5DtoRGB is a Mac OS X app developed by Rarevision that is “designed to transcode your footage to a camera master format, either as Apple ProRes QuickTime files or DPX files.” Not a necessity for a lot of DSLR users, but great for any medium to heavy post work and those wanting to get the most flexibility when color grading. Another interesting bit is the ability to add an alpha to ProRes 4444 clips based on the luminance, to make it quick and easy to work with footage in post. Could be very useful for those shooting effects elements, etc.

At this point in time, 5DtoRGB is still in beta and works only as a single shot transcoding method. Meaning only one clip can be processed at a time. I would imagine Rarevision is planning to add batch functionality to their app in the future, but I see this as a very useful tool that people would like to put to immediate use. I developed 5DDtoRGBB to make it simple to open multiple instances of 5DtoRGB and prepare clips for encoding. I haven’t tested encoding times thoroughly, but I would imagine opening a massive number of 5DtoRGB instances and having them all process clips simultaneously will only end in tears.

5DDtoRGBB v1.1 (9/7) addresses this by having an “Auto” mode. Not quite a batch solution, but still very useful. In Auto Mode, 5DD will allow you to select or drag and drop multiple clips, and one instance of 5DtoRGB will load up with the first clip in the queue, allow you to convert it, then quit that instance, the next one will load up, and so on and so forth. So you still need to manually choose options for conversion and select a destination, but still can save some time. This is likely going to be redundant when Rarevision puts out on update, but I find it a good exercise to help improve my current and other future workflow tools. Rarevision has confirmed that a command line version is in the works so more 5DtoRGB stuff will definitely be happening in the future.

Included in the download is 5DDtoRGBB, and a Reset 5DDtoRGBB Preferences app which does exactly that. It sends the preference file (which is stored at ~/Library/Preferences/com.andorulabs.5DDtoRGBB.plist) to the trash. As you may have noticed, I also included a nice unofficial icon for 5DtoRGB as well. Let’s see if Rarevision is interested. . .

Demo:

Available soon. . .

Download: 5DDtoRGBB (871KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.9.06 – v1.0 Released!
-2010.9.07 – v1.1 added “Auto” and “Manual” modes

I have contacted Rarevision with the hopes that they will add command line functionality to their app so I can incorporate 5DtoRGB encoding into my RenderQ app and have a single simple solution for all heavy duty processing I do on my workstation. In the meantime, I am working on adding drag and drop functionality to this tool, and the ability to open multiple clips up in their own separate instance of 5DtoRGB, ready to press convert and began encoding when ready. Still not a complete batch processing solution, but a good workaround until. . .

Update (9/7): Rarevision says a command line version is indeed in the works and more features are coming soon.

If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this tool is free but feel free to donate if you find it useful.

[5DtoRGB] | [andoru.labs]

After using Nuke for quite awhile now I have really started to like it’s built in viewer. It has easy controls to view multiple channels, simple region of interest, exposure and gamma controls, and proper keyboard shortcuts (jkl) for playback. I found myself often opening up Nuke just to use the viewer to take a look at renders and recently discovered while digging through the documentation that Nuke can be launched in viewer only mode using the command line. If you have ever visited this site before it is probably well apparent I am a fan of making AppleScript droplets for utilizing command line features of apps, and this was no different.

NukeView is a simple app that allows you to easily open an image sequence in the Nuke viewer without going through all the steps of opening the app, creating read nodes, finding the sequence, etc. You can simply drag and drop any file in the sequence onto NukeView and it will open Nuke in viewer only mode, then begin playback of the sequence.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1172×720 (50.6MB)

iPhone Version (15MB)

As mentioned NukeView expects the “filename.count.ext” naming syntax and that you actually choose or drag and drop one of the image sequence files, not the folder that contains them.

Download: NukeView (1MB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.17: developed basic functionality
-2010.5.28: redeveloped to allow opening and drag and drop of any file in sequence, NukeView will find how many characters are in the fileCount and open it accordingly.

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate like a maniac.

