, his excessive drinking and minimal financial contributions to the family put the majority of the caretaking responsibilities on Fiona (Emmy Rossum), the oldest sister.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Click on the image below to see a storyboard

Director: Guy Ritchie
Title Design by Danny Yount/Prologue Films

Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson join forces to outwit and bring down their fiercest adversary, Professor Moriarty.

La Última Muerte

Director: David “Leche” Ruíz
Title Design by Maribel Martínez/diecinueve36

Dr. Alexanderson finds an unconscious young man by the doorstep of his cabin. He will try to piece together the mans broken memory without knowing the dangers his family and friends will be exposed to in this psychological revenge thriller.

Wer rettet Dina Foxx?

Director: Max Zeitler
Title Design by weareflink/weareflink GmbH

This TV thriller kick starts the cross-media event “Rescue Dina Foxx!”, which combines TV and internet to highlight the dangers of digital identity theft. The film introduces the story of Dina who is arrested for murder but claims her world has been manipulated by a digital doppelganger.

X-Men: First Class

Click on the image below to see the sequence and making of:

Director: Matthew Vaughn
Title Design by Simon Clowes/Prologue Films

In 1962, the United States government enlists the help of Mutants with superhuman abilities to stop a malicious dictator who is determined to start world war III.

Maya 101: Intro to Maya

Dennis — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:10:11 +0000

In this Maya tutorial by Daniel Reynolds he shows how to get you up and running in Maya 2012 with a little sword to demonstrate certain principles in the world of 3d.

“Still Life” Motion-Sensitive Picture Frame

Dennis — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 08:05:41 +0000

This is a demonstration video showcasing Artist Scott Garne’s interactive still life project. It involves a motion-senstive frame that feeds realtime tilt data to a 3D scene.

The Future of CGI w/ Michael Bay, Jon Favreau, Ray Liotta and Paul Scheer & Rob Huebel

Dennis — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:38:50 +0000

Ray Liotta, Michael Bay & Jon Favreau talk about the future of CGI with motion capture experts, Paul Scheer & Rob Huebel in this Funny or Die video.

Making of “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” credit sequence

John P. Hess — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 21:01:45 +0000

The title sequence to David Fincher’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” is an amazing mix of dark forms and stylized violence. This sequence which houses over 250 shots alone was created by visual effects house, Blue Studios.

An “under the hood” look

Our first task was to pull together an enormous bag of reference. Videos, stills, fine art — anything that could apply to the “tell the story of all three books in 2.5 minutes” concept. From that grab-bag, certain things began to catch David’s interest and ours. People covered with paint or liquids was particularly interesting. There’s some great black-on-black photos and fine art installation. At some point, all of this came together and David said, “I want everything to be black, none blacker and covered in dream-ooze.”

—Motiongrapher.com | Read the Full Article

Drew Berry: Animating Unseeable Biology

John P. Hess — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:20:00 +0000

Molecules exist in dimensions smaller than the wave lengths of the visible light spectrum and because of this they are impossible to photograph. But that hasn’t stopped scientists from thinking about what they look like and what they’re doing. In this TEDxSydney talk, Drew Berry shows an amazing 3d animation of what’s going on at the molecular level inside a cell nucleus as it’s getting ready to split.

More animations by Drew Berry showing molecular processes:

http://youtu.be/HUSDvSknIgI

Making of – IMMORTALS

Dennis — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:24:08 +0000

This making of video for Immortals by Tippett Studio shows the CGI animation that went into creating the Titans of Hyperion’s army.

From the producers of 300 and visionary director Tarsem Singh, Tippett Studio is creating breathtaking imagery and animation for this November 2011 release.

In Immortals, the ruthless King Hyperion, played by Mickey Rourke, leads his bloodthirsty army on a murderous rampage across Greece to find a deadly weapon that will destroy humanity. A mortal chosen by Zeus named Theseus (Henry Cavill) must lead the fight against Hyperion and his evil army with the fate of mankind and the Gods at stake.

Tippett Studio created the Titans of Hyperion’s army under the supervision of Matt Jacobs./blockquote>

The Science and Future of 3D Films, With Legend3D Founder Dr. Barry Sandrew

John P. Hess — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 17:10:35 +0000

In this three part article for Forbes Magazine, Mark Hughes explores the details and challenges of 3d films with Dr. Barry Sandrew whose company helped add dimension (at least in a spatial sense) to Alice in Wonderland, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Green Lantern, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, Conan the Barbarian, Priest, and The Smurfs.

Part 1

…An interesting thing to understand about 3D movies is that when you watch a 3D film, you are not experiencing “true” 3D at all. As Dr. Sandrew explains, “If we attempt to focus on a blurry object in the foreground [in a 3D film], our brains have the expectation that our eyes will resolve it into focus and that it will become sharp and clear as it is in real life. Of course, that does not happen in a 3D movie, nor should it.”

His point about why it shouldn’t happen is important, because as he puts it, “If there is a foreground element in a shot that is blurry, it exists that way because the director wants the audience to focus its attention elsewhere.” He goes on to note that since shifting our gaze won’t make blurry objects sharper and clearer, “it then immediately forces us to re-direct our attention toward what the director originally intended, and eventually, we learn how to correctly experience the film in 3D.” In this way, he notes, 3D serves the film director’s desire to direct audiences’ attention to different parts of the storytelling process.

— Forbes.com | Read The Full Article Part 1

Part II

…“Worldwide, the performance of 3D movies has been extremely strong during the past two years,” Dr. Sandrew stated. “Despite that fact, it?s not uncommon to have one commentator looking at the box office numbers as proof 3D is ?fading’, while another, relying upon the same data, interprets it as proof that 3D is ?hot? and ?on the rise.?”

“The reality of what has been happening,” he said, “though not without a few negative instances, is positive growth for 3D worldwide. According to the-numbers.com, six of the top 10 highest grossing movies of all time are 3D films that were released since Avatar in 2009. That represents $8.361 billion of gross revenue over the past two years or 63% of the total gross from the top 10 films of all time. If 3D didn’t add anything to the movie-going experience, would 40% to 60% of $8.361 billion worth of moviegoers make the choice to pay a premium price to see the 3D version of a movie? I don’t think so.”

— Forbes.com | Read The Full Article Part II

Part III

…“When it comes to 3D, everyone is still in a learning phase,” Dr. Sandrew stated. “Some directors who understand the medium are aided by truly knowledgeable stereographers at every stage of their productions, and then there are other directors, who also have a sensitivity toward 3D that prefer to use a stereographer only in a post production mode. In any visual effects-heavy film, the mastery of the director and cinematographer/stereographer is key to the creation of good or exceptional visuals, and this reliance on both technical and creative expertise is not any different in 3D. 3D offers the filmmaker an unprecedented ability to influence the memory, emotions and even primitive survival instincts of the audience in a manner that is impossible in 2D. When employed correctly and strategically, and when the appropriate knowledge base is leveraged, 3D can be a very powerful creative medium for the director.”

— Forbes.com | Read The Full Article Part III