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	<title>Adventures in Media</title>
	<atom:link href="http://motion6.com/blog/?feed=rss2" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://motion6.com/blog</link>
	<description>Cameron O'Rourke - Multimedia Producer, Software Architect</description>
	<pubDate>Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:18:59 +0000</pubDate>
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		<itunes:summary>Cameron O'Rourke - Multimedia Producer, Software Architect</itunes:summary>
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		<itunes:category text="Society &amp; Culture"/>
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			<title>Adventures in Media</title>
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		<title>Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=80</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=80#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:57:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Productivity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/?p=80</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m reading (actually listening to &#8212; I love audio books for driving and walks) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink. Pink asserts that everything we know about motivation is wrong. What passes at the typical workplace, or school environment for &#8220;motivation&#8221; does more harm to problem solving, creativity, productivity, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I&#8217;m reading (actually listening to &#8212; I love audio books for driving and walks) Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, by Daniel H. Pink. Pink asserts that everything we know about motivation is wrong. What passes at the typical workplace, or school environment for &#8220;motivation&#8221; does more harm to problem solving, creativity, productivity, enjoyment and mastery than good. He covers study after study showing how typical carrot-and-stick rewards and punishments, actually reduce productivity and engagement rather than increase it. He delineates between &#8216;extrinsic motivation&#8217;, doing something for a reward or avoidance of punishment, and &#8216;intrinsic motivation&#8217;, doing something out of curiosity, joy, and progress towards mastery. He outlines the conditions for motivation: autonomy, mastery and purpose. This book has been richly thought provoking &#8212; I bought it to better understand how to motivate my kids, but quickly gained flashes of insight into my work life and how to improve it.
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
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		<item>
		<title>A Campaign Media Critique</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=72</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=72#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:49:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Messaging]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/?p=72</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I was just made aware of Oracle&#8217;s Iron Man 2 campaign page. Having been a part of the team that conceived of, and did most of the work on the original Iron Man campaign, I was interested to see how the relationship with Marvel was playing out. Its great to see Oracle Marketing keep the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I was just made aware of Oracle&#8217;s Iron Man 2 campaign page. Having been a part of the team that conceived of, and did most of the work on the original Iron Man campaign, I was interested to see how the relationship with Marvel was playing out. Its great to see Oracle Marketing keep the Marvel partnership going (even though they had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the partnership in the first place).
Oracle Iron Man 2 Campaign Page
The first thing we see on the page is the branding message, followed by too much text. The branding message is repeated in an edited version of the trailer that also appears on the page. To me, juxtaposing &#8220;Man. Machine. Hero.&#8221; against &#8220;Software. Hardware. Complete.&#8221; is just too obvious and blunt. I feel insulted, or at least, like I&#8217;m being subjected to a hard sell. There is just no subtlety, no room for creative interpretation, no room for thought. By contrast, the slogan we came up with for the first campaign, &#8220;Hardware by Marvel. Software by Oracle.&#8221; was more subtle and interesting as it implied linkages at multiple levels and made you think a bit.
There is a &#8220;Master Cloud Operative&#8221; game on the page. The button launches a Flash interactive experience. The Flash content is very pretty, and its a great idea to key off the Stark Expo theme, and create a learning game. The initial startup looked great. The progress indicator, made out of a 3D arc reactor that you could move around was cool. The wide shot coming into the room was cool (with the people sitting at virtual consoles at the sides.) The big Exadata racks felt a little cheesy &#8212; why not arrange them in a more dignified pattern, like the machine room we made in Episode 1?  But all is good because the thing overall looks pretty slick. Unfortunately, when we get to the video screen, the experience starts to break down, and the lack of depth and polish becomes distracting. 
It doesn&#8217;t seem like much thought or care went into how the game itself imparts information, and what it teaches the participant. For example, there is little to no introductory information given, you have to &#8216;fail&#8217; on one of the questions to reach a teachable moment. Many of  the questions are &#8220;All of the above&#8221; &#8212; and easily guessable, so the opportunity for learning is lost. Think: What is Oracle&#8217;s unique contribution to the field of cloud computing? Did the presentation leave the participant with a solid sense of what Oracle can uniquely offer here?

