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Post by evilengine on Mar 2, 2023 11:41:43 GMT -5
Other than surviving Covid (still having problems walking but getting better) I have been busy in a new genre of film making, called "Virtual Production" which you might be familiar with if you watched the Mandalorian or even any Marvel film in the last few years. It is basically taking a virtual 3D environment created in software such as Unreal Engine, and having these environments rendered on large arrays of LED monitors. This gives the illusion the actors are actually in these scenes and not just acting on a green screen. Advantages to this are many, but the main ones are the environmental lighting from the monitors actually give off the light that helps make it look like the person and other real assets in the scene feel like they are actually being there. No reason to fake lighting . Best part it helps the actor perform as they don't have to pretend and focus more on the script and acting. Now some of you might remember, I have been working with Unreal Engine since 98 making characters, weapons, vehicles and environments for mods and personal game projects. Never did I know this type of knowledge would be precious gold to movie companies , small and large, to make movies. So I've been working with a small indie called Roninfilm for the last 3-4 yrs now making our own films and teaching other film makers and schools how virtual production works since it is still new to alot of people. So now we work with other big companies who produce some of the biggest films in the industry and small indies so too can build a VAD team (visual art dept) and use the large LED arrays that are becoming more common now, companies such as Magnolia studios have spent millions in thier own custom high DPI arrays for better color and sharper realism. Here is some videos showing some of the Unreal Engine work I have done over the years. Even produced a Super Bowl commercial for a solar company, which was fun. Heres some vids of our "breakdowns" on Roninfilm's youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@roninfilmvirtualproduction7745/videosHere is some commercial work I did with Brandstar Studios last year:
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 2, 2023 12:37:26 GMT -5
Thats awesome! Sorry to hear about the Long COVID issues.
Speaking of video editing I just in the last week switched from VideoPad (I know I know....) to DaVinci Resolve. I tried Sony Vegas like 6 years ago and it was waaaaay too complicated for someone who just wanted to put PUBG videos on YouTube. I got a GoPro recently and the limitations of VideoPad basically forced me to move on.
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Post by evilengine on Mar 2, 2023 12:42:39 GMT -5
DaVinci Resolve is the goto now by all the pros in the industry, its that good.
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 2, 2023 16:00:08 GMT -5
DaVinci Resolve is the goto now by all the pros in the industry, its that good. I got one of those fancy Macbook Airs with the M1 chips but VideoPad Mac is still programmed for Intel so you have to use the Rosetta 2 emulator for it so that limits the chip to 70-80% of its theoretical performance, plus VideoPad Mac doesn't support GPU at all. I also own a PC with a 2020 i7-10875h 32 gigs RAM and a 2070 Super but for fun I wanted to do one of my YouTube videos on my Mac. My project was just 6 4k30fps mp4 files between 3-11 gigs in size equaling a little over an hour of filming. I needed to combine them and export H.265 4k30fps. Beyond simple compared to the professional jobs you do. I went with the highest quality settings I knew in VideoPad and hit Export. VideoPad Mac glitched out so bad that it took 24 hours to export that job using 15-20% of the CPU cores on the M1 and no GPU at all. That is not a typo. A fucking DAY to export an hour of 4k30 video. Rather then hit cancel in disgust I let the job finish. The Macbook Air has no fan and uses the metal case as a heatsink but it wasn't even warm to the touch. Room temperature. I let the job finish and it spit out a 27 Gig mp4 file that looked great no skips or visible issues after a fucking day. lol. I had no idea how to use DaVinci Resolve but I downloaded the native Mac M1 version and loaded up my 6 video files. I created a new Timeline out of them and hit export with the highest quality settings. Using the M1s GPU in 40 minutes I had a 24 gig mp4 file. I did not do a frame by frame comparison but it looked the same as the VideoPad project to my eyes. I'm still very new to Resolve but I plan on using it from now on. Do most of the companies you work for use PC or Mac?
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Post by evilengine on Mar 2, 2023 16:39:44 GMT -5
For content and final pixel we use pcs with Quadro or other GPUs with high amounts of video memory. I personally use an A6000 because I need all that memory I can get for the Unreal world building and real-time rendering. Ironically most video editors come from a Mac background and stubbornly continue to stick with that platform and they get by just fine, unless they too run into large jobs that requires GPU acceleration and 8K final pixel production. Virtual production commonly uses 8k and higher video renders for the super high res monitor arrays and its pretty hard to do that on a little mac book.
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Post by ForRealTho on Mar 3, 2023 9:30:32 GMT -5
For content and final pixel we use pcs with Quadro or other GPUs with high amounts of video memory. I personally use an A6000 because I need all that memory I can get for the Unreal world building and real-time rendering. Ironically most video editors come from a Mac background and stubbornly continue to stick with that platform and they get by just fine, unless they too run into large jobs that requires GPU acceleration and 8K final pixel production. Virtual production commonly uses 8k and higher video renders for the super high res monitor arrays and its pretty hard to do that on a little mac book. I do IT an I just sent off some Dell Xeon servers to surplus last week. They had some Quatro P2000s, if I wanted I could have slipped one out of the back and took it home and played with it for fun but naw. Maybe next time I will try and convince my boss to let me.
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Post by Cop on Mar 4, 2023 13:15:55 GMT -5
Lol, this is the next video in line
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Post by evilengine on Mar 4, 2023 21:55:36 GMT -5
Lmao yup. Im in Detroit and when I made these vids I was working for a Florida company, which this company Power Home Solar hired to do the commercial. Turns out here in Detroit that company lied and manipulated alot of customers. They coincidently changed their name to Pink Power, didn't work because women found the owner to be very creepy. I think they are out of business now. Oh well, I still got paid for my work
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Post by Cop on Mar 5, 2023 9:28:08 GMT -5
Seems like you ended up getting paid for what you liked doing for free anyways, so good on you. We're not all so lucky. Best of luck with the covid too. Didn't anyone tell you that's all made up? There's nothing wrong with you, it's just a cold
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Post by Emig5m on Mar 6, 2023 0:07:19 GMT -5
DaVinci Resolve is the goto now by all the pros in the industry, its that good. Bleh...Vegas Video Pro FTW. But shit, anything but lame-ass Adobe products FTW I guess...
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Post by Emig5m on Mar 6, 2023 0:12:06 GMT -5
evilengine, you mention something about Unreal Engine. I'll play you 1v1 in UT, my entire bank account vs yours, you up?
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