Escape Blog

Escape this Spring!

Want to know what it’s like to work in a thriving, dynamic industry?  Escape Studios is offering a taster into the world of computer graphics with its new three-day short courses that highlight the exciting career opportunities on offer to students and provide valuable insight into the industry.

Escape Studios is offering four new taster courses: Introduction to 3D using Maya (the leading 3D imaging software), Introduction to Computer Animation, Introduction to Visual Effects and Introduction to Games, which all contain abbreviated content from Escape Studio’s full-time courses. Over three days, students will learn the basics of 3D effects creation and gain a better understanding of what’s involved in visual effects,  character animation and games art with guidance from world-class tutors. The courses are aimed at giving people a chance to get a feel for what a computer graphics job is like and understand what discipline they might want to pursue in the industry.

All four short courses cost £399, which is refunded should the student decide to sign up to an Escape Studio classroom course. Full courses are typically 12 weeks long and have been designed to cover all the basics and provide someone new to the industry with the required skills to begin their career. Escape Studios offer a range of courses including visual effects, animation, games and more. For more information please contact the training team.

Are you a woman trying to break into the film industry? If so, this training course could be just what you’re looking for.

Thanks to funding support from Skillset, Birds Eye View is offering a range of 3D and VFX training, including a 3D Graphics and VFX course specifically for women, which will be delivered by us here at Escape Studios. The training takes place on Sat 6^th & Sun 7^th March and is designed to give a practical, introduction from anyone wanting an insight into 3D for visual effects and post-production.

This hands-on session will take you through the basic creation of 3D models, the process of camera tracking these into live-action footage and the skills required in lighting and texturing, in order to achieve photo realistic results – it’s a great opportunity for any woman looking to boost their skills, confidence and experience in film.

If you’re interested, download an application column on the right hand column of this web page. All you have to do is submit your application and CV to the following address  office@birds-eye-view.co.uk and Birds Eye View will let you know if you’ve been successful.

We look forward to seeing some of you there in a couple of weeks.

Birds Eye View Film Festival runs from 4-12 March at the ICA and the BFI. See at full 2010 programme at: www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/2010/festival

So I’ve promised details previously, and details you shall have!

Our full Stereoscopic solution is finally here, and we’ve shipped it out to its first adopters,a well known soho studio. The project will be rolled out as a story from their perspective in a couple of weeks, but for now, let’s have a word about the technology behind it all.

The suite comprises of 3 parts; infrastructure, hardware and software. Let’s go through them.

Infrastructure
The backbone of the suite is provided by a slightly modified Boston Igloo machine, which is a direct attached storage solution with 24 bays, and a very robust/customizable platform that we’ve been using for various different projects, consultations and startups. We had to put some black magic into the machine, including a very powerful RAID card for better interaction than the typical, as well as 10 gigabit ethernet and some lightweight linux server structure to handle iSCSI interaction between 10 gigabit and the RAID blocks themselves.

From all our tweaks and tinkering, we’ve managed to pull the fully populated, 24TB igloo into two halves which wind up being an effective 10.903TB each. These two halves of the physical and virtual units are intended to be a left eye stream, and a right eye stream for stereoscopic purposes. They are two fully seperate RAIDs, handled by a single controller, which hands off to the 10 gigE and linux to iSCSI bind it onto the interface to move away from the unit. Sounds a bit complicated, I know – but this is all something that’s pre-configured by us before we even ship the units to site.

For the purpose of the initial commission, we went with an HP rack as per requests, but can rack this into anything with a 4U space and enough cooling to cover BTUs from 900W. We can extend this distance up to about 30m, which is the current (speculative) limitation of CX4 terminated 10 gigabit ethernet.

