Feral Dream

Interesting use of 3D printers

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:16:17 -0800

Interesting article on using 3D printers to fine-tune stop-motion character expressions: 3D printer brings animated movie stars to life.

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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My first C4D animation!

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 11:44:18 -0800

3D Water

G w wrong perspective

G on Cliff

So here's my first Cinema 4D model and animation: water!

I could have bought 3D water but instead, I chose to learn C4D by trying to make it. The reason why I needed water was that I had a scene in my novel trailer (WAR GAMES) where one of my characters, "G," is climbing a cliff above water. I started my animation of G on the cliff in DAZ and just stuck a background of 2D photo of water (see "G w wrong perspective"). First of all, the perspective is wrong - it looks like he's crawling out of the water onto the ground. Secondly, when I animated it, it looked very wrong to have the water so still. So my challenge was to make water so I could choose the perspective and also animate it.

To make water, I followed this tutorial. I used the "metal" texture that comes with C4D for the material reflection, and "water" texture for the bump and environment. I tried a few of the other tutorials where the water looked better (by using caustics) but when I tried it, it took a l-o-n-g time to render and my results sucked. So this was the best way I've found.

Once the water model was made, I needed to animate it so it looked alive. I ended up applying "vibrate." Right click on the water in your objects tab, cinema 4d tags> vibrate. In the Attributes menu (click on the vibrate icon in your Objects menu), I used the following vibrate parameters: Relative, Enable Position, Amplitude 10, 0, 0. I'll refine the parameters as needed. I may want a gentler motion.

The next challenge will be to combine the animation of G climbing the cliff with the water animation. I have two choices: "green screen" G and composite it with the water animation in After Effects; or import G's scene into the water animation (or vice versa) and combine them. I'm totally new to 3D so everything I do will be an experiment. I've also never used green screens before so that will be a learning experience too. Right now, G and his climbing animation is in DAZ and the water is in C4D. I'll need to figure out how to import one into the other if I choose that route.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my first modeling results!

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Hello World! Happy New Year!

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 12:04:33 -0800

Wow, an unintended break. It's been almost 2 months since I last posted. I didn't intend to stop blogging, I just got distracted and before I knew it, 2 months had gone by.... During that time, a Russian economist has declared that the US is disintegrating, 2008 turned into 2009, YouTube changed from 4:3 to 16:9 and then went HD. SAG is still threatening to strike - they might as well threaten to go on a hunger strike because that's about how self-destructive it would be.

So what have I been doing? At first, I went into a creative mode where all else was consumed by my obsession over making an animated book trailer for my novel, WAR GAMES. Then, I remembered I had never done animation before, ran into technical difficulties, and I geeked out. Right now, I'm somewhere between my creative mode and geek-out mode (I know, some might say I'm always in this state). I just bought Cinema 4D from someone on Craigslist who may or may not be part of the Russian mob; I also bought one of the last Comic Book Creator programs despite the fact that it looks like the makers are going out of business; ordered a new over-the-top mobile battlestation (aka "notebook computer"); sent out some DVDs of TOOTH FAIRY to film festivals; killed my power supply in my desktop which is now open under my desk with its guts spilling out; got a new terabyte (!!!) second hard drive for my desktop and a 64G (!!!) USB drive for Christmas (I hear other girls want jewelry as gifts -- can you imagine?); got my butt kicked clear across silicon valley by a group of graduates of the Stanford EE masters program in a game I never heard of before; and I ate a pound of Trader Joe's milk chocolate with almonds. There you have it -- now you're all caught up.

Happy New Year!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Free 3D animation software

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:43:00 -0800

DAZ makes a couple of amazing and free 3D animation software. DAZ 3D lets you play around with animated figures and settings. You can buy premade elements - like playing house - and piece them together to make your own image. Bryce lets you build entire worlds. Bryce 6 is for sale but Bryce 5.5 is free.

Our very own Cannes guest blogger, Robert Pratton, filmmaker of Mind Flesh, made his own fun video as part of his marketing push for Mind Flesh. He bought a dog from DAZ, then used an alternative program, Poser, to animate it. (See how making these extras gets you publicity?) Check it out.

Cheers,
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

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Machinima

nobody@vox.com(Susan Ee) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 09:28:26 -0700

Check out Moviestorm. You can make an animated movie (machinima) for free. I love the idea but it's in beta and I tried to watch some of the resulting movies and had a lot of trouble with it. I'm scared to download it in case it crashes my whole system, especially since my media computer has Vista which is not compatible with anything, I mean, with Moviestorm. Sometimes, it's worth paying for a product after beta. Also, this version seems to have just regular people in regular settings. The great thing about something like this is to get into environments that would be too expensive to make in the real world: science fiction, fantasy, historical, something with epic crowds. I'm sure that's coming. Until, then, I may find myself in a game world that supports machinima because I don't think I can resist playing around with it. If you see a chick in WOW fending off monsters away from her cast and crew, that may be me... :-) Say hi and help me slay that dragon so I can get on with my film!

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