Along another dimension, the MCO game was not a particularly pleasant gaming experience &#8212; I felt kind of like a trained monkey being led through the steps. Nor is it a great training experience &#8212; I managed to get through all the questions without being exposed to a single bit of training material. 
And, where was the demo? Don&#8217;t we actually have an Enterprise Manager page that lets us control the cloud? Why not show that, instead of making me click on a bunch of fake stuff?
From a media perspective, a lot of the Flash elements were really nice looking, I especially liked the way the floating panels would tilt and track the mouse &#8212; gave it a very interactive feel. But there were also a number of really distracting elements. The actress is clearly reading from a teleprompter, which is super unnerving. The whole &#8216;cyber voice&#8217; thing feels kind of unmotivated &#8212; is she human? Is she a robot? Why? In the future can we not afford a good audio and video feed? The script spends a lot of time on theme, but not much time actually imparting key marketing messages. 
For me, the moral is that its not enough for someone in marketing to come up with a cool idea, and throw it over the fence to a creative firm. You need a crack internal team fully engaged from beginning to end, skilled across multiple facets (product messaging, demonstrations, technical content, training, media production, creative management) to produce something that works on all levels. That&#8217;s the kind of capability that we had built up over the last few years.
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		<item>
		<title>Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=69</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=69#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:20:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Productivity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/?p=69</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I highly recommend Seth Godin&#8217;s new book: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
The book challenges us to not just settle for &#8220;another cog in the wheel&#8221; jobs &#8212; but to share our &#8216;emotional labor&#8217;, create art, and &#8216;give gifts&#8217;. I just finished reading it, and think its very relevant to vfx artists. The book caused me to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I highly recommend Seth Godin&#8217;s new book: Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
The book challenges us to not just settle for &#8220;another cog in the wheel&#8221; jobs &#8212; but to share our &#8216;emotional labor&#8217;, create art, and &#8216;give gifts&#8217;. I just finished reading it, and think its very relevant to vfx artists. The book caused me to &#8216;quit&#8217; my old manager at the day job. I just started in a new position with a group and manager that &#8216;gets it&#8217;, and will better appreciate my work. The book is all about how to become indispensable in an age of outsourcing, shrinking revenues, and mass market media.
Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
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		<item>
		<title>JavaFX Silicon Valley Meetup at Google</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=65</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=65#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:47:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[JavaFX]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Rich Clients]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Software Development]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/?p=65</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night I attended a really interesting meeting, the first Silicon Vally JavaFX Users Group. It was held at the Google campus in Mountain View.
Joshua Marinacci showed some pretty amazing things that people are doing with JavaFX, like Project MaiTai which lets you connect audio and visual building blocks (oscillators, particle generators, filters, etc.) together [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[Last night I attended a really interesting meeting, the first Silicon Vally JavaFX Users Group. It was held at the Google campus in Mountain View.
Joshua Marinacci showed some pretty amazing things that people are doing with JavaFX, like Project MaiTai which lets you connect audio and visual building blocks (oscillators, particle generators, filters, etc.) together to create interactive displays. 
Richard Bair, from Sun, showed some really cool examples of how the language works (sequences, binding, list comprehensions), how to be efficient, and why they did things the way they do. He also previewed some of the new UI controls coming in release 1.3.
I got a lot of questions answered, especially in the area of media. Like: Whats up with JMF (Java Media Framework) it seems to be dead? A: All the JMF developers are working on JavaFX media.
Turns out that JavaFX is not just the scripting language, it is a ground-up rewrite of the client stack including fonts, image handling, rasterization, etc.
There were a lot of startups there"it definitely had that buzzy feel like the early JavaOne conferences. A common theme on why these new ventures were interested in JavaFX was the availability of the entire Java stack right from the start. They cited, for example, the ease with which you can access web services, or do peer-to-peer networking, or anything involving security, databases, 2d/3d visualization, or math.
The Google campus is a pretty amazing place. When I left at 9:30PM the parking lot was still almost full. You can just feel the buzz. There are all kinds of exhibits/projects in the lobbies showing stuff that teams are working on, and a general level of zaniness"if you have ever been on a tour of Pixar&#8217;s facilities, think Pixar x2.
