I would like to explain in few words the structure of this material.
The main part of the this introduction is based on the ten main areas:
1) Noise and Grain (Artifacts)
2) POV and POI, FOV, Perspective, and Movement. Tracking/Stabilization
3) Lens; Lens Distortion; Filter
4) Scale and details
5) Reflections, both directions.
6) Light, Secondary Lights, Shadows Bi-direct)
7) Color, Brightness, Saturation (Color-perspective)
8) Light Warp/Light Glow
9) Lens 2: Depth of Field
10) Motion Blur
Part 1 and 2
Each point (1-10) has one tutorial which introduces the theme (part one), and one that discuss it (part two). The discussion is based on the idea where in the pipeline we have to take care of it. Part of the discussion is as well how each part (1-10) relates or interacts with the other parts (1-10. All in all, you will find over 140 possible combinations discussed.
In part 3 I introduce you to the drill which will be discussed in part 4. I have supplied a HDRI, Sony EX1 and RED Footage. To work with the RED footage, please download the RED-CineX from RED.com, it’s free) This material is free to use for your training here and I’m happy if you use it in your demo reel in a positive way, after you have created your own scene.
Finally, part 5 goes a little bit into VFX terrain and we close with part 6 (Final words).
If you go along these tutorials, you will have a better understanding about the JET making of series.
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The idea is here to deliver a good base and give you material to do it on your own, after you have understood the “challenge”.
I’m not certain if I would suggest this training for people who just opened the application the first time. You should feel comfortable with CINEMA 4D.
All in all, each of the upcoming series should give you a base to think and work like film-maker. Film-making is the most complex art form, as it contains a lot of art forms—it can’t be simpler. So please take time to get used to this vast amount of material.
Please let me know if there are any question. I’m really happy to answer. I believe in creativity, and I like to support any efforts to overcome the technical or conceptual obstacles, in the frame of Cineversity. It is an adventure to make movies and it will change you life. So, be prepared :o) It is a wonderful ride.
My best wishes
Sassi
The material for this is different to JET, as you might like to create your own version ;o)
I just want to say that after watching part 1, 2, and the introduction. For the practical section, I am VERY impressed and can’t wait to go over the rest of the tutorials!
One thing, though is that your tutorials are not showing for the newest tutorials on the tutorial page. Without that, very few people will be aware of the new tutorials.
You are spot on and thanks for mentioning it!
The default search is not really “nice” to my work ;o)
I’m glad that you have no problems navigating easily in that system.
Clicking on the “Instructor” and then on my name will remedy that, but you are right, who does this?
I hope your input and the lovely PR people do will help. It is certainly a long series and nothing that gives some “cool” tricks to show of. However, I’m more interested to deliver long lasting information. Stuff that keeps people in their jobs (at least that is my hope—to contribute a little bit to that, with all my work)
One thing, though is that your tutorials are not showing for the newest tutorials on the tutorial page. Without that, very few people will be aware of the new tutorials.
This was a deliberate decision based on the sheer number of tutorials included in the series and the current release schedule.
The tutorials were back dated so as not to effectively flood the new tutorial section for the next few months.
Instead we released the playlist as the most recent item, that way there will be a few playlists sitting at the top of the list and we don’t flood the single tutorial pages.
The most recently added playlists can be found on the New Cineversity Playlists tab of the User Home.
Well, I really have to get back to work But watched the first five videos and they’re great. I look forward to finishing the series and to all the future tutorials you have coming. It’s so great to have some hard core VFX tutorials within a Cinema 4d context. These are the kinds of shots I’m trying to pull off invisibly, and there is not a whole lot of info out there. Thanks for putting these together, and I have no doubt the will be worth the wait.
Thank you very much—again—very kind of you Biagio.
Yes, compared with the tool description clips of C4D—this was a lot of research. I tried to get time-less material into these series, even knowing the typical “half-value-time” in the digital workflow is relatively short. I hope it will give certainty in this field of work, as quality is mostly based on the fact to be able to “see” and “know”, rather than a bag of cool tricks (which is nice to have, but should be the icing on the cake only). At least that is my idea of it.
