Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1013519
www.postmagazine.com 7 POST AUGUST 2018 BITS & PIECES TIMBER COMPLETES 'EPIC' COX CAMPAIGN SANTA MONICA, CA — The visual effects team at Timber (www.timber.net) transcends the cinematic experience in Cox Communications' new spot and campaign entitled, Epic Battle. The ambitious spot places viewers right in the midst of an active battle, revealing that the addition of "extras," both in battle scenes and through Cox services, is always an advantage. To elevate the scale, ferocity and cine- matic scope, Timber used crowd simulation software to take 100 extras and make them feel like 1,000. Animated characters blend- ed seamlessly with real ones, along with CG weaponry and digital fire effects, creating a larger-than-life world akin to Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. "In our business, we're used to taking on live-action projects that have very little on screen at first, and our job is to make it feel like it's large in scale," shares Timber creative direc- tor/partner Jonah Hall. "Working with director Paul Middleditch was an exciting experience because he put together a shoot that was al- ready big by any measure. Our job was to make it feel massive. That felt really good because we were starting out on a whole new level." To pull it off, the team at Timber relied on a mix of Houdini as its main software tool, Redshift for rendering and Nuke to complete the compositing. Then, it was all about plan- ning the details. "One of the biggest aspects of this project was creating the crowds and the warriors, run- ning and battling," says Hall. According to Hall, the Lord of the Rings films were really the first to create innovative software tools to help make crowd simulation easier and faster. "At this point, the technology to do some- thing like that is within reach," he notes. "But it's not just the technology. First you figure out, do we have a crowd simulation tool? Then, do we have a renderer that can handle it? You check off all the boxes. But then, you ask, 'How do we get the characters? What do we want them to look like? How many are we going to need?' "I went to Vancouver with the production company while they were shooting and scanned the extras that were in warrior outfits. The scans gave me the model — the color, the picture, the feature and textures — and I sent them back to Timber where our char- acter setup and digital effects supervisor handled it. The next phase would have been a really complicated rigging process, but we have a tool that basically ingests the model, attaches some animation cycles that are open source and within no time we had thousands of them running around. It really just boiled down to having smart people that knew how to get to where we needed to go, quickly." AJA SHIPS KONA CARDS & IO IP WITH NEW DESKTOP SOFTWARE GRASS VALLEY, CA – AJA Video Systems (www.aja.com) has released the KONA HDMI multi-channel HD/single-channel UltraHD HDMI capture card; KONA 1 3G-SDI capture/playback card and the Io IP Thunderbolt 3-equipped video and audio I/O device. Simultaneously, AJA delivered Desktop Software v14.2, which introduces support for KONA HDMI and KONA 1, 10GigE support for 2K/HD video and audio over IP with Io IP, a "Deep Buffer" capture setting in AJA Control Panel and new KONA, Io and T-TAP improvements. KONA HDMI is a flexible HDMI video capture card that supports live streaming, broadcast, production, post, vlogging, video game capture/ streaming, VR, projection mapping, HDR capture/pass-through and more. It enables four simultaneous channels of 2K/HD capture with streaming and switching applications including Telestream Wirecast and vMix, or one channel of 4K/UltraHD up to 60p over HDMI 2.0 using AJA Control Room software for file compatibility with most NLE and effects packages, and oth- er third-party applications. KONA 1 simplifies capture/playback over 3G-SDI in broadcast, post and ProAV. The robust single-channel 3G-SDI 2K/HD 60p I/O PCIe card features standard application plug-ins and supports capture, monitoring and/or play- back with industry-standard applications from AJA, Adobe, Apple, Avid, Telestream and more, in addition to the AJA SDK for developers. The Thunderbolt 3-equipped Io IP provides reliable ingest/output from/to IP networks for 2K/HD/SD video/audio workflows. Local monitoring is supported by 3G-SDI, HDMI 2.0 (including HDR) and analog audio. Compatible with ma- cOS and Windows, Io IP works with production, post, mastering and streaming tools from Apple, Adobe, Avid, Autodesk, Telestream and others. Desktop Software v14.2 includes support for KONA HDMI and KONA 1, 10GigE support for 2K/HD video and audio over IP (uncompressed SMPTE 2022-6/7) with the new Thunderbolt 3-equipped Io IP, a "Deep Buffer" setting in AJA Control Panel for improved handling of storage interruptions during ingest and other enhancements for KONA, Io and T-TAP products. Io 4K Plus, DNxIV and Io IP users benefit from a new feature allowing all eight analog audio channels to be configured for either input, output for full 7.1 ingest/mon- itoring, or a 4-In/4-Out mode or I/O for stereo plus VO and discrete tracks. KONA HDMI ($895 US MSRP), KONA 1 ($595 US MSRP) and Io IP ($2,495 US MSRP) are available now through AJA's worldwide reseller network. Desktop Software v14.2 can now be downloaded for free from AJA's support page (www.aja.com/ support). Kona HDMI