And.. I won a Sun Spot development kit! http://www.sunspotworld.com/ Man, I never win anything! Its basically a kit containing two sun-spot micro-controllers with wireless radios and several sensors: 3D accelerometer, a temperature sensor, a light sensor, eight LEDs, two switches, and I/O pins. You program these things in Java and there is a special JavaVM that runs on the board. It has both 802.11 and mesh networking built-in. Now I have to cook up some projects to build with my teenagers.
So, in the end I came away even more bullish on the JavaFX platform. The future of any technology is unpredictable, especially given the pending Oracle acquisition"but in terms of client-side Java, this is where all the attention and effort is going. They might just get client-side Java right this time.
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			<wfw:commentRss>http://motion6.com/blog/?feed=rss2&amp;p=65</wfw:commentRss>
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		<item>
		<title>On Ups, Downs, and Perseverance</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=55</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=55#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:32:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[Productivity]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/?p=55</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I seem to be at that point in my life where I&#8217;m starting to &#8220;get&#8221; certain basic principles. I&#8217;m not sure whether this is the normal process of aging and acquisition of wisdom, or some urgent cosmic message, but I&#8217;m starting to notice the insights arriving at a quickened pace. 
One recent insight was that [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I seem to be at that point in my life where I&#8217;m starting to &#8220;get&#8221; certain basic principles. I&#8217;m not sure whether this is the normal process of aging and acquisition of wisdom, or some urgent cosmic message, but I&#8217;m starting to notice the insights arriving at a quickened pace. 
One recent insight was that ideas are cheap, but passion and perseverance is priceless. In other words, &#8220;its all about execution.&#8221; Now, I have heard variations on this maxim for years, decades &#8212; but I never truly understood it. I would hoard ideas like putting butterflies in a jar, and think that all I needed was the &#8220;right&#8221; idea and I&#8217;d be all set.
But, butterflies will eventually die if left in a jar. Ideas, like butterflies want to be free and its in the observing that we derive value. Whether by choice or circumstance, I&#8217;ve had to execute tirelessly on some pretty simple ideas recently, and one day, after wading through dozens of emails full of well-intentioned ideas, I finally got it: Ideas are cheap, easy and effortless. But executing on an idea is difficult, requires trial-and-error, and requires us to fail on the way to realizing a goal. 
The cool thing (for some of us, at least) is that execution is so difficult for most people that they won&#8217;t do it. Which is why ideas can be safely let out into the wild without fear that someone else will &#8217;steal&#8217; them. The value of the idea is in the observation, interaction, experimentation and execution. 
The reason that most people won&#8217;t execute on an idea is fear of failure. The highs and lows associated with attempting anything, whether it be sports, stock market success, a new business or creative endeavors, is hard for a lot of people to accept. Its a part of the process of creation that not everything will be brilliant. Even God, if we believe the story, had to start over. 
But, if you don&#8217;t try anything new, and you take no chances, you&#8217;ll never &#8220;fail&#8221;, but you&#8217;ll never produce anything great either. We are currently struggling with that at my day job &#8212; current management is so conservative that we are not allowed to &#8220;fail&#8221;, and as a practical consequence, the quality and impact of our work has dropped off dramatically. 
So, the ability to tolerate highs and lows appears to be a prerequisite to achieving greatness. In this article from the recent Startup School entitled &#8220;What Startups are Really Like&#8221;, http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html, the author interviewed 70 or so startup entrepreneurs. A common theme was the sheer magnitude of the highs and lows on the way to achieving their ultimate success:
&#8220;The ups and downs were more extreme than they were prepared for. In a startup, things seem great one moment and hopeless the next. And by next, I mean a couple hours later.&#8221;
Getting back to perseverance &#8212; in addition to getting you through the highs and lows, its amazing what you can achieve if you continuously, and over time, keep pushing towards a singular vision:
The book: The Pixar Touch (Vintage) is an absolutely fascinating story of perseverance and struggle. Over the course of more than 20 years, Ed Catmull and the others endured setback after setback on the way to realizing a dream: to make animated feature films. At one point they made commercials; at one point Pixar was a hardware company; for a time, they suffered multi-million dollar losses. But through it all, the founders kept vectoring towards their singular vision. Whenever circumstances would knock them off track, or throw up a roadblock that required a detour, they would continue pushing, pulling, nudging towards their goal. 
