d-os AV/blog

MED spring/summer 2010

short sponsor-promo for MED luxurious lingerie & swimwear created at beetroot. (model : k.stikoudi)
the motion layers were created via the use of simulated slit-scan technique and were then mapped onto rotating particle planes by Trapcode Form.

Tags: after effects, beetroot, fashion, freeframe, MED, sexy, slit-scan, Stikoudi, trapcode, trapcode form

10 years of megaron logo treatment

here’s the motion logo treatment for the ‘megaron’ of thessaloniki. created at beetroot.

it consists of particles animated under force influence from target to target. i did the music to suit last night as a study on Penderecki.

Tags: beetroot, logo, megaron

more on “summer” by marsheaux!

now part of the permanent “official” Trapcode Gallery !!

http://trapcode.squarespace.com/

see? it really pays to use the best particle system for motion graphics in the world !

thank you Peder Norrby !

Tags: beetroot, marsheaux, out of line records, particular, summer, trapcode, undo records

museum of photography

here’s a wee little logo treatment for our city’s museum of photography. created at beetroot.

Tags: beetroot, museum of photography

marsheaux : summer

ok then, here is the finalised video conceived & carried out at beetroot for the band marsheaux in all its 4:3 glory ! the track is called “summer” and it was published by OutOfLine GmbH ©2009.

this second video is a montage of some of the procedures that i had to undertake in order to complete the task.
some of the stuff here, was crudely screen captured (for the showcase) and thus, jerky due to dropped frames ..

the first bits present a few of the steps that had to be taken, in order to 3d track existing summer-y and urban footage (of quite low-rez to be honest..) and painstakingly extract the 3D camera translations (after many tracking passes per scene), as well as, some sort of geometry & ZDepth information (based on the calculated point clouds).

the next step involved the importing of the point cloud data in my 3D software of choice, the refinement (by hand) of the camera data and the recreation of the approximate geometries and matte/shadow & reflectivity surfaces, as needed (on top of the backplates).

when all these were done the ‘protagonistic’ (sic!) geometries were added, bone-rigged, shaded, lit and rendered in all available passes.
i also, usually, like to extract 3D light information and then pass it on to After Effects along with the rest of the stuff (3D camera, point clouds, particle sources and video layers -particularly the normals!) in order to help me in the compositing process.

The compositing involved a lot of grading, re-shadowing and re-lighting (completely with CG lights) of the individual scenes. these were all, then, edited together and re-graded into a coherent (?) whole.

for some parts, i had to devise complex scripts for the bubble and water motion parts, made entirely out of (meta-blob) particleFlows in Max.
Another breakthrough, came about as the project was nearing completion with some amazing mandelbrot raytracing algorithms which helped aesthetically re-shape all the chorus parts of the video. those detailed implicit surface effects where created with the use a brand new julia fractal algorithm which works in true 3D.

in all, this has been huge fun, although it required a tremendous amount of work both in terms of pure math & physics (for the sims), as well as, huge amounts of manual roto work. the beetroot team have been of great help throughout this, especially in terms of the all-important psych factor ! enjoy a sort of a making-of montage :



now… for those ‘in the know’… this is one more project which could never have been completed without the brilliant Trapcode stuff by the utter genius that is mr. Peder Norby !

The jellyfish tentacles are, indeed, a hair&fur system scripted to suit.

no! Andrew Kramer’s Optical Flares wasn’t, obviously available at the time of working on this video, neither was the Knoll 3D Flare utility by RedGiant. I had to either hand animate the 3D lights and flares in After Effects, and/or do lots of scripting with a great deal of help by the equations of Dan Ebberts.

the soundtrack is an unsolicited (by the band..) edit that i did on the actual track (leaving out the vocal parts), with the addition of the true loves of my life : the KR55 and the 808 ! it was all performed in a little over a couple of hours last night, on the Ableton Live Suite!

Tags: beetroot, CGI, marsheaux, music video

marsheaux : summer | still captures

here’s a gallery-full of still from the latest music video for marsheaux

i shall be uploading the full video and an additional making-of montage as the evening progresses.

do follow http://blog.beetroot.gr/ for more information on the project!

Tags: beetroot, marshaux, summer