Oh man! Epic Meal Time is my favorite!!!

Freddy is good to... he just needs a DP...

@grego

Your post just answered why this kind of testing is necessary. In post point of view. There is lot of things that
are werry important in footage. My self have found that gh2 footage just works for example in rotoscoping much better than canon do. And that is thanks to hack.

Yea there is some great stuff here! Loved the Chorebot short! Awesome lighting work... The CGI blend was very convincing!

@Rerbreg

Nice model! Do the feathers take long to render? And are you using dynamics for them in animation?

@brianluce

The location is in Austin, Texas. There is a neighborhood that is all modern homes called Agave. It's a like a pre-made set:). I had to clean up the plates, take cars out, randomn signs and general stuff in the yards to make it cleaner. I did that in photoshop and AE. I might do one more pass with that and add some things in the background.

@stefanos

Thanks for the compliments! The sound design is not final, just firstpass, I haven't given it to an engineer yet. Glad you picked that up though, means you really watched it close.

Some things about the project that might help others.

Using Hdr is essential. I use a large chrome ball method to get my hdr image for the environment. For rendering, I used vray, but I started in mental ray. I normally use mental ray for projects due to its speed and it comes with max and maya. I actually rendered the entire short in mental ray then went back and rendered it using vray. Only one shot remains in mental ray. Render times are about twice as slow depending on your settings in vray but the realism is twice as good too. The tweaking and post work to get mental ray half as good as vray was not worth it. Vray handles reflections and Hdr so much better and more realistic.

The gh2 looks and feels like film to me more than the canons. We have a 5d but to me the 5d looks too magenta and I hate battling the narrow depth of field due to the large sensor. If you notice in the film I rarely employ narrow DOF. Most the times it's a hinderence and doesn't help push the story along. If I need close ups and seperation then I will open up the camera. But that being said I could have told the story with any camera.

I think I will stick with the gh2 along with 60p cams (eventually 120p fps cams) for film type work with fx. Right now the cameras are so powerful it really depends on the user to make stories and not worry about what the cam, they are all capable of producing narratives and docs.

The only other issue I have seen with cmos dslrs is the jello for tracking and that has been well documented. We use syntheyes and mocha for AE. We didnt have tracking issues out of the ordinary with the GH2 on this film. Most tracking issues arise out of motion blur and having enough clear points to track. We tracked the yellow tablet in the film if anyone was wondering.

I am happy to answer any questions or advice on a 3d pipeline. I am no means an export but as far as 3d animation I have been doing it since 1995, so I could help some I am sure.

@grego
man that is some awesome stuff. Really really great little film. The photography was excellent, excellent compositions especially. I digged the music a lot too (sound design was a bit weak though). Great VFX for low-budget. Great location scouting-production design. Nice and simple little story. Thumbs up.

Really like this topic :-)

I use the gh2 all the time for vfx. I run an animation and vfx company. Here is a short film I shot with the gh2 and a 2Xanamorphic lens. I use 3ds max and after effects.

in Сinema 4d

mechanisms, vehicles scare me))

Fusion is like Nuke. Werry similar (better) i do not know. I just start to use it and have not seen point why to change.

yeah, I recently used nuke to comp some CG (a car plus some smaller stuff done in maya/vray) over GH13 footage. Now I'm starting my own pretty CG heavy project with GH2.

As for the workflow, I output mts files as 16 bit exrs. All CG was in 16/32 bit (depends on passes) exr as well. Now I will most likely use an intermediate codec for the plates (cineform or free 5dtorgb).

Probably a mock commercial for now... to make sure the composting look right. And then maybe a narrative... I just need to raise funds to build an interior cabin, so actors can "drive" it.