A 'Little Joy' for the Holidays

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Happy Holidays,

I am proud to announce the release of a new music video Directed by Warren Fu. Warren has outdone himself again.


Little Joy: No One's Better Sake - HD




About the FX:

I helped Warren do a few fx shots on the cove. We found pictures of Christmas Lights online, applied a kaleidoscope filter, tracked in a spinning precomp to the walls, and color corrected to make it appear as if it was on set. Hopefully it's not obvious.

Warren's signature graphics to the beats in the song is very present in the video. The video is "Rocksteady meets 1970's PBS". If you ever get to see in full rez or on my laptop you'll appreciate all the 70's subtlety Warren created.

Chris Stillman in San Francisco did the SEEOUTLOUD logo animation.


Press:

"The Stroke's drummer Fab Moretti's team-up with Rodrigo Amarante and Binki Shapiro has lead to one of our absolute favorite albums of 2008."
From My Old Kentucky Blog
http://myoldkyhome.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-video-little-joy-no-one-betters.html

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/148058


Director:
Check out www.seeoutloud.com to learn more about the Director and see photos from the shoot!


Feel free to spread the Joy!

Enjoy,
Louis
www.louiskatz.com

Maya Batch Rendering on Mac or PC

Forget Render Pal (Not your pal), Maya / Batch Render (which is not batch rendering), or rush. This is the way to go for Maya rendering at home or school while you sleep on one or multiple machines.

Maya Batch Render on Mac:

Open TextEdit and make a file called maya_render (or whatever you want, and no extension).

Make sure it's plain text.

No spaces in paths, or your screwed.

Copy and paste the template below. Edit for your project.

Open Terminal from applications / utilities (or your dock if you made shortcut).

Type in cd (and drag your folder with maya scenes to terminal).

Type chmod 777 maya_render (or whatever you called it). This will make file executable.

Go back to folder and double click on maya_render. It should render now!

/Applications/Autodesk/maya8.5/Maya.app/Contents/bin/Render -h (for render options)

-r mr (mental ray)

-s (start frame)

-e (end frame)

-rd (render directory to store images)

#--------------------------------------------------

#!/bin/sh

/Applications/Autodesk/maya8.5/Maya.app/Contents/bin/Render -r mr -verb -s 1 -e 10 -rd /cityknock/batch_render_test/ /cityknock/batch_render_test/test_a.mb

/Applications/Autodesk/maya8.5/Maya.app/Contents/bin/Render -r mr -verb -s 1 -e 10 -rd /cityknock/batch_render_test/ /cityknock/batch_render_test/test_b.mb

NOTE - You may need to modify path to your version of Maya, i.e. 2008.

Maya Batch Render on PC:

Make a .bat file, edit, and double click on .bat to run.

maya_render.bat
render -verb cgloft_logo_RND_beauty.mb -s 1 -e 100
render -verb cgloft_logo_RND_matte.mb -s 1 -e 200

mental_ray_render.bat
render -r mr -verb cgloft_logo_RND_beauty.mb -s 1 -e 100
render -r mr -verb cgloft_logo_RND_matte.mb -s 1 -e 200


Enjoy,
Louis

Dear Adobe

Adobe, your After Effects team listened to me years ago when I said users should be able to drag and drop imported footage on an icon that creates a comp automatically.

Now please listen to me again on 3 fronts.

1. Develop a true 3D application before George Lucas buys out Autodesk and controls the entire CG industry.

2. Please port at least Photoshop to Linux so we don't have to login to a Windows Box for Adobe Products and Linux box for everything else. This will also be good for the environment. As if we care. Wait, we do because it's popular to care, right?

3. Listen to Dan Goldman. He is on the forefront of simple, easy-to-use video interactivity here:
http://vimeo.com/2345579

Thanks,
Louis Katz
www.louiskatz.com

Midnight Son

A rough cut of Midnight Son with temp fx has been sent to Sundance. We are crossing our fingers the film gets accepted. We plan to finish the film by end of the year.

Eduardo Sanchez (BLAIR WITCH) has joined the project as Executive Producer.

Check out www.midnightsonmovie.com for updates.