Autodesk Smoke Essentials: Autodesk Official Press (2014)

Chapter 1. Before You Begin

This chapter discusses the very first things you need to do to configure Autodesk^® Smoke^® software after you’ve installed it, prior to working on your first project. In the process, you’ll learn how to set up your working environment and how to create and organize your projects.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

· Opening Autodesk Smoke

· Choosing your storage volume

· Creating and managing users

· Creating and managing projects

· Smoke preferences for audio playback and broadcast monitoring

· Other important preferences

Before You Open Smoke

In this first chapter, you’ll be guided through the process of opening Autodesk Smoke for the first time. You should already have Smoke installed on your system, along with any drivers that are required for the external video interfaces you’re using; if not, please refer to the installation instructions that accompanied your disk image or installation disc.

Because of its underlying architecture, there are certain aspects of your Smoke application environment that you need to configure using a separate application, Smoke Setup, as shown in Figure 1.1, located in the Utilities folder of the Smoke 2013 folder.

FIGURE 1.1 The Smoke Setup application

Most crucially, Smoke Setup lets you configure the video and audio devices that you’ll be using while you work, as well as the media storage devices you want to use with Smoke.

The following procedure will walk you through the process of setting these things up:

1. Open Smoke Setup. The Smoke Setup application window appears, with seven panels of configuration options to choose from, as shown in Figure 1.2. At the moment, there are two you care about, starting with the General panel.

FIGURE 1.2 The Smoke Setup window

2. If you have an AJA or Blackmagic Design (BMD) video interface connected to or installed in your computer, you can choose it from the Video Device pop-up menu. Make sure that you have the correct drivers installed for the Blackmagic Design or AJA interface you have. If you don’t have a third-party video interface, you should choose None.

3. If you choose an AJA or BMD video device, you may also want to make the same selection from the Audio Device pop-up menu. If Video Device is set to None, then you should choose CoreAudio in order to play audio out of your computer’s audio interface or from any third-party audio interface that you’re using.

4. Open the Media Storage panel, as shown in Figure 1.3.

FIGURE 1.3 The Media Storage panel

The Media Storage panel is a list where you can add all of the storage volumes that you want to use with Smoke. You were prompted to choose a disk location to add a Media Storage folder upon installing Smoke, but you can add as many volumes as you like and switch among them as you please. Be aware, however, that when you create a project that’s linked to media that was imported or transcoded to a particular storage location, the media needs to stay where it is.

5. To add an additional disk location, click Add. The Media Storage Folder dialog appears, as shown in Figure 1.4.

FIGURE 1.4 The Media Storage Folder dialog

6. Click Select, pick a fast volume connected to your computer, and click Choose. You can choose any volume you like — an internal hard drive or SSD, an external RAID, or a removable disk. Keep in mind that the performance of Smoke depends highly on the performance of the storage volume on which your project and media are stored, so you want to use a fast volume whenever possible.

7. Type a plain English name into the Media Storage Name field, which is how you’ll refer to that volume in the list, and then click OK. Your new volume appears in the Smoke Setup list, and a directory is created that corresponds to the path in the Location column.

It helps to choose a Media Storage Name that corresponds to the physical drive (for example, OWC Drive or Promise Array) to make it easier to keep track of which Media Storage folder is on which hard drive.

8. When you’re finished adding directories, click Apply, and then click Quit.

Smoke is now configured and ready for use. Whenever you need to change AV interfaces or volumes, quit Smoke, open Smoke Setup, and make the necessary changes.

Smoke directories contain all project data and media created by Smoke, and they must never be deleted or manually altered. This cannot be stressed enough — deleting or altering a Smoke directory may result in a catastrophic loss of project data. In all cases, you want to interact with project data and media from within Smoke. These directories are, for all intents and purposes, a black box that you should not open.

Opening Autodesk Smoke

Once you’ve configured your environment using Smoke Setup, you’re ready to open Smoke and start working. However, Smoke is a database-managed application, so there is a little more setup required when you first open Smoke to make sure that your projects and media end up where you want them.

