Ken Schafer

See how Real-time Stereographic Previsualization can transform your 3D productions Thursday Aug. 27, 2009 at 10:00am-3:00pm FrameForge Previz Studio 3 is an optically accurate previsualization, storyboarding and animation program available for Macintosh and Windows that has been used and acclaimed by filmmakers for many years, and is the only program of its kind to be sold by the ASC. Version 3 has just been released and lead program architect, Ken Schafer, will be in Burbank on Thursday Aug. 27th, 2009 at Stereoscope Studios giving live demonstrations of the revolutionary new stereographic functionality. With real-time Stereographic display, optically accurate cameras, fully customizable stereo rigs, automatic out-of-range positive parallax warnings and more, this stereographic 3D edition of FrameForge Previz Studio will allow you to prepare and control the stereographic depth of your shots in your pre-production as easily as it can your framing. This special one-day demo is open to all interested professionals. Thursday, August 27th 10am-3pm at Stereoscope 727 N Victory Blvd Burbank, CA 91502 (818) 729-0372 More information about the program, its stereo and non-stereo features can be found at our website www.FrameForgePreviz.com

Thanks for the feedback.

I will. We are toying with the idea of outputing to POV Ray or another similar Ray Tracer which would theoretically render all the nuances of the lighting plan, including reflections, bounced light and so on. How much use would this be to you folks? What would be the minimum features a lighting plan designer would need for it to be useful to a DP?

Hey Glen, thanks so much for the info, references and thought that went into your response. I feel like I went to use a water fountain and got a fire hose! While our program and Maya have some loose similarities (they're both powerful 3D programs with cameras) they have very different focuses. Maya is a general purpose 3D modeling/rendering program while ours is a dedicated 3D previsualization program that uses a large library of stock objects and characters (though you can build and import your own) with built-in relationships and interactions. Ours is designed specifically for filmmakers and is user friendly enough that pretty much anyone with basic computer skills can use it in very short order. It offers real-time previsualization with detailed set and camera information reports. While we are integrating basic lighting and shadows, it will not however, be a lighting plan designer as it is real-time and doesn't use any diffusion, light bouncing or other advanced techniques that require ray tracing. I looked at Zemax and that's orders of magnitude more complicated than what we're looking to do, which is a quick and rough light calibration so that a light like the Mole Richardson above, throws roughly as much light in our 3D world as its real-world counterpart. I know it will be rough, but without ANY calibration between our lighting numbers and the real world, I feel like the guy in Spinal Tap who keeps on insisting that "It goes up to ELEVEN!"

I do and unfortunately, for our purposes, we can't take any of it into account because we're not doing Ray Tracing, just real-time point and spotlight lighting with true DOF and multi-light source shadows. However, that means no diffusion nor bounced light. I know, I know, you're all thinking so what's the point... :) The answer is that the program is not designed to be a lighting plan designer, but rather is real-time previsualization and presentation. However, within those known and admitted lighting limitations, I'd like to get as close to the real-world output as possible, so if someone wants to put a 1K of known capabilities on a set, it will throw roughly the same amount of light as the real-world fixture.

Hey Jonathan: Thanks for the kind offer; but actually Chris Nibley beat you to it. He was going to be calibrating a new light meter anyway and so we're doing a two-for-one. Depending how it goes, I hope I can keep your offer "open" as I may want to come back to you with other questions or testing if you're willing.

Here's our issue -- we're working on a software program for cinematographers that uses 3D rendered lighting. The light sources in the 3D engine do follow the inverse square law but use their own arbitrary brightness units with no equivalancy factor between their units and foot candles (or lumens, lux or any other real-world measurement for that matter). Now, I realize that that unlike the real world, in the software we can only perceive the 3D world through a virtual camera (which by definition will have an f/stop and "speed") so I know that I have to make some arbitrary choices. However, given a chosen f/stop and film speed, I believe I should be able to back-calculate it if I could get images of a calibrated grayscale card lit solely by a light source with known foot candle specs. In other words, if someone could Take a single-bulb fresnel light with published foot candle specs (such as all Mole-Richardson's lights) Light a calibrated grayscale card solely by that light Shoot images of the grayscale card with the light at the distances listed by the lights foot candle specs Keep the camera fixed and use a single f/stop for all images (and yes, I know this will probably result in some images being under or over-exposed) Given the above images and camera distance, f/stop and film speed, I believe I should be able to sample the resulting images and recreate it in our virtual world so that the virtual grayscale card matches the actually shot images, thus calibrating our software's internal lights. In case that wasn't clear, for the Mole-Richardson's baby 1K shown above, we'd need six images of the grayscale card, one each at 5, 10 and 15 feet in full flood, and again in full spot. We'd also need to know the film speed, f/stop and camera distance from the card. Does this approach seem reasonable, and are there such images already available? If it does seem reasonable but such images do not already exist, if someone would help us by generating them, we'd be certainly willing to give free software (worth several hundred dollars) and credit. Any takers?

