Escape Studios Blog

Isn't It Marvel-lous?

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:05:19 +0100

We just can’t get enough of Marvel at the moment. And they are back again with one of the most popular characters coming back to the big screen, The Amazing Spider-Man.

This film has Andrew Garfield of The Social Network fame, starring as Peter Parker in an untold story that presents us with a different version of Spider-Man. It is due in cinemas from July 3rd, but you probably knew that already.

But what we can do today is watch this four minutes preview.

I don't know about you, but I find it amazing! If you still haven't seen the trailer, you can watch it here.
And if it's still not enough and you want more you can have a look at the game which will be available on PS3, X-Box Live and Nintendo systems.

Hopefully that has your spider-senses tingling, for today at least.

All The Best Things Are Made From SCRATCH...Cannes 2012

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:00:00 +0100

We would like to be one of the first to congratulate Assimilate for their success at the Cannes Festival 2012. Although the winning films are yet to be announced, several films on the competition's roster have been created using SCRATCH, Assimilate’s digital workflow and post-production tools. SCRATCH has been used on recent screen successes like The Artist, Thor and Underworld: Awakening as well as the films nominated at Cannes 2012.

Among those nominated are SCRATCH artists from Cosmo Digital, Digital Cube, Onemore Pictures and Cinecolour Argentina. 14 films have been nominated for prizes including the short film Waiting for P.O. Box or Falastein, sandouk al intezar lil burtuqal by Syrian director Bassam Chekhes (snippet clip here) which has been shortlisted for the 2012 Short Film Palme d'or. Waiting for P.O. Box is one of the ten films selected out of 4,500 entries to be submitted for the coveted prize.

For more information and to see the nominations for this year’s festival check out the Cannes film Festival 2012 website. Try and take a look some of the shorlisted films, they are definitely worth a quick view!! And for more information on Assimilate’s SCRATCH get in touch with our software department.

Built by Self-Confessed Industry Nerds

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

With the divide between 2D and 3D becoming increasingly indistinguishable, I thought I'd share some information about an interesting alternative to Nuke’s default scanline render node and indeed much of Nuke’s current 3D shading tool set.

Lighting, shading and working with animated geometry becomes greatly enhanced once you install the 'look-dev, lighting and rendering 3D toolkit' AtomKraft by *Jupiter Jazz*.

We have been using AtomKraft on our Advanced Compositing course here at Escape and our students have enjoyed taking advantage of its added benefits. Compositing students have the ability to develop and integrate their own 3D assets without having to acquire them from other 3D artists. The toolset was designed to minimize the need for compositors having to return work to the 3D department and request additional render elements or re-renders. AtomKraft includes some of the following functionality with the added bonus of never having to leave Nuke!

Some of the benefits include....

* Global Illumination and image based lighting
* Hybrid RAYS/REYES rendering
* True 3D motion blur and camera based depth of field (bokeh)
* Particles support
* Access to multiple render channels (AOVs/Arbitrary Output Variables) in any node and in the Nuke viewer
* RenderMan Shading Language support (RSL 1.0/2.0) via AtomShader

We have some screenshots for you to take a sneak peak at too...

Along with a fully threaded version aimed at production, a two threaded version is available absolutely free of charge and fully functional from their website and a version for Adobe After Effects is upcoming.

Head of Maya Development at The Mill

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:44:32 +0100

This year, Escape Studios is ten years old, and it’s a pretty big deal for us. It’s also a big deal for all of the students who we’ve trained over the years and are now dotted throughout the world of VFX. So, from now on, every week, we’re going to be launching a story from our escapee Wall of Fame which will showcase all of the escapees who have gone on to work on the biggest and boldest films, TV shows, commercials and games over the years. It’s a chance for them to step up and take a bow, albeit a virtual one.

