A motion graphic animation for a major Australian financial company. Creative direction by E-2

Because the schedule was quite tight, E-2 wanted to use a purchased stock footage instead of spending time creating everything from scratch. Not completely satisfied I made my own test with me creating a similar effect as the stock video used with Trapcode Particular.

Tic Tacs

My Attempt at the 3D pixellated effect

I am working on this to expand it into a more meaningful piece. Man, that GI takes ages to render! So stay tuned.

This one was quite a bit of a learning experience for me. I wanted to test the shatter simulation plugin in Cinema 4D called Xbreaker 1.7 made by nitroman of Pariah Studios, but soon it became a little test of multipass rendering. The depth of field and motion blur was added in post using depth pass and motion vector passes (respectively) out of cinema 4D and into After Effects. And also managed to setup Cinema 4D plugin in After Effects so that it could read AE projects generated by Cinema 4D. This is awesome because it can export full 3D information of the lights and cameras. Saves a lot of hassle. And I added the sound effects from a little collection that I have using Garageband, just because I am very familiar with it and know my way around quite well.

Just testing out the clothildle cloth simulations in Cinema 4D. In context this could be some pieces of cloth/paper flying around randomly in the scene (in a barren deserted city for example).

Some more results from my Cinema 4D journey. Learnt a lot of things from this one. I followed Rob Redman’s C4D Basics: Reflections and Global Illumination tutorial to do this.

The way I like to follow tutorials is that I like to follow the classroom approach. I watch a tutorial to it’s completion, while taking quick notes on things I find interesting or things that are new to me. Then I try to do it later by myself. If I have a problem or run into a wall, I go back to the specific point in the tutorial and find out the particular information and quickly get back. I find this method way better than following the tutorials step by step.

I’ve been trying out Cinema 4D these days and finding  out that it’s a very powerful software. Especially for it’s dynamics/awesome instancing feature called MoGraph. Here’s something I came up with after following the tutorial on Maxon’s Youtube Channel.

I just received the Images and Word: Live in Tokyo/5 Years In A Livetime double-feature DVD by Dream Theater on the main today from Amazon. I was quite happy that I got the DVD on Amazon for less than half the retail price on the stores, but it didn’t come without any catch. I popped the DVD in and turns out to be a region1 disc (instead of region4 in Australia)! Anyway, thanks to my experience with these kind of stuff, I quickly figured out a solution that worked. Yay!

This DVD is seriously something all Dream Theater fans must have. I especially love the DVD commentary that goes on throughout the entire two discs by the whole band together. And there are some real funny bits in there. Just that in itself makes up for the trouble I guess.

My new Apple iMac I ordered from the Apple Online Store arrived exactly in one month. After finishing Billy Blue, I needed to buy a new capable computer for my work and experiments in motion design and was deliberating on buying a powerful PC workstation. The new Intel quad core processor the Core i7 have just been released I knew that was the processor I would be going for. I didn’t want to buy another laptop because they can only be so much powerful and if I was buying a new computer I would pack all the power possible into it. The other option was a Mac Pro with a quad core 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon “Nehalem” processor which is an awesome piece of machine but just too expensive at over A$4000 for the base configuration. So the only option I could see was a custom PC, probably with the Core i7 920. Atleast I could then play all the games that are not available on the Mac like Grand Theft Auto 4. But in the back of my mind I wasn’t looking forward to switching back to Windows operating system having been so used to Mac OS X for such a long time.

That was exactly when Apple released their amazing refresh on the aluminium iMacs. There were five models:

• 21.5″ 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo
• 21.5″ 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo with ATI Radeon 4670
• 27″ 3.06 GHz Core 2 Duo with ATI Radeon 4670 (with an option for ATI Radeon 4850)
• 27″ 2.66 GHz Core i5 with ATI Radeon 4850
• 27″ 2.8 GHz Core i7 with ATI Radeon 4850

I was particularly excited with the the highend model with the Core i7. Together with the model with Core i5, it was the first quad core iMac and it was a beauty, especially for the price of A$2,881 (with 4 GB of RAM). It was arguably a workstation Apple computer priced very competitively with PC workstations.

Here are the things I like about it:

Processor: Intel 2.8 GHz Core i7-860 “Lynnfield”

The new line of Intel Core i7 processors are just legendary. Built on the new 42 nm Nehalem micro-architecture, they have several new features than the older Core 2 Duo/Quads or the older Xeons (the newer  Xeons are also built on the Nehalem micro-architecture).

• Multi Threading
  Each of the the four cores enables two threads which act like virtual cores, making the processor have 8 cores in total.
• Turboboost
  Multiple cores are really useful for most things I do, such as rendering comps in After Effects or rendering out a scene in Maya but when I things like browse the internet or watch movies, there is little use for the multiple cores. In cases like these, the processor dynamically shuts down the unused cores and overclocks one or two remaining core to 3.6 GHz  (Infact the Lynnfields boost five multiplier steps, higher than two additional steps of Bloomfield).
• Direct Media Interface
  Replacing the Front Side Bus technology, Intel Direct Media Interface establishes much faster, higher bandwidth communication between the processor and the memory and the motherboard or logicboard in Apple lingo (although it lacks the Intel QPI and triple-channel memory in its big brother Bloomfield).

