Freekstorm VFX Blog

Some of our readers may dimly recall our failure last October to get Acid Pro 7 to work on our 64 bit PC. Well, finally our resident genius figured out how to do it!

For those who are having similar problems, you need to install ASIO4ALL which is the universal ASIO driver for WDM Audio. You can download the driver here.

After installing this you will need to switch Acid Pro 7 from WDM to ASIO (the option can be found in Audio Properties) in order for it to work.

Such a shame we discovered the solution too late for our movie deadline!

Still, now at least we don’t have to buy Adobe Audition 3 instead, and that saves us loadsa money. (I’m a skinflint – I LIKE saving money!)

Labels: Software

It has been a busy Christmas week here at Freekstorm Entertainment. Rich has spent several days designing CG animation for some friends (alas, we can’t show it here until they are ready to launch their own product) but IMO it looks very cool. However, we can tell you all about what Rich has been up to in Vue 8.

Vue 8 is exceedingly cool software which creates entire worlds. E-on Software (who design it) call it “digital nature” and honestly this stuff is so cool that I’d (almost) sell my soul to buy the xStream version of the licence which integrates Vue into Softimage so that virtual landscapes can be integrated into your film. This software has been used on many, many major films such as Terminator Salvation, Pirates of the Caribbean, Season 5 onwards of Stargate Atlantis...and so on. Vue 8 is the landscape generator for Industrial Light and Magic. It is.... the Holy Grail of VFX landscaping!

You can create complete new backdrops for your movie, fully populated virtual worlds with trees, virtual planets, the list is endless. The only limit is your imagination (and your wallet)! Having seen what this baby can do, all of our ideas for future movie shorts depend on it. Remember that we don’t shoot on location if we can help it. We’d much rather green-screen the entire thing and design the landscape afterwards. Why? Because we wanna do sci-fi shorts, and the locations we need don’t exist on this planet. I know because I’ve looked. We simply can’t boldy go where no sci-fi movie-short has gone before without mega-cool extra-terrestrial landscapes. Got the script, got the camera and sound equipment, got some young and talented actors, got the green-screen studio (sort of – it’s still in pieces.) Alas, no alien planet. Bummer!

Unfortunately the cost for realising our filmmaking runs to over one thousand pounds and there is no way in hell that we can afford our dream-planet any time soon! Still, nothing wrong with a bit of “Iwantitis” is there? After all, it is very important to have goals in one’s business plan. Goals move you forwards, they make you try harder, they give you something to aim for. And let's face it - it is the producer's job to achieve the totally impossible so that her director can make the movie he's always dreamed of!

So my New Year Resolution for 2010 is to earn enough in the day-job to be able to fund this VITAL AND VERY NECESSARY addition to our filmmaking software family.

So get cracking on the day-job, Rich. I wanna make sci-fi!!!



Resources:

e-on Software have a free personal learning edition available for download here. Be careful though - it's a seductive little beastie and you'll quickly want to upgrade to a better version so that you can a) get rid of that pesky watermark, and b) have access too all those mega-cool extra features. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Labels: CG, Software