Dreamlight 1 & 2 FX -- What Apps Can Do These?

Soniclight wrote on 9/14/2007, 5:41 AM

Thanks to Farss, I got this week's Artbeats 10-seconds freebie and it fits right into my film project. As title of this series states, it's dreamy and comes in 2 series..

I can't afford to buy these, they cost in the hundreds of dollars per clip. I wrote to Artbeats to ask them if I could contact the original artist so I could get some advice from him or her on how it was done..

No-go, they said.

They have their content protected like Fort Knox. I found nothing about who created it or how besides Artbeats or Pluginz product mentions by Googling either. I have Particleillusion and I may be able to replicate this style to a certain degree, but it looks possibly more sophisticated, almost 3D -- or not.

I made a 640x480 Flash of said freebie (otherwise unprocessed by me) and put in a blank page at my website.

Your thoughts?
Thanks.

"Dreamlight" Effect

Comments

farss wrote on 9/14/2007, 6:16 AM

Firstly if something from Artbeats costs $100s of dollars it's a pretty fair bet it cost a heck of a lot more to create or shoot. Just to give you an example a HD aerial shot of Sydney might sell for $500, it would have cost at a minimum $5,000 to shoot and the dubs cost around $200 just for the tape. Some of the stock footage shots I've looked at buying make Artbeats stuff seem very cheap. One I really wanted from a stock library of a black jaguar leaping was USD 1,500. I'd reckon it took months hiding in the jungle with a 35mm camera to get that shot, $1,500 would have been a bargain. Someone else had a shot of the same species for $15, it was shot through the wire cage in a zoo, you gets what you pays for. The poor beast looked pretty sad to boot.

Anyway, got that off my chest, sorry I have a lot of admiration for those who shoot stock footage, wish there were more of them. Thought of doing some myself but the costs can be staggering and the returns far from certain.

To your problem.

Have you looked at the Vision Loops from SCS, on sale on this very site and some of them are much like that although I don't recall any quite as beautiful as that. Oh and they're WAY cheaper too. Again you get what you pay for though.

Now way back when these Vision Loops first came out I remember being told what software was used to create them but I've long lost that info, maybe some other old timer from back then can remember and chime in.

Whatever it is I'd imagine it's not cheap, easy to drive or quick to render. Smoke and light to get photorealistic is a HUGE task. Smoke is comprised of billions of particles, the light beams therefore have to be calculated based on even more billions of interactions. But here's a thought. smoke is cheap, coloured lights are cheap and you have a camera. Empty / discarded fishtanks are to be had for free on cleanup days. Find a source of smoke that'll hang in the tank, shine colored lights into it and shoot that, stir to taste. Maybe you don't have to use smoke, particles in water would also work maybe. Heck even if it doesn't work out it's free and fun but it should work out, these FXs were done decades before the first computer was built.

Bob.

Edit: Do checkout the Vision Loops, from memory there's a couple of freebies.

winrockpost wrote on 9/14/2007, 6:31 AM

http://www.axogon.com/en/mutator.html

this app can get some interesting stuff , create and then effect in vegas and can make some decent stuff
aint artbeats, but for 9 dollars (was free , greedy sons of ..) worth playing around with.

Soniclight wrote on 9/14/2007, 6:54 AM

Bob,

Thanks for reply. As I told you in an email, I did do the jar and ink version of that 30 years ago -- so maybe I'll just have to upgrade to fish tank some day :)

It seems to come down to proprietary secrets. I agree that the subtlety of this kind of effect must be a system intensive to render. So maybe it's some guy that works at ILM and has such progs as a hobby and makes some money on the side.

That said, I'm not going to easily give up on this kind of effect, whatever the means will eventually have to be. The polished nature of the small clip points to the overall desired quality of all the visual fx that I am slowly but surely creating.

The one thing about this kind of effect that would require a computer based modality is that I would be doing fly-throughs. Even an HD cam + the fish tank, pan/crops and track-motion have their limitations.

I just checked out the Vision series, but I'd only probably maybe use one or two as raw material in conjunction with other ways to create effects, so it would not be worth it -- for me. But thanks anyway.

_____________________

Winrock,
Thanks for the referral, I checked it out. That app is fine for screen-savers and DVD menus and the like, but not for what I'm working on. Vegas preset Generated Media do much of that already too.

verticalheat wrote on 9/14/2007, 7:14 AM

Digital Juice Jump Back # 40 Ethereal

http://www.digitaljuice.com/products/products.asp?pid=249

It's not very cheap - $99.00 USD, but they run specials everyday and you can get their products close to $ 20.00-26.00 USD per item (plus S&H.)

Regards

farss wrote on 9/14/2007, 7:31 AM

My goodness, you want to fly through the stuff as well?

I tell you what, I'll write the code and you get me unfetted access to the NSA's computers, just so 1 second of footage renders before hell freezes over.

Only joking, wouldn't know where to start trying to code that. Fluid dynamics are still cutting edge physics, that's why we still use wind tunnels to test aircraft designs.

Daz have some add ons that do smoke and fog with light rays. Uses zillions of polygons, render times must be forever. I'd imagine some other high end CGI apps can do the same but you'd probably need physics as well, yish, no wonder the clips were so expensive.
Try some Googling, I've seen some thesis projects that output simulations that were visually pretty similar.

Hope someone else has some better ideas than me, I'm probably not being very helpfull here, sorry.

Bob.

Soniclight wrote on 9/14/2007, 8:01 AM

"My goodness, you want to fly through the stuff as well?"

