CG Swot webinar June 23 with Todd Kopriva

CG Swot has a number of interesting free webinars and interviews. An interesting one will be live on 23rd June 2010 with Todd Kopriva, documentation lead for After Effects.

'House' DP on Canon 5D MkII

Adam Wilt investigates how the DP used Canon 5D MkIIs on the “House” finale in HDSLR Revolution: Gale Tattersal Talks about “House:

'“Help Me”, the season 6 finale of “House”, was shot with Canon 5D Mk II HDSLRs using off-the-shelf Canon still lenses [similar to the one below from Adam]. This past week, Director of Photography Gale Tattersal quashed a few rumors about how the show was shot, and commented on what he liked about using the Canons as cine cameras.

Mr. Tattersal‘s comments were made on the Cinematography Mailing List, and I reproduce them here by kind permission of Mr. Tattersal and CML’s Geoff Boyle. I’ve made minor edits for formatting and readability, and added some links...'

Sapphire 5 for After Effects

Genarts recently released a CS5 version of their original big set, Sapphire 5 for After Effects. Here's a few highlights:

• over 220 effects in lighting, stylize, blur, comp, render, distort, time and transition categories, each with unique options and parameters
  
• includes 15 new effects such as TVDamage, TVChannelChange, Technicolor, and new transitions
• GPU acceleration, with NVidia GeForce 200 or 400 series or Quadro 5800 graphics card required for maximum performance
• supports full 32-bit floating point for all internal processing, improving quality for many effects
• Sapphire plug-ins for AE are licensed per machine, so one serial number allows you to use them on multiple AE compatible host applications on the same computer.

Sapphire is a massive package that's become something of an industry standard package across platforms. Genarts has brings even more to this rev, but it does come at a price and even seems to compete with the other packages by Genarts, Tinder and Monsters/Raptors. Happily there are trial and monthly rental versions, and a slew of tutorials available to make a proper evaluation. Here are a few video intros of the new version:

PVC webinars: What's New in After Effects CS5

Chris & Trish Meyer are hosting 2 webinars on What's New in After Effects CS5: part 1 (June 22, 1 pm ET) on Roto Brush, mocha, mocha shape and more, and part 2 (June 23 at 1 pm ET) on Repoussé, effects, modes, and user interface enhancements.

The cost is $50 each or both for $79.

Update: there's also, "Getting the Most Out of After Effects CS5" by Chris and Trish Meyer on Tuesday July 20, 2010.

21 Motion Graphics and Visual Effects User Groups and Meetups

Topher Welsh has collected 21 Motion Graphics and Visual Effects User Groups and Meetups.

That's more than seen elsewhere (an old list) but hopefully comments will expand the list. Maybe not though -- user groups come and go. San Francisco has had several since the first one at the parent of Toolfarm. I can add SF Cutters and irregulars SF Mograph, Digital Cinema Society Northern California Chapter, and MacFilmmakers.

Color space in Premiere

Karl Soule has started looking at color space processing in Premiere and the Premiere Pro Effects panel; see Understanding Color Processing: 8-bit, 10-bit, 32-bit, and more. Hopefully he'll also explain YUV, the Video Limiter effect, and add more on preserving luminance highlights (as in FCP).

Extra detail on 32-bit float space can be found in After Effects tutorials videos Floating point overview by Chris Meyer at Lynda.com and Understanding Linear Workflow video by Daniel Broadway on AETuts. For more even on Linear color space, here are additional resources:

• Stu Maschwitz Passing the Linear Torch (summary of posts with a brief update on how to set it up in AE CS4).
• Chris & Trish Meyer on Linear Light, Intro to Color Management, and Adding a Filmic Glow.
• Mark Christiansen's Linear Blending at Any Color Depth in After Effects and book After Effects Studio Techniques.
• Jonas Hummelstrand's linkfest Floating in 32-bit Space (where no one can hear you scream)
• AE Help's Color management and Linearize working space and enable linear blending.
• The official Adobe whitepaper Color management workflow in After Effects CS4.
• Understanding Linear Workflow, the video below by Daniel Broadway, is easy on the eyes and passed peer review on AETuts:

Pixel Bender: ft-CombineRGBA for After Effects

François Tarlier has released yet another Pixel Bender filter; he says Pixel Bender : ft-CombineRGBA for After Effects is the last one this week:

"This really simple shader let you combine 2 inputs channel into a new one. There is already something like that in AE, but I believe it is only working in 8 or 16 bits. This one is working in 32 bits (thx pixel bender). I just did it because sometimes I do need to combine map datas (as normal map & height map) for my shaders, since Pixel Bender is limited to 2 inputs."