The first in this series is Suraj Harrington-Odedra. Before you read his success story on how he got to where he is today, here’s one of his jet-setting industry tales. Oh to live the life of a 3D Artist…

"I was asked to fly out to the studio in LA for a Wrigleys commercial that was to feature lots of creatures made of smoke. By mid-flight, stretched out watching films with a sneaky gin & tonic and peanuts for a snack, I’m mentally getting more psyched up to land and start the job. However, by the time I land the director has changed his mind! All of a sudden he wants these creatures to be made out of oil! Oil! Um, did anyone mention I was a smoke expert? For two months it was my responsibility to figure out Houdini – a tool I’d never used before – while also working out the best way to make these creatures out of liquid! So, stepping up to the challenge, with the sun pouring in and Wacom pen in hand, I’m thinking ‘Yep, getting paid to play with software in an area I love... it doesn’t get much better than this!"
Suraj Harrington-Odedra
(Head of Maya Development at The Mill)

Read the full Suraj Harrington-Odedra success story here.

It's not just Mums that go to Iceland!

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:30:00 +0100

Honestly this is not about the supermarket chain Iceland but did you like what we did there? We do have our moments.
Anyway… in the past 10 or so years Iceland has become a hotspot for movie and TV shoots, and after seeing these photos we aren’t surprised!

Leirhnjúkur

Jökulsárgljúfur National Park

Hverir

Utterly breath-taking right?

Captured by husband and wife Erlend and Orsolya Haarberg, these shots were taken from 9,000 feet in the air. The rugged terrain, hot springs, ice caps and Eyjafjallajokull volcano make the perfect backdrop used in mainstream movies like James Bond’s Die Another Day, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Batman Begins and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. It also features heavily in the new season of Game Of Thrones as the setting for the cast going north of The Wall.

Pegasus Pictures were on set for Game of Thrones filming in Iceland and talk about their challenges in this interview with The Location Guide.

For more from Erlend and Orsolya’s photographs take a look at their wesbite and keep up to date with their blog. They are lucky enough to have shot natural wonders from around the world and we are dead jealous.

Under the hood

Tue, 15 May 2012 10:36:27 +0100

As a follow-up to my post on learning resources for coding, I'd like to share our recent efforts to open source some of our in-house code.

We've got an in-house web development team that plans and codes up new features for our different web applications. These are built upon the shoulders of some big open source PHP frameworks: symfony/Symfony2, Zend and the SilverStripe Framework (Sapphire). Whenever possible, we do our best to contribute back to the open-source community by releasing code: it's a great way to give something back to the projects we make use of, as well as a great way to get feedback and collaborate with other people to improve the codebase. As a result we've been pushing more and more code to our github organization.

Have you ever made use of Ptex, Dynamica or Alembic? These are just a couple of examples of open source software, specifically for the CG industry, from big companies like Walt Disney Animation Studios and Sony Pictures Imageworks.

Have a look at our github organization and start checking out some of our public repositories. If you're not a developer and would like to find out more, don't hesitate to get in touch! I'm always wondering whether people out there are interested in hearing more Escape Studios "behind the scenes" technical information :-)

Think It's CG? Think Again...Part Two

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:00:00 +0100

Welcome back to part two of our series on effects that you thought were CG.

Independence Day was a great movie, putting aside the actual plot, for all the special effects that were in it. There was that great scene where the fireball engulfed New York and we see the wall of flames rushing in a very strange manner down the streets.

This effect is hard to achieve with CG, even if it was done today, so Roland Emmerich shot it for real....So how is it possible to torch New York without really torching New York?

Well for a start you can build a scale model to set alight. Now to get that strange creeping motion they built the model on its side and stuck the camera at the top.

When the flames naturally rise up they will look as if they are going sideways along the model streets...They shot this all at very high speed so that when the film was played back at the right speed we have this fire crawling, oddly, along the streets of New York.

This is how we used to do these things. We’d build a beautiful and detailed set and then blow it up and hope that the shot looked good. Because when it comes back from the lab that a second shot is needed its not really all that possible...

For part one of this blog click here...