Yeah, I know, Bob, I'm one ambitious one-man film-maker s.o.b, aren't I? :) That's the trouble with having an fertile imagination and obsession with light since I was in my early 20s.

You haven't rained on my parade, just given me some perspectives. Now, since you mentioned physics (a.k.a.) mathematical models, I just remembered that I had since-moved-out-of-state neighbor and friend who finished his doctorate in cryptology here at UCLA.

Hmmmm... maybe time to send him an email and see if he knows some dudes or dudettes who play around with this kind of stuff on their lunch breaks. Mandelbrot fractals are so last century :)

________________________

Verticalheat,

I checked out the link you provided -- it's hard to tell how detailed the stuff is is with the tiny player preview, but I'll keep it in mind. As I told Bob above, I need stuff I can pan/crop and so on.

Soniclight wrote on 9/14/2007, 5:10 PM

Since I have PI, I obviously posted a similar posting on their forum. For anyone interested, there are some good starting point emitters that could come close with some effort and layers, namely:

--- A) "Abstracts" superemitter
--- B) 2005 free emitters, i.e. "emitters_05_02" (February)

A) For the supermitters one -- go to link on top right hand side of Wondertouch and choose "pro emitter movies,HD res images" in side menu. Or if it works for you, see the .mpg link below for the Abstracts (if not, you can download and view it offline -- my browser got a bit confused).

B) For the 2005 free emitters, go Support/Download Emitters and choose 2005.

Wondertouch --- http://www.wondertouch.com
Abstracts -- http://www.wondertouch.com/movies/pe/abstract_all.mpg

farss wrote on 9/14/2007, 5:44 PM

Been a while since I played with PI however from memory it is a 2D application. So as wonderously beautiful as those sample look trying to fly through them is where you'll come unstuck I think.

verticalheat wrote on 9/14/2007, 7:14 PM

They have HD version of this item. Link to the page with spec. info:
http://www.digitaljuice.com/products/products.asp?pid=250&tab=t2#tabs.

This product is network broadcast quality.
You can change any animation size, colors, speed and render to many different formats (using DigitalJuice free utility program)

Hope this will help.

deusx wrote on 9/14/2007, 7:54 PM

It could be aftereffects, fusion, or any better 3d app.

If I had more time, I'd do a bunch of these.

You can grab smoke animation here:

http://www.deusx.com/freevideoloops.html

process it in Vegas ( experiment ) , change color, do whatever you think necessary, and I'm sure you can come up with something similar. And it's free to use, It's my clip, so feel free to do whatever you want with it.

Soniclight wrote on 9/14/2007, 9:00 PM

Thanks to all for additional feedback -- and additional info and.... clip (deusx -- much appreciated!). To follow up on what Farss said, I do have to be realistic here:

-- On my doing this-all -in-my-tiny-apartment "studio parameters and budget, I'll simply have to fake fly-throughs through clever editing. Once I have good mock-up of the film project and get lucky with some funding, then I can upgrade and polish the effects.

I'm so much still in "learning curve" mode in all of this, incl. Vegas. As my now passed-on Italian stepmother would say, "Pazienza, FIllippo, pazienza."

Indeed.

And frankly, in my ten years on the Net, I've never inhaled more learning than at this forum for y'all. As Ive said before, gettin' Vegas was one the smartest moves in my creative life.

Life still ain't always easy, but it is good.

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/14/2007, 9:56 PM

The primary difference between the DJ content and the Artbeats content is the depth, fluidity, and as Farss mentioned...the cost.
The Artbeats libraries took more than a year to complete, came from 4K masters, and are quite a bit more rare, which means the clips won't be seen in the budget stock seen on the web or television.

Soniclight wrote on 9/15/2007, 12:33 AM

Spot,

You said, "

Could you elaborate on that? Again, I'm a bit behind on lingo so I am assuming that maybe "4K" refers to work resolution -- or maybe not. It sound like you know who the "masters" are or are simply using deductive observation of the quality of the work.

Logan5 wrote on 9/17/2007, 12:37 PM

IF you have After effects & Trapcode Particular you can make your own.
you can get the project file below.
I've tested the file and you can get a "Dreamlight" look with he right settings.

http://www.trapcode-people.net/filedetails.php?fileid=56

Spot|DSE wrote on 9/17/2007, 1:08 PM

4K master means they were working with a 4K resolution original project. Obviously, they're being delivered at a much lower resolution, depending on whether you're using HD or SD.

Soniclight wrote on 9/17/2007, 10:37 PM

Logan5,

I don't have AE or Trapcode, so moot. Well, that's not quite correct: I have a 10 year old copy of AE (3.1) which I never use and the files you suggest are most likely not that backwards compatible :)

AE 3.1 was my first and frustrating taste of editing in video - got a legit copy off of a clearance table in a computer store some time in 2001 or so for USD $49. Not bad considering it cost more than 10x that on first release..

Way newbie then, So I went to Pinnacle Studio 8 to get my feet wet, then graduated to Vegas.

Spot,

Thanks, figured 4K meant that.

Soniclight wrote on 9/28/2007, 6:38 PM

Update:

While certainly not 3D andlooking a bit over-compressed and dull in the PI site clip below, I finally decided to buy the "Abstarct" super-emmitter. Some of the emitters near the end of it are good starting place to emulate the "Dreamlight" type of feel..

Still HD images are available at Wondertouch also at their Products/Pro Emitters page..

-- only 10 Mb.