François Tarlier's Blog > CG Artist, Matchmover, VFX, Open Source topics, Computer Vision, and geek stuff !

Bouygues Telecom Entreprise are 2 commercials I worked on as a Matchmover.

Calibre de Cartier is the last commercial I worked on as a Matchmover. it was directed by Rob Chiu. Unfortunately I’m not allow to show the breakdown tracking shot. But at least I can share the final video

• Calibre de Cartier (quicktime file)
• Calibre de Cartier (flash version on Fubiz)

My tutorial for AETuts+ is finally out !!
It covers Time Remapping, Waveform to keyframe conversion, expression, … I got really inspired by watching all those reels from motion designer or filmmaker with music most of the time from Hecq. I was wondering how they did their editing and cuts, so I came up with this idea. I don’t know if it’s the way they did it, but this is my approach.

Hope you like it !!!

Link : Audio Reactant Time Remapping Tutorial at AETuts+

Introduction

Yeahh Matt Ebb just commit my patch (SVN r27733) for the “Color Balance” node in Blender 2.5 Compositing node !!! Now it should be much easier to work with.

You can get a version of blender at Graphicall.org (any version above revision 27733)

There is still some precision issue on the color wheels, I guess some day it will be possible to move the color picker slower.

How to use it ?

First I would recommend you to un-check the “color management” setting in Blender 2.5 or it will make the blacks really hard to control.

If you are not so familiar with color grading, and push-pull techniques, I would really recommend you to watch Stu Maschwitz’s (Prolost) video tutorial using Magic Bullet Colorista. The settings won’t be exactly the same, but the approach quite the same though !

Red Giant TV Episode 22: Creating a Summer Blockbuster Film Look from Stu Maschwitz on Vimeo.

How does it works ?

I described the Lift/Gamma/Gain in a previous post, and mostly this node is based on the formulas specified there. We just slightly modified it so the 3 defaults values parameters are equal to 1.0 just like in Colorista. Which makes it much easier to control the blacks.
Actually the “Color Balance” node before this revision was the same formula but with lift default value equal to 0.0

Some presets !

While making some comparison test between Colorista in After Fx and the “color balance” node in blender, I tried to mimic some of Colorista’s presets.
You can download the “Blender Color Grading Presets” here : http://code.google.com/p/ft-projects/downloads/list

There is the following presets :

• Bleach
• Cool – warm
• Day to night
• Cold
• Punchy
• Vignetting (based on this tutorial I did on mask, but much better and flexible, just check it out) UPDATE : add Mike Pan’s vignette, which is much better than mine. Describe here : http://blog.mikepan.com/the-making-of/

Bleach preset w/ Color Balance node

Cold preset w/ Color Balance node

Cool to Warm preset w/ Color Balance node

Day to Night preset w/ Color Balance node

Punchy preset w/ Color Balance node

vignetting using Mike Pan's approach

If you haven’t seen my previous post yet, here is the Syntheyes’ Cubic Lens Distortion algorithm ported to Pixel Bender.

New Features

1. Scale factor : works exactly as Syntheyes Scale Lens Workflow (v2)
2. Chromatic Aberration : based on Martins Upitis‘s GLSL posted here (v2)
3. Blue/Yellow Chromatic Aberration based on Dorian modification (V3)

Download

1. Download ft-CubicDistortion.pbk here : http://aescripts.com/ft-cubic-lens-distortion/
2. Place it in your “Support Files” folder (which is in your AE install folder)
3. Launch AE
4. Look for the effect called Cubic Distortion

Source Code

just download the file at http://aescripts.com/ft-cubic-lens-distortion and open it with your notepad application

Donate

still if you wish ^^

Introduction

If you are doing Matchmove, you probably bumped into Lens work-flow issue, where you have to un-distort the footage in your matchmove software, then track it, and export a new undistorted footage, so your client can compose the 3d rendering on top of it and then distort it back.
I don’t really like this work-flow, since for instance AfterFx do not have Cubic Lens Distortion FX and it would be really hard for the client trying to match the distortion back.