I hope the next 200+ series will find its way faster and we get close into a flow that I was used to while doing daily tool time. Perhaps weekly in the future. We will see. I have so many ideas ;o)
Yes, indeed! I’m sure you know you have my vote to get more tuts up as regularly as possible. I admit, I didn’t know the tuts were up yet…I’d been checking back and since I didn’t see them on the front page I didn’t know. I will keep an eye on the playlist page from now on.
It’s good for Cineversity to make sure we all know when new tuts go up, regardless of where they land. This series is a sizable addition to the library, but had I not seen the forum post, I would not have noticed. Every new piece of video makes Cineversity a more worthwhile investment for those of us paying the yearly fee, and I’d hate to think that some people are missing out on new content because they didn’t realize it was here.
I swing by every couple of days to look, and since it seemed that there were no new tuts since December’s videos about Art Smart…a very nice plugin but a long time to go with no new tutorials. Now I realize I need to look beyond the tutorials page and dig in to see if I’ve missed anything. Perhaps something to think about in the future for the Cineversity site would be to make it easier to find the new material (or perhaps I’m missing something?)
That said, please keep the new training coming. It’s great to have C4D VFX training.
And thank you, Patrick, for getting the videos up. Looking forward to more soon!
Currently I take a Color Science course (my second one already) given by Charles Poynton, he creates the suggestion papers for SMPTE for example. So my part in color profiles and spaces for my “Creating Textures” series. Yes, its not jsut point and shoot, hehe. But I will break it down in easy steps. Simplification is for me not to chop it in small pieces. It is more walking through the complete complexity and find the inner logic/mechanic in it, which is then explained as a scaffold—to be safely filled later on. It has worked for me, teaching all kind of stuff. I’m not happy with the chop-chop method.
All the best
Sassi
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I will try to make an introduction page each week for these: (Dates are given to me, I do not call the shots for the release.)
Highlights of the JET Production Notes series and each section (in order of release):
Integration (release date Feb 4th) – is a 54-part, in-depth and more advanced theoretical and practical introduction to help artists think in terms of production pipeline interoperability and workflow. Using a structured step-by-step approach, it demonstrates the elements of integrating a 3D spaceship with practical footage. Included is new, state-of-the-art RED HDR-X raw footage and raw 3D models with instruction that allows members to create their own demo clip. Other topics covered include, creating 3D environments, compositing, and more.
Cinematography (release date Feb 11th) – is a 27-part, two-hour ‘crash course’ for 3D artists. The tutorial content focuses on elemental cinematography principles including the rules of camera use and lighting as they apply to the features available in CINEMA 4D. [Note: The Cinematography tutorial series received two Telly Awards and a Remi Award.]
JET, Making of (release date Feb 18th) – is a 40-part series that takes all of the large 3D environment scenes in JET, including those with thousands of buildings, to introduce and breakdown widely used digital filmmaking techniques.
JET, Speed modeling (release date Feb 25th) – is a production-based series providing ideas and procedurals to create the background and middle ground for a complete cityscape. Based on the ‘Pershing Square’ scene in JET and using its set design as a base, it shares methods to quickly model detailed facades and also demonstrates use of the powerful CINEMA 4D MoGraph toolset to create 4,000 different objects – in less than a day.
Animation Techniques for Teams (release date (Mar 4th) – is a course in “non-linear-animation” designed for artists at large-scale production facilities or those collaborating from remote locations sharing video assets. Because JET was created solely by Sassi, this ‘bonus’ series provides critical knowledge and concepts for filmmakers working in teams that are not discussed in the other tutorials.
Lighting (release date Mar 11th) – is a collection of themes that addresses the day-to-day challenges and mistakes* artists make using 3D lighting options.
Modeling Industrial Holes (release date (Mar 18th) – is a ‘bonus’ series demonstrating how the powerful modeling tools in CINEMA 4D provide options to produce specific structures, i.e., metal mesh filters and vents. (*mistake or creative option, I never can split this couple)
That looks fantastic! I truly hope the schedule stays as planned, and personally I can’t wait for February 18 and 25! I promise you I’ll be putting your teaching into practice ASAP, and I look forward to sharing some of the shots that come out of your classes.
