Wednesday, December 5, 2007

VFX Naming

When naming VFX, there is a standard in place within many companies that makes things very smooth for all involved:

1) Make sure when naming shots, always use three numbers (Sc 8o would be 080).

2) Use the scene number to label your VFX shots for easy locating.

3) When naming multiple shots with in a scene, you should label each shot in increments of 10.
  • Let's say you have 5 shots in Scene 80, your shots, in sequence order, would be - 080x010, 080x020, 080x030, 080x040, o80x050.
4) If later, you spot new VFX within that same scene, and a new VFX is in between two existing VFX shots, you would go to the number 5.
  • You spot a new shot in between 080x020 and 080x030...the new shot would be 080x025. Let's say there is one more between 080x025 and 080x030, you could do 080x028...so on and so forth.
By naming your VFX shots in this way, you insure that your VFX numbers are labeled in sequential order, making life easier for all.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

What would the convention be for versions of that VFX shot? Can you show an example? I am interested in seeing how long a file name will get for VFX tracking.

Michael

Anonymous said...

We use something like this. For scans I send to VFX, I have them named:

I_AL_002_010_bg_v01
I_AL_002_010_ref_v01
I_AL_002_010_fg_v01

The 'I' means input (input to VFX system) 'AL' refers to the project, then the vfx number, then the plate name and lastly the scan version.

When VFX send a composite to me they could use something like this:

O_AL_002_010_v02

The 'O' stands for output. However sometimes they add other bits of info, say if the shot is in its early stages, but the version number is always the key part:

O_AL_101_010_tst-deJitter_v05

Anonymous said...

"…However sometimes they add other bits of info, say if the shot is in its early stages, but the version number is always the key part:

O_AL_101_010_tst-deJitter_v05"

that makes sense, although i suggest that the note go at the end maybe, that way it keeps clips together, since the v05 would stay with 'all' the v05 clips.

so if you wanted to do 5 different 'test', then at least no matter what those test were, they would all be right together and not have to go thru the whole list to find them. makes it easy to delete them as well.

Anonymous said...

Yep, good point!

Anonymous said...

I personally think the idea of trying to keep the VFX shots sequentially number is more work than it's worth.

For my money it makes a lot more sense to simply number the shots as they are ordered or it becomes apparent that they are needed.

None of the rest of the movie is labeled in sequential order? Imagine if we tried to shot the film this way.

Shots come and go and are re purposed in different places in the cut.

So I agree with the naming conventions listed but trying to keep the numbers sequential by using multiples of ten seems like a waste of my time.

I use a naming convention that goes like this.

VFX10_1
VFX10_2
VFX10_3

for shot names

VFX10_1_bg_1
VFX10_1_fg_1
VFX10_1_fg_2

Elements sent to the vfx dept for shot VFX10_1

I expect VFX10_1_v1,2,3,4 etc back.

Pretty simple and frankly if at the end of the shot I end up with shot
number 10 in front of shot number 2 so be it. The whole rest of the movie is all jumbled up when it comes to shot names etc.

Just my two cents
Regards
Alan Bell
www.handmadedigital.com
www.vfxtracker.net