Fireflies and Home
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 25.06.07While my project is waiting on a few effects elements from another artist, I’m taking the opportunity to visit my parents. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a break, (not counting my being sick a couple weeks ago) and it’s been especially nice to kick off and drive up to north central Indiana. I get an amazing “this is home” feeling about the time I turn off the interstate and hit SR3; rolling hills and endless fields, all spattered with woods and copses and towns. It’s awesome.
North central Indiana also has some of the best fireflies you can find. I’m not sure if it’s the large quantities of fields, the midlands locale, or that it’s totally “the boondocks”. Since I can’t find my tripod I’ve ended up borrowing my dad’s, and spent from 10:30 till well past midnight photographing the fireflies. And stars. And some long exposure madness with the moon. It’s crazy how bright it gets with a near-full moon and a 30 second exposure.
Those pictures are great! I can’t decide which one is my favorite.
That long-exposure shot is AMAZING! Wow!!
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2007 Reel
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 24.06.07After a few positive reviews (including inquires made at work) I simply extended the 2007 preview into a slightly-longer 2007 demo reel. Some better thought out audio mixing and a few additional shots, but it’s still in desperate need of the completed Adam project footage (made especially obvious at the end). There should be another, even more official update in the next few weeks.
Speaking of which, if you happen to know of any companies looking for a visual effects generalist, let me know! I have about three more weeks left at my current job, and am looking for what comes next. Someplace more northern than my current location would be ideal, I’m tired of the heat down here.
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Fading on Distance
iaian7 » tutorials » aftereffects John Einselen, 15.06.07Fades layers based on distance from the camera, allowing you to fly through compositions without layer snapping as the camera passes through. Especially effective for flying through layers of clouds.
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Channel Multiply
iaian7 » tutorials » aftereffects John Einselen, 15.06.07Multiply a layer’s channels by a specified amount. It’s ridiculously simple, but invaluable when dealing with 3D tracking camera data, where scaling the global animation can really help fix After Effects insistence on importing meters as pixels.
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Null Averaging
iaian7 » tutorials » aftereffects John Einselen, 14.06.07Tracking in After Effects can often result in data too jittery to be of any use. If you’re able to get multiple tracks, however, it’s possible to average them into a single, smoother, track. Even if the single tracks are decent, averaging will help increase the accuracy of the data.
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Multiplaning
iaian7 » tutorials » aftereffects John Einselen, 14.06.07Use a slider or null to control a 2D multiplaning effect. No 3D, no cameras, no fuss.
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Channel Additions
iaian7 » tutorials » aftereffects John Einselen, 14.06.07Basic positional modifications, especially useful for effect center points that need to be attached to a null by a specified offset.
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Safari 3
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 13.06.07As betas go, it’s not as bad as it could have been… I guess. So far I’ve seen random symbols added while editing text, a couple crashes, and a few less-than desirable interface changes. Safari 3 is a lot like Safari 2… just with more FireFox mixed in.
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2007 Preview
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 10.06.07I’m editing a new demo reel encompassing the past half year of VFX work, and thought I’d release an exclusive peak here on iaian7.com. Enjoy!
Super! The music fits perfectly. I like your scene selections and how they fit together. The ark door closing is a favorite. The only confusing part is when the water begins to cover the earth and there is a white cloud – ? – over part of the earth.
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Leaves and Menus
iaian7 » blog John Einselen, 7.06.07I haven’t had much to post lately, as work has mostly involved render wrangling, file management, and tedious compositing, and… I have no life. Not the most interesting blog subjects, but I’ve also gotten to do some texturing lately. A couple leaf sets with the basic colour, bump, translucency, and cutout masks. Oh, and some texture variations for top / bottom colouration.
It seems easiest to start in Illustrator (much like the ferns) to design the basic shapes and vein patterns (art brush strokes can really save the day), then take it into Photoshop for loads of blurring, layering, overlaying, and effects. The sample renders (grabbed from longer test animations) used simple flat polygons in Lightwave… hopefully, the textures will work well for full size trees while keeping poly counts low.
Oh, and there have been a few updates to the site. Amidst a flurry of complaints (well, one guy… but I agreed with him) regarding the fickle operation of my previous site navigation setup, I’ve mussed around with the javascript a bit. Try clicking instead of rolling over the section title to expand the content; it should be quite a bit more consistent and reliable than before. Let me know if you think it’s an improvement or not. I also updated my LiteBox installation to be a little more… polished. It’s black now, and proudly wears new buttons and a loading animation. Slick, no?
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Those photos are amazing! Quite inspirational.
On another note, you’ve also introduced me to a new word: copses. I looked it up, giving you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you didn’t simply mistype corpses.