[andoru.labs]

Remember all those render droplet apps I was always going on about? Forget about them. I haven’t told any of them yet, but their services are no longer required. Each app performed it’s job perfectly well, but I am all about teamwork here, and there is no “Q” in team. . .

Which has nothing to do with RenderQ, the latest update to the render droplet apps; which not only combines the functionality of MayaRender, AERender, NukeRender, and all of their Q counterparts, it does them all one better by using a little bit of intelligence. RenderQ is a drag and drop render queue app that will send Maya, After Effects, Nuke, and Shake renders to Terminal and queue them up for easy and efficient local rendering. It is now very easy to set preferences for the version of each app you are using, as well as enabling and disabling additional flags for each filetype. RenderQ will also automatically detect the filetype and submit the job accordingly. I have also added Shake rendering to this version of the app.

Also included is RenderQ maitre d’ to pause and resume renders and will also show which render engine is currently active and the last job submitted to the queue.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (92MB)

iPhone Version

Support for more apps could very well be coming in the future. A $0-25 donation is customary. I prefer to keep this sort of thing on the honor system rather than setting up some sort of direct cost. If you use this tool at a facility I suppose a site license will cost you a $0-$1000.

Download: RenderQ_v1 (2.4MB .zip)

Log:
-2010.6.01: RenderQ_v1 released!

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. One thing I didn’t mention in the demo is that there is also a simple app included to reset the RenderQ preferences. It is quite possible there could be a few little bugs or improvements that could be made so don’t be afraid to contact me. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate, as many hours of work were put into it.

[andoru.labs]

With a bit of testing and a tiny bit of additional code I was able to build a basic queueing system into my render droplet apps. Instead of having each version open up a new Terminal window and start a separate simultaneous render, the “Q” versions of the apps will send everything to one Terminal window and render them one after the other. Not only does this make the apps easier to use, it should actually make rendering with all of them much more efficient, especially when you need to render multiple project files, scenes, or scripts. Now you can get them all set to render with the “Q” droplets and go to sleep, go drink some coffee, or better yet, go work on something else.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1440×900 (46MB)

iPhone Version

Download: AEaeCS5 (165KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: Updated for After Effects CS5
-2010.5.6: added “Q” version

Download: MayaRender (6.7MB .zip)
Includes MayaRender2009-2011.

Log:
-2009-12-1: added 2010 versions plus V-Ray, and 3delight droplets.
-2010-3-10: fixed Maya 2010 versions to work with the changes that were made to the location of the “render” binary.
-2010-3-20: fixed typos in latest Mental Ray versions (2009 & 2010) and removed “mail_cmd” in MayaRender2010 (universal version), top secret feature coming soon. . .
-2010-4-10: Updated for Maya 2011
-2010-5-06: Added “Q” versions

Download: NukeRender (725KB .zip)
Includes NukeRender6.0v5, for instructions on older versions go to NukeRender page.

Log:
-2009-5-01: Updated for Nuke6.0v5
-2010-5-06: Added “Q” versions

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate like a maniac.

[andoru.labs]

AEae. . .

. . . and AERender have both been updated for After Effects CS5. I worked night and day to make this happen, changing the 4 to a 5 took a good 2 mins out of my life. Once again more time was spent on the new icons. But I must. . .

Download: AEaeCS5 (165KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: basic functionality

Download: AERenderCS5 (748KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.5.1: basic functionality

I have tested both with no problems but as usual, if there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, these apps are free but feel free to donate if you have the means.

COMING SOON:

“Q” versions of all the render droplet apps! With a slight adjustment to the scripts, I have found a way to allow a simple but effective queuing system to all the droplets. Will be available soon. . .

And for the record, RotoBrush is cool and all, but the addition of the FreeForm plugin is HUGE for anyone doing Matte Paintings, nearly all of the bicubic cards (3D point manipulation) functionality of Nuke and the camera controls from Maya equal a 3D workspace that is finally enjoyable to use. Bravo CS5, Bravo. And don’t even get me started about photoshop.