Real-Time Path Tracing Bunny

Mon, 14 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Want to see a demo of how computer games will look in the not too distant future? You are in luck. Here is a big breakdancing bunny courtesy of Samuel Lapere. Forgive us, the quality isn't great but it's still pretty phenomenal.

Lapere is a graphics developer at OTOY, working on the holy CG grail of real-time photorealistic graphics. This big breakdancing bunny was created using Brigade 2 real-time path tracing technology and the new Blinn shader. Take a look at the video and screenshots to see how far Lapere has come. The renders almost look like photographs!!

And just think no more waiting for renders… if only!!

To keep up-to-date on his progress check in on Samuel Lapere’s blog.

Marmalade sandwich anyone?

Mon, 14 May 2012 09:30:00 +0100

I am destined to never grow up and quite frankly I refuse to see why I can’t stay immature for my entire life. I loved every single aspect of my childhood but the most memorable things for me were TV shows. Saturday mornings you would find me virtually attached to the TV for cartoon after cartoon. And another thing you should know is that I have a penchant for all things a little kitsch and retro. So if you combine these two elements you will understand why it is not possible for me to contain my excitement, especially after hearing this news.

It was announced last week that David Heyman, producer of the Harry Potter films, will be working with French film production and distribution company StudioCanal to create a CG/live action adaptation of Paddington Bear, the treasured children’s character, set for release in 2014.

Originally Paddington Bear, for those who remember, was a stop-motion puppet in a paper cut out world who bumbled himself into a variety of chaotic situations. The books alone have sold 35 million copies and have been sold into over 40 languages. Paddington holds a place in the hearts of many and for me represents an amazing British TV show. It characterises how us Brits are seen around the world and it encapsulates it down to the smallest details. It is charming, beautifully cringe worthy and perfect children’s television.

Tell me that you can watch this clip without cracking even just a little smile…

David Heyman has such a perfect way of portraying British literary work onto the big screen I will be waiting on the edge of my seat, wellies and duffle jacket on, tucking into some Marmalade sandwiches.

Think it's CG? Think Again...

Fri, 11 May 2012 12:00:00 +0100

Special effects with computer graphics are all the rage recently. There are very few films produced these days without jaw dropping stunts courtesy of the digital department. But a lot of directors still prefer to shoot the real thing if they can as it nearly always looks better than the CG equivalent.

I am going to post a series of blogs to show some of these effects that you may have thought were CG when in fact the director and VFX crew were crazy enough to do it for real.

For the first example let us start with good old Batman: The Dark Knight. Remember the scene where Batman flips the Joker's 18 wheel truck head over heels? This was actually done for real.

Batman: The Dark Knight

Why do something this spectacular safely in CG when you can just close off a street in downtown Chicago and flip an 18 wheeler truck over?

Chris Corbould and his crew built the rig into the truck. It consists of a hydraulic ram that shoots out at high speed from under the truck to flip it over. This 'hydraulic ram' is incredibly powerful. I had the pleasure of working with Chris on Casino Royale where we built a similar rig to flip over an Aston Martin car. The rig was so powerful that the Aston rolled over a massive 12 times earning the film a World Record for the highest number of rolls in a car. It did give the stuntman a headache... but after watching the finished product it was completely worth it.

Check out the behind the scenes video of Chris testing and then shooting this crazy 18 wheel rig in action.

Think this is good? This is just the start...there will be more to follow!

Highway to the Danger Zone - ZBrush Webinar

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:59:03 +0100

We had the pleasure of working with the ever so entertaining Paul Gaboury, 3D Application Engineer at Pixologic, for a special webinar to showcase the newly added features in ZBrush 4R3.

There was a little issue with time zones so for the lucky few that checked in a little early we were treated to some incredible bonus material from Paul, not to mention his hilarious stand-up routine and a little help from Bob Ross.

With the additional new features to ZBrush 4R3 including MicroMesh, FibreMesh, AutoAdjust mode and Surface Noise, Paul showed us exactly just how easy ZBrush 4R3 is to use and even included a Kenny Loggins musical number to demonstrate a timeline sequence.