The whole notion of perseverance in achieving one&#8217;s goals is nothing new. What really struck me from the book was that: no matter how random or chaotic the circumstances, no matter how many times you are knocked off track, if you keep applying force in a given direction you will eventually overcome the randomness of life, and move things in the right direction. Its like herding cats: the random movements of the cats will be a little less random if you keep nudging them towards the door. Its also a little like compound interest, in that the force vectors (attention) that you apply begin to multiply and compound over time. 
What this model absolutely requires, however, is a crystal clear destination. Something simple, almost mantra-like: &#8220;Make animated feature films.&#8221; I&#8217;m convinced that such a vision must be the product of the unconscious mind. That is, the vision must be worthy, lofty and game-changing. And that is the real difficulty. Because no matter how disciplined you might be, you can&#8217;t force your way to a truly inspirational vision. 
So, I&#8217;m afraid, dear reader, that I&#8217;m leaving you with more questions than answers: &#8220;How does one train their mind to conjure a worthwhile destination?&#8221; &#8220;How do you know when an idea is worth pursuing, or is just plain dumb?&#8221; &#8220;Does it even matter?&#8221;
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		<title>Siggraph 2008 Day 3</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=34</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=34#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:21:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[Life]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[VFX]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[siggraph vfx 3d maxon catmull fxphd fxguide]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/2008/08/18/siggraph-2008-day-3/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I started the day easy with a sit-down demonstration of eyeon&#8217;s Generation suite. It builds on the Fusion compositor and allows versioning, collaboration, and annotation of assets including 4K DPX plates. They had two screens set up simulating to different users logged into the system and it was neat to see the way the collaborative [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I started the day easy with a sit-down demonstration of eyeon&#8217;s Generation suite. It builds on the Fusion compositor and allows versioning, collaboration, and annotation of assets including 4K DPX plates. They had two screens set up simulating to different users logged into the system and it was neat to see the way the collaborative features worked in real-time. The pricing for the suite, at $10K seemed high for the functionality shown, but apparently the trick is in being able to show multiple streams of 4K DPX plates, and this represents breakthrough pricing for that type of capability. 
Walking around the outside of the exhibit hall, I spotted the 3DConnexion SpaceNavigator left hand controller. After about 60 seconds with this device I bought one on the spot. It allows you to pan, tilt, zoom, and rotate your workspace with your left hand, while your right hand continues to work. I&#8217;m left-handed so when I&#8217;m using my pen tablet, I&#8217;ll use this controller with my right hand. Everyone should have one of these. The company claims that it improves productivity by 20%-25%. I believe it.
I then sat in on a couple of amazing Cinema 4D demos. One on on particles and included a clever use of cloth to create a moving flame front. The other was on their new matte painting tool called Projection Man. I will probably wind up upgrading to R11 just for this, the new Mac 64-bit support, and the new SpaceNavigator support for Mac. 
There are a several 3D printers and 3D printing services here at the show. This stuff is just so cool. Basically, anything you can model in 3D can be &#8216;rendered&#8217; out as a plastic model. Some include color. Great for character design, prototyping new products, and architectural models. Sounds &#8217;so what?&#8217; until you actually see the models. I&#8217;ve just got to think up something to model for no other reason than to have something cool to put on my shelf. 
Heard about the new Squiggles iPhone App by Scott Squires (VFX artist extraordinaire) which is essentially a mini-Photoshop for the iPhone. I can totally see using it to rough out concept art as it has great brushes and support for opacity and transfer modes (like overlay, screen, burn, etc.)
The highlight of the week for me was the fxPhd roof top Bar Camp attended by John Montgomery, Mike Seymour, and Jeff Heuser of fxguide.com. A bunch of folks from fxphd.com and pixelcorps.com were there. The discussions were lively and insightful. About halfway through, they started recording on a podcast and I was the first &#8216;volunteer&#8217; to talk about the conference. Several folks took pictures of the affair which featured a spectacular sunset.

