Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/813438
www.postmagazine.com 27 POST APRIL 2017 www.postmagazine.com 27 POST The Third Floor with the camera and visual effects departments." Floch: "MPC does offer techvis as a service. We present it either in the form of diagrams or anno- tated, split-panel QuickTimes. On Passengers, we did several passes of techvis for the zero-gravity pool sequence. The safety of the actress was dependant on every department wrapping their heads around the resources required for each shot. We included the hydro-crane rig and stunt rigs, and for visual effects we included passes for background plates, green and blue screen place- ment and reverse-engineered passes for practical camera and actress orientation under water. "I've lead techvis efforts to inform department heads and executives which stunt rigs would be used in which shot and for which actor or stand- in. It's common to reverse-engineer some shots for acquisition on a green-screen stage when the actor is suspended by cables or by various stunt rigs. Some shots need to be laid out showing a clear demarcation between digital and practi- cal elements or extensions. Motion-based shots generally require techvis in order to verify the legality of the movement well ahead of the shoot day. There's no shortage of good information thant can be extracted from previs." Brown: "Unfortunately, most of our clients don't require this type of service, so I have never had the need." Burbidge: "Techvis is very much a part of our workflow. Figuring out how to shoot the previs is a natural part of the process, whether it's in depict- ing detailed camera and shooting details through diagrams or QuickTime movies, or helping block and rehearse scenes with our in-house motion cap- ture or virtual camera systems. Our teams also go on set to provide live visualization and simulcam, sometimes actually porting the animation that was worked out in previs to drive physical rigs and camera dollies, and working with the on-set crew to develop shooting solutions on the fly. "We've also been working with our partners in visual effects to ensure data we create in previs can integrate easily into their workflows. There's a real interest in facilitating continuity not just of the creative intent being communicated in the previs but bringing the work from previs more directly all the way through the film. In addition, we've been building tools to integrate virtual reality into our process." What software tools are you using for your previs/postvis work? Smith II: "We primarily use Maya, After Effects, Premiere, ZBrush, Photoshop, Mobu, Nuke, SynthEyes, Unreal and Nx Witness." Frankel: "For previs, our primary tools are Maya and Adobe Premiere. We also make extensive use of Photoshop. For postvis, our primary tools are Maya, Nuke, After Effects and SynthEyes. We occasionally use ZBrush and Blender. And for realtime work, we use Unreal." Floch: "MPCs team use Maya, Photoshop and After Effects extensively in previs. There are a number of packages for UV mapping and tex- ture painting that our asset artists also use, and we have a number of proprietary tools at our disposal. We're finishing up development on a new VR, game engine pipeline. In postvis you can add tracking software like Boujou, SynthEyes or PFMatchIt to that list." Brown: "We use Maya for all of our previs work, and will either cut it together in Premiere or Nuke, depending on whether or not I want to tweak lighting, color or any number of other factors. Ultimately, the software isn't as important, it's the team you're working with that is critical to the success of your project." Burbidge: "The tools we use include off-the-shelf software, like Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder, Adobe After Effects and the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. We also use Nuke for postvis along with various 3D tracking tools. The Third Floor also develops its own proprietary tools, libraries and surrounding pipelines to make our workflow as efficient as we can. We've recently been customiz- ing tools, for example, in Epic's Unreal Engine. In the past few months we've also put a lot of time and resources into building our own custom virtual production technology. We feel it's central to how projects of the future will be made." The Third Floor's previs for Rogue One: A Star Wars Star Wars Star Story.