TV Series "Heroes" Stop Scene FX?

garo wrote on 1/20/2007, 12:48 AM

Prol'y several examples but in the TV series "Heroes" you have scenes where a guy stops time and walks through the scene doing stuff with everythng else just frozen in time. I guess they use lots of chroma and track layers or what?

//Garo

Comments

DJPadre wrote on 1/20/2007, 6:15 AM

lots of 3d compositing tools, such as those found in Combustion 4 (G buffer) <where u draw a gradient across a video/photographic space and the gradient ratio/intensity allows that photo/video element to be manipulated in 3d space. Also it allows you to add behaviours based on the depth of gradient... hard to explain, but the gradients allow one element to relatively affect another based on the depth of the gradient itself.. im not explaining it right.. lol

another one is Fusion5, which is an incredible tool..

this kinda stuff is usually shot with a green/blue screen, with a 3d environment created in post.. vegas cant do this kinda stuff and if it can, youll be there for days..

Steve Mann wrote on 1/21/2007, 12:37 AM

Hate to burst your bubble, but there was an article in Post Magazine about the series recently. (Post is the post-production trade publication).

"Heros" is very low budget and few of the stop-time effects are composited - most are made with strings to hold things in position and then removed in post. Even the people that Hiro walks among are just holding the pose.

Steve

FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/21/2007, 2:10 AM

i can hardly imagine that they're not doing some serious compositing when i see a Burst of flame from an explosion stopped mid burst, and things like that.

Dave

garo wrote on 1/21/2007, 2:35 AM

Also things like smoke were involved - rather than solid objects - try to hang smoke on astring! ;-) Obviously several techniques are involved ... :-)

DJPadre wrote on 1/21/2007, 4:45 AM

combustion 4 is perfect example of allowing a 2d engine to run within a 3d environment.. smoke in 3d space is something which is pretty easy to pull off with particle illusion (the PI particle emitter engine is the one thats found within combusiton) however, using the smoke particle emitter with a Gbuffer (as an exmaple) allows one to create a 3d active DoF whereby a subject can move THROUGH the emitter (or object) in 3d space. Wth motin tracking, and repeatable shots (which for the life of me I cant recall its ""official "' name of the technique, u can pull this off quite easily.
As for the strings and some such, nothing surprises me these days LOL