Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film [Paperback]

Doug Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 13, 2000

Provides professional compositors, digital compositing software users, students, etc., with a comprehensive reference that includes all the information available on resources for digital compositing. Overview of methods, procedures, and results attainable with various digital compositing software, such as lighting, transitions, rendering optimization, and more. Contains thorough reviews of software packages, plug-ins, and resources relating to digital compositing.Digital Compositing In Depth includes two CD-ROMS with Digital Fusion 2.52 fully functional watermarked software (PC); trial versions of After Effects, Premiere, effect, paint, Shake, Ultimate, and Zbig (PC); 3,400+ frames of of video footage, including matte, bluescreen, live action, and CGI character animation footage (PC/Mac); full-frame motion picture footage (PC/Mac); motion control files and footage (PC/Mac).TOC: Part 1 The Profession of CompositingChapter 1 Who is the Digital Compositor?Chapter 2 The Rest of the Team

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There is often far more going on in any given frame of a contemporary movie or commercial than meets the eye. In Digital Compositing in Depth, the techniques of both visible and invisible effects are explored and explained.

Obvious visual effects are pervasive in today's broadcast media; less obvious effects like color correction, image stabilization, object removal, and virtual backgrounds are more common than most observers might guess.

And that's exactly the point of Digital Compositing--to educate those not involved in the business, or to broaden the knowledge base of those involved with exposure to other software tools. The book starts and ends with discussions on the business of compositing: what it is, the responsibility of the compositor compared to other team members, and an excellent chapter on how small and large studios are run and how to launch your own studio.

The meat of the book contains a comprehensive set of tutorials varying in complexity, from "Basic Compositing" through "Advanced Compositing" and "Output." They cover both video and film resolution projects. The tutorials use a variety of software, most of which can be found in demo form on one of the two accompanying CDs.

Final compositing is often the last and crucial step in the development cycle of a project, but it usually gets in the limelight least. Digital Compositing in Depth is a valuable eye-opener, and a worthwhile book for anyone involved in video or film post-production. --Mike Caputo

About the Author

Doug Kelly has written several books and articles, and has presented various seminars on computer graphics since 1992. His publications include Character Animation with Lightwave [6], Character Animation In Depth, Digital Compositing In Depth; as well as, contributing to the manuals for several 3D programs, written numerous articles for Keyframe and 3D Artist magazines, and his LENY '97 Character animation seminar CD-ROM. Doug is currently a freelance writer and animator and is editor of Keyframe Magazine.

Product Details

• Paperback: 650 pages
• Publisher: Coriolis Group Books (March 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576104311
• ISBN-13: 978-1576104316
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,715,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars good book wrong title, July 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film (Paperback)

while i have no doubt this is a real written and researched tome, i must give this book 1 star based on the deliberately misleading title

this book should be titled "digital fusion in depth"

if you need to master digital fusion, by all means please purchase this title, however if digital fusion is not your compositor of choice DO NOT BOTHER!

fight the power

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No Sir, I didn't like this book one bit!, December 15, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film (Paperback)

I bought this book hoping to learn more about compositing techniques and instead had to skim throught all the explanations of how to use Digital Fusion. If you don't use Digital Fusion don't bother with this book. Literally half of the book has tutorials that read more like a software step by step than an actual overview of compositing. I usually don't like to write negative reviews, but I really don't like spending money on a poor product. Sorry.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Spread too thin...., April 8, 2001

By 

Mel Matsuoka (Honolulu, HI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Digital Compositing In Depth: The Only Guide to Post Production for Visual Effects in Film (Paperback)

The title of this book is misleading: There is more *breadth* than actual "depth". This book has the potential of being the digital compositing world's equivalent of Trish and Chris Meyer's "Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects"--An invaluable *practical* bible for its field. Unfortunately, the author wastes way too much space by attempting to appease users of several different compositing applications at once. He tries to explain how to perform each compositing topic in Digital Fusion, Adobe After Effects, Newtek Aura, Nothing Real Shake, Puffin/Pinnacle Commotion, Discreet effect* and Silicon Grail Chalice.

This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that a great majority of the time (particularly in regards to Newtek Aura), you are told that if you want to do such-and-such compositing task, you'll need to "use another program" that does because "<insert app here> doesn't support it". It's so recurring that it almost seems like a joke whenever you get to the Newtek Aura section of each tutorial, and the book basically tells you that you're screwed if you want to do that particular compositing task in it.

As other reviewers have mentioned, there is a heavy bias towards Eyeon Digital Fusion in this book. However, even as a heavy After Effects user, I didnt mind this at all, since its the *concepts* and techniques that matter to me more. If you understand these basic concepts, you can apply them to *any* compositing application. This is the book's main virtue. The in-depth discussions of Matchmoving, bluescreening, tracking and "cleanup" are very good, and haven't really been practically discussed at length in any other book, AFAIK. Theres also a lot of good information about the unglamourous side of CGI work--the "business" of selling yourself and getting work.

If the author would have just narrowed his scope, application-wise, this could have been an absolutely killer book. The inclusion of Chalice and Shake in this book are particularly puzzling, since it would seem to me that anyone who is in a position to be actually /using/ these products is already doing high-end film compositing to begin with, and probably wouldn't need a book like this. The fact is that the vast majority of digital compositors who would even *need* a book like this are most likely using more common applications like Digital Fusion, After Effects and Commotion. If this book just concentrated on these apps, more space could be used to discuss each of thier strengths and weaknesses relative to the compositing task at hand, and in the end, it would make for a much more practical and useful book.

All that being said, I still think this book is worth getting if you aren't already a battle-scarred veteran of digital compositing. Just be prepared to wade through a lot of chaff to get to the real useful bits. I would still recommend buying Brinkmann's "The Art and Science of Digital Compositing" first, though. Thats as close to a "bible" as you'll get right now. "Digital Compositing in Depth" is *almost* there....