Smoke is a one-window application that always takes up the whole screen. You can always hide it using -H or use application switching or Mission Control commands to jump to different applications. Generally speaking, however, once you open Smoke, you’ll be working within the Smoke environment, which has dedicated controls for media import, export, and file management.

The Startup Screen

When you first open Smoke, the Project panel appears, which presents you with the name of the host computer and a set of three pop-up menus for setting up a project in Smoke. The Project panel is shown at the bottom of Figure 1.5.

FIGURE 1.5 The Project panel

These pop-up menus let you choose which storage volume to use. The Project panel also lets you choose, create, or edit projects. Finally, it’s where you define and choose a user. You’ll also notice a series of four links at the upper right of the Project panel that take you to some invaluable resources for learning more about Smoke:

Smoke Learning Channel This is a constantly updated and expanded set of video tutorials covering all manner of Smoke functionality.

Smoke Forum This is a user-driven forum focused on issues related to Smoke.

Smoke on Facebook This page provides a way to get updates on what’s happening with Smoke over time.

Choosing Your Storage Volume

When you open the Storage Volume pop-up menu, every storage volume that you added using the Smoke Setup application appears within.

1. Choose another volume from the Storage Volume pop-up menu. For maximum performance, this should be the fastest and largest volume attached to your computer.

Before you open Smoke, use Smoke Setup to add all of the volumes you want to be able to use with it. Otherwise, you won’t be able to choose the volume that you want to use.

2. Click Open.

As mentioned previously, each storage volume contains its own media files, all of which are referenced by the project data contained within the Smoke database, which is located in /usr/discreet/project/.

Creating and Managing Projects

The next group of controls on the Project panel is for choosing, creating, editing, and deleting Smoke projects, as shown in Figure 1.6.

FIGURE 1.6 Project management controls

The storage volume that is selected dictates which projects are available from the Project pop-up menu. If this is your first time using Smoke, there won’t be any projects available on any volume. You’ll need to create one.

1. Click New (in the Project group). The Create New Project dialog appears, as shown in Figure 1.7.

FIGURE 1.7 The Create New Project dialog

2. Verify that the correct volume is selected in the Volume field, and then type Introductory Project into the Name field (Smoke automatically adds underscores to replace any spaces you type).

3. Click anywhere outside the Name field to force the Setup Directory pop-up menu to update with the project name, which will be used to create that project’s directory inside the automatically managed Smoke directory at /usr/discreet/project/, as shown in Figure 1.8.

FIGURE 1.8 The updated Setup Directory pop-up menu

You’ll ignore the Setup Mode button for now. Later, however, when you have multiple projects using different settings, this pop-up menu will let you copy the saved setup used by another project to use as the starting point for a new project that you’re creating.

4. Open the Config Template pop-up menu, and choose 1920×1080@23976psf.cfg to configure the Resolution controls and set the master frame rate of the project to match the media used in this tutorial, as shown in Figure 1.9.

FIGURE 1.9 The Config Template pop-up menu

It’s very important that you select the correct frame rate in the Config Template, because once you set it, you cannot change it. If you choose the wrong frame rate, you’ll need to create a new project with the correct one and use that instead.

5. Choose 1920 × 1080 HD 1080 from the Resolution pop-up menu to configure most of the Resolution controls, as illustrated in Figure 1.10.

FIGURE 1.10 The Resolution controls

This is the default resolution for new sequences you create within this project. If necessary, you can override this setting when you create new projects and use the setting you choose there. Choosing a new resolution automatically updates the width, height, and aspect ratio controls.

6. Choose 10-bit from the unlabeled default project bit depth pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 1.11. This setting dictates the default bit depth with which new sequences are created. You can always select a different bit depth later on, and you can have as many sequences using as many different bit depths as you like.

FIGURE 1.11 The available bit depths in Smoke

In general, the media you’re using within your project should determine the resolution and bit depth you use.

NOTE All media in this book use the Apple ProRes family of codecs. In particular, most media are in the Apple ProRes 422 (LT) codec, which is a 10-bit codec. Media used by some of the compositing exercises use the Apple ProRes 4444 codec, which in Smoke is identified as having a bit depth of 12-bit u.