Thanks for the reference, however, the following sentence in the article is DEAD WRONG! We ALWAYS have allowed user to specify the film format and from day one have calculated the focal length from the actual recordable frame sizes for each format as reported by David Eubank's wonderful pCAM software (used with permission). You should also read a more in-depth article which appeared in American Cinematographer. American Cinematographer Review Thanks for all your interest. Ken Schafer president / lead software designer Innoventive Software, LLC www.frameforge3d.com

If what you're looking for is the 3D Camera Move rather than actor animation then you pretty much can do it in the current version. Just snap multiple frames as you move the camera and then flag them as one continuous shot. When you show the slide-show it will do dissolves between the still frames, giving you a fairly realistic sense of camera motion. We're still locking that down but what's definitely in it are facial expressions, non-skin-tight clothing (i.e. dresses), easier posing of actors... and a bunch of other really cool stuff which I could tell you about but then I'd have to kill you. :) And hopefully in spring of 2005. Hospital, Rich and Famous (limos, actors in tuxes etc.), Sports... etc. I'm not really sure when the next one will be released as most of our effort is focused on Version II. That is possible in the current version. You'd just export all the shots as JPEGS (and you can specify the resolution) and then you can bring them into any of these types of programs and edit to your heart's content!

Mais bien sur. With the exception of "very light", FrameForge does EXACTLY that. You typically start building your set in a top-down view where you drag in walls (which can be sized to exact dimensions) with doors, windows and so on. Put in props such as chairs, tables, beds etc and position them where you like. You set your film format and aspect ratio (and optionally zoom limitations and/or avialable primes) and then the program first limits the shots which you can set up to your available lenses and then also reports the focal length and angle of view at all times. The angle of view is also shown as a gray triangle on the overhead view so that you can visually see it. As a previous poster noted, the lighting capabilities in FrameForge are virtually non-existant. Although this MAY change in the future, it is not our primary focus and I make no promises as to when or if real lighting will be added. - Ken

We plan to. Whether this feature makes it into Version II is still on the table, as it were, but we definitely want to make the move in that direction. Right now, in the current version, you can play the stills as a slide show with the ability to define each frame's duration down to a tenth of a second. You can also define several frames as being all part of the same shot and the program will automatically do dissolves between them during the slide show so as to convey the sense of camera/actor movement. This slide show can be exported as a flash animation, which we had chosen as our format of choice because it is much smaller than Quicktime. That said, due to user requests, we do have plans to add a QuickTime export. I must confess I don't see the advantage of QuickTime over Flash and I'd love someone to enlighten me here... :)

