Visual effects and computer graphics have become an integral part of our lives. Today anyone can study the mysterious and magical world post-production and become an expert in this field. The tips below will help you level up your VFX and CGI knowledge.
This is fairly obvious advice, but beginners very often ignore it. The habit of looking and analyzing should become part of the work process or training. After watching a film with cool visual effects, watch it again, but not as a viewer, but as a specialist. Try to find mistakes and problems, there are actually a lot of them. Analyze how the frame was created, how it was lit, and why it was done that way.
Copy
Try to repeat frames from your favorite films or videos. Of course, I was working on creating one cool shot cool team artists. But I am sure that most of the shots can be recreated with a minimum budget. The task is to create something similar with a minimum budget and maximum quality. Remember, you are doing this in the interest of your professional development. As a result, these works will fit perfectly into the portfolio, and they can be published on behance.
Who am I?
When you watch Hollywood's acclaimed CGI blockbuster, remember that a team of professionals worked on every frame. Each team member did one highly specialized job. One group modeled while the other lit the models, some painted the environments, some animated the characters, and some did the compositing, blurring the line between reality and the CG world. If everyone did everything, the result would be disastrous.
Therefore, it is important to decide what your soul is about. What are you willing to do for 10-12 hours a day without regretting a single second spent on work? You can choose several directions for yourself, but it is important to highlight the primary ones and, if possible, tighten up the rest.
Learn the Basics
Being a highly specialized expert is important, but you need to understand the entire process of creating a visual piece. If your job is to rig characters, then you need to understand and know how those characters were modeled, how best to light them, and how they will be composed with the footage. Basic knowledge in each of these areas will give you a huge boost to development.
Chat and meet experts
Go to CG and film related events. Of course, there are very few of them in the CIS, but when they happen, real visual effects sharks gather there.
It's never too late to learn or how to save a few years
A few years ago, it was believed that only a select few could become a VFX artist. In fact, that's how it was. Only the most diligent and persistent could find the valuable information they needed and spend hours studying programs through trial and error. Now everything is exactly the opposite. There is so much information that you could spend your entire life watching tutorials alone. But you won't get that far.
The only one the right way There will be training from professionals. Only under the supervision of a master will a student conquer the heights of the CGI industry.
The only question is where to go to study?
There is only one answer here - to the best masters of your business. For example, take studio courses TerminalFX, just look at them portfolio to understand how cool the teachers work there.
The money spent on training will pay off tens, if not thousands of times. The field of computer graphics is only gaining momentum and specialists are always needed here.
Material from Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia
CGI studios
One of the first computer graphics studios was the American company Industrial Light & Magic, founded by George Lucas in 1975. ILM revolutionized the concept of visual effects in films.
See also
Write a review about the article "CGI (graphics)"
Notes
Literature
- Boris Mashkovtsev(Russian) // Film equipment and technologies: magazine. - 2006. - No. 2.
- Kerlow, I.V.. - 2004. - 451 p. - ISBN 0471430366.
| This is a preliminary article about cinema. |
| This is a preliminary article about computer graphics. You can help the project by adding to it. |
An excerpt describing CGI (graphics)
Princess Marya knelt in front of her and hid her face in the folds of her daughter-in-law's dress.- Here, here - do you hear? It's so strange to me. And you know, Marie, I will love him very much,” said Lisa, looking at her sister-in-law with sparkling, happy eyes. Princess Marya could not raise her head: she was crying.
- What's wrong with you, Masha?
“Nothing... I felt so sad... sad about Andrey,” she said, wiping her tears on her daughter-in-law’s knees. Several times throughout the morning, Princess Marya began to prepare her daughter-in-law, and each time she began to cry. These tears, for which the little princess did not understand the reason, alarmed her, no matter how little observant she was. She didn’t say anything, but looked around restlessly, looking for something. Before dinner, the old prince, whom she had always been afraid of, entered her room, now with a particularly restless, angry face, and without saying a word, he left. She looked at Princess Marya, then thought with that expression in her eyes of attention directed inward that pregnant women have, and suddenly began to cry.
– Did you receive anything from Andrey? - she said.
- No, you know that the news could not come yet, but mon pere is worried, and I’m scared.
- So nothing?
