Probably the most valuable couple of megabytes on this site, my storyboard templates have continuously been one of the top sources of traffic. For me, storyboarding is simultaneously the most rewarding and frustrating part of the film making process. It is very rare that a scripted scene survives the storyboarding step unscathed. While you really don’t need anything special to produce a great sequence of storyboard panels (choices range from the lowly diner napkin to the highest end Wacom Cintiq), we live in a world where people offer up all shorts of wonderful options and tools free of charge, and you would be silly not to take a look at them. I never found anything I really liked to draw my panels on so I put together some of my own a little while back.

Recently I updated them just a bit and while I tend to do most of by story boarding on one of these beauties. . .

. . . I also put together some .psd versions for people that like to work digitally from start to finish. Working in Photoshop also gives you the ability to mask off panels and shuffle things around easily.

You can checkout some examples of these templates in use on my current Floating World project page.

Demo:

QuickTime Version 1280×800 (26MB)

iPhone Version (8MB)

Download: andoru.LABS 2010 Storyboard Templates (1.54MB .zip)

Log:
[feel free to use and distribute these in accordance to the CC license presented at the bottom of this site]
-2010.8.06 – Updated for 2010 and simplified
-2010.8.06 – Added .PSD templates for digital storyboarding

Like I already mentioned, there are many ways to create a storyboard. Being arguably the most important part of the film-making process I recommend doing it with some class. . .

If there are any issues or concerns please contact: andoruLABS.support. Also, these templates are free but feel free to donate if you find them useful.

[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]

Space Keyboards in Istanbul (2.8MB)

And some refinements to some you may or may not have already heard:

Me Dera (2.4MB)

I don’t know oh where can you be? (3.4MB)

Turn up the speakers and the rain and have a listen.

[ekahwerdna]

Full steam ahead. Dried Up (a film some good friends of mine made) received the Silver Medal in Animation at the Student Academy awards on June 12th in Beverly Hills. Even better the award was presented by Henry Selick.

From Right. Henry Selick, Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper.

If you haven’t already make sure to check out the film:

Congratulations to all those involved. Very well deserved!

[dried up] | [isaiah.powers] | [jeremy.casper] | [stuart.bury]

For your consideration:

Next task, Plastic Peephole. . .

[Stu Maschwitz | Plastic Bullet]

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]

15 frames per second. That’s 1296000 an hour. Your brain doesn’t like it, not one bit.

These are almost always done by accident.

(click image to watch)

[15fps_0003 - 330frames] | prores | iphone | 2010.5.22

Music by Ekahwerdna

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

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]

[adobe]

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. . .

Free and sexy to the ears. Who knew this is what the foot were doing in their spare time.

Shout-out to jSchlock for “flysway”. Gosh damn. . .

The FOOTclan is:
AL_PD
BMOODY
Dan Matic
jSchlock

Also check out: WeFunkRadio.com (on recommendation from Mr. Paul Fuller)

[foot.CLAN]

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]