I missed the Ed Catmull talk on Monday, but heard all about it at the Bar Camp. The central theme of his talk was a question: Are good ideas, or good people more important to the creative process? This was in response to a (now infamous) high-level level Hollywood studio head&#8217;s comment that our central problem is not finding good people, but finding good ideas. Through many anecdotes taken from Pixar studios, he explained why some projects work and others don&#8217;t. He made a convincing argument that it is not the idea, but the team who drives the implementation that leads to success. (i.e. &#8220;Its all in the execution.&#8221; Where have we heard that before?) A mediocre team with a great idea will produce a mediocre result, and a good team with a mediocre idea will find a way to make it great, or reinvent the whole thing. 
This was my first Siggraph conference and I found it to be an intensely educational and interesting trip. It will take my brain many days to catch up with all of the things I&#8217;ve seen and heard, and I met a lot of really great folks. I came away with whole new perspectives on how I might integrate more pre-vis and VFX techniques into our productions.
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		<title>Siggraph 2008 Day 2</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=32</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=32#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:01:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[VFX]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[siggraph vfx pipeline temerity haptic maxon collada moc]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/2008/08/12/siggraph-2008-day-2/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[With the vendor exposition opening today, was expecting tired feet and brain overload and I wasn&#8217;t dissapointed. 
First spotting of the day: the Latte art machine uses existing inkjet technology to spray chocolate ink onto foam-topped beverages.
In the new technology areas, I spotted at least two dozen or so haptic (touch) sensors and feedback tech [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[With the vendor exposition opening today, was expecting tired feet and brain overload and I wasn&#8217;t dissapointed. 
First spotting of the day: the Latte art machine uses existing inkjet technology to spray chocolate ink onto foam-topped beverages.
In the new technology areas, I spotted at least two dozen or so haptic (touch) sensors and feedback tech demonstrations. Some require that you wear something on your hand or finger, and some let you move your hand within a confined space. Some offer touch feedback. This is the future of UIs, especially for creatives.
Also in the new tech areas, Shinoda Lab had what looked like a big metal table with various lights and other gadgets arrayed around the surface. Apparently, this surface not only supplies power to the gadgets, but allows them to communicate. So some of the devices are sensors, others make light, noise, show video, etc. Completely unsure what this is good for, but I&#8217;d sure like to let my kids play with it. 
Spent a little time in the Maxon booth catching up on their new Cinema 4D Release 11. Some of the things I grabbed on to were: support for 64-bit on Mac OS X, the Projection Man matte painting system originally developed for Sony Pictures, and COLLADA support (an open file exchange standard).
Saw an interesting presentation about the Electronic Arts (EA) motion capture studio. All of their sports video games, tennis, football, golf, skateboarding, etc. utilize extensive mocap. They have a football-field sized studio in Vancouver with tons of Vicon mocap gear. It took them $8 million to build this facility. They can lay down turf for a football field, or erect a giant half-pipe for skateboarding in this thing. 
Did some quick walking around the rest of the show floor then headed over to the Production Tracking Methods, Issues and Challenges BOF session. Lots of TDs and producers from major shops were there along with a few software vendors. Good discussions about render management, the touchy subject of tracking artist&#8217;s work, representing shot complexity, reporting, plans vs. actuals, workflow, and unique aspects of the VFX industry.
Finished up the day with an interesting talk by Jim Callahan of Temerity. They make Pipeline, a workflow management app. It basically takes the (often hand-crafted) task of building a render pipeline, and puts it into a configurable, node-based toolkit. You configure your pipeline using a set of tools that are pre-wired to popular VFX apps. It does a lot of really smart stuff and can save a facility a lot of money. The bulk of their business is actually consulting with shops to help them improve their pipelines and save money. The best part of the talk was when he got into his work of deriving statistics from collected production data. Jim hired a financial statistician to work out all kinds of crazy correlations in the data, and presented some really interesting looking graphs. From this we can see all kinds of uncomfortable things about a production, like, who has the most influence on a project vs. how much time they spend at the office (sometimes an inverse correlation.) There is much more work to be done, but hopefully VFX houses will have new tools to analyze their productions and improve their margins. 
