Studio Practice "Motion Capture"

Motion capture used in games like "Skate." and also films the most famous one being "Lord Of The Rings".
























The Motion Capture system uses multiple cameras set up in the corner of a room. These are special cameras that only pick up the reflections made from the little balls that are placed on a skin tight Lycra suit. The suit has to be skin tight so it doesn't move when the actor is doing there movements.

Studio Practice "3D Scanning & Printing"

3d scanning is used in many different application and there are alot of different type of scanners. The scanner we were looking at was the Zscanner. This type of scanner is very light and easy to use. It can scan any object into the computer by using little white circular pads that are applied on the object so when you use the Zscanner to revolve round the object it understands the pattern and translates that pattern into the computer, then you will get your 3d image.











3d Printing is often used in the industry for prototyping for clients, 3d printing makes it easy for a 3d artist to show their clients what there model/ idea is going to look like. The printer we looked at was the Zprinter which works by printing layers of plaster/ resin, building up loads of layers to create your model. The down

fall for this method is that when the models are finished printing they are extremely fragile and most models need to be glued.

Studio Visit "Motion Control,Crowd Duplication & Audio"

Motion control is mostly used in SFX. The vast technology in the robotic camera is the same used by car manufacturers. Motion Control is a robotic camera that can either be controlled by a computer on site or programmed to repeat movements to be pixel accurate.

The Motion Control Rig in the Phoenix studio is a portable rig meaning it can be dismantled and transported very easily compared to some rigs that are in set that will just be constructed and left there, because they are just too big to be moved.
The motion control rig is situated on a rail type track that gives it the smooth continuous motion that you see in most films nowadays.

We used the motion control rig to record some crowd duplication. this task meant that we had to set the motion control rig up on the computer to run a programed sequence of movements when the camera was rolling with the help of a flashing blue light that would flash on frame 1 to make it easier to synch up the footage in composting. A group of us planned out what we were going to do for our crowd duplication and then we had to record us on the foreground doing our sequence and then we repeated it but with us doing a different sequence in the background. In theory it should look like all of our group have doubles.

We also went into the recording studio where most/ all of the sound effects are recorded as well as soundtracks and voice overs. When a group of us was in the Music studio we got shown a short 3d animation with no sounds. The task was for us to create convincing enough sounds using just easy found objects. When we were recording the sounds we decided to use a wooden box for the stair sequence. this gave us a convincing enough sound but we would need to cut and put it into the exact place it was needed. The hardware the studio uses is a Mac which runs the Pro Tools software which is a industry level software used to record and edit music files.

Studio Visit "Studio Green/Blue Screen"

Green/Blue Screens are primary used in SFX (Special Effects), as a backdrop for images to be placed upon during the composting stage of production.

Continuing on from my last entry about lighting, in this session we found out more information about why lighting is so important in green screen/ and blue screen. One of the most important things you have got to consider when setting up lighting for your green screen footage is the shadow. When you light you're scene you light the screen behind the object as well as the object in the for ground to avoid a shadow on you green screen when composting. A shadow will effect the colour of the screen and so by lighting it separately you erase nearly all the shadow, and hopefully get a solid colour that is so much easier to work with in compositing.


























The Green screen in the Phoenix studio was set up for us to film our crowd duplication in the coming week, we practiced using the camera like focusing and using the white balance. We set up the white balance by holding a white object infront of the camera then we zoom into the white object and then we can set the white balance to that.

Studio Visit "'Studio Lighting and Camera"

Lighting plays a big part in any kind of production, ranging from theatre productions to Hollywood blockbusters. Often used for artistic and dramatic effects. Without the correct lighting your green screen or any scene will look tacky and cheap, and will cost you many hours correcting it in post production.



There are many kinds and type of lights in the Phoenix Studio:

*The "Red Head" is commonly used studio lamp that is placed on top of a lightweight tripod due to its small size compared to some other lamps. All of the "Red Head" lights in the Phoenix Studio have barn door fitted to the front of them to direct light where ever it is needed in the shot/ scene.

Camera's Used In The Phoenix Studio:

The Camera used in the Phoenix Studio is the Panasonic HPX 500 and 200.
These are semi-professional camera that are close to or identical to industry standard camera's.
Recorded footage from these camera's are not stored on tape but stored on multiple Panasonic P2 memory cards that are inserted into the camera, these memory cards are big enough to hold RAW Uncompressed HD footage which, being Uncompressed, are quite substantial in size.