After watching Victor Wolansky’s FXPHD Class on SYN202 (syntheyes) about Lens work-flow, I thought : “hey why not porting the lens distortion algorithm ?”. Pretty easy to do, since I already did it for HLSL & Martins Upitis did port my shader to GLSL !
Thanks to SSonTech for sharing there alogrithm

Pixel Bender Cubic Lens Distortion :

Not much to say, it does what it suppose to do ! You can copy & paste values from Syntheyes and it will match perfectly (or it should at least). See the screenshot below.

1. Download CubicDistortion.pbk here : http://code.google.com/p/ft-projects/downloads/list
2. Place it in your “Support Files” folder (which is in your AE install folder)
3. Launch AE
4. Look for the effect called Cubic Distortion

UPDATE : now with scale factor & chromatic aberration, see the post here

Thanks to Jerzy Drozda Jr (aka Maltaannon) for his great tips about Pixel Bender.

So now, you can create a new comp with your distorted footage > pre-comp it > undistorted it with the shader > track it in syntheyes > export the camera to a 3d package > render the scene > import the render into your pre-comp > desactivate the shader. Should match perfectly

Screenshots

(yeah I know, PFTrack grid with Syntheyes … not cool ! :p )

Distorted Grid

Syntheyes Cubic Undistortion

AE with Cubic Lens Distortion shader

compare AE & Syntheyes Lens distortion

Donation

If you wish

Since there is no mask in the “Compositing Editor” of Blender yet, I found a simple tricks which could work pretty well especially in case of color grading.

You’ll see nothing really fancy here since the mask can only be square (or pretty close to a square shape though). But if you check out Colorista for instance, the two allowed shapes are ellipse and rectangle.

Blender Quick Tips : How to create masks in the compositing editor from François Tarlier on Vimeo.

I’m currently taking a class at Fxphd called “DOP210 -DSLR Cinematography” with Stu Maschwitz (prolost) & Mike Seymour as mentors!
This is an awesome class if you have a Canon 5D or a Nikon D90 and want to make movies with it and post-production/grading as well!
Either if the class is talking about the two cameras, the focus is mainly on the 5D!
Stu had a really nice post on Prolost about setting the 5D called “Flatten Your 5D“. Those settings aim to get a neutral picture (low contrast, low sharpen, low saturation,…) which would give a better control in post-production for grading. Settings which he’s using in his class of course !
Since I own a D90, I thought I would give a try to port his 5D’s settings to the D90!
Here is what I have done :

I also turn off D-Lighting, but I’m not sure it is the right move. I’m not sure it is the best settings yet but it looks close though

Update : Also I recommend you to take a look at “Understanding and Optimizing the Nikon D90 D-Movie Mode Image“ on the DVXUser Forum, it give nice tips to trick your camera a bit

Here is a test I have done with those settings and Rebel CC on After Effects.

Mobile Version on Vimeo

Finally, my Matchmove Reel is done ! I guess this one is for the first part of this year, because I have a lot of shots idea in mind I wonna try !! Feel free to contact me for critics, job, tips…

PDF Reel Breakdown

Mobile Version on Vimeo

Last week-end was the FISE at Montpellier, so it was a good reason to go and shoot some photos and videos. I guess this could be a “Spare Time Project” as well. I did learn a lot by shooting sport photos ! It is way harder than what I thought. I did use some old optics on my D90 so, aperture, shutter, and so on totally manual, but it’s a really nice way to learn.

Basically this is what I learned :

• Think fast
• Set your camera when nothing happen
• keep your two eyes open (one in the camera, the other one on the field)
• understand what the riders are going/want to do
• always stay aware of what happen
• look every where
• know your gears !

all those things are quite common, and actually that what I mostly do every time I take a picture, but with, what I would call, high speed shooting those things are way more intense !!

FISE 2009 – a set on Flickr.