What I learned today: IT in VFX houses is typically done by folks know Python scripting, that are willing to wing it. Very little extra money for &#8220;proper&#8221; IT. A very closed-loop system that seems to yield a lot of hacked together solutions. The funniest anecdote was the shop that did its production planning in Photoshop!
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		<title>Siggraph 2008 Day 1</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=31</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=31#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 12 Aug 2008 03:58:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[VFX]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[siggraph vfx autodesk mudbox 3d stereoscopic]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/2008/08/11/siggraph-2008-day-1/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Since this is my first Siggraph show I opted for the basic pass, which gets me into the exhibit floor and a lot of the artist exhibitions, but not the technical talks. Since the exhibits open tomorrow, on Tuesday, I arrived today (Monday) around 4:30pm for registration.  Time from Oakland to LAX: 1 hour. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[Since this is my first Siggraph show I opted for the basic pass, which gets me into the exhibit floor and a lot of the artist exhibitions, but not the technical talks. Since the exhibits open tomorrow, on Tuesday, I arrived today (Monday) around 4:30pm for registration.  Time from Oakland to LAX: 1 hour. Time from LAX to Los Angeles convention center (via the Blue shuttle) 2 1/2 hours. Sheesh.
After getting registered it was straight to the Autodesk event at the Shrine Auditorium. Noticing that the program was to be about 3 hours long without a break, I took a &#8217;strategic&#8217; seat on an aisle. 
The presentation kicked of with a series of choice commercials done by various houses. Some were very innovative and folks were applauding. This is a very cool community of folks. 
The keynote featured a look at gaming graphics from Ubisoft, who are doing James Cameron&#8217;s Avatar as the first stereoscopic console game. There was also a mention of new HDRI capabilities in Stitcher, and something about Moviemento. It was hard to follow. Apparently, a very thick French accent was a speaking requirement for anyone doing the keynote. 
Next was an amazing demonstration of a 3D modeling, texturing and painting application called MudBox. The artist was able to &#8216;paint&#8217; on textures and materials in real time. It was amazingly fast. But it just kept getting better as he turned on various specular settings to make the figure look wet, turned on ambient occlusion, changed the lighting by moving around an HDRI lighting map, dialed in a shallow depth-of-field, and more, while continuing to work in real time. The crowd really went wild for this. 
The Third Floor did a really cool demonstration using the Moven wireless suit and a handheld virtual camera to create a pre-vis scene containing a moving character in about 10 minutes. The Moven suit is totally self contained and uses accelerometers placed at strategic points in the lycra suit to measure the movements. The &#8216;director&#8217; used the virtual camera to get different camera angles and a handheld feel for the shot. I could totally see using this for pre-vis, corporate video, and sports training. 
Blizzard Entertainment showed its work on Starcraft 2/Diablo 3 teasers. Very cool to see these at full resolution on a big screen compared to the little compressed ones you see online.  Amazing work. The StarCraft II trailer was excellent. 
Duncan Brimsmead provided a series of small demos in Maya showing off their nParticles system. He is really a master. Simple demos that spoke volumes. The second, and last set of product feature cheers for the night. 
The new stereo viewports in Maya, Toxik and Lustre were very cool. We all had 3D glasses and slipped them on when the artist popped into 3D mode.
Jaw-dropping the first time you see it.
Dreamworks demonstrated a scene from Kung Fu Panda reworked for 3D. This was the jailbreak scene and it was stunning. Its purpose was to shatter all of the old assumptions about what you can and can&#8217;t do with 3D. Quick cuts, DOF effects, camera pans, etc. The crowd was really excited over this. 
Then, Dreamworks showed a 5 minute preview in 3D of their upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens. Looks like its going to be another great show to take the kids to, and the 3D was done very nicely &#8212; not over-the-top like the Journey to the Center of the Earth clip that Sony showed later in the evening. 
