VizWorld.com

Movies get bigger.  Budgets get bigger.  Explosions get bigger.  What doesn’t get bigger?  Timelines.  As studios try to cram more and more cheap VFX into the same timelines as traditional films, studios find themselves unable to cope with all of the effects in-house.  Modern movies now find themselves split among half-dozen or dozens of studios, forcing the studios to cooperate and share their previously proprietary technology.  In a new blog post from The Molecule, they discuss this emerging trend.

When we talk about the big players, ILM, Framestore, Digital Domain, etc., it’s without a doubt they dominate many of the large-scale projects, however it is not uncommon for them to collaborate with smaller firms to achieve the best end-result. Whether that collaboration is inspired by skill-set, geography, budget or schedule, this collaboration isn’t anything new to the industry.

And, on a proud side-node, they actually referenced VizWorld!  Glad to see VizWorld getting some recognition in the industry.

Update 3:58pm: Fixed the Quote.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule: On Industry: The VFX Playground.

Science the molecule, vfx

Every VFX studio needs a render farm, but the specs are typically considered a bit of a secret.  Not so at The Molecule, who has just posted a nice article on their blog detailing both the hardware and software configuration they use.

Over the last 6 months our render farm has gone through a full body remodeling. Over 100 processors are logged into the system at once. The new server, written in php, features a virtual file system that links together functions and resources into a read-write space that connects the interface to the back-end components, offering a pretty cool thin client set-up. Some other interesting and different features are the render farm’s graphical interface, written in Flash AS3 and containing 21,000 lines of code, and its node-based design allowing for the creation of dependency trees (a means by which processes can be organized).

via Everything looks better after The Molecule.

Graphics, Hardware renderfarm, the molecule, vfx

The Molecule has a new blog post discussing the installation they designed for Barry Diller’s InterActive Corp’s headquarters, unveiled in 2006.  The installation projects a large globe onto a wall and allows users to manipulate it to see real-time information about various IAC-owned companies.

Using the program MotionBuilder allowed us to render the globe in real-time, as well as respond to external triggers. While MotionBuilder is generally used for motion capture it was a good choice for the creation of this installation because of its ability to receive information from multiple sources (i.e. the network, the mouse, etc.), and it runs a real-time node based math and animation engine called relations. In the final design there are multiple shading layers involved, including a land layer, 2 light layers. a haze layer and cloud layers. The “twinkling light shader” used was written in an open GL shading language (CgFX) which created a cool real-time effect that’s not possible out of the box.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule: Spinning Interactivity.

Graphics, Hardware installation, realtime, the molecule

Greenscreen & Bluescreen technology has been around for years, and while it has problems they’re generally known how to overcome.  The Molecule opted for a new technology called “Reflecmedia” for their work on “The Unusuals”, and writes up the experience on their blog.

Basically, the way Reflecmedia works is by projecting color LED lights, arranged along a ring fitted to the front of a video camera, onto a Chromatte fabric that is set up behind the shot. The light emitted from the ring is bounced off the gray, iridescent, beaded curtain- giving it a green appearance to the camera lens.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule.

Graphics, Hardware reflecmedia, the molecule, tv, vfx

The next Adobe After Effects New York meeting has been announced, and it’s a week from today.  This time they’ll have visual effects studio The Molecule on hand, and freelancer Eric Epstein.

Next meeting: Thursday, July 30th, 2009

The Time: 6:45 PM – 9:00 PM

The Place:

P.S. 41

116 W est 11th St., NYC

(corner of 11th Street and 6th Ave.)

via Welcome to Adobe After Effects NY.

Graphics aftereffects, meeting, the molecule

While definately definitely not as impressive as blowing up a building or transforming cars into giant killer robots, fixing gaffe’s in common video is big business.  The Molecule has a short post up showing some recent work they did for Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein to fix a “bad tie job”.

The process involved a few steps in order to make the tie lie in its proper resting place. We began by tracking the tie, this meant we had to bring it into shake and apply tracking points to it. From that point we then rotoscoped the best frame we had of Blankfein’s shirt and tie. After scaling the frame a bit, we were then able to composite the tie and shirt back on top. Final finishing touches were applied, such as graining for continuity of the image, and voila the tie was risen!.

Now, it’s a tiny thing, just removing a shirt button to make the tie look better, but things like this bring rise to questions about how can we tell when Real is Real?  Several photographers have been busted in the last few years for doctoring photos.  How long until CNN or some major news agency finds that their video has been doctored?

Update: Corrected spelling.. Kinda surprised FireFox’s built-in spellcheck didn’t pick it up.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule: The Subtlety of a Button.

Graphics the molecule, vfx

The Molecule has a new blog post up talking about the problems they experienced doing the 3D Modeling and simulation work for “The Detonators” on Discovery Channel.  Each of the 20 simulations took multiple layers (5 to 8) plus 2D overlays, and they found alot of interesting tricks along the way.

Additionally, it is important to note that the layers were not all rendered at the same resolution–occlusion and shadow passes were amongst the slowest, and rendering them at half- or quarter-resolution would allow us to decrease the render time by a factor of 4 or 16, with no noticeable difference in final image quality.

Most of the modeling was done with Maya and the nCloth solver.

via Everything looks better after The Molecule.

Graphics maya, ncloth, television, the molecule, vfx

The recent “Rescue Me” opening scene was a hallway fire scene with some impressive VFX, and The Molecule is to thank for the fantastic work.

We at The Molecule, a visual effects company based out of NYC, have had the opportunity to take part in this increasing trend. In this week’s episode, we combined several passes of live action footage including plates of a hallway, the firefighters, and several explosions and flame effects, into one composite which looked as if the characters were running through a burning hotel. Several of the visual components had to be digitally retimed in order to sell the shot.

Everything looks better after The Molecule.

Graphics television, the molecule, vfx