Welkom op de nieuwe blogsite

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Welkom op de nieuwe blogsite van Rowu Media.

In aanvulling op de algemene website, is er nu ook een aanvullende blogsite.

Gekoppeld aan o.a. Twitter en Linkedin, hoopt RowuMedia op deze manier via een informele, en leuke manier klanten te informeren over onze projecten en activiteiten.
Ook ontwikkelingen in ‘de 3D branche’ of simpelweg schitterende producties van derden zullen in de blog worden opgenomen als voorbeeld van wat er allemaal mogelijk is.

Een deel van de blog is tevens gereserveerd voor algemene informatie m.b.t. fotografie en software tutorials. De tutorial pagina’s zijn over het algemeen geschreven in het Engels.

Disney’s Paperman

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Een Walt Disney experiment in het combineren van 2D en 3D animatie, resulteert in een mooie zwart-wit animatie én een Oscar nominatie:

Meer informatie over de technische achtegrond vind je hier:

Omschrijving:
“The short follows the story of a lonely young man in mid-century New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office. With only his heart, imagination and a stack of papers to get her attention, his efforts are no match for what the fates have in store for him…”

RefCube – Free Test sIBL

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RefCube Test Drive – Free download!

We (Rob Wuijster and Bob Groothuis) made a free package with all the ingredients you need to test the RefCube for yourself.

What’s in the package?

- a sIBL HDR set, that can be used in any 3D application,
- a 19 K extra spherical (same as within the sIBL set but the a “bit” bigger),
- extra BG plates with the Refcube and without. Also we shot with a Gridcard (a thank you! to Darlings Postproduction in A’dam for lending us this one), so there are also undistorted versions in there too,
- a simple test comp with one of the backplates,
- a Nuke setup file as an example of the undistort workflow.

More information about the RefCube visit our website here

Click here for the pano VR of the shoot.

Below some images of the shoot, and you can see it’s really easy and quick to (dis)assemble the RefCube in the field.

bob_comp

dsc1067

refcube_setup












SHOOT INFO:

EQUIPMENT
- 360precision Absolute MK2 panohead – link
- Nikon D800 camera – link
- Nikkor AF-D 16 mm lens – link
Note: Extra BG plates were shot with Nikkor AF-D 16 mm + Nikor 35 mm) + – QPCard RAW 203 – Reference card

POSTPRODUCTION
- Adobe Photoshop CS4 – link
- QPCalibration v 1.17 – link
- Adobe DNG Converter v 7.1.0.354 (CS4 cannot load NEF RAW files from D800) – link PC & link Mac
- PTGui Pro v 9.1.3 – link
- Photomatix Pro v 4.2.4 – link
- Pano2VR v 3.1.4 – link
- KRPano – link
- NukeX v.6.3v8 – link

Introducing the RefCube and RefTrack

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RefCube or RefTrack, your gizmo for aligning your 3D with HDRI and backplates, or video and film.

What is this for?
For proper integration of 3D models into photography or video/film, we need as much information of the location and the camera(s) used during a shoot.

The brand and model of the camera will give us information on the dimensions of the backplate, the lens that was used will gives us the focal data.
We write down additional information on height, angle etc., so we recreate these values in 3D.

But we also we need some form of reference to ‘ground’ our 3D into the plate, later on in the process. This is were the RefCube and RefTrack come in.
The RefCube or RefTrack is a physical object with a known size in your frame and/or backplates, to help you to align the 3D camera to the one from the real world.

Official website
Just click here to visit the official RefCube & RefTrack website for more information on the various models, pricing and shipping&handling.

Who made it?
The RefCube and Reftrack are the brainchild of Rob Wuijster and Bob Groothuis. Rob has been doing ‘stuff in 3D’ for quite some time now, and is a enthousiastic HDRI photographer as well. Just for fun, or on set.
Bob Groothuis is well known for his Dutch Skies 360 HDRI panoramas, that are used in games, commercials and movies. We had a personal need for something like the RefCube or ReftTrack, but found nothing. So we decided to build our own.

Who are using The RefCube of RefTrack?
HDRI photographers that want to deliver complete (sIBL) sets of HDRI lighting, backplates and scale references. Post-production companies that want to have a reference model on set for scale or tracking purposes. So this could be used on set when shooting commercials, indy movies, movies, tv shows, and more.

Some example images
pathe_refcube_web

pathe_reftrack_web

 

 

 
Notes
Note 1: The Kurhaus HDRI panorama used for the images above was created by Bob Groothuis and shot exclusively for the “3D Artist” magazine, issue 42.
Note 2: An earlier prototype + article that started the whole idea to website, and some additional free sIBL / HDRI sets shot at Protospace Fablab Utrecht can be found here.

The RefCube website is an initiative of Rowu Media.

PROMETHEUS Trailer

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De laatste trailer voor de nieuwe film van Ridley Scott, Prometheus. De ‘prequel’ (of toch niet…) tot de Alien films:

Veelbelovende nieuwe film van een regisseur die de films ‘Alien’ en’Blade Runner’ tot klassiekers in het genre maakte.