Time Lapse and a couple of stills

Same video twice,
hmmm, video is less than ideal on blogger...

Movie Magic

Bella and I went to the library to get movies (only $1 a week), I pick out "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" by the Coen Brothers. She picks out "Sullivan's Travels" with Veronica Lake - She starts reading the back and says "this is about a movie named 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou'"!! Weird - a quick check of IMDB at home confirmed that the Coens named their movie after the one in the Veronica Lake movie...Movie Magic.

images of the past week

Waiting around the mall, picking up A from work...
No tripod, just wide open (1.8) and high iso.

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One of my first attempts at HDR, hmmm

butterflies of the future

Clouds at Sunset

Time Lapse

TTV

Not TTV

She's such a strange girl...

long exposure

By the roadside
30 seconds, f7, 125asa, 50mm

low light

more 7d madness

night yard @ about 30 seconds, f5.6. 125asa, 50mm




Power Pole - Lawndale



Redondo Beach Pier Oct. 09

7D wooooooo

Poor little critter caught in the fire









Curves man - possible scene from MC

I was playing with some images to import to C4D and Isabella liked it this way



These flowers looked so damn beautiful before the sun came up



Another Generation

4 pix - august morning - first day off work

Old Man Cactus

Lady of the Garden

My new look

Posterized Peafowl on the roof

Microchick Still

post is slowly winding up on Microchick - I like the look here

Matte edges inAE by J Ussing (in Rebel Cafe)

Are you talking about the problems that arise when you comp many premultiplied layers, and get matte edges?

My solution is one of the following:

1) Rendering straight
- Render out as TGA sequences with STRAIGHT alpha, not premultiplied.
- In After Effects, choose "ignore alpha" on all the multipasses you want to comp together (for the same CG object anyway).
- Import ONE of the passes again, this time with alpha channel, and put it on top of the other layers, set to "stencil alpha" mode.
That way you comp your layers without alpha channels at all, hence you don't worry about the anti-aliased and semi-transparent areas, and then you add the alpha on top like a cookie cutter. -No ugly matte edges!

2) Un-premultiplying in After Effects (same as above, but with premultilpied 3D renders)
- Import all the passes with alpha channel set to premultiplied.
- For each layers you want to disable the alpha channel on, add a "levels" effect. Instead of RGB, set it to alpha. Move the slider so you "crunch" the alpha and re-store the un-premultiplied image data.
- Apply the "stencil alpha" layer on top like a cookie cutter, as in previous example


(end alpha geekiness

- Jonas

next project???

found this, from more than a year ago, before MicroChick. Think I want to do something in this vein, somewhere between live action and animation.

AE expression of the day: Smooth()

smooth() doesn't specify units (ie, pixels for position, etc).

The two arguments are width and samples.

Esoteric? I know

The best explanation I saw is in Mark Christiansen's amazing "After Effects CS4 Studio Techniques" book:

"Width determines how much time (before and after the current time) is averaged to create the result. A setting of 2 samples 2 seconds means 1 second before and 1 second after the current time. The samples argument determines how many individual points within that range are actually sampled for the result; generally, the more samples, the smoother the curve".

Posted by Adolfo Rozenfeld @ adobe AE user to user forum

MicroChick pic

Volcano Two, SB-37

TTV

Brownie Reflex Face

RIP Kitty - you were one hell of a kitty

you were quite a girl, we'll miss you

By Bella @ the tidepools



Bella's Birthday

Professor Simpleton

Evil Minions

forms

http://mis15.ncarts.edu/film/forms/production/
nice movie making forms; actors release, etc

Matte tricks when keying

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/435659?tstart=0
"Pre-compose the keyed layer (you can duplicate before Pre-Composing if you don't want to compromise the original).
You are only pre-composing it because some effects that will take the key as source wouldn't see the key but the original unkeyed footage as result if it wasn't in a Pre-comp. This pre-comp can be turned off. You don't need to see it. The effects need to see it

Apply the Set Matte effect in the solid. Make sure it points to the Pre-Comp in the "Take Matte from" menu, and uses Alpha Channel in the "Use for Matte" menu. This will mask the solid with the key. Then apply either the Simple Choker or Matte Choker effect (Effects > Matte) to the solid, and tweak the choke so that it closes the holes. This will give you a solid that is roughly masked like the keyed layer" -- Adolfo Rozenfeld

you can freely employ any adjustment and trickery to ramp up contrast between foreground and background no matter how strange it may make your footage look. Remember, that it's easy to recombine color and Alpha using Matte modes or effects like Set Channels/ Shift Channels/ Set Matte -- Mylenium