For those of you who just can’t get enough of ZBrush tricks and tips, Pixologic has released a five-part ZBrush video tutorial with Michael Pavlovic. There is a ton of information to improve your ZBrush skills. Paul also pointed us in the direction of a few books that will be helpful to all the ZBrush fanatics, including his own that is set for release June 19^th. His book ZBrush Professional Tips and Techniques will be a great accompaniment for those of you looking to increase your knowledge of ZBrush. And I think for anyone who has sat through a webinar with Paul, you will agree that the next edition should include a bonus DVD for a little extra Gaboury magic. Paul also highly recommends ZBrush Creature Design:Creating Dynamic Concept Imagery for Film and Games by Scott Spencer and Introducing ZBrush by Eric Keller.

A massive thank you to all who joined us for the webinar, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and also a massive round of applause for Paul and Pixologic. For those of you who missed it we will be making a recording of the webinar and posting it online soon… so keep your eyes peeled!!

Flying the flag...and carrying the torch.

Fri, 11 May 2012 10:00:00 +0100

As we all know the countdown to the 2012 Olympics is on, in fact it is at 77 days to be precise. The buzz of the Olympics is infectious and seems like a time for us to celebrate all things British, especially when it comes to VFX. So thankfully I found this in little beauty in the VFX news this week, the final version of Studio AKA’s introduction sequence for the BBC and their Olympic Torch Relay Coverage.

Cool right?

I know that not everyone is excited for the Olympics but I am not one of them. I personally cannot wait. Yes my journey to work might be horrific, well more horrific then before, but I think it is a great way for the UK to showcase our talent. And obviously not just in sport and the proof is right here. London based CG Studio AKA and Kristian Andrews, a brilliant British talent, were at the forefront of the BBC project.

The Studio AKA clip combines Andrews' direction, a breath taking interpretation of the Olympic Torch’s and an inspiring theme song by Brit band Elbow. I personally think it creates an additional level of excitement to the beginning of the first Olympics in the London since 1948.

If you are yet to see the Olympic Torch design then take a look here. It is pretty spectacular. It’s made from a dual layer aluminium alloy and the design includes 8,000 circular laser cut perforations to represent each of the 8,000 inspirational torchbearers from the UK.

For more information on the Olympics or to see if the Olympic torch is coming anywhere near you check out the London 2012 Olympic website

We promise no more sports related blog next week!!

Dedication Required

Thu, 10 May 2012 12:30:00 +0100

Ever wondered how much you change in the space of 4.5 years? Would you take a photo of yourself every single day and then animate it?

The anonymous internet moniker and social media magician "clickflashwhirr" has monitored exactly how her appearance has changed by logging a daily photograph of herself. With the series of images beginning in September 2006 the posts continue to update and log her progress online with a yearly time-lapse video.

The anonymous female has collected many Twitter and Facebook followers and has opened herself up to mass criticism. She is the inspiration behind the Flickr Project 365 group where members upload a photo of themselves every day for a year.

Whether you admire her courage, envy her confidence or deem her as narcissistic it’s really cool to see in the space of 41 seconds just how much one person’s appearance changes over a year.

We applaud her dedication and patience to produce it…I’m not sure if I could remember to take one photo of myself every single day for 4.5 years. Check it out and make up your own mind… we think it's really fun!

Finger puppets? They Really Bring out the Kid in Me!

Thu, 10 May 2012 11:44:25 +0100

Batman? The Dark Knight? Wonder Woman? Not really, but these incredibly detailed, hand-crafted finger puppet designs by Tamara Maynes recall iconic heroes and villains who we’ve seen in the pages of comic books and as blockbusters on the big screen.

So we have Angle Man, Rocket Woman, Bird Man, Star Man and all other unique Hero Fingers. I wonder if we’re going to see them in action in some new movie, maybe in an assembly like the Avengers!