27″ Monitor

The 27″ monitor is really one of its kind. First of all, it’s just huge, almost comically. It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever worked on. Not that it’s just physically big, it can display at 2560×1440 resolution, the same horizontal resolution as the 30″ Apple Cinema Display. It uses IPS technology and LED backlighting which results in perfect representation of colors, just what I needed.

Magic Mouse

Magic mouse is, for those not familiar, world first multitouch mouse. The whole top part of the mouse is a multitouch sensor and it  only comes wireless. Apart from looking awesomely sleek, it’s also lot of fun to use. Especially for browsing the internet or reading documents.Whenever you need to scroll a lot (thanks to it’s momentum scrolling). The only drawback of the mouse is that unlike the Mighty Mouse (which was quite annoying to use), it does not feature a middle-mouse button. This isn’t really a big drawback for most people, but I happen to use Autodesk Maya where the middle mouse button is pretty much essential. But being a multitouch mouse this problem isn’t very difficult to fix, a firmware update could add a middle mouse button to equation but it something like that hasn’t been released by Apple yet. I guess I’ll just use my Microsoft Standard mouse (which is quite good for the price) whenever I use Maya until someone fixes the problem.

Anyway, I am loving Here are some more pictures of it:

Yep. 5th December 2009. That definitely a date to remember for me. My first Dream Theater show! I was looking forward to it ever since I found out about it sometime October.

Doors opened at 7 PM and got myself a Dream Theatre TShirt and a wristband \m/. I got in quite early and I the pit was filled up with about 10 rows of people. On the stage were instruments, amplifiers that lacked the hugeness associated with DT (Portnoy’s huge drum set, Myung and Petrucci’s massive amplifier cabs). Behind them was a black curtain suspended from above which obscured the rest of the stage. Having watched videos of them in BC&SL tour in Youtube I knew the DT gear were behind it.

Pain of Salvation came on to stage and started making jokes about the fact that they were from Sweden and the fact they drove a long time to get to Sydney (he then proceeded to add the fact that they drove from Brisbane not Sweden, because it isn’t possible to drive from Sweden to Australia). A soon as they started to play their first riff and vocalist Daniel Gildenlöw started to give out a shrill, energy started flowing and heads started banging. Most people not being familiar with Pain of Salvation (me included) people couldn’t sing along but the energy was there. But there were a group of people who had come to specifically see Pain of Salvation. I didn’t actually see them but I found out later was a group of Pain of Salvation fans with self-made Pain of Salvation t-shirts.

After Pain of Salvation finished their set, they proceeded backstage and their equipment is swiftly frisked away by the crew. Petrucci’s guitar tech brings Petrucci’s massive pedal board and places on stage right (his usual position). He brings a shiny Musicman John Petrucci BFR Signature Model guitar and does a final check before the show. Petrucci’s two footrests (for him to rest his foot while he plays billion notes per second, ) come in and the rig is complete. While the rig is being fixed an amazing acoustic cover of As I Am with a female vocalist is played through the PA system to the delight of many fans who sing along. Later, back from the concert I learn that they were Pipo and Elo and the fact that they play it on every show in the BC&SL tour. I’m a fan. Check it out:

As I Am – Pipo and Elo

The crew finish setting up and leave the stage. After a few minutes of nothing, suddenly a sound of thunder fills the entire place. To the fans ofcourse this is the opening of Nightmare To Remember and people start cheering. Soon Rudess’ twangy chorus-laden piano starts off, with the curtain still in its place and no sign of any band members. The suspense is chilling. Another couple of cracks of thunder and the curtain falls off with the crunch of Petrucci’s guitar revealing the band. Portnoy’s huge shiny drum kit is definitely the first thing anyone notices. Couple of bars later Myung’s throbbing bass combined with Portnoy’s relentless double-bass fill the sonic spectrum. That is when it hits you, “I am watching Dream Theater LIVE!” Having been used to watching Dream Theater on DVD in my tiny Macbook, the fact that they are actually right in front of you (I was at about 7th row from the front, almost directly in front of Petrucci) needs getting used to. I mean Petrucci was less than 100 metres away from me!!!

The show was rocking awesome. I am a big fan of Dream Theatre and for the past 6 months, that’s all I’ve been listening to. They songs are great, turns out they are even better live; didn’t know that was even possible! Their intricate drumwork, odd time signatures (I have to say it isn’t as easy to headband to odd time signatures, you’ll feel you’re constantly out of time), guitar and keyboard solos that seem to border vulgar display of power and powerful basslines driving the rhythm sections when Petrucci and Rudess are busy delivering a barrage of notes.

Here’s the setlist from the show

• Nightmare to Remember
• A Right of Passage
• Hollow Years
• Keyboard Solo
• Prophets of War
• The Mirror
• Lie
• Wither
• The Dance of Eternity
• One Last Time
• Solitary Shell
• In the Name of God
• Encore: The Count of Tuscany

Here are some Excerpts from the show, thanks to rufusdisturbed.

This one is solo excerpt from In The Name of God (from Train of Thought). Just witness the Majesty (pun intended, LOL) of Dream Theatre with that guitar/keyboard unison solo and when they come to the main riff after it and Portnoy is playing the drums standing up. Amazing!

Here another part of the same song when Portnoy gets off this throne (another Majesty pun LOL! For people not familiar with DT, they were known as Majesty before they were big, but had to change their name because of copyright issues) improvises on this cymbals from the stage.

And here’s Dance of Eternity, just an amazing song.

And here’s Nightmare To Remember opening the whole concert with the curtains fall down with the guitar thing: