To Blur or Not to Blur

Hey guys! Welcome back for another blog post! This week I found myself wondering about ISO. If you've been following this blog, you may remember I mentioned ISO during my Green Screen Adventure, and while I had come across advice about ISO, I had never actually had the chance to truly figure it out. That left me wondering what exactly ISO is, and what does it stand for? Until now, the only ISO that I knew of was the International Standards Organization, and that didn't relate to photography or video in any way.

I was wrong. That's exactly what ISO stands for: International Standards Organization. Specifically, in photography and videography, it refers to the international standard of measuring the sensitivity to light for film and digital sensors. In the case of actual film, each film was calibrated for a particular intensity of light. This was beneficial for capturing images in different situations from nighttime to daytime, from indoors to outdoors and everything in between. This also enabled more creative license on how pictures could be taken. When photography was in its infancy, the photographer needed to know everything about his camera and how the light entered the unit. It was a far cry from the point and shoot technique so many people employ today. Photography was something taken seriously by those using the camera. Those that practice photography as an art today, aren't much different. And the measurements and settings aren't any different either, they're just Standardized now.

So that's cool right? Some trivia to... well, what good is trivia? What does ISO actually mean? Well, to properly explain that, I should really get into the Exposure Triangle. It's pretty important, and the things in it are very closely related.

Naturally there's three specific things that make up the Exposure Triangle: ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed. Each of these things controls the amount of light that reaches your film, or digital sensor, but they do it in different ways.

The ISO is the amount of light that your sensor (or film) is calibrated to receive. (A point of note: The size of your sensor is arguably more important than the amount of megapixels. A 10 megapixel camera with a large sensor will take cleaner pictures than a 10 megapixel camera with a small sensor.) As I learnt with the green screen, the higher the ISO the more noise in the image, the lower the ISO, the cleaner the image. That sounds like a clear argument for always using the lowest ISO possible, but that's not desirable either. If you have your ISO set low, say 50 or 100, and you're taking a night time picture with no flash, then all you'll get is a clear picture of black. In other words, the clarity of your image depends on the amount of light available. If you're taking a midday picture, then a low ISO will work well. If you're taking a night time picture without a flash, then you're going to want a high ISO to be able to see details in the image. Things to keep in mind for ISO: How much light is available?  And how grainy do you want your image?

There's another word of mystery that I've been coming across: F-Stop. This turns out to be the measurement of Aperture, the second member of our Exposure Triangle. F-Stops are seen as things like f/16 or f11, and refer to the amount of light coming through the lens. See, the aperture itself is the opening of the shutter. When the shutter is more open, then more light comes through, when the shutter isn't open as far, then less light. It's similar to your eyelids, the more open they are, the more light comes in and vice versa.  Just like your eyes, if the aperture isn't open far, you don't have as much depth perception. This means that getting the cool effects like focusing on an object up close and having the background blurred out (bokeh) is largely dependent on your aperture setting. Conversley the aperture setting can be set so things in the distance are in focus, and so are things in the foreground. Thing to keep in mind for Aperture: How much focal length do you want?

The last element of our Exposure Triangle is the Shutter Speed. Simply put: How long is the shutter open for? This can be a tricky one to manage, because the longer the shutter is open, the more blur you're going to get. To counteract that you may want to use a tripod or an image stabilizer. The flip side is the lower the amount of time it's open, the more crisp the image is. For instance, when taking a picture of a bird in flight, if you have a fast shutter speed, you'll be able to see the birds wings frozen in time; but, if you have a slow shutter speed then the birds wings would be a blur. Things to keep in mind for Shutter Speed: Are you trying to capture action? Do you want blur in your image?  Do you have a tripod or stabilizer?

These three things together make up the Exposure Triangle, because they all affect exposure. This means that if you adjust one of them, you're likely to want (or need) to adjust one or both of the others.

In conclusion, the things I've learned from this is that my phones camera isn't as amazing as I thought. Now that I know about this, I just don't feel my phone camera is adequate anymore. :( Though, I have a better grasp on taking photos, using either my phone or an actual camera. I did take some pictures with my phone after reading about this. Here's one:

Reflection For The Day

By the way, since I mentioned it but didn't really explain it, an F-Stop is literally a stop in the sequential list of available aperture settings. Generally one F-Stop will represent double or half the amount of opening compared to the stop beside it. This is similar to the stops used for Shutter Speed.

I've only just scratched the surface of my photography learning. I recommend checking out my sources for further information.

--CGWise
        aka Charlie Griffin

Stick with me and we'll get wise together.

