Few weeks back, we did some interesting Testshoots at our company Haus&Gross communications, to improve our CGI Integration pipeline regarding new 3d tracking oppertunities, on-set HDRIs with our new 8mm lens and a mirrorball, and using Cinema4D for all the CG elements.

We came up with this little Making-Of:

“The Foundry launches two brand new high tech tools for Adobe® After Effects® taking full advantage of the 64-bit capabilities offered by Adobe® Creative suite® 5 Production Premium (CS5).” www.thefoundry.co.uk

I had the chance to take part in TheFoundry´s beta-testing programm for their 2 new high-end After Effects Plugins “Camera Tracker and Kronos 5.0 (including its own motionblur effect)”.
From the beginning , i was suprised by the fast and really stable versions of the tools, didnt expect that for a v01 of a beta-candidate.

After a little period of trial´n´error i felt quite confortable with the tool , especially the cameratracker, which gives a really huge amount of new possibilities to motion graphers out there using AfterEffects all day long. And with the really cool AEtoC4D-script from Paul Tuersley its even possible to have a great tracking-2d-3d workflow.

Testing this possibilities was my task at work at Haus&Gross communications, and so i came up with some fast-comped shots.

Luckily, TheFoundry set up a little competition for all beta-testers sending in their shots, so i did and even more luckily won a licence of both plugins, incredible awesome! :)

So here is what i came up with:

1.Domino

Thanks to Philipp Hubel for setting up the original 3D simulation for an earlier project.

2.The Door

3.Running - Retiming

Some more examples and infos about those great plugins can be found over at the product pages
CAMERATRACKER and KRONOS

New FXPHD-Term, new Challenges.
This time i took part in “challenge33 - CGI/LiveAction Integration”.
The shot of sindey harbour and the corresponding 8mm bracketed shots for HDRI lightning were provided by FXPHD.

That´s what i came up with at the end:

FXPHD - Challenge33 - Sidney Harbour from Alexander Lehnert on Vimeo.

I´m planning on doing a Making of for that shot, so stay tuned.

For the last few days, i worked on my U.F.O modell for my shortmovie project “The Big Step (AT)”.

So this is what i came up with … old, dirty, long time used 2nd hand U.F.O. ;)

After 2 evenings of learning how to rig, i just finished my first lowpoly character rig ever for my 3d animation project “The Big Step (AT)”.

Joe is now ready for animation, but i still have to rework texturing, weight maps, facial expressions/blendshapes and some minor modelling issues. The rig is the hardest part of getting a character to live so i thought of doing it now, to have something to work with.

After the rig was done, i just set up the Cinema4D internal “Visual Selector” to select my animation controllers as easy as possible.

Time is hunting me again. After some busy days, i finally got some spare time to continue with my short.

i started modelling out “Joe Average” - one of my two characters. Not final textured yet, but i just have to get the rig done first. As it´s my first time rigging a character, it´s little time consuming.

and some pictures from the rig and the user data controllers:

Hope to get Joe into motion as soon as possible. Exciting time …