7. Check the currently selected unlabeled Graphics Rendering pop-up menu. In general, you should choose 16-bit FP Graphics. However, significantly slower machines can be set to 8-bit Graphics for improved performance — at the expense of lower quality.

8. Choose ProRes 422 (LT) from the Preferred Format pop-up menu of the Cache and Renders tab, as shown in Figure 1.12.

FIGURE 1.12 The Cache and Renders tab

Smoke uses this codec when rendering effects to be cached for real-time playback. Since the media in most of the examples in this book are in the ProRes 422 (LT) format, choosing this same codec will save you some disk space as you work. Be aware, however, that choosing a codec with lower quality than the source media with which you’re working will result in a loss of quality when rendering. You can always change this setting later on.

9. Click Create to create this project file. The new project now appears in the Project pop-up menu, as shown in Figure 1.13.

FIGURE 1.13 The Project pop-up menu

If you changed the Graphics Rendering bit depth pop-up menu to 8-bit, you’ll get a Project Depth And Visual Depth Mismatch warning dialog.

10. Click Confirm to move on. This won’t cause any problems.

Aside from the project’s frame rate, which is now unalterable, you can always change a project’s other settings by clicking the Edit button, as shown in Figure 1.14.

FIGURE 1.14 The project’s Edit button

The Modify Project pop-up menu at the bottom left of the Edit Project dialog lets you choose different operations including deleting the project, deleting the setups, and deleting that project’s clips, as shown in Figure 1.15.

FIGURE 1.15 The Modify Project pop-up menu

11. Choose an operation from this pop-up. Then choose any other options you might want to change if you’re modifying the project, and click Done to make the change.

You can also change a project’s settings while that project is open by choosing File Project and User Settings and then clicking Edit in the Project and User Settings dialog.

Here’s one final reminder to reiterate a very important point: Smoke does not expose an easily identifiable project file in the OS X Finder. All project and media files must be managed from within Smoke. Any attempt to manually manage the files located within directories created by Smoke could cause unsolvable problems.

Creating and Managing Users

The last pop-up menu in the Project panel is for choosing a user, as shown in Figure 1.16.

FIGURE 1.16 The User pop-up menu

User settings contain Smoke preferences data specific to that user, as well as which keyboard shortcuts are used. This allows multiple Smoke artists to use the same workstation while keeping things configured to their personal preferences. Users and projects can be mixed and matched at will. At first, there are no users, and you’ll need to create your own as follows:

1. Click New (in the User group). The Create New User Profile dialog appears, as shown in Figure 1.17.

FIGURE 1.17 The Create New User Profile dialog

2. Type Student into the Name field. You can enter your own name, but you must use alphanumeric characters with no spaces and no special characters.

3. Make sure that the Keyboard Shortcuts pop-up menu is set to Smoke (FCP 7). This is the default keyboard shortcut set for Smoke on the Mac, and these are the shortcuts that are referenced in this book.

You’ll want to leave the Directory path alone, and leave the button underneath it set to New Preferences, because you’ll be creating a completely new set of preferences for this user.

Opening a New Project

Now that you’ve defined a storage volume and created a new project and user, click Start at the bottom right of the Project panel to open that project and begin.

The Smoke user interface appears with your empty, new Introductory_Project ready for you to get started. Smoke only opens one project at a time.

At this point, you’re ready to work. However, now that you’re inside Smoke, there are one or two remaining setup tasks left to do.

Important Preferences

While you’ve already performed some configuration using the Smoke Setup application, this only defined the broad strokes of how Smoke uses hardware and disks. Now that Smoke is open, there are many other ways that you can customize Smoke to reflect your preferred methods of working. First, however, you need to choose Autodesk Smoke Preferences to open the Preferences window, as shown in Figure 1.18.

FIGURE 1.18 The Smoke Preferences window

The Preferences window has 11 tabs containing a multitude of customization options. The settings you choose here are saved within the user profile you used to open Smoke. The following sections explore some of the most important of these options.

Audio Playback

The very first tab contains the controls for audio playback in Smoke. There are numerous options for choosing sync delays, audio metering display, the tone standard and reference level for bars and tone generation, as well as a listing of the audio-mixing performance characteristics of your workstation. However, the most important setting for you to adjust as you set up Smoke for the first time is the Outputs pop-up menu at the end, which is shown in Figure 1.19.