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"To learn and not to do is really not to learn. To know and not to do is really not to know." - Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
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Sources:
https://digital-photography-school.com/iso-settings/
http://www.brighthub.com/multimedia/photography/articles/72927.aspx

Inching Forward

Hi guys! Welcome back to another blog post! In previous posts you've seen many photos that I've taken. They've been edited and manipulated in a variety of ways, and so at the barest minimum, these count as CG. They're significance in regards to CG comes more from style, presentation, direction of the eye, and of course, they can be used as textures! Textures, of course, are in high demand among the CG community, and are a significant part of why I started taking pictures. I have some that I have kept just for textures, but the others, I played around and manipulated.

I have found that I can take pictures of landscapes and natural elements pretty well. At least in my opinion. But the best way to keep your skills sharp is to test yourself with new things, or things that you know are a challenge. So this week I tried a couple of new things.

I have found that taking pictures of animals or people is particularly difficult. I haven't yet figured out why, but I just can't find the pop factor with them. Below you can see one of my attempts in this. It's a better quality picture now than the original photo, but I can't really say it's something that I want to keep looking at. It's a cute dog, but really it's a "pass the eyes over, and keep on going" picture...

Branching out into a different form of digital manipulation, I decided to try out the Oilify technique. I'm quite pleased with these results, but they're still just nature scenes.

Into the Veil

Cloud Walk

Path to the Bright Side

Andrew at BlenderGuru put himself on a mission to improve his skills, and seems to regularly rekindle this mission. I have to give him credit for inspiring me to do the same. I can legitimately say that I wouldn't be the artist I am today if it hadn't been for him. So, while I sincerely thank him for this gift, I also call all of you to action. Look at your skills, whether it's art or otherwise. Are you the best in the world? Not likely...There's always room to grow and improve. So find the skills that are truly a passion of yours and work with them. Amplify them. Bring yourself to new heights. It's well worth the investment.

-- Charlie Griffin
                       for CGWise
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"To learn and not to do, is really not to learn. To know and not to do, is really not to know."

- Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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Green Screen Adventure: Part 2

Hi guys! Welcome back to another blog post! This week, I'm going to continue the Green Screen discussion that I began last week.

So, let's just say the difference between having an actual green screen and not having one was like night and day. The way that a green screen captures the light is so very different from a sheet or a tarp.

As you can see, the difference between the sheet and the green screen is quite dramatic. Additionally, the way the green screen looks through the camera is very different than it looks to the naked eye! In the picture you can see that the green is very brilliant(though badly lit), however to the naked eye, the green screen looks like it's just a matte, unremarkable green. Don't get me wrong, it's still very green, but it's just green in a fabric like way. I don't really know how to explain how the green really appears when not being viewed that way, but it was possible to get this more dull view through the camera:

So, I set up the green screen, and that was great and all, but I still needed the answer to the big question. Would it edit? I shot my footage and popped it on to the computer. At first, I was not impressed. It was the best footage I had gotten so far, but I still had shadow problems. And when I tried to get rid of those, I was erasing my actress... So I changed the lighting and tried again. Same problem. Oh well, I was running out of time. I was just going to have to deal with the visual noise. So I continued with the edit, and other than the noise, the edit was going good. Until... I lost the project! My definition of not impressed changed a bit at that point.

I still had the footage, so I started over again. Surprisingly, having to start from scratch really turned out to be the best thing for the project. When I edited out the green screen, it actually went away like it was supposed to! Hardly any extra effort. So what was different? What had I changed between the original and the restart? The amount of shadow in my sample!

After that it was smooth sailing. I ended up with a good product and a good learning lesson.

Some tips I learned:

1) Use a non-textured, matte surface. Shiny surfaces produce highlights which are hard to key out. The general advice given if you have poor green screen footage, is to filter it multiple times. Having tried this, I can testify that the sharp highlights caused by a tarp do not come out this way. At least, not without wiping your talent from the screen.

2) You want your background to be as close to one solid color as possible. This way it's easier to key out without keying out the talent at the same time.

3) If the screen is dark, then find a way to light it up. Obviously, you need to do this without affecting the lighting on your talent. Depending on the thickness of the screen you can light it from behind, or from the front along the side, or the top. Do your best to avoid varying shades of green in your screen, and avoid shadows cast by your talent or anything else in front of the screen. Be careful to avoid "hotspots" if you're choosing to light from behind.

4) Obviously, a proper green muslin backdrop designed for this purpose is best.

