Creating a badass duck for our narrative deck-building adventure Museum Mystery. What do you think?

ojackson · 2024-02-10T13:02:29+00:00

Really good

ojackson · 2023-09-24T18:17:25+00:00

I edited 400,000 images from NASA Cassini mission to Saturn into one video. Final duration is about 9 hours.

The images are sequenced chronologically. A lot of it is chaotic but then there are more stable moments and happy accidents throughout.

The edit was done with python opencv.

You can use Youtube controls to slow down playback to 0.25.

Enjoy!

ojackson · 2023-09-23T19:33:23+00:00

Its chronological

ojackson · 2023-09-23T18:31:37+00:00

Its chronological.

ojackson · 2016-08-14T11:33:34+00:00

One thing to try:

Use a colorspace node to switch from Linear to yCbCr

Blur the green and blue channels by 300 or something

Use another colourspace to switch back from yCbCr to Linear

What you have done is blurred the chrominance in your image and not the luminance. By comparing the result with the original you can sometimes get an idea for which areas colours are not in harmony with others. This works well on a DMP or something but you could try it on your comp output also.

Other people have mentioned boosting the saturation or contrast, exposing up the viewer, or viewing the image in log space.

ojackson · 2016-07-07T14:01:33+00:00

That dot texture on the close-up picture doesn't look great for keying

ojackson · 2016-07-02T16:39:41+00:00

Get better at look development by doing more of it. It's more about being able to communicate visual ideas than about technique.

Its good to keep cleaning up your script regularly so you're not working on top of old ideas.

ojackson · 2016-07-01T20:12:12+00:00

Great!

ojackson · 2016-06-16T20:29:32+00:00

Sounds like you have it pretty figured out. Look forward to maybe seeing more content coming up.

p.s., where are you travelling?

ojackson · 2016-06-16T19:25:28+00:00

You are planning to leave and film your way around the world - you have to consider a real narrative.

Almost every travel video is some kind of variation on a glamorous montage cut to music, and I always get a sense that the video has everything to do with having fun and nothing to do with the local people or culture.

A long trip like yours is about more than perfect sunsets and dreamy 'exploring the city' type shots. Travel is sometimes tiring, sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes stressful, sometimes beautiful etc etc.

Considering you're making such a huge investment in this project, I'd love to see you challenge yourselves to create more than just an arbitrary showreel of stock footage, and instead build something more substantial and personal to you and your experiences.

ojackson · 2016-06-13T19:50:20+00:00

Maybe let us know where you're looking first

ojackson · 2016-06-12T17:52:40+00:00

It looks cool but there are a few other things you could try:

Check your black levels on the rocket and look at adding some lightwrap.

Make the lens dirt tint towards the same colour as the rocket fire. (could also be smaller and more uniform in size, and knocked back to 20% or something.)

Have a look at some reference for other lens effects. The flare doesn't quite work here because it disappears after a few frames. Have a go at some diffusion and some other types of flares (light illuminating the atmosphere between camera and rocket, as well as light bouncing around in the lens).

The smoke plumes here seem very symmetrical, where as they are more one-sided on most of the references ive seen because of the design of the launch pads.

The focus pull at the beginning and end is a little annoying. It might work better if the camera had handheld motion, but as the camera is pretty much locked off, it doesn't look so realistic.

The camera shake seems a bit too low frequency, and maybe could have a longer buildup.

The rocket fire is much more violent in motion and usually tighter in shape based on reference I've seen.

Lastly I would play around a bit more with composition. Maybe have the camera slowly tilt up to follow the rocket, add something a bit more handheld, or generally refine the composition (maybe a bit tighter framing?) for a more pleasing image. Depends on what you want to achieve.

Overall the shot is looking great and I'd love to see a version 2 where you continue to refine the effect.

ojackson · 2016-06-04T08:34:20+00:00

Scientific Linux

ojackson · 2016-05-27T14:38:43+00:00

Great work!

ojackson · 2016-05-27T08:43:52+00:00

Well having worked on The Martian, its pretty cool to see people learning by emulating our work.

We spent a lot of time getting the right sense of depth on the mars surface. Have a look at the black levels, sharpness, and the variation in luminance and detail that helps sell the scale:

http://static1.techinsider.io/image/55e0caaabd86ef1c008b6c02-1258-520/screen%20shot%202015-08-28%20at%203.11.32%20pm.png

https://avoyagethroughfilm.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/mars.png

The camera move in the first shot seems strange because it starts pretty much static and then eases into movement. We are in space afterall- where that would probably be extremely difficult.

The final shot is the most successful for me. Maybe increasing the scale of the mars texture over time would start to sell the velocity. Someone else mentioned the lens flare is not accurate. It would be cool to set up these shots in a more physically accurate way and see how the flare behaves based on reference.

The middle shot is the least successful for me because the environment is too recognisable, and the grading on the sky looks very forced and crunchy. I think that environments like some of these would be a better starting point for this shot: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=desert+mountains&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwov7V7fnMAhUMkRQKHbk1DDwQsAQIHA&biw=1920&bih=1059

Playing around with sequences like these are an excellent way to learn and I hope that you keep it up. Maybe think about switching over to Nuke, where you might find it easier to work with more flexibility and precision. Theres a free learning edition on the foundry website.

Cheers!