Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 016

Hey,

I'm off on vacation in Europe this week, but don't worry, I'm not going to leave you hanging! Thanks to the efficiency of automation, in conjunction with some prior planning, I'm able to send you this newsletter whilst I'm relaxing on the deck of a cruise ship!

Speaking of relaxing, let's get into our first piece of content.

THE IMPORTANCE OF TAKING TIME OFF
The VFX industry is a special place where artists one-up each other with stories of their longest workday, and consistently receive impersonal congratulations from production teams for completing yet another "big push this week".

You may be passionate about your craft and put life aside on a moments notice, or you might be worried about not seeing your kids for months at a time, but the consistent piece of the puzzle between us all is: it's easy to get burned out. Everyone has their own threshold for where this point is, but it's important to notice when it's starting to hit.

I've written an article on this issue in the hopes that it helps you to prevent burn out, and continue churning out amazing comps.

Click here to read it.

BATCH-REPLACE FILEPATHS FROM ONE OPERATING SYSTEM'S FORMAT TO ANOTHER
When working at smaller studios, I often miss the little things that would otherwise happen by themselves at a bigger studio. One such thing that came up for me in the past was Production staff working on Windows & therefore copy/pasting Windows filepaths, when myself and the team of artists were on Linux workstations with different filepath naming conventions. Simply copy/pasting & changing one filepath to the Linux standard was a pain, let alone a set of renders with multiple AOVs! It was incredibly inefficient, so I sought out a better way...

Enter Simon Bjork, who came to my rescue with a Python script that fixes this exact problem! It's a simple fix -- essentially a glorified find & replace tool, but has saved me endless hours of monotony.

Click here to download sb_ReplacePaths!

VIRTUAL CAMERAS
Although on the more basic side, I've really enjoyed Khan Academy's "Pixar in a Box" courses. The way they teach is certainly aimed at beginners, although I feel everyone should take a refresher every once in a while.

The first half of the Virtual Cameras component outlines how cameras work (nothing new here), and how to use certain techniques for artistic effect, to help tell your story in a visual language. The second half explores the math behind Depth of Field, which I found quite insightful!

Click here to watch the course videos.

THE HISTORY OF ASPECT RATIO
Ever wonder why Aspect Ratios are the way they are? Albeit being 5 years old, I recently stumbled across this lecture, which tells the fascinating history of Aspect Ratios, and how they've changed over the years.

Click here to watch the lecture.

If you've created a gizmo or python script to solve a common problem or speed up your workflow, please reply to this email and let me know about it's existence! I'd love to help spread the word, to help us all be better compositors together!

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