Obligatory New Year Post

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I’m waiting for a few matts to render out so I’ve got some time to fill a gap. I haven’t written in a while so I might as well update. So no rant today, sorry 😛

Christmas and New Years were lots of fun. Had lots of family and friends over, and my girlfriend and I have decided we don’t like people and are going to be hermits for a bit.

I’ve discovered a new renderer, Maxwell. I absolutely love it. Unfortunately you show a client a low sample level render, because it’s quick, and they freak about about the grain in the shot. And it seems no amount of explaining that the grain will go away subdues their worry. Ah well, new things often scare the client. I try not to involve anyone in the technical stuff. I had this one client many years ago who would constantly stick his nose into my process, “Use Nuke, do it like this, why is your comp so bright, etc.” Which drove me nuts. I’ve never heard of anyone going to a mechanic and asking them if they use a Bosch drill or a Black and Decker screwdriver; that’s downright ridiculous.

My little car that I’ve been working on has taken a back seat to a few other things I’ve got going, but there’s about 73 frames left then I’m going to comp the whole shot. But… there’s a big but… With my rediscovery of Maxwell I’m thinking of doing it over. I will let this Mental Ray render finish however (Let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot here).

So what does this new year hold for me? A new show reel, I can tell you that much; it’s WAY overdue. I’m going to be learning the shit out of Maxwell. What I find now is that I don’t have as many technical hurdles to jump with Maxwell as I did with Mental Ray. So this means that it’s down to my creativity and insight into photography to get things looking good now. And that’s a good thing; I’ve had enough of only one side of my brain being challenged.

I’m also going to be learning how to fly. I was recently gifted a flight in a little aeroplane and the pilot and I had a long chat in amongst the stalls and low flying over jet skiers. He gave me the yoke (The joystick) and let me fly for a bit and I loved it! Once we had landed he explained the costs of learning to fly and all the technical details and I’m very keen. It’s expensive but I can go without sushi for a while… And who knows, in a few years I’ll be able to fly myself and three friends down to Durban if I wanted to. My girlfriend giggled like a schoolgirl at the thought of me being a pilot and that motivated me even more.

Oh look my matts have finished. I may update more next week with an update of my car.

My war on H.264

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There seems to be a constant battle between client, production, and the people who actually have to sit behind the computer and do the post-production. This battle comes in the form of a huge dissonance between expectations and budget. I don’t care how good the VFX artist is, crap footage is crap footage. I’m not talking artistically; I’m talking technically. This specific distinction is probably the crux of the issue. The only person who understands the technical ins and outs is the guy who sits behind the computer. Sure, the other groups understand how something like a green screen works, they understand that a computer can track markers and make CG fit into the shot, basic fundamental visual effects knowledge. Then you go a level deeper, do they understand how H.264 affects your footage, do they understand where and how many tracking markers you need? I chuckle to myself to think how few of these “professionals” actually do know. I could go deeper asking if they even know WHY we use something like green screen.

It is definitely not their job to know. It is their job to get things done under budget, on time, and of high quality. Yes, in that order of preference. I find that a lot of the time people think that budget and quality is unrelated. You might disagree with that sentence because budget and quality is obviously linked. It makes me wonder where this disconnection happens. Here’s a typical example that happens very often. There are these wonderful cameras out there (i.e. the 5D and 7D) that shoot beautifully in HD… to H.264. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, until you try to manipulate the image. Crank your colours too much and you’ll start to see the artefacts. This is even more obvious when you try to use the poor thing for green screen. A distinct halo will form around your subject (Where the stark green and the rest of the colours meet). In extreme cases you’ll even see the blocks of compression! So then why is this even used? If the problems are so obvious then surely we’d be using something else? Using a 5D to shoot vs. using a RED or an Alexa is cheaper, oodles cheaper. So much cheaper, in fact, producers will completely overlook the lack of quality. Most of the time you’ll shoot some footage, grade it lightly, and be done with it. This generally works out really well and looks very good. This in repetition will reinforce the fact that the H.264 cameras are just as good as the high-end cameras.

This is only a small part of the problem. The big part comes in where expectations are unrealistic because of this skewed view on what “works”. Once a shoot is done and in post only then do these problems crop up. You’ll have your producer and director look at the green screen or the grade and to their genuine surprise, it looks nothing like <insert Hollywood blockbuster here>. I sit there and laugh at questions like, “Where is all this noise coming from?”, “Why is the motion blur so blocky on the green screen?”, “How come the blacks are flickering?” Usually I’ll look up from my desk and ask, “You shot on a 5D didn’t you?” and it doesn’t seem to click.