“Nothing,” said Princess Marya, radiant eyes looking firmly at his daughter-in-law. She decided not to tell her and persuaded her father to hide the receipt of terrible news from her daughter-in-law until her permission, which was supposed to be the other day. Princess Marya and the old prince, each in their own way, wore and hid their grief. The old prince did not want to hope: he decided that Prince Andrei had been killed, and despite the fact that he sent an official to Austria to look for his son’s trace, he ordered a monument to him in Moscow, which he intended to erect in his garden, and told everyone that his son was killed. He tried to lead his previous lifestyle without changing, but his strength failed him: he walked less, ate less, slept less, and became weaker every day. Princess Marya hoped. She prayed for her brother as if he were alive and waited every minute for news of his return.
“Ma bonne amie, [My good friend,”] said the little princess on the morning of March 19th after breakfast, and her sponge with mustache rose according to an old habit; but just as in all not only smiles, but the sounds of speeches, even the gaits in this house since the day the terrible news was received, there was sadness, so now the smile of the little princess, who succumbed to the general mood, although she did not know its reason, was such that she reminded me even more of general sadness.
- Ma bonne amie, je crains que le fruschtique (comme dit Foka - the cook) de ce matin ne m "aie pas fait du mal. [My friend, I’m afraid that the current frishtik (as the cook Foka calls it) will make me feel bad. ]
-What’s wrong with you, my soul? You're pale. “Oh, you’re very pale,” said Princess Marya in fear, running up to her daughter-in-law with her heavy, soft steps.
- Your Excellency, should I send for Marya Bogdanovna? - said one of the maids who was here. (Marya Bogdanovna was a midwife from county town, who has been living in Bald Mountains for another week.)
“And indeed,” Princess Marya picked up, “perhaps for sure.” I'll go. Courage, mon ange! [Don't be afraid, my angel.] She kissed Lisa and wanted to leave the room.
- Oh, no, no! - And besides the pallor, the little princess’s face expressed a childish fear of inevitable physical suffering.
- Non, c"est l"estomac... dites que c"est l"estomac, dites, Marie, dites..., [No, this is the stomach... tell me, Masha, that this is the stomach...] - and the princess began to cry childishly, painfully, capriciously and even somewhat feignedly, wringing his little hands. The princess ran out of the room after Marya Bogdanovna.
- Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! [My God! Oh my God!] Oh! – she heard behind her.
CGI(English) computer-generated imagery, lit. " computer generated image") - special effects in cinema, television and simulations created using three-dimensional computer graphics. IN computer games Typically, real-time computer graphics are used, but in-game videos that use CGI are occasionally added.
CGI allows you to create effects that cannot be achieved with traditional makeup and animatronics, and can replace sets and the work of stuntmen and extras.
Story
For the first time in feature film computer graphics were used in Westworld, released in 1973. In the second half of the 1970s, films using elements of three-dimensional computer graphics appeared, including “Future World”, “ Star wars" and "Alien". Jurassic Park (1993) was the first to use CGI to replace a stuntman, and the same film was the first to combine CGI (the skin and muscles of the dinosaurs were created using computer graphics) with traditional filming and animatronics.
The first one was released in 1995 full-length cartoon, completely computer-generated - "Toy Story".
The film "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Us" (2001) featured realistic CGI images of people for the first time.
On the one hand, the OpenSceneGraph engine itself has a developed subsystem for managing windows, processing user input events, sending and receiving user messages. We talked about this in some detail in previous articles in this series. In general, combined with the capabilities of C++/STL, this is quite enough to develop arbitrarily complex applications.An example of OSG integration into an application, developed in QtDesigner. This example will be discussed in detail below.
On the other hand, to speed up development in C++, both third-party libraries are used that expand the capabilities of this language (like boost), and entire frameworks that allow you to easily and naturally develop cross-platform applications with wide functional purposes. One such framework is the ultra popular Qt. No matter how Qt is criticized for its meta-object compiler and other shortcomings and inconveniences, the strength of Qt is in its extensive class library, which solves all conceivable problems of cross-platform development, as well as in the “signals-slots” concept, which implements a messaging subsystem between classes. Methods of interaction between an application and the operating system, as well as interprocess communication, are also based on signals and slots.
And, damn it, it would be very interesting to combine two technologies: Qt and OSG. My team had to solve a similar problem, which I already wrote about in. However, I would like to expand on this question a little more widely, and this article will be on this topic.