My name is Ken Schafer, and I am the designer and Windows programmer of FrameForge 3D Studio so I will confess that I am a bit biased in favor of the software. Let me start by saying that I don?t disagree with anyone that producing storyboards in FrameForge can be far more time-consuming than whipping out a quick sketch?especially if you aren't disciplined and you end up tweaking the angle on each finger or coloring in every part. What I?d like to add is that I (and many others) feel there is value to be gotten out of the process which makes it worth the extra investment of time. When we showed the program at a seminar at the ASC, the demo started with most of the DPs confessing that they hated storyboards?but the demo ended with enough of them impressed by it that the ASC as an organization now sells FrameForge 3d Studio on their website, and it?s the only software they do sell. Why the change of heart? The answer has to do with WHY most of the ASC DP?s told us they hated storyboards. Inevitably, they said, you get on the set and the prize sequence which the director had labored over and had polished to a shine would be fundamentally unshootable. While the frame might look right on paper, to film it would require a camera to be put through a wall, or the apparently correct perspective that it was drawn with turns out to be wildly inaccurate, or the framing could be gotten, but to do so would require a 5mm lens which either isn?t available or introduces unacceptable distortion, or any of a host number of other issues. In showing our program in the US and at Cannes, I can tell you that when I bring this up to virtually anyone who has shot film with storyboards they almost inevitably all start nodding?been there, done that, tossed pages of storyboards out the window? So how is doing your storyboards in FrameForge different? Well, let?s start with the end product, the print-out. Sure, the frames print out with slightly stiff-looking (though we?re improving that!) actors that don?t have that jazzy dynamism that a hand-drawn frame can convey? but the FrameForge 3D Studio frames are dead-on realistic as to what the camera will see based on the physics of optics. If you set up a shot accurately in the FrameForge virtual world, you KNOW you can get that shot once you get on the set which means that your prep work time?though probably longer than if you?d just drawn it?will actually be useful and won?t have to be discarded once you get on the set and in the real world. Secondly, in addition to the frames themselves, you get the focal length, camera height and angle of view used in each frame, plus an overhead blueprint view of the frame showing the camera setup. This latter printout can be an invaluable tool for figuring out the best order of shooting to minimize camera and lighting setups, thus making your shoot even more efficient. Thirdly, while you are setting up your shots, you can tell the program about the limitations you are working with, what the film size/aspect ratio you are using, what lenses you have available, if there is a maximum height in a room you can put the camera and so on. All of which work towards again ensuring that your end product, the storyboard frames, is actually useful on the set. The other issue which everyone is taking for granted is why you storyboard in the first place. Whether you draw your storyboards by hand or produce them in any other non-3D program, what you are doing is communicating (hopefully successfully!) your existing vision of the shot or sequence to the cast and crew. You are getting down what was already in your head but no more than that. Then you get on the set and suddenly see an angle you hadn?t thought off. You walk around the room and see that the slats of the bed create an interesting angle framed with the actor and suddenly your prep work will go out the window. Will that kind of on-set spontaneity happen with storyboards generated in FrameForge? Sure. But it can also happen during the storyboarding itself. This is because you are not working in a 2D world that is just showing what you?d already thought of seeing, but rather a true 3D world build to accurate dimensions. Add to that the fact that you can use multiple cameras and it becomes a very common occurrence as you set up the shot you were thinking of getting, you?ll discover something new. Perhaps you?ll see an interesting angle or foreground object that you hadn?t thought of, or you?ll glance up at the monitor and be intrigued by the view through another camera, or you?ll just plain start experimenting to see what looks the best. But by doing it in a 3D world, it turns the act of creating storyboards from an exercise in communications to a dynamic, exploratory previsualization process. A perfect example of this is a sequence I did for a demo. The scene was an inner city girl meeting her ?Big Sister? in the park only to be told by the Big Sister that she couldn?t do it any more. I had envisioned them meeting in the park, then going and sitting in a gazebo where they would chit-chat until finally the Big Sister broke the news. As I was setting up the sequence however, I was forced to move the camera around to get a clear shot through the pillars of the gazebo when I suddenly realized that the pillars were actually an intrinsic part of the shot. They were the perfect visual representation of the emotional separation the characters were feeling: boxing the little girl in and separating her ex-Big Sister from her. By actively incorporating these pillars into my sequence, I could more effectively capture the emotional content of the scene in a way I simply hadn?t thought about, and certainly wouldn?t have discovered through traditional storyboarding. Once I realized what I had, I ended up delaying their entry into the gazebo and used the boxing in of the pillars as a foreshadowing of the ?break-up? that was coming. Would I have discovered the same thing on the set? Quite possibly, though it would have then involved making the decision as to whether to toss out my original storyboards (and their investment in preparation) and figure it out on the fly or stick with the existing but less powerful storyboarded version. And it is always cheaper and more time-effective to make these sort of discoveries in the privacy of your own home than it is to do them on set with dollars ticking away by the minute. Ultimately you?ll have to make the decision as to whether FrameForge fits in with how you work as a creative artist, and whether you find the value in spending the extra time in the preparation versus spending it on the set. But if you?ve read this far, I really appreciate the time and consideration you?ve given to my thoughts and wish you the best of luck with your filmmaking. Sincerely, Ken Schafer FrameForge Web Page FrameForge Community Site