[andoru.labs]

Another ridiculous one I decided to make while checking h264 encoded versions of renders in QuickTime Player 7 for compression differences before uploading them to the web. Yes I know that I could open up something like AE or Nuke and easily do difference comparisons between the footage:

But I found the time it takes to do that and all the other things I could get distracted by in AE or Nuke end up taking more time than I really want to spend anyway. And just visually comparing the difference the way the audience will see it makes more sense anyway. So my normal image quality check would require aligning the QuickTime Player windows and cycling between them by using (command ⌘ + ~)

As you would imagine aligning the windows is difficult to ever get perfect. Luckily this was something Applescript could easily handle so I first wrote a simple script that would easily line up all the open QT player windows to the frontmost window. Now I was able to easily cycle between the windows with the same hotkey combo mentioned above. I thought I would try automating this a bit and also found a way to have difference do this for me automatically for me by telling it how many times to cycle and how fast to do it. So now the process is simple. Just open the content you would like to compare in QuickTime Player 7, click the difference app in your dock or Finder toolbar. . .

. . . and difference will line up the content and will ask you how you would like to automatically cycle the images (you can quickly just type 0, return, 0, return if you would like to do it all manually) and then you can just sit back and check it out for yourself, the way your eyes see it on a screen.

Luckily this process seems to be less important as encoding for the web gets better but I always find it a good idea to at visually check to see how something compares to the original before putting it out there for the world to see. With an app this easy to use you no longer have an excuse.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1440×900 (70MB)

iPhone Version

Download: difference (360KB .zip)

Log:
-2010.3.25: basic functionality
-2010.3.27: added automatic cycling

Not 100% sure if QT player was called QuickTime Player 7 in 10.5.8 so anyone using Leopard let me know and I will make sure to include a version that works.

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate like a maniac.

[andoru.labs]

Updated both MayaMaya and MayaRender for 2010 & 2011 versions. Maya 2011 is a must have upgrade if you are working on OS X, loads of new features, lots of bug fixes (although I am sure some others will pop up) and just an all around better version of Maya for the Mac. Oh, and 64bit! Who doesn’t want to have multiple iterations of that sexy UI?

Just download from the same location as before using the links above. Both apps are tested and should be working just fine with the new versions, please let me know if you have any issues.

Side Note: You may have seen the little orange plus signs recently added below each post, those are there to let you easily share and link to these posts on other sites, so feel free to do so.

[andoru.labs]

Updated version of the original post to show off what is possible with projector_v2!

Quite possibly the laziest of all the lazy apps. projector is a simple workflow droplet app that allows you to easily create and change project folders and icons to keep your film/animation projects nicely organized at a glance. So you can easily go from this:

To this:

In no time at all.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1440×900 (160MB)

iPhone Version

Download: projector_v2 (8.6MB .zip)

Notes:
-upon first launching projector apps, it may take longer than normal for icon change to take place…

Log:
-2010.3.22: projector_v1.0 released!
-2010.4.09: projector_v2 released! (new workflow including reprojector)
-v.2.2: added Premiere Pro and Shake icons

I have also included a .pdf User Guide so check it out if you have any problems.

The icons included are modified versions of the default OS X 10.6 icons or icons included with the specific apps, and a few 2001: A Space Odyssey icons made by Mischa Mclachlan.

If you have any requests for icons to include in the release let me know in the comments! It will be easy to keep track of that way and stay attached to this post.

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, this app is free but feel free to donate like a maniac.

[andoru.labs] | [mischa.mclachlan]

15 frames per second. That’s 54000 an hour. Your brain doesn’t like it, not at all, it has been trained to need 9 frames more per second to be happy.

Most people don’t appreciate how much is really going on in a lamp:

(click image to watch)

[15fps_0002 - 239frames] | prores | iphone | 2010.3.27

Music by Ennio Morricone

[15fps] – a project without a time-frame. . .

The scale keys tool in Maya is a little awkward. Why doesn’t it just have a normal scale manipulator tool like every other app?

It does, it just isn’t turned on by default:

Open or download the QT version below if you want to see a higher resolution version of the video:

QuickTime Version 1152×720 (95MB)

iPhone Version

Feel free to let Autodesk know that this should be on by default.

