Test footage from my Trek animation

Hey everybody,

Here is a little bit of test footage from my animated short film titled 'Star Trek: The Armageddon Clock'.

I was testing my nebula effect and my volumetric clouds.

There are two files here - 1) for people with broadband and (2) for poeple with dial up.

In order to make this easy for everybody to view I compressed it into a Windows Meda file (WMV) so that there wouldn't be any issues with 'codec not installed'. The full version of my animation plays with DivX compression and looks a lot sharper than what you'll see here. Those of you familar with the WMV compression probably already know how much quality you lose when crunch your file down to something this small.

The real version of the film plays at a resoulution of 800x450 but for these tests I've compressed it down to 720x486.

Both files are pretty small so you shouldn't have too much problem downloading them.

Broadband version (2.33mb) : www.wabashponies.com/dan/wipmed.wmv

Dial-up version (1.78mb) : www.wabashponies.com/dan/wipsmall.wmv

My Trek story takes place between the TOS:TMP era and the TNG era.

The Starship in my story is not a flagship or pride of the fleet and my Captain isn't some super famous big-shot who every Klingon knows by name and dreams of killing. My Captain is sort of a middle-low end guy who's flying an outdated ship with some system and comptuer upgrades. Our Captian is one who is expendable and if he and his ship disappeared tomorrow, few people would even notice. That's exactly why they've been sent on such a cricital mission. Should they fail, Starfleet will disavow any knowledge of their mission, will lable them as rogue, and not attempt any sort of resue or diplomatic mission. And if they do fail, an all out war will begin between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.


Credits:
Starship: Evil Genius 180 - Phase 2 with Dennis Bailey's 1701-A nacells and a few modifications by me.

Regula-1: Rick "Hobbes" Snider

Animated with Carrara Pro 6 (render time: roughly 10 hours).
Edited with uLead Video Studio 9.
Compressed with Windows Movie Maker.

[evil_genius_180]

Looks good, dude. That nebula is the shiznit. About how long did it take just to set up that little bit? (nebula, animation, everything)

[gmd3d]

That was a great animation man .. the movement was smooth ..


and nebula effect was great .. spill the beans and tell all..

[gmd3d]

WOW just seen the 10hour render time .

The nebula is mulit-layerd.
I have one sphere textured with a bitmap I made using Lightwave 9 set to turbulence as a texture. I saved that image and then attached it to the sphere in Carrara.

The 2nd level of sphere is textured with a starfield (and one on the self illumination/glow & alpha map layers).

The 3rd level of sphere is the outer most sphere and it's textured with a starfield (and one on the self illumination/glow layer as well) but nothing on the alpha map layer - this gives me the 'dark' space needed.

Inside the sphere I have (the number depends on the shot) a few (usually at least 3) volumetric clouds with a light set to illuminate each one individually so I can contol the amount of light/colour on each.

Then I have my ships/space station 'floating' around inside the sphere.

All in all I would say I have probably about an hour of pre-rendering set up time for these shots.

I've mentioned it before but the reason I use Carrara is because it works so well with my workflow/train of thought that it's almost effortless for me.

And thank you for the compliments you guys.
It means alot to me as I know you're awesome modelers and I hope you'll like what I do with your meshes.

When it's finished the animation will run about 30 minutes.

I will need some people who can speak Klingon (audio files) if you know anybody who might be interested. All I need is the wav file and I can lip synch that to the 'actor' mesh for the scenes.

These are just my 'test' shots to see if I like the nebula and if I think the starship looks ok. So far I'm pretty happy with both and reading your comments suggests to me that I might be going in the right direction.

I'm really happy right now!
Thanks a million


Just to keep things from being confusing - when I say 'layer of sphere' I don't mean actual layers like in LWO but instead there are 3 different spheres inside of one another - each one just a wee bit smaller than the other. Plus the 2 starfield spheres are rotated at different angles so they don't look the same.

[evil_genius_180]

I think this is only the second time I've ever sen one of my meshes animated, so I'm stoked about that. (the first was by scifieric) I did a little crappy animation once, and want to try again since I have the new computer, that's why I was asking about setup time.

Anywho, as Ger said, the animation is nice and smooth. It looks great so far, even with the .wmv compression. (though I thank you for that, as I do use dialup.)

[General Phoenix]

That's a great piece of work, man.

I would love to see the full version when it's complete.