FIGURE 1.19 The Outputs pop-up menu

You need to choose your preferred audio interface from this menu, which reflects the audio output setting you chose in Smoke Setup. If you selected Core Audio, then any OS X–compatible audio interface connected to your computer should show up in this list, and you can pick the interface that’s connected to your speakers. If you don’t configure the audio output here, you’ll be wondering why you can’t hear anything.

Broadcast Monitor

The third tab, Broadcast Monitor, as shown in Figure 1.20, is where you configure video output. As stated previously, Smoke is a single-monitor application, but you can choose to output the video signal that you’re working on either to a broadcast video interface (either internal or externally connected) or to a second computer display.

FIGURE 1.20 The Broadcast Monitor panel

If you only have a single computer monitor and no broadcast video out, then leave the top pop-up menu of the Broadcast Monitor group set to Off. Otherwise, choose Dual-Display Preview if you have a second computer display, or choose the name of your AJA or BMD broadcast video interface if you want to output to an external video display of some kind.

When you choose an option other than Off, the Broadcast Selection menu below updates to show you what options are available. These menus are illustrated in Figure 1.21.

FIGURE 1.21 Available Broadcast Monitor controls

The Broadcast Selection pop-up menu, below the Broadcast Monitor menu, provides two options:

Screen Grab Mirrors the entirety of the primary Smoke display to a second display. This can be useful in presentation or educational situations.

Show Selected Item Outputs the currently selected viewer to video out so that only the video stream is being viewed on your external display. This is the preferred mode for getting a full-screen preview of what you’re working on.

Once you’ve configured these first two pop-up menus, a variety of other controls become available to let you set up how clips are scaled to fit mismatched displays — whether to output based on the viewer settings in Smoke or whether to independently apply a LUT, or Look Up Table, how to apply overlays, and how to handle stereoscopic 3D media.

Input Devices

The fifth tab, as shown in Figure 1.22, provides controls for customizing your preferred input device, whether it’s using a mouse or a pen and tablet.

FIGURE 1.22 The Input Devices tab

While Smoke was originally designed with pen and tablet users in mind, it’s perfectly fine to use Smoke with a mouse. However, if you are using a pen and tablet, the controls to customize how Smoke responds to pressure thresholds are right here, on the Input Devices tab.

Be aware that when using Smoke with a supported Wacom graphics tablet, the entire tablet surface is mapped to the primary Smoke display — even if you have multiple displays connected to your computer. The Tablet Margin controls let you define how much of the tablet’s surface is mapped to the primary display.

User Interface

Lastly, the User Interface tab, all the way on the right, as shown in Figure 1.23, provides a number of controls for customizing the color of the interface to make it brighter or darker, changing the location of the onscreen calculator that lets you click to enter values into number fields, toggling snapping of thumbnails, and so forth.

FIGURE 1.23 The User Interface tab

The Tooltips options are of particular note as you go through the process of learning Smoke. Just about every control in Smoke has a verbose tooltip that explains its function, and these controls let you determine whether they appear, adjust how long (in seconds) you have to hover the pointer to make a tooltip appear, and the duration in seconds that tooltips remain before disappearing.

By using these controls, you can have tooltips appear quickly and remain for a long time when you’re just getting started. Once you have the hang of things and don’t want tooltips getting in the way, you can set them to appear after a longer delay. Then when you’ve mastered Smoke, you can turn off Auto Display altogether so that they don’t end up obscuring the UI during contemplative moments of your workday.

The Essentials and Beyond

Now that you’ve seen how to configure Smoke to get started, it’s time to explore some of the additional educational and reference options that are available from the Project panel and Help menu.

Additional Exercises

· Choose the Smoke Learning Channel from the Help menu to open this YouTube channel in your media browser, and bookmark it.

· Go back to Smoke, and then choose Smoke AREA Discussion Forums and bookmark it.

· Return to Smoke, choose Smoke Help from the Help menu, and choose 2013 Help User Guide Preferences Broadcast Monitor Preferences to read more about the different Broadcast Monitor settings.