There was also a clip from one of the original Star Wars films converted to 3D. Very cool! The crowd cheered that one. Also a new Pixar/Disney short in 3D about a lonely Russian outpost guard who is visited by space aliens. 
During the (way too long) stereoscopic screening with Sony, you could really start to get a sense of what works, and what doesn&#8217;t in this new medium. Nice and subtle uses of parallax with good motivation work to add depth to the scene. Overt uses of the technology, for example the flying fish in Journey to the Center &#8230; that fly right at the camera, the National Geographic title sequence (with title graphics all on different depth planes) and flat looking backgrounds don&#8217;t work. We&#8217;re going to see a lot of 3D crap before it gets better.
The after party had about a dozen models dressed in some kind of world-of-warcraft / barbarian costumes. About a half-dozen artists from Massive Black were creating illustrations of the models that were being projected on large screens. I left when I could no longer move freely. 
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		<title>The List of VFX Project Tools</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=29</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=29#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:41:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[PostProduction]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[tools vfx studio]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/2008/04/29/vfx_project_tools/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Over at the PixelCorps, we are working on a bunch of visual effects shots for an independent film. It is a massively distributed project with the director, producers, VFX supervisors and artists located all over. I&#8217;m part of the production management team and the task of coordinating 50+ people located all around the world is [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[Over at the PixelCorps, we are working on a bunch of visual effects shots for an independent film. It is a massively distributed project with the director, producers, VFX supervisors and artists located all over. I&#8217;m part of the production management team and the task of coordinating 50+ people located all around the world is &#8212; complex. Communication is the key thing. 
A project like this really needs a system that people can collaborate around, something that would help coordinate a far-flung post-production team: posting the shot breakdowns, shot assignments, task progress, submission and review cycles, client approvals, tracking the progress of the overall pipeline, moving assets and work outputs.
Being a database guy, my first thought is: &#8220;Aha! I need a database.&#8221; My next thought was: &#8220;Surely, someone has already built one.&#8221; However, so far, I&#8217;ve found nothing that really fits the bill. I started using a spreadsheet but quickly found that I could not keep up with all the activity.
It seems that the big houses have elaborate home-grown systems for managing the shots, and assets, and budgeting and all that &#8212; but what do small/independant VFX producers use for project management to keep everything organized? So I started doing research for my own home-grown VFX project database. I&#8217;ve come across the following resources which I&#8217;m posting here for reference. 
UPDATE (7/18/08): I added Shotgun and Flowsmith to the list.
UPDATE (10/24/08): I&#8217;ve move the list to its own page.
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		<title>Beware! The Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Dot Gamma Nightmare</title>
		<link>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=28</link>
		<comments>http://motion6.com/blog/?p=28#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:26:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Cameron</dc:creator>
		
		<category><![CDATA[PostProduction]]></category>

		<category><![CDATA[gamma display]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://motion6.com/blog/2008/04/13/beware-the-ctrl-opt-cmd-dot-gamma-nightmare/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I just solved a color issue on my Mac that was so insidious, so destructive and so mind boggling that I had to post a warning to others. 
I was working away on some video, doing motion graphics and color correction, etc. and at some point, I noticed that everything seemed darker and &#8220;off&#8221;. I [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[I just solved a color issue on my Mac that was so insidious, so destructive and so mind boggling that I had to post a warning to others. 
I was working away on some video, doing motion graphics and color correction, etc. and at some point, I noticed that everything seemed darker and &#8220;off&#8221;. I really noticed it in some motion graphics that have grey lines over black: the grey lines were barely showing up. 
I looked at every display setting I could find. I read up on all of the crazy gamma shift issues around Mac, QuickTime, Final Cut, etc. I was tearing my hair out, and about to do something drastic, like reformat my hard drive and reinstall everything. 
Then finally, almost by accident, I stumbled past the Universal Access settings. My Display was set to Enhanced Contrast.  If you use this key combination: Ctrl-Option-Cmd-. (dot) you will increase the display contrast by one notch. I must have hit this by accident &#8212; although I&#8217;m not sure how. This totally changes your display gamma curve across everything, and is insidious because it is not a setting you will find anywhere on the Display prefs. 
Problem solved. Doh!
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