Re: flying swarm of apples - advice?

Hi,

You haven't really mentioned what you want to know, so it's hard to know where to start, though I would off the cuff just suggest the following:

* use locked off shots and no camera movements with the flying apples unless you or your LW artist have match-moving skills & tools to integrate with LW and your footage. locked off tripod shots will help you avoid "slippage" of the 3D objects should you attempt to composite them by eyeballing it along a certain plane - etc without match-moving software.

* photograph real apples or standins with the footage and digital cameras in several examples of the actual lighting environment your footage will be shot to get reference footage and/or texture maps for the 3D artist.

* consider the motions that the apples will take to achieve the effect you are trying to achieve. Will these swarm like bees, birds, floating ping-pong balls, apples rotating and flung through the sky? you get the idea. Your artist will most likely be using a particle system for the swarming, but have an animation style in mind as each of these types of motions I've listed here would look quite different and have a very different feel from each other.

* Try and storyboard the shots so you only have to animate the swarms for short discreet shots and not some long flying path as that would be more difficult. Remember depth of field in the 3D and consider that extreme closeups of a flying apple with blurry background and other blurred apples in the background could convey some energy to the motion when intercut with wide shots - so be sure and get extra plate footage for the closeups with the camera defocused and moving to show animation as if the camera was moving alongside one of the apples.

* workflow wise:
- consider how interlacing will affect your workflow if you don't shoot progressive.
- consider doing some shots with high shutter speed so that you get little motion blur - that way if you want to use something like twixtor (or any other plugin in the compositor that uses optical flow) to re-time the footage. Re-timing with ramps and envelops could add additional power/energy to your scene - and the shutter speed just gives clearer images for the optical flow to work with, and you can re-introduce motion blur where you want it in post if you choose.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head - hope they help.
:)
Sam