 5) When doing the actual edit, it's best to select the darker areas of shadow when keying out the green. Doing so makes it easier to hit the right spectrum of green to get rid of the shadows.

One final bit of advice that I learned too late, and so didn't get to try: Lower the ISO setting on your camera as far as you possibly can. The higher the ISO, the more noise or "snow" you get. So in theory, the lower your ISO the cleaner your green screening will be. I didn't get the chance to film this way. So I can't verify the accuracy. However in a little bit of experimentation, I did discover that lowering the ISO resulted in a much darker image on the camera. So I guess if you lower the ISO, it's doubly important to pay attention to the lighting.

All in all, it was a rewarding experience, and I was glad that I kept the talent far enough away from the screen to avoid the spill. (That's the reflected light from the screen around the edge of the talent.) As it was, I had a fair amount of spill anyway. Unfortunately I had to shoot (and edit) multiple times, but now I know from practical experience what to do. The Internet can only get you so far after all. ;)

--CGWise
        aka Charlie Griffin

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"To learn and not to do, is really not to learn. To know and not to do, is really not to know."

- Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

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Green Screen Adventure: Part 1

Hi guys! Welcome back for another blog post!

So, this week I've been working on a Green Screen project. This was my first time working with a green screen, and I wasn't sure what to expect. When I was first approached for the project, I was a little intimidated by the idea. However, I embraced it as a valuable opportunity to expand my skill set, and promptly started researching it. The Internet gave me the how to's and showed how easy it would be to do. My mind was put at ease, my client was happy, and I was happy. I happened to have a green tarp that was still in the package, so I opted to use that. Again, the Internet told me that would work, and it would be easy.

I set up the screen, set up my lights, got my talent into the studio and recorded. Everyone was happy.

Then I fired up my trusty Lightworks and actually tried to do the edit. I was not so happy. I was able to apply the green screen effect, but I just could not get it cleaned up.

I decided to try different backdrops. I tried a green sheet, and I tried a light blue sheet. Both came out looking virtually identical to each other, and rather grey. And neither cleaned up very nice. I changed the lighting so the sheet was better lit, and that improved things, but still wasn't great. Next, I tried a navy blue sheet, and that worked so much better! But... I still had to key it twice, and it resulted in an outline around my talent. I added lighting to eliminate the outline, but that caused too much variance in the colour, so I took it back out. I settled that the navy was best, made sure the sheet was as wrinkle free as possible, and the lighting was even. I was satisfied I had a very good screen. Unfortunately, after all of this, I attempted to chroma key the footage from this screen, and... disaster! The screen was now dark enough that I was chroma keying out shadows in the hair, and the pupils of the eye! I decided it was time for a real green screen.

I'll see how it turns out this weekend!

Recent Art

Hey Guys! Welcome back to another blog post! This one is kind of a bonus unscheduled one. 😊

Over the last few weeks, I haven't been putting much art up here. I would like to include art in each post, but the art I've been making hasn't correlated very well with the subject material. So here's some of the stuff I've put together over the last little while:

Experiments in animation:

The Oasis Windflower

A Bouncy Ball

A Rotating Canadian Penny

The results of a photo walk:

Historical Beauty

Sun Blossom

Tower of Babylon

Devouring the Sun

Steeple Odyssey

Pretty in Pink

And the beauty of the night:

Fully Through the Void

A Fantastic Night

Enjoy your voyages wherever they may lead you!

The Passion of the Art

Hey guys! Welcome back to another blog post! I've done a bit of reading, watching videos and listening to podcasts, and I'm noticing a couple of common questions out there in the world.

1) How do you stay motivated to finish a project and start new ones?
2) When do you know a project is done?

I've got some thoughts on the matter, but they are purely my opinion. That said, the first question kind of confuses me. Let's look at the term CG Artist. CG is really the lesser component of that term. That's why it can be shortened. That's why it's possible for some people not to know what it stands for. The second portion though is what holds the answer. Everyone knows what an Artist is, they're a person that makes art! But, what does an artist do? That is a question many people don't understand. If art can cover classical painting, music, literature or CG, then clearly an artist isn't just moving a paintbrush around. Ultimately an artist creates pictures. Pictures in the audiences mind. But, not just any pictures. I could describe to you the fibres of the carpet on the floor, they're gray and bristly. That puts a picture in your mind, but it doesn't matter. It has no meaning, no feeling. Now if I describe sitting on a crowded bus watching a mother feel helpless as her baby cries, that starts to bring up feelings. For some it might be sympathy, for some it might be irritation. Now we start to get involved in the mental picture. As an artist, that's what we do. With our chosen mediums we reach into your heart, mind and soul to elicit a reaction. It's our way of connecting to each and every one of you. Most say that art is a form of expression, but for an artist it's really our passion. You can't touch someone's soul without sharing some of yours.