Do you mind to share if you have some interest in Digital Matte Painting? Basically more photo and 3d model based than pure painting. Digital Environment as “we” call it since some years. A very strong part of C4D.
Could that be a nice idea to work on? :o) I would love to do that, I have some ideas already…hehe.
It’s good for Cineversity to make sure we all know when new tuts go up, regardless of where they land. This series is a sizable addition to the library, but had I not seen the forum post, I would not have noticed. Every new piece of video makes Cineversity a more worthwhile investment for those of us paying the yearly fee, and I’d hate to think that some people are missing out on new content because they didn’t realize it was here.
As far as I know there was an Email blast sent out, as well as a press release, and even an interview.
So I think we did due process for putting the information out into the world.
As stated earlier in this thread, the choice to leave them out of the single tutorial list was because of the sheer number of videos to be released…the list can only display 12 videos at a time, which is not very effective.
I can however ask about getting something in the news slider on the User Home.
Do you mind to share if you have some interest in Digital Matte Painting? Basically more photo and 3d model based than pure painting. Digital Environment as “we” call it since some years. A very strong part of C4D.
YES! YES! YES! This is basically what I’m hacking my way through. For instance, in GHOST INSIDE MY CHILD, I had to do low budget 3d moves on the Oklahoma City building destroyed in the bombing. I did indeed do part of what you’re talking about, (crudely) modeling out the parts of the building in C4D, and then using camera mapping to add my photoshop composities “on top” of the crude model. This is an area I’m intensely interested in, both for doing recreations in our crime/flashback type shows, and for building virtual environments in our scripted work.
Patrick:
Patrick Goski - 08 February 2013 05:47 PM
As far as I know there was an Email blast sent out, as well as a press release, and even an interview.
I’m sure if you’re doing all that, I just missed it. I’m a fan of what you’re doing here, and I just want to make sure I’m looking in the right places. Basically, I just swing by and look at the Tutorials page, which is probably the wrong approach. I keep trying to use Cineversity 2.0 like Cineverstiy 1.0, and I think I just need to spend a little time getting to know it better. I would like to say that while the Tuts are very, very important, the speed at which both you and Dr. Sassi reply to these threads is astounding, and really adds to the value of Cineversity. I do think that in Cineveristy 1.0, the little “new tutorials” list on the right was helpful. If you do put up a bunch of tutorials and back date them, it would be useful to have some kind of alert somewhere for those of us who only look at the tuts list.
Great and thank you for the feedback. I certainly believe that scenes, like you mentioned, are more and more in use. Hence the productions budgets become smaller (or for situations that you can’t really re-create partly or at all.)
I hope to get a good foundation with my current (in work/photography) series, to build up upon those. What I love the most, if “you” to have nearly no material and create an complete environment out of it—with camera moves and the illusion of practically footage. A passion that I hope to feed into this material. So, thanks for your input. I will keep this in mind.
You’re right on, Dr. Sassi. With shrinking budgets and high demands, creating photo-real and/or highly stylized camera moves ouy of simple photos is a goldmine of production value. For instance, the National Archives contain many photos that are freely usable, even in commercial projects (as do NASA, and other government agencies.) While these photos may not always be perfect, having an asset like that to start with that is free is an amazing jumping off point (always check with your lawyers, first, of course!)
On our last show we did have to get approval from lawyers (ours and the network’s) before using any of these “free” pictures, but once they signed off, I was able to create a handful of shots from photos that worked well enough for the network to be happy.
Naturally, as I learn more from you, these shots will be much better
But watched the first five videos and they’re great. I look forward to finishing the series and to all the future tutorials you have coming. It’s so great to have some hard core VFX tutorials within a Cinema 4d context. These are the kinds of shots I’m trying to pull off invisibly, and there is not a whole lot of info out there. Thanks for putting these together, and I have no doubt the will be worth the wait.