See the entire collection at photographer Julian Wolkenstein’s website.

Our Second Visit to the Framestore London Studio

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:00:00 +0100

I have found that there are many advantages to studying at Escape Studios. Aside from the obvious vast amount of knowledge that you acquire, you also get to visit and meet some very cool places and people. Last Friday we had the pleasure of visiting Framestore for a presentation with Ben Frost and Chas Jarrett to hear about their experiences working on the second Sherlock Holmes movie - A Game of Shadows. In particular, they discussed with us the typical hurdles and constraints they came across and what we as VFX artists may expect to experience working in the VFX industry.

The shots they were mainly focused on were the ‘Shush Club’ scene where a digital set extension had to be produced, the infamous train sequence which was by far the single longest section and required the most work, the castle where Professor James Moriarty's master plan was to be executed and the fantastic finale waterfall shot of Mr Holmes and Moriarty apparently falling to their demise.

Ben served as Effects Technical Director for this film and had a hand in all of the major scenes that required work by the guys and girls at Framestore. Ben and Chas Jarrett, VFX Supervisor, shared the specific challenges that individual shots presented and in particular the end shot in which Sherlock and Moriarty fall from the castle balcony down the waterfall, a scene that required crucial attention to detail. They also told us how they needed to come up with different solutions for the task at hand, letting us into some industry secrets. Afterwards there was a Q&A session where the students and the tutors got to ask questions on their work on Sherlock Holmes as well as general questions about working at Framestore, where they think the industry is heading and what we should have in our showreels for particular job roles.

Overall it was a fantastic experience visiting Framestore once again and one which I know everyone enjoyed massively and learnt a lot from. So thank you to Ben and Chas for the presentation and Framestore for allowing us the experience!

Gone to Where the Wild Things Are!

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:38:04 +0100

Yesterday Maurice Sendak, author and illustrator of the children’s classic book Where The Wild Things Are, died. Famous through his writing and illustrating, Sendak published a number of children’s books, wrote and designed three animated stories and his final book “Bumble Ardy” was an adaption of a collaboration between Sendak and Jim Henson from kid’s TV favourite Sesame Street.

Where The Wild Things Are was one of my favourites when growing up and was a real departure from the staid illustrations of the time, with rather dark and almost scary images it truly is great stuff. Despite receiving negative critiques when first published, Where The Wild Things Are became a children’s favourite and sparked an animated series in the 1970s, an opera in the 1980s and a live action feature film in 2009.

Sendak’s books reshaped the bedtime story routine for an entire generation and changed children’s literature forever. His talent will be greatly missed.

Looking for new Worlds using the "Minority Report" Interface

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:00:00 +0100

NASA's Kepler Mission has been running since 2009 and is currently searching our region of the Milky Way for habitable planets. So far, it has spotted about 2,300 and confirmed 61 planets. Data artist Jer Thorp and John Underkoffler, the designer who created the interfaces in Minority Report, have produced a user interface that lets us find out how these new planets look.

The demo of the UI, which only becomes more impressive the longer you watch it, not only lets you use gestures to highlight individual planets and rotate your view of this solar system, but you can also seamlessly transition from 3D view to chart views, toggling between planets in 3D and graphs sorting them by their size or heat.

More information on the Kepler Mission's discoveries can be found here.

Check out the video and let us know if, like me, you are really jealous. I'm going to talk to the boss and see if I can get one of those!

Coming Soon!! mocha Pro Event...

Tue, 08 May 2012 17:00:00 +0100

Last June Imagineer Systems and Escape Studios hosted a mocha Pro demonstration event in London to celebrate the success of this tracking software. Due to the success of that event we are pleased to announce that we will be hosting another one this year on May 30^th 2012.

This time we welcome the development team from Imagineer to demonstrate mocha Pro V3. Not only that, but we also invite Red Giant to discuss the plugin applications that work brilliantly alongside mocha Pro, and Baseblack who, following the success of their work on Black Swan, will show us more exciting projects that have benefitted from using mocha Pro.

