The Filmmaker's Guide to Visual Effects

Eran Dinur is an Emmy and VES Award-winning VFX supervisor, artist and instructor. His work at ILM Singapore includes films such as Iron Man, Star Trek, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Terminator Salvation. Since 2011 Eran has served as the VFX supervisor of NYC-based company Brainstorm Digital on numerous film and TV projects, including The Wolf of Wall Street, Boardwalk Empire, The Lost City of Z, Café Society, Nerve, Delivery Man, The Heat, The Men Who Built America, and The Immigrant. Eran won a Primetime Emmy Award as well as two Visual Effects Society Awards for his work on Boardwalk Empire. Eran teaches VFX production skills at the School of Visual Arts, has created popular online courses at fxphd, has written numerous articles for 3D World Magazine, and has presented at various international conferences including SIGGRAPH, NAB, and Mundos Digitales.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Visual effects overview

Visual effects in contemporary film & TV

The invisible art of supporting VFX

Why use VFX?

VFX as a story-telling tool

Reducing costs

Creating the impossible

Fixing mistakes

Supporting the visual language

CGI: preconceptions and misconceptions

Visual effects in production: 3 case studies

Case study 1

Case study 2

Case study 3

Working with Key people in the VFX team

The VFX supervisor

The VFX producer

3D, 2D and 2.5D

Camera movement and parallax

Working in 2D

Working in 3D

"Fake" 3D: 2.5D projections

2D or 3D? Advantages and disadvantages

Part 2: VFX in depth

Introduction

The VFX chain in small and large facilities

2D tracking & Match move

2D tracking

Camera tracking

Modeling

Hard surface modeling

Organic modeling

Texturing

Shading & lighting

Shaders

Direct and ambient lights

Global illumination, ambient occlusion and HDRI

Animation

Technical animation

Character animation

Motion capture

Rigging

Simulations

Hard-body

Particles

Fluid

Cloth

Matte painting

Compositing

Rotoscoping

Keying

The final stage – how everything comes together

Compositing as a VFX powerhouse for the budget-conscious

Part 3: photorealism

Introduction

The search for clues

The integration checklist

Context

Movement and motion blur

Perspective

Light

Depth and atmosphere

Color

Focus

Optical phenomena

Grain

Part 4: Preproduction

Script-based VFX breakdown

Storyboarding

The bidding process

Initial meetings with the VFX team

Location scouting with the VFX team

Previz

Planning the shoot

Part 5: On set

The importance of a second unit

Shooting Green/blue screens

Crowd tiling

VFX vs. SFX

Dos and don’ts

Part 6: Postproduction

Understanding delivery formats

Establishing the color pipeline

The reviewing process

RND, assets, style frames and temps

The approval stages

Turntable

Layout

Primary animation

Secondary animation

AO

Textured

Final

Effective communication with the VFX team

The DI review

Glossary