Front-end Hardware
So the back-end is sorted and firing out 700mbps post all the tuning and configuration, but how are we going to utilize this unit? Well, we bring it via the CX4 10gigE into the workstation of our client’s choice, and for the initial project, we’ve chosen the HP Z400 workstation. We’ve dropped in a Myrinet 10gigE platform to be the acceptor of the bandwidth, and added a 3800 series Quadro FX graphics board into the machine. The first comission didn’t require an SDI board, but this is certainly possible for any suite configuration. The power of the i7 platform and 6gb of DDR3 is all that’s required to run this, so the workstation comes in at a pretty nice price!

Panelling is a discussion that’s very dependent on people’s usage and workflow. Saying that, the first project has been intended for an 8-bit DVI->HDMI connection from the card to a JVC Stereo 46″ panel. Lovely stuff! There’s also an Eizo CG series panel for the software to run from where the JVC is for the playback.

There are many options to choose from, inclusive of Grade 1 and 2 solutions from Eizo, TVLogic as well as JVC – and with an SDI board being possible, the world is your oyster for choices!

Software
Great! We’ve got a lovely little platform going here, and our suite is starting to look quite neat! How do we drive it though? The software platform can be a variety of different setups, but in this instance the guys were after XP64-bit, and IRIDAS FrameCycler DDS. No problems there! We’ve tweaked a few registery bits and bobs to open up the raw power of 10gigE, gone with jumbo frames and other transmission window modifiers to get the full brunt of our backend power, and tuned up the graphics platforms to certify with FrameCycler and the JVC panel – and hey presto, we’re ready to fire out some realtime 2K stereo, and we’ve got our glasses ready set to stun!

This isn’t a limited option however. Don’t despair if you’re a linux-based studio or if you’re anti-Windows! We love a challenge, so please, don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’ve got any questions, ideas or interest in a suite! We’ve got a working platform for Linux and other versions of Windows as well.

Sounds good eh? Well, here’s the best part. Inclusive of software, VAT, installation, shipping – literally everything under the sun to get this badboy working starts at around £30,000. That’s for an extended suite complete from start to finish that can hold 3 full film-2K resolution features and hit them all back in real-time!

So there you have it: a nice price for a great suite! We’ve still got a few things up our sleeve, so make sure you watch this space and our website for details of upcoming demo events – both in Soho (London) and at Escape Studios, as well as some fairly neat stories, pictures and future kit to be developed.

A few weeks ago we ran a customer satisfaction survey. As part of the survey, we had a prize draw, with the winners bagging a masterclass with our VFX tutor Lee Danskin and the runners up all receiving Amazon vouchers.

We’re pleased to announce that the following three respondents have been drawn as the winners of the masterclass: Ben Nuttall-Smith, Keiron Campbell and Mark Robin. Congratulations to you all!

We’ve also got 20 runners-up, who all receive an Amazon voucher worth £25 (or $40, if you’re into that sort of thing): Kevin Rittenhouse, Jaime Rivera, Dan Nastasa, Marcus Williams, Surapen Yosravikul, Curtis Cooper III, David Godefroy, Carla Gomes, James Pruszkowski, Hugo Guerra, Amanda Carrington, Joe Williamsen, Satoko Kojima, Jason Mullin, Mi Li, Artur Leao, Tom Crate, Luke Caulfield, Jeff Chen and Denise Ebanks.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the survey – we’ll be posting next week about the results and the insights we’ve drawn from them.

Hello world!

Since the releases of The Final Destination and Avatar, there’s been alot of talk about town regarding stereoscopic 3D, workflow and how it applies to film, commercials, TV and all things media.

Simply put, stereoscopic video is the magic behind 3D films that you can see via the usage of various types of imaging technology and optical accessories. Remember the blue and red jelly-tinted cardboard glasses? Remember how the films made you dizzy without them? Well, they’re back, and they’ve grown up a fair bit.

Stereo is popping up all over the place in media these days, and a lot of people are looking for a simple way to explain it from a technical standpoint. In a nutshell, it’s a method of overlaying 2 streams of video or still sequences used in conjunction with 3D generated from any source, to produce a “pop out” 3D image for its viewers. This is why a lot of people report being ill watching these videos without the proper eyewear, as it can look as if the images are ghosted over one-another.