15 frames per second. That’s 900 a minute. Your brain doesn’t like it, not at all, it has been trained to need 9 frames more per second to be happy.

What does it take to make 15fps something you can enjoy? color grade? camera movement? composition? vfx? music? location? Can interesting and beautiful imagery be made with cameras meant only for utility?

Let’s find out shall we:

(click image to watch)

[15fps_0001 - 297frames] | prores | iphone | 2010.3.24

Music by Max Richter

Probably more than that. You people will never be satisfied. . .

[15fps] – a project without a time-frame. . .

UPDATED: projector_v2 now available.

Quite possibly the laziest of all the lazy apps. projector is a simple workflow droplet app that allows you to easily change project folder icons to keep your film/animation projects nicely organized at a glance. So you can easily go from this:

To this:

In no time at all.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (39MB)

iPhone Version

Download: projector_v1 (3.6MB .zip)

Log:
-2010.3.22: projector_v1.0 released!

I have also included a .pdf User Guide so check it out if you have any problems.

The icons included are modified versions of the default OS X 10.6 icons or icons included with the specific apps, and a few 2001: A Space Odyssey icons made by Mischa Mclachlan.

If you have any requests for icons to include in the release let me know in the comments! It will be easy to keep track of that way and stay attached to this post.

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support.

[andoru.labs] | [mischa.mclachlan]

Here is a quick demo showing the workflow for using the different render droplets on my site. PLUS! A very thorough demo and explanation of using Apple’s Qmaster application that is part of Final Cut Studio for rendering with Maya, After Effects, and Nuke, and some detail on how it works and what it is doing.

A lot of the Qmaster info and initial motivation for the different render droplets comes from Hugo Guerra’s post on vfxtalk.com.

The vimeo version of the demo is kind of low resolution so check out the QuickTime below if you want to see more detail:

QuickTime Version 1152×720 (93MB)

iPhone Version

Again, if there are questions, definitely check out the Qmaster documentation or contact me at: andoruLABS.support

Here are links to the aerender docs, maya docs, and nuke user guide.

EDIT: A lovely commenter named David did some very thorough testing of the render droplet and Qmaster setup and posted his findings in the comments.

[andoru.labs]

Like my other 2 render droplets for AE and Maya, this one starts Nuke script renders in Terminal on OS X.

You just need to go through the normal steps of setting up your render in Nuke with the proper Write nodes and instead of pressing the Render button in Nuke you can quit the app, drag your .nk script onto this droplet, and your render will begin in Terminal

It is worth noting that if you have a machine with many cores (4-8 core machine), it is well worth your time to look into how to setup your Nuke renders with Qmaster as demonstrated by Hugo Guerra. This allows for full multi-threaded use of your multi-core machine and as he demos, this can really speed up render times.

Download: NukeRender (725KB .zip)

Note: This version is for Nuke6.0v5. If you would like to keep this up to date for use with the latest, or an older version of Nuke, all you need to do is open up the app in “AppleScript Editor”, an app included on every Mac, and update the Nuke executable path accordingly:

Included in the package is a version called “NukeRenderFlags” that will ask if you would like to use any additional flags for your render.

If you have issues, questions, or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Enjoy.

[andoru.LABS] | [hugo.guerra]

Just like the MayaRender app, but for After Effects. A quick and easy way to launch AE renders without using the resources necessary to load up the After Effects UI and load each preview frame into memory. Plus this gives you the ability to launch multiple renders at once if you so choose.

Essentially just another way to render in the background (inspired by Lloyd Alvarez’s great BG Render script on aescripts.com), but without ever having to open AE. Render speeds should also be slightly quicker this way as well since no resources are used by the app and only the render engine.

Download: AERenderCS5 (748KB .zip)

Download: AERenderCS4 (268KB .zip)
-Based on code originally developed by Dustin & Cody Beltram.

