VFX WTF QUOTES 041323 - 1 of 2: "Seriously, how hard it is to learn what an Alpha is?" Just when I thought this series of posts was out of steam, a couple of folks mentioned a couple more. This quote (which I copied word-for-word) was a response to a discussion of why Roto was important, and how it is important to create an Alpha channel. I had two takeaways from the quote: 1- The content of the quote communicates the opinion that Roto and Alpha channel creation are simple jobs. 2- The tone of the quote implies that no one should spend more than a few minutes to explain it or learn it. In my studies of VFX Roto, I found that you can explain Roto in a simple way but the studies and practices of Roto are vast, largely misunderstood or under examined. Lastly, this dismissive mindset of Roto could be used against other disciplines of VFX. What's so hard about [add VFX discipline here]? What's so hard about Tracking? What's so hard about Animation? What's so hard about Compositing? And once this devaluation of any of our disciplines becomes normalized, then people could attach a bid associated with that perceived value. If VFX people undervalue other VFX people, then its not a stretch of imagination to see people outside VFX undervaluing us. "Can I get the VFX for a dollar? And can I get unlimited versions? SERIOUSLY how hard can it be?" Speak up VFX Roto Professionals! What are your thoughts?
Learning the concept of what an alpha is shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. Learning how to make an alpha will probably take much longer than that. Learning how to quickly make a good alpha will probably take years.
It’s kind of clickbaity that you’ve got this big ole quote posing a fair-enough question/thought, but the body of your post infers a lot from it and paints the rest of a context behind it. I’ve worked on large ad campaigns and received assets from the client with ‘_alpha.png’ in the name - and the asset of course didn’t actually have an alpha channel - and I found myself asking the same question you’ve got in the image. So yeah, understanding what an alpha channel is, especially for anyone in the biz, should take about a minute to comprehend. To your other points - roto and alpha creation, are indeed simple jobs. They’re meticulous, take a long time, but they are about as simple as things gets in the VFX pipeline. You’re creating/adjusting a single channel, and assigning values between 0 and 1 to it. Whether you’re pulling keys, tracing shapes, painting by hand or something else, it’s still a simple task. That’s what makes it so meditative, and also easy to delegate between multiple people. When it’s right, it’s right - and when it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Its an objective task. It takes care and time and an artistic/experienced eye will do a better job of it, but it’s still simple. None of that is devaluing.
The fact that once we did a shot of around 140 frames, had 70 people working on it for 7-8 days is going to show you how insane some roto tasks are. And it's never only alpha, usually overlapping elements get channel renders, but learning about Alpha is honestly kinda eas, not going to lie 🤣 By the way the shot had multiple horses and people with long hair, blasting at full speed. Full detail hair roto... 🤣
Nitish Mehta
1y
I remember my mind just blew away into pieces when our faculty was trying to explain this concept.
Jim Hillin
1y
Lol
VFX Artist
1yCouldn't agree more