One of the things I discovered is that when you want to have a camera shake, normal camera translation doesn’t really work. Hardly any motion is perceived, unless the camera moves enormous distances. What I found to be the most effective approach is to rotate the camera, rather than change its position. This really makes the audience feel uneasy and unbalanced, which is exactly what we want the camera shake to portray.

Here’s an example of it from our new show, Solar System Odyssey.

If there is one thing we’ve learned in the past, it’s that particles can be expensive in terms of development, implementation, and hardware resources. Though there are many effects that call for particles, and sometimes using them is unavoidable. A workflow we’ve come to use is a process where we generate a particle system in After Effects using the Trapcode Particular Plugin, then map that image sequence to a plane in 3d to get the look we need without spending hours tweaking a fluid or particle system in Maya.

You could even use the same principle with stock footage of bullet hits and explosions. This process is best for systems that have limited interaction with their environment, and that the camera sees them from a distance. Typically we’ve used this for bursts and explosions, and a few eruptions.

Now for the flat screen this concept of using 2d effects layered over your comps isn’t very new. Applying the idea to the dome world requires you match it by hand using one of the dome plugins for After effects, or map it to Geometry in a 3d Scene and render it with a 5cam stitch or fisheye. These passes generally take little to no time even at a 4k resolution because you’re essentially rendering a simple piece of geometry with a single image texture. The texture files are generally 2k, unless the situation calls for more resolution.

When we started this project over a year ago, I had a very limited knowledge of Autodesk Maya, and was primarily a 3ds Max user. We made the commitment to do a character driven show so I had to learn this new tool, and I don’t think I could have if it hadn’t been for the training materials we got from Digital Tutors.

I started with their intro to maya DVD set and then moved on from there into more complex and production specific tutorials.

In Solar System Odyssey I had to make a space ship, terrains, eruptions, rocket exhaust, explosions, and even a futuristic Mega City full of flying traffic.

I hope to address how most of these effects were created in the coming weeks with more blog posts. For the mean time if you haven’t checked out www.digitaltutors.com I would highly recommend them. They offer training on a variety of software platforms.

We’re finishing up our latest show, Solar System Odyssey, and we’ve just released a teaser trailer on YouTube. Here’s a description of the show and the video:

Our story takes place far in the future with an Earth on the verge of environmental collapse. Billionaire Warren Trout thinks he can make a fortune colonizing the rest of the solar system and sends space pilot Jack Larson to find out where. But there’s one thing he didn’t count on – Ashley, Trout’s daughter, has stowed away on board the ship and has her own ideas. Learn about the solar system and the potential for human life on other planets and moons in a fun and exciting way. Ages 10 and Up. Produced with grant funding from NASA. Running time: 27 minutes

We’ve been really busy cranking away on our latest show, Solar System Odyssey, which we’re due to finish in 2 weeks. So we’ve been neglecting When in Dome a bit. But we’re almost there. Just putting some finishing touches on the visuals and working with master composer Mark Slater to finish up the score (which I’m really excited about). It’s been a year and a half long journey, but we’re finally seeing the light (and a much deserved break)!

Both Solar System Odyssey and our previous show, Magic Tree House: Space Mission are now available from Sky-Skan so go check them out. You can see a trailer and preview of Magic Tree House on Sky-Skan’s site or check out this post.

Stay tuned for a teaser trailer from Solar System Odyssey. I’ll be uploading it soon…

We just found out that Jeepers Creepers won an Honorable Mention at the Jena Fulldome Festival in Jena, Germany last weekend. Thanks to Volkmar Schorcht and the rest of the crew that put that festival together.

Here’s the full list of winners:

Winners in the “VisuaLiszt” category:
“Liszt from Space” by Stefan Berke and Jan Zehn, Ten Art Communications,
Jena. (independent media artists), endowed with 3,000 Euro (approx.
$4,300),
“How to disappear” by Merlin Fluegel, Offenbach Academy of Art and Design
(students’ work), endowed with 2,000 Euro (approx. $2,900),
“The Metalliszt – Road to Victory”, by Robert Sawallisch, Samuel Klemke and
Hannes Wagner, Weimar Bauhaus University (students’ work), endowed with
1,000 Euro (approx. $1,400),
“Nanocam. A trip into biodiversity” by Laura Alonso, Producciones El Exilio
S.L., Madrid, Spain (professional media production), special prize of the
jury, endowed with 500 Euro (approx. $700),
“Hysteria” by Pedro Zaz and United VJs, Sao Paulo, Brazil (independent
artists), special prize of the jury, endowed with 500 Euro,
“Lisztrausch” (Liszt Rapture) by Adrian Woldt, Weimar Bauhaus University
(students’ work), endowed with 500 Euro.

