Only 3 months left to Light Dreams 2014, and it's time to stop playing with new stuff and finish turning the show into full Anaglyph 3D. A good while ago, I did the basic work of creating 2 cameras in After Effects for each sequence, lining them up, and re rendering the whole show in 3D. It worked fine, but a lot of improvements could be made improving the depth of the 3D space and accentuating the 3D effects for individual objects. I reworked all 5 sequences, and re rendered the whole thing in 3D. After watching each sequence, I made lists of errors and improvements, and have been "fixing" things. That's turning into a much bigger job than I expected, as always.
I have pretty much finished the first 3 sequences, and am now working on the difficult fourth sequence, the "Hommage to the Quay Brothers". I have gone through the whole thing at length, creating a full 3D staircase in front of the facade, giving depth to the pediment, and generally pushing the 3D effects as best I could. I am now working on a second series of corrections and improvements.
Just to give you an idea of the complexity of the job, here is a screenshot of my 4 x 23" HD 1920 x 1080 monitors setup desktop with After Effects CC running:
It really takes all that screen space to work comfortably, and I still complain that the fonts are too small…
Top left are the project files and the Camera View( that's the left eye view of what will be projected on the building):
Top right are four different views of the 3D set: top, front, side, and a 3/4 view that shows the three dimensional set:
Bottom right are the Quicktime movie I am correcting, the Effects Panel, the list of the corrections, and various other panels:
Finally, on the bottom left, last but not least, is the Timeline with all the layers of the animation,in the case of this sequence a total of 390 layers:
That's a hell of a lot, and is pushing After Effects and my MacPro pretty far…
Each image, and each sound is on a separate layer. I name and color code each of the objects for clarity, and all the audio is light green. Some of the layers are actually "Pre Compositions" that have their own timeline and set of layers. For example, each "paper drawer" is a composition made of a front, a back, a bottom, and two sides assembled in a box shape in 3D space. The stairs are a Composition made up of 11 Pre Compositions, each containing the top, front and sides of a flat box.
After Effects makes it very complex to build cylinders and spheres, to say nothing of odd shapes. So most of my objects are flat images. That's not perfect, but that is the best the software can do, and I don't mind at all the "surrealistic effect".
I have experimented with Maya and other full 3D softwares, but am not happy with the textures. The objects ARE 3D, but they don't look real to me. I prefer my flat textured images, and it's just too much anyway for a lone 68 years old "half geek" to learn and to do. May be with a "full geek" team of 4 working thousands of man hours, we could do a FULL 3D show.
But there is no budget for that, and I am honestly not convinced the show would end up any better. Plus I would rather retain full control over the final product…
Back to work now...
I have pretty much finished the first 3 sequences, and am now working on the difficult fourth sequence, the "Hommage to the Quay Brothers". I have gone through the whole thing at length, creating a full 3D staircase in front of the facade, giving depth to the pediment, and generally pushing the 3D effects as best I could. I am now working on a second series of corrections and improvements.
Just to give you an idea of the complexity of the job, here is a screenshot of my 4 x 23" HD 1920 x 1080 monitors setup desktop with After Effects CC running:
It really takes all that screen space to work comfortably, and I still complain that the fonts are too small…
Top left are the project files and the Camera View( that's the left eye view of what will be projected on the building):
Top right are four different views of the 3D set: top, front, side, and a 3/4 view that shows the three dimensional set:
Bottom right are the Quicktime movie I am correcting, the Effects Panel, the list of the corrections, and various other panels:
Finally, on the bottom left, last but not least, is the Timeline with all the layers of the animation,in the case of this sequence a total of 390 layers:
That's a hell of a lot, and is pushing After Effects and my MacPro pretty far…
Each image, and each sound is on a separate layer. I name and color code each of the objects for clarity, and all the audio is light green. Some of the layers are actually "Pre Compositions" that have their own timeline and set of layers. For example, each "paper drawer" is a composition made of a front, a back, a bottom, and two sides assembled in a box shape in 3D space. The stairs are a Composition made up of 11 Pre Compositions, each containing the top, front and sides of a flat box.
After Effects makes it very complex to build cylinders and spheres, to say nothing of odd shapes. So most of my objects are flat images. That's not perfect, but that is the best the software can do, and I don't mind at all the "surrealistic effect".
I have experimented with Maya and other full 3D softwares, but am not happy with the textures. The objects ARE 3D, but they don't look real to me. I prefer my flat textured images, and it's just too much anyway for a lone 68 years old "half geek" to learn and to do. May be with a "full geek" team of 4 working thousands of man hours, we could do a FULL 3D show.
But there is no budget for that, and I am honestly not convinced the show would end up any better. Plus I would rather retain full control over the final product…
Back to work now...
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