If your device outputs to H.264 then your green screen WILL be shit.
I know some people might start bringing up Andrew Kramer and say that his green screen shots have been amazing and he shot on a 5D. There’s a simple answer to that: Andrew Kramer is the guy who sits behind the computer, as well as the director, as well as the producer, he knows the limitations of H.264 and works around them.

All I’m saying is there needs to be some sort of shift in thinking, imaginations need to be reeled in a bit, and maybe a bit more research done before choices are made resulting in highly unrealistic expectations. If you want your $10,000 production to look like a $1,000,000 then you need to put in $990,000 worth of preproduction, planning and research. Shooting it guerilla style will result in exactly that, something that looks like it was shot by a gorilla.

Here’s a very nice example of the different looks you can get out of different cameras, they’ve all been graded to match. Pay very special attention to the crispness of the hair, deepness of the black, noise, and artefacts. I’m still trying to find the source file, all I have to watch is… you guessed it… the HD H.264 download from Vimeo…

I thought I’d be nice and put down the rates for the different cameras as a comparison but I had a look at some rate cards and they don’t even mention the formats that these cameras output which just made me rage even more. I did however find the related article that I’ll give a read in the near future.

Cameras used in order of appearance (all shot at 24fps):
• Arri Alexa || HD 1920×1080 (Quicktime ProRes 444 LogC)
• Red Mx || 4K 16:9 3840×2160 (4K REDRAW, redgamma, redcolor)
• Canon EOS 7D || HD 1920×1080 (Canon H.264 mpeg-4, Technicolor Cinestyle)
• Sony F65 || 4K 4096×2160 (4K Sony RAW, S-Gamut, Slog2)
• Sony FS700 || HD 1920×1080 (NXCAM AVCHD mpeg-4)
• Canon C300 PL || HD 1920×1080 (Canon XF Codec 4:2:2 mpeg-2)

</endRant>

PEBKAC

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I’ve noticed a tendency in people to blame computers when they don’t actually know what they’re doing. This doesn’t bother me so much, what does bother me is the excuses that are commonly used to blame the computer are generally accepted in popular society!

“My computer crashed.”
“My hard drive crashed.”
“There is obviously something wrong with the software/crack.”
“This &^$!@ stupid thing isn’t working.”
“My computer can’t make a smaller PDF to email.”

I asked on Facebook for a term for this behaviour, I had one friend tell me ID10-T error and another tell me PEBKAC.

A person vomits out one of these computer stupidisms, they get nods of understanding, and suddenly the blame on them vanishes. This feels like the Emperor’s New Clothes all over again. Maybe these excuses persist because everyone is safe behind them; there’s no accountability, a victim mentality. The biggest culprits are probably students who LOVE to blame their computers and various fictional e-goblins for their tardiness. “My printer ran out of ink!” How convenient. Take 25c to the local print store and they’ll print you a page. It’s probably cheaper in the end to print at these places than to actually buy and maintain your own personal printer.

A side story: I used to lecture for a brief stint and I once had a student hand me a flash with his “PDF” on it. I copied it over and became suspicious when the PDF was 10 Megs big. This was a five-page essay with no pictures necessary… I looked up at the student querying the size of the file and all I got was a shrug. I decided to try to open it and Acrobat tells me it’s corrupt. I look up at the student and instantly he goes into defence mode: “It must be a virus from the library computers.” I burst out laughing and ask him how a virus works and again I get a shrug. I ask him for his backup and he doesn’t have one. I ask if he emailed it to his Gmail and he says it was too big (Last time I checked you could email 25 Meg files to and from Gmail). Sweat is building up on the poor kid’s forehead. I look him dead in the eye: “Are you bullshitting me?” “No Sir, I promise it was working this morning when I left, I even opened it on my friend’s laptop…” and as he rambled on, I renamed the file from PDF to MP3 and looked up at him and waited for him notice. He stopped talking dead in his tracks, he knew he was busted, and there was silence. I pressed enter on this MP3 file and some hip hop crap that they love so much started playing. The kid went pale. I took him to a disciplinary hearing for fraud or something like that, I can’t remember. What a laugh.