I had a few people contact me about a version of this for CS3 so I went ahead and put one together:

Download: AERenderCS3 (.zip)

Log:
-2010.3.18 – Updated scripts to include “-sound ON” flag to enable AE render completion sound.
-2010.3.20 – Updated CS4 and CS3 AERenderFlags scripts so flags are entered in the proper syntax. (If you downloaded before March 20, 2010 please download the latest version available on the site)
-2010.5.01 – Updated for CS5

Demo:

Here is a quick demo of the AERender & AEae apps (both available in the “labs” section of this site.

QuickTime Version 960×600 (27MB)

iPhone Version

Enjoy! If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support.

[andoru.LABS]

Just like my MayaMaya app, but for After Effects. It simply opens up another instance of After Effects so you can have multiple projects open at once.

Unfortunately you cannot copy and paste directly from instance to instance, but there are many other reasons this can prove to be very useful.

Download: AEaeCS5 (165KB .zip)

Download: AEaeCS4 (200KB .zip)

Download: AEaeCS3 (200KB .zip)

Featured on Motionographer.com!

If you have issues, questions, or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support

[andoru.LABS]

Working with multiple iterations of Maya open is a great way to save time, it allows you to copy and paste individual objects/nodes from scene to scene, just like many pro apps out there. No one has done it better than Apple with Logic Pro 9, making running multiple iterations unnecessary as they have added a fantastic method of importing whatever data you like without importing entire projects (although this is still possible with Logic) :

Selective Track-Import

If you want to have this same type of functionality with Maya on OS X, you can’t just fire open another instance of the app like you can on other platforms by just launching the app again, but luckily it is very easy to do. One method is popping open Terminal and telling Maya what to do:

open -n /Applications/Autodesk/maya2009/Maya.app

This is something you want to do quickly though, so a one click solution is a must, and that is the point of MayaMaya:

Download: MayaMaya (799KB .zip)

Log:
-2010-3-3: Released MayaMaya 2009
-2010-4-10: Updated for Maya 2010, 2011

An app to pop in your dock, or Finder toolbar, or wherever is most convenient so you can easily open as many instances as your system can handle.

NOTE: The version available here is for Maya 2009 as it is the version I use, if you would like to use this for 8.5, 2008, 2010 it is a very simple process of opening the app with “Applescript Editor” which you should have in your “Applications” or “Utilities” directories, and changing 2009 to the appropriate version.

One annoyance you can run into is the “Pasted__” prefix that will be added to all pasted files. This can easily be taken care of using a simple .mel script that Alex Villabon does a great job outlining on his site Green Soda.

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me or comment, and I will help you sort out any problems.

[andoru.LABS] | [Green Soda]

QuickTime Version 960×600 (95MB)

iPhone Version

An overview of some of the rigging/technical work I have done. Including:

-Maya Camera rigs
-character rigging
-layout/scene rigging
-camera projection
-dynamics

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! A lot of this work will be appearing in fully rendered form in upcoming and current projects or on my next reel and some of these assets may soon be available on this site.

Rendered out at a very low sample rate (to avoid hilarious overnight renders) in RenderMan slapped together in Nuke:

Really just doing some tests for some IDs for a fake company, also have some new workflow tools coming up the pipe. . .

EDIT: Just had a Ahh Yes! moment with this one, you will definitely see something in the future involving this idea that should be quite interesting indeed!

720p

Just trying out a technique using the iPhone to capture some handheld camera data and use it in a comp. Even with only 640×480 pixels and an envelope with hand drawn tracker markers it still works very well.

Section of the iPhone camera track:

Watch it on an iPhone

This is a fantastic way to take the “perfect” out of the CG camera without messing with the CG methods of doing it. Randomization does not equal human, the way a human moves while holding a camera, large or small, is very far from random. Should be fairly simple to move data like this from application to application once a good track is put together.

Essentially the poorest, least efficient, laziest man’s version of James Cameron’s SimulCam without any of the benefits, except the human feel.

(Vimeo. . . I just can’t deal with Flash in my life anymore, I will still upload to you for continuity’s sake, but I want iPhone viewable embeds!)

And animators need some frame by frame action damn it!