So how does this apply to anyone’s workflow? Well, stereo is quite a weighty process to get into when it comes to generating this material. A large amount of 3D involving particle systems, dynamics and fluids is done to produce the results you see in theatres around the world, and video encoding and renderring can be quite a painful experience for those taking the cutting edge trek into it.

The question of quality control comes up quite often: how can a studio keep hold of quality assurance in this situation? Raw playback solutions have always been quite expensive, and for that reason a large number of studios can be seen turning down stereo projects for lack of facility. The workflow for a studio without a playback unit could involve renderring out a composition daily to go through with supervisors and artists. This process can take hours, might not necessarily work out, and is simply not fast enough to be worth the time invested and overhead cost.

That being said, the general public should prepare itself for a new, cost-effective solution for studios stuck in the peril of new hardware – Escape Studios has cooked up a great solution in the lab comprising an entire suite, bespoke and tailored to anyone who’s looking to jump into it.

Keep an eye on this space for the details of the exclusive new Escape Studio 2K Stereoscopic playback unit: we’ve perfected it and it’s ready for the world.

We’ve just made another free tutorial available to you all: Camera Projection in Nuke is a great opportunity for those of you who want a better understanding of Nuke’s 3D environment.

The step by step video tutorial is taken from our online compositing course, Nuke for 3D artists. It explains how pre-built geometry and textures are used to visualise your final project and bring it to life – a necessary skill for anyone who wants to produce convincing 3D work.

To access the tutorial all you need to do is register or login on our website to access our online learning centre. Once inside, select the ‘FREE AREA’ from the drop down menu in the ‘My Courses’ tab.

Would be great to get feedback from you on what you thought of this tutorial, so please post your comments here.

For those of you considering working in this thriving, dynamic industry, we’re offering a taster into the world of computer graphics with a range of three-day short courses. They’re a great opportunity to get a better understanding of the career opportunities out there while gaining valuable insight into the industry.

The four new taster courses available are: Introduction to 3D using Maya (the leading 3D imaging software), Introduction to Computer Animation, Introduction to Visual Effects and Introduction to Games. They all contain abbreviated content from Escape Studios’ full-time courses and will give you the chance to learn the basics of 3D effects creation while gaining a better understanding of what’s involved in visual effects, character animation and games art with guidance from world-class tutors.

All four short courses cost £399 each, which will be refunded if you sign up to one of our classroom courses – these are typically 12 weeks long and are designed to arm you with the required skills to start your career. We offer a range of courses, so for more information check out the site or speak to our training team.

The Skillset Visual Effects Course is now underway and the work which the guys have produced after just six weeks is incredible!

The Skillset Film Skills Fund invested in our visual effects training, by offering 100% funding for 12 lucky participants. In addition to being fully funded, the selected 12 are also paid the minimum wage throughout their attendance on the course

The Skillset Visual Effects course offers a rich mix of intensive practical training and industry work experience, providing participants with the skills and confidence for career success. Participants receive comprehensive training in the use of Maya and Nuke and learn all of the camera tracking, lighting and compositing skills needed to create visual effects shots to a professional standard.

If you’ve any questions about this course or any other training opportunities, drop Joe Kelly our Training Co-ordinator a line.  Alternatively, stay up to date with the latest  courses and exclusive offers by signing up to our newsletter.

Here’s the fourth step in my Top Down Animation, Work in Progress series. The following video shows my Initial Blocking Pass. In this step I animate just the Root or hips of the character letting the feet just drag along after. I try to only use as few a variables as I need to rough in the action and work out the timing. That way I can change things around quickly and easily. I can indicate the pace of the characters walk by the up and down translation.

Step Four – Blocking:

Again, if you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or send me a Tweet (@Escape_studios)