Another common thing I find is that people don’t actually read the error messages that pop onto their screens. I oft’ get phone calls complaining about something not working and when I ask what’s wrong they tell me it just doesn’t work. I then ask what the error was and they say they didn’t read it. There is a small group of people out there who think that just pressing buttons makes technology work. I remember buying something from a costume store a while back tended by an elderly couple. The husband was busy so the wife tried to process my credit card on her little machine. She went through the motions like a monkey would copy a person. Swiped the card, pressed some buttons, handed it to me, and the machine quite clearly displayed “ENTER SUPERVISOR PASSWORD”. I looked at her and told her that I don’t think she did it correctly and handed it back. Again, swipe, press press press, hands it to me, “INVALID OPTION”. I hand it back again telling her she’s done something wrong and she starts getting flustered with the little device, “Ag this damn machine, it never does what I want, I’m going to call the bank and complain!” Eventually I took the machine from her and did the transaction myself. She looks at me as if I’ve performed magic. I had never seen the machine before, I had no idea how it worked; I just followed the prompts on the screen.

I love how people like to argue with me. I had a colleague of mine tell me that they can’t get onto the network. I go through the usual rigmarole of asking what the error message is and they tell me it’s asking for a username and password. I ask them if they’ve tried their username and password and they tell me “no no, it’s asking for a domain password”, all the while staring at the screen clicking frantically like they’re playing some Facebook game. We run on a domain network by the way. I told them to try their username and password and again they tell me no. Why ask me if they don’t want my help? Anyway, I tell them just to do it and not argue with me. “Oh it’s working, thank you.”

Following instructions also seems to be rocket science, especially when it comes to cracking software. I won’t go into whether I condone software piracy or not. Stealing is bad kids! There are four basic cracking methods plus one or two overcomplicated ones I’ve come across. Either you have to replace some exe files, or you have to run a keygen, or you have to do an “offline activation” sort of thing, or you get some very generous crackers that give you a little programme that does the whole thing for you. That’s it! Each of these usually comes with very well documented instructions on how to achieve a “licensed” piece of software. But for some reason I still get phone calls asking for help with this and I end up reading out the instructions to them like a five year old. I’m not sure how this relates but I’m probably just ranting now.

“But I’m not a computer boffin like you!” You might exclaim… that’s another one that really gets into my panties. Its 2013, you bloody well ought to be! This is probably why Mac is gaining in popularity. The software and interface is becoming more and more simplified and idiot proof. Microsoft, following the same rout, thinks they’re clever with their integration of the Metro interface in Windows 8 (Those blocks you see when you press Start). The blue screen of death is such a joke, how often do you actually see these things nowadays? Practically never! Still I have people tell me their computer blue screened causing them to lose all their work and we should accept that as a valid excuse. No my friend, if your computer blue screened then there is obviously something wrong with your hardware. I can most likely attribute this to too much percussive maintenance to get the thing to run faster, I’ve seen frustrated monkeys get less violent. Last time I checked, Word, Excel, etc., have autosave features that work every five minutes or something silly like that. After Effects has autosave. Maya 2014 even has autosave… wait let me check… Yep, found a YouTube video by some guy called Ken Lee, couldn’t understand a word he said but I could at least see what he was doing. Even the new OSX has some persistent operating state or something like that where you close the application as is, open it again and it carries on right where you left off.

There is hope though! Another of my colleagues had an issue with a piece of software that I had dished out a while back. She followed the instructions I laid out perfectly but still had an issue. I came to sort it out but she wouldn’t move, she would rather have me instruct her on what to do so she could learn, rather than me waving a magic wand to fix it and she’s none the wiser.

It’s a big problem when common misconceptions grow in popularity and grab hold purely because it’s safe. It’s easy. It brings me back to the Emperor and his clothes. Everyone sticks with these misconceptions because the moment you actually admit to doing something wrong yourself and not blaming the machine, then suddenly you’re the idiot, and you’re the one who can’t do their job properly.

How else do you learn?

The first step is to admit that you don’t know.

Some Time to Breathe

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Finally I’ve had some time to have a good look at my renders. This fluid render taking up to three days, I felt, was not a realistic. So having a good look at the scene I realised that I would not need the shadow passes I was pushing out; turned those things off. I also decided to turn the texture of the fluid off and it made no difference. Very curious thing that, I think it has something to do with that scale. Working to scale has thrown a couple curve balls my way; I don’t usually work to scale. I usually sit there with things the size they are, sitting comfortably on the standard grid. I’ll have to experiment some more.