People are passionate by nature. You can't stop us from expressing it. Sex is an obvious expression of passion, but it's really a small one. It takes place in a moment in time. But the love we have for our partners, that lasts for an extended time. So do our religious beliefs, and our political viewpoints. How often do you hear people around you complaining about things people are doing, or the state of global affairs, or even the weather? Every time we form an opinion on something, that's an expression of passion. Passion is in everything we do. For an artist, we choose to express that passion through art. Being that it's a passion, it's unstoppable, and so it's always there for an artist to express. So, my thought is that if you're having trouble staying motivated you need to ask yourself, why is it important to be motivated for this? Is it something that is truly your passion? Or would your efforts be best used on a different interest? Another good thing to understand is, are you doing this because you want to? Or is it because it's a job?

"Whatever you're going to do, be the absolute best at it. I think ultimately, it always works out in the end." - Ryan Flaherty (in The Tim Ferriss Show: #238: The Savant of Speed)

In regards to how to know when a piece is finished, that also depends on whether this is Your Art or your Job. If it's your job, then the answer is simple. Ask two questions: How close are you to the deadline? And is it good enough for the client? A deadline plays a very significant role in how the piece is planned, designed, composited, and refined. With the deadline in mind, you still have to make sure that it conveys the message and / or feeling that the client is aiming for. But the level of refinement can be cut short at "good enough." The other side of good enough though is, if you have a lot more time before the deadline, have you given it enough effort? If you've got the play in your schedule, feel free to improve the expression of the piece.

If you're doing this because it's Your Art, then it's all up to you. If you're getting bored with the piece, then you're not giving it your passion anymore. It's time to stop. Your passion for the project is ultimately your barometer for when you deem a piece complete. Does it tell the story you want to tell? Does it express the feeling you were aiming for? These are guiding questions, but your passion ultimately holds the bar.

May the Fourth be with you!

Hey guys! Welcome back to another blog post!

A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away....

STAR WARS

MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU

A BRIEF REVIEW OF CG

George Lucas created a masterpiece which would inspire millions of people in a variety of ways. Amongst the CG industry the Star Wars films are considered to have raised the bar on CG, especially early on. When Star Wars: A New Hope was released CG was not yet commonly adopted in the movie industry. When looking at the original films through the lens of CG, one might assume that most of the films were CG. After all, there's space ships, robots, laser fire, and... light sabers. And while all of those were VFX marvels in their own right, none of those were CG in the original releases. So where was the CG? In A New Hope, a Death Star simulation was used in General Akbar's briefing. This was done in CG and is credited to Larry Cuba. However Larry Cuba was not a one man team. You'll find that Dan O'Bannon, Jay Teitzell, and John C. Wash were also computer animators for the original movie of the series. Surprisingly, that is all for the original releases. Until this time in cinema history, there were relatively few examples of Computer Graphics, so while it may seem minimal to our modern minds, it was in fact revolutionary for it's time. Mr. Lucas has said in interviews that he was waiting for technology to catch up to his vision. In the 1997 rerelease, ILM(Industrial Light & Magic) was brought on board and many things were reworked and done in CG to bring the films closer to George Lucas' vision.

You can watch this little documentary on the topic here:
https://youtu.be/yMeSw00n3Ac

More recently Rogue One: A Star Wars Story raised this CG bar again by resurrecting an actor from the dead to play Grand Moff Tarkin. In this age, computers are often used to generate digital doubles of actors or their body parts. But the reason why doubles have always worked throughout film history is because they only have to look close enough to the original to be convincing in silhouette, or distance, or other camera trickery. In the case of Grand Moff Tarkin, there is no "good enough," it had to actually look like the actor. This is an impressive feat, and one that brings the art dangerously close to the uncanny valley. Perhaps ILM actually did overstep that boundary in this film. You be the judge. This is not the first example of bringing the dead back to life on film, but it is the most extensive. Other examples include films such as Gladiator, and 7th installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise. It's even been done in commercials.

Of course there has been SO much CG used in the Star Wars series. Much, much more could be ( and has been ) said on the topic.

Star Wars continues to be a trend setter, and promises to keep doing so. But more importantly it continues to have a huge impact on our culture and aspirations.

May the Force be with you!