Winners of the FullDome Awards:
“The Royal Pea” by Helena Doyle and Rob Bidder, University of Westminster,
London (students’ work), Creative Fulldome Award, endowed with 500 Euro,
“No 217” by Julia Wiesner, Lea Weber-Schaefer, Phil Schoell, Potsdam
University of Applied Sciences (students’ work), Performance FullDome
Award, endowed with 500 Euro,
“Schwimmende Einhoerner” (Floating Unicorns) by Stephanie Kaysz, Offenbach
Academy of Art and Design (students’ work), Audience FullDome Award,
endowed with 500 Euro.

Honorable Mentions have been presented to:
“Mephisto Cubic” by Philip Mayer and Bruno Mathez, GaiaNova Productions,
London (independent media artists),
“All We Are” by Norrkoepping Visualization Center, Sweden (professional
media production),
“Jeepers Creepers” by Morehead Planetarium & Science Center, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, USA (professional media production),
“Dynamic Earth – Marine Biosphere” by Spitz Creative Media, Chadds Ford,
USA (professional media production),
“Tale of Stars” by Kagaya Studios, Tokyo, Japan (professional media
production).

We just found out that Morehead’s fulldome short Jeepers Creepers won “Best Soundtrack” at the Immersive Film Festival last weekend in Espinho, Portugal. Additionally, our artist in residence, David Colagiovanni, won “Best Immersion” for his short, Charting Course for the Unknown. Next stop for both shorts is the Jena Fulldome Festival, which takes place May 12-14 in Jena, Germany.

We’ve got a pretty amazing After School program here at Morehead. Kids from Kindergarten to 5th grade come over here after the school day is over and do all kinds of cool hands on science activities and field trips. We brought a few of them over to our studio to show them how planetarium shows are made. We even gave them a Wacom tablet and let them have at it. Better than being on the street, looting and pillaging or whatever it is kids do these days. Anyway, I was told it was their favorite field trip of the year. If they’d only just teach Maya in 4th grade, we’d have our next slew of interns. Here’s a few photos:

Well, we’re in the last phase of production for our latest show – Solar System Odyssey. We’ll be doing evaluations with students on a rough cut of the show in our dome during the first couple weeks of May and then we’ve got 3 months left to put on the final polish.

In the meantime, we were asked to put together a new trailer for our first show, Earth, Moon & Sun. Full disclosure – when we originally put together a trailer for the show, we thought our target audience would be kids and their parents who would see the trailers being played before other shows, much like they would during a typical film in a movie theater. Turns out that’s not the case.

The audience for planetarium show trailers are science center and planetarium directors and educators – the people that are actually going to lease the shows and bring them to their planetaria. So we added more science content from the show and more explanatory voice over to give a better idea of the focus of the show. This will let the directors and educators know that we’re hitting specific curriculum points for children in the 8-11 range. Keep all that in mind if you’re making a trailer.

We also found out that Earth, Moon & Sun was the best selling show of 2010 from our distributor! I might have mentioned that in a previous post but we’re pretty psyched so I’m leaving it up.

Here’s the new trailer in domemaster format:

NewScientist.com, the online version of the pop science mag New Scientist posted a short article on their blog called “Beware: It’s raining creepy crawlies” about our latest dome short Jeepers Creepers. There’s also a small, flat video dome-master version of the short at the top of their blog post. The short was just premiered over the weekend at the 2011 Fulldome UK festival and hopefully will be showing next month at the Immersive Film Festival in Espinho, Portugal.

Update:
Jeepers Creepers is also blogged about on SyFy Channel’s blog – DVICE. The best part is that the title for their post starts with the word, “Ew.” As is Ewwwwww…bugs.