So now the renders are MUCH faster (I’ve had to start over but hey, there’s no deadline and this is helping me learn; you never stop learning).

In the mean time Render10 is still doing it’s thing with the main colour. It makes no difference in the end but Render10 for some reason can’t access the fluid cache so it’s better used on the colour pass.

Hopefully this thing will be done soon…

Technical Woes

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Oh no. Get this. Some of the farm machines have been down (I’m sure you read about it), and we ordered new boards for them. Now for some reason the boards won’t fit the chips! I thought they would have checked this being our IT “professionals”.

And still, we have intermittent email. This has been going on for roughly a month now. We have to connect to our VPN across the country for emails to work, and Flying Spaghetti Monster save us if the other branch’s internet is down. Then we won’t get email at all! Who does that? Where on earth is it common practice to hook up to a VPN to get your email from the exchange server!?

And now had to recover from a bluescreen.

Every now and then everything goes wrong at once. And then you have to wonder, if people just cared a little bit more, just that tiny bit, or maybe paid a little bit more attention, it wouldn’t be so bad… would it?

Maybe I should start my own company and then I’ll see just how difficult it is.

These renders are crazy!

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I put my car shot on to render between the 17th and the 21st this month (I’m rendering my tire smoke separately). It is now the 29th… so roughly 8 days worth of render on the farm for this smoke… some of the frames have taken 3 days while others have taken half an hour, I’m sure I’ve done something wrong.

Our IT guy was supposed to install an additional four machines into the farm last week, I’ll give him an email and ask what’s going on…

EDIT: Well now, it turns out the machines that were taking four days were actually OFF. They must have not been able to take the strain. I got into the server room and half the machine’s lights were just dead, switched them all on again and we’re back up to speed. What a waste of time! I still haven’t heard from our IT guy yet.

Fluids tests

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https://vimeo.com/77487784;

I finally decided on what to do with this car. I’ve made the side badge into my name, used Craft Director Studio to animate the car doing a wheelspin, and then used Maya fluids to do the smoke. I originally tried using particles and planned to use Krakatoa as the renderer but I just couldn’t get the right motion I was after. So this shot is going to be the opening to my new reel. I haven’t made one in about two years now and it’s high time that I did.

This took about two days of fiddling to get right. Most of the time I would run out RAM and the computer would freak out and crash. Also if you were to cache from the wrong place with the wrong method then you’ll break the cache file as well. I didn’t want to compromise on the fluid resolution (It was only at 100) so I had to use the auto resize feature and I messed that up as well. I thought I knew this stuff!

Auto resizing doesn’t work if you’ve got your threshold at 0. Surprise dumass! So I eventually settled on a threshold value of 0.1 and a margin of about 4 voxels. Finally the thing would resize appropriately and I would NOT end up with a 1.5GB cache file per frame. I’ve got 16 gigs of RAM on this machine and it got filled up so quickly.

Right now I’ve got the render going on the farm and it seems to be coming out quite nicely. Let’s wait and see.

Make it look real, but meet my optically impossible expectations at the same time.

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I have to get this off my chest.

I’m sure the client I’m doing this for will probably never read this; but if you do, you know who you are, and you know I think you’re being ridiculous.

What is it about doing 3D, doing design, that makes a person forget how simple things in life work? Here’s the scenario, there are these groves in an object, not too deep, and at the bottom of the grove is a light surface. Obviously when looking at it from certain angles you won’t see INTO the grove any more and therefore can’t see the light. I then get told “That’s weird, it doesn’t feel right, why can’t I see the light any more ” I feel like I have to explain why you can’t see the sun any more when you turn around.

We’ve also got some volumetric lighting; a simple fog from a spot light. In the first shot this object comes out of this “fog” and reveals itself. In the last shot it runs basically in reverse, away from us. And now the guy is comparing the last frame of the first shot to the last frame of the second shot and asking me why it looks “bright”.

It’s not JUST this guy. He’s a good designer. These examples are just fresh in my mind because of how recent they are. But I find that when it comes to 3D and rendering photo real stuff then suddenly there’s this spacial dissonance in a person’s mind. They make these mental leaps that no one would EVER make on a real set. I bet looking at something with a large depth of field on set you wouldn’t look through the lens and ask that the focus area be wider. It’s called a focus POINT, not a focus AREA. This focal plane moves backwards and forwards parallel to the plane of the camera lens; why on earth would you think that this can be changed? But somehow, when doing a comp, you show a person the focal plane and they suddenly think you can rotate it.