[gmd3d]

it has me wishing that my PC was in the bin and a newer and more powerful one was at my disposal,

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

I think this is only the second time I've ever sen one of my meshes animated, so I'm stoked about that. (the first was by scifieric) I did a little crappy animation once, and want to try again since I have the new computer, that's why I was asking about setup time.

Anywho, as Ger said, the animation is nice and smooth. It looks great so far, even with the .wmv compression. (though I thank you for that, as I do use dialup.)

Very cool!
I'm glad you're digging on seeing your mesh 'come to life' and move.
And, yah - I know you're on a dial-up so I made that file just for you. (awwwww) LOL!

@ General Phoenix - Thanks for the compliment and when the final version of the animation is done I'll make sure there is a link to it posted here. I'm not sure how long it'll take me to do the entire project (start to finish) since I am an animation studio of one but I'm shooting for about 6 months.

And if anybody is interested here is what my system specs are:

Motherboard: MSI - MS7125 ($85)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 processor 3500+ MMX 2.2ghz ($130)
RAM: 1024MB ($50)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT - 1024MB vRAM ($110)
Assembled by: Me about a year and a half ago.

[gmd3d]

money well spent .. I am dead jealous of your skill in the animations.

what prog was that

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

Very cool!
I'm glad you're digging on seeing your mesh 'come to life' and move.
And, yah - I know you're on a dial-up so I made that file just for you. (awwwww) LOL!

I appreciate the thought but 2.33 MB isn't very much, so I downloaded that one. It only took a few minutes to download.

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

Motherboard: MSI - MS7125 ($85)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 processor 3500+ MMX 2.2ghz ($130)
RAM: 1024MB ($50)
Video: NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT - 1024MB vRAM ($110)
Assembled by: Me about a year and a half ago.

That's similar to what I'm running because I bought a refurb that wasn't the latest tech (I can always upgrade it later.) But it handles trueSpace 4 very easily and tS 7 decently, so I'm happy.

Originally Posted by Taranis

money well spent .. I am dead jealous of your skill in the animations.

what prog was that

I use DAZ 3D's 'Carrara Pro 6'.
I spent a lot of hours working my tail off learning MAX and LWO and when I found Carrara I didn't have to work at it - the program just worked with me and my mind and everything came as easily to me as drinkin' beer and playing guitar.

I still use MAX and LWO for things now and then but Carrara is my weapon of choice right now.

If anybody would like to have a look at it, follow this link.
They also have a 30 day demo version available for download.

http://www.daz3d.com/i/software/carrara?_m=d

I know it's not an industry standard tool and that there are some people who look down on those of us who use DAZ tools and products but like I've said before... I think of myself as a writer then an animator and lastly a modeler.
For me, it's all about how to get my story out there and Carrara lets me concentrate on my story and not on '...how the heck am I going to animate this?!'

There are things I would like to see in Carrara (like creating a path) but it more than makes up for the things it's lacking.

If anybody would be interested in it, I can try and make a tutorial on how I did these shots.

I love this progam...can ya tell?! LOL!!!!

@ EG - Ok, cool that you could get the larger file. I was honestly worried about it because I can still remember my days on a dial-up (after having broadband for years I got stuck in a place without it and I went nuts) trying to download anything bigger than a couple of mb in size. The AVI file if it is much cleaner and you can see the specularity on the ship as it passes by.

I must tell you this - the textures on your mesh look really good in Carrara.
When the lights hit the surface of the ship it looks really metallic.
Nice work man...Nice work!

I still need to figure out how to get the UV mapping for the nacells and the pylons to work correctly. I've been having an awful time with that but UV mapping is not my strong suit - at all - LOL!

And it goes without saying (so why am I saying it then?!) but I'm going have this site and everybody who's meshes I've used credited in the final version of the animation. Perhaps once it hits something like YouTube (or whatever) it'll drive some people here - never can tell.

I have some other test footage but I'm not happy with it so it didn't make it into this edit. At the moment I'm converting the ST:2 bridge for Carrara/D|S and Poser but I still have a lot of stuff to do on it. The lighting is being tough and when I set the lights up so I like them it drives the render time into the 20+hour range and that's not acceptable to me. Since I'm one guy with one computer I need to have my renders come out clean and quickly.

If my bridge conversion is good enough when I'm finished I'll upload it (with the artist's permission of course!) here in case anybody else would like to use it. One of the things I'm doing with