All of this will take place at Framestore screening room on Wells Street, for an event where we hope to see you all. If you would like to attend this event please register your interest here.

Note that this event is for professionals only, and any students that register will be placed on the waiting list.

We look forward to seeing you there!!

V-Ray 2.0 for 3ds Max 2013

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:00:00 +0100

Back in February the lovely Tim Flett posted the news that Chaos Group were soon to be releasing an update for V-Ray 2.0 for 3ds Max 2013…well ladies and gentlemen today is that day.

This week sees the much anticipated release of V-Ray for 3ds Max 2013 with all the bells and whistles and host of new features and modifications. With additional features like new shading features, Ornatrix 2.0 support, matte for reflection/refraction options, support for motion blur in ActiveShade mode and as a production renderer.

And this is just the new stuff! Modifications include support for motion blur of V-Ray mesh lights, increased speed for dynamic geometry and reduced memory usage. Chaos Group have even released an online tutorial to give you a little sneak preview before your version arrives.

To read Tim’s original blog click here and for more details please get in touch with our software team who will be more than happy to help you with all of your V-Ray needs.

Happy rendering!!

On yer bike..

Tue, 08 May 2012 09:38:08 +0100

I was recently asked to ride the Chiltern 100, I’m attempting the 58 miles ride for a children’s charity at the end of May.

Now for those that know me, well, they know I am not particularly ‘active’ – I guess that’s why they ask people like me to do charity events, it’s a challenge!

However, don’t feel sorry for me - cycling has taken over my life for the past 6 weeks. I have gone from one bike ride a year (.5 miles to the shop) to 27 rides in April totalling 295.54 miles. I don’t suppose that’s far for many of you… but it is for me!

So what has the blog got to do with CG? Well, my tenuous link is there are a whole bunch of #vfx cyclists out there, not surprising I guess if people are mostly living / working in London! The image above is taken from the basement at The Mill. So right there is my link to VFX!

Part of the makeup of my recent obsession has been based on social media… With all the iPhone apps for tracking why wouldn’t you get addicted? OK maybe you have a life! With #runkeeper sending you emails telling you how well you are doing and where you are ranked in the World, it makes you want to go longer and faster!

I use iSmoothRun for logging my rides, these feed in to Twitter (@mjcass) and RunKeeper and now Fitocracy. The latter being introduced to me by @dave_A_davidson (thanks DD)! Now whilst I have not got to grips with Fitocracy yet, the forums are amazing and they are frequented by some like-minded people who simply want to help and thus far; all ego free!

So I want to thank everyone on Social Media for being my support infrastructure, who needs friends eh? I have obviously set the goal of completing the 58 miles on 27^th May but also to complete 3000 miles by the end of the year and I’ll be signing up for the London to Brighton in September. All of this when I have yet to overtake another cyclist!

Another part of the obsession is the ‘gear’. With me it’s a case of ‘all the gear and no idea’ but I am genuinely trying! I filled up my shopping basket at wiggle.co.uk so many times - but never managed to check out (can’t afford it)!

My bike is a Norco Valence made by a Canadian company (est 1969), probably better known for its mountain bikes and I am very happy with the bike; although once you get in to cycling you tend to have severe bike envy. I want a £4,000 carbon bike but I can’t have one. I now have the shoes with cleats, the bib and the top!

Of course for me there’s more than the apps and the gear, that’s all part of it but it’s truly about the ride. The ability to spend an hour or three simply riding, clearing your head from life and as a side benefit, becoming fitter. I never thought I would say that!

Without starting a cycling blog it would be great to hear from fellow roadies, but keep your bike make and model quiet as I'm sure to get jealous!

And finally, this link will take you to the rules of cycling, kindly sent to me by our CEO Dominic. You must obey these rules, seriously, I have no idea what failure to do so will mean but I am not prepared to find out.

Eat some tarmac.