I’ve been doing 3D for close to ten years now. We are acclaimed as miracle workers, magicians. And with this reputation comes an expectation, an expectation that you can break physics. Telling them “no” gets you a sudden look the way a child looks at you when you tell them that the tooth fairy isn’t real. I’m surprised every time. A heated debate ensues and the person is in such shock that you don’t have this ability to do what he’s asking you.  Your dog died… WHAT? But how!!? NO!!!

At what point in a person’s career do you get to stop explaining these things? Things that are a fundamental instinct a person has from childhood.

This actually reminds me of an experiment they did with some primates. There is a point in a child’s life where they make a switch in their mind. This is a switch from assuming that everyone has the same knowledge that you do, to realising that other people may possess knowledge that you don’t have. The experiment is fairly simple but the implications are great. You show a child two people, call them John and Susie. John puts an apple in a box and leaves. Susie takes the apple and puts it into a bag. John then returns and the child is asked where John will look for the apple. If the child has passed this developmental stage they will say that John will look in the box where he originally put it, if not then the child knows where the apple really is and assumes that John knows as well.

How this relates to the primates is they have noticed that the primates who can speak sign language express the same sort of pre-developmental social interaction awareness. They never have any questions for us humans that will give them knowledge they obviously don’t have.

So maybe, just maybe, a similar process is happening when a person is not all that experienced in 3D. They are awed by the possibilities and all conventions are thrown out the window. Maybe it comes from working in the 2D design space for so long.  I’ve often seen insanely good designers confuse the difference between where a shadow goes and where a reflection goes.  See this picture of where things should go:

ImageHow this is confused I don’t know. But many times I’ve seen reflections placed where the shadow should be. How does this happen!!?

I’m just tired of having to explain why. It’s a stupid question. Why do you copy the files from your computer to the flash to take them home; won’t they still be on your desktop? Why is it reflecting like that? Why can’t I see it any more when it’s behind something? Why is it bigger when it’s closer? Why can’t you make it move faster over the same distance and time?

There’s another one that frustrates the horse piss out of me! Being told to make something move faster and then being asked why it finishes moving so soon. This is more common nonsense! If a car goes at 100km/h then how far will it go in one hour? Obviously 100kms. And then what happens if the car slows down and travels for another hour? Obviously it won’t go as far. But then moving this simple idea onto a computer screen and all of a sudden it feels like we’re dealing with rocket science. Here’s a little video to demonstrate:

This is usually what a serious conversation between serious adults looks like in my industry. Ask the same person this simple question the guy asked the blonde girl and they’ll answer straight away with no problem. For some reason the moment this idea is transferred to screen they become stupid and you have to remind them that when things move over time their speed determines the distance they travel.

This is all really frustrating but short of looking at the client like an idiot and just saying “no” I’m not really sure what to do about it. I will probably be plagued by these questions over and over for as long as I do 3D.

I don’t know what to chalk it up to; they’re not stupid… But I’ll still find myself mentally facepalming every time.

 

Early Morning Render Farm Maintenance

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Last time I checked this was IT’s department.

I dropped my girlfriend off this morning at the airport because she’s being sent down to Cape Town for some sort of emergency in her company. Good for her. I’ve taken the opportunity to do what I’ve been asking IT to do for the last month now. We’ve had two machines down on the farm. One because of some network card issue, and another because of some Java or .Net issue. Not a clue actually. My solution: FORMAT THE BASTARDS!

It can’t be that hard? I’ve been doing this for many years now and to format a machine and start from scratch will always give you the best results and best performance in terms of raw processing power from a machine. I just can’t believe that I have to email, and email, and email, and still nothing get’s done. Our IT guy has had a look at the one machine, tried to install a new driver, shrugged his shoulders and left it. That’s 8 cores down. And the other machine that just needs a wipe, another 8 cores right there. Deadline reports that as roughly 48GHz that I don’t have access to. That’s a lot of power right there. With those two machines up and running I could have my renders done 25% faster. That’s a lot!

I lost my shit a while back already about this IT guy not doing anything. Even CC’d the boss and he told them that they’d better pull up their socks. Yet here I am, at six AM, doing his job.

If I ever run my own company, I won’t let things like this slide.

Double Spaces

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Seems that I’m a bit of a dumass. Double spaces after a full stop is how I always type. A difficult habit to break. But what happens is that sometimes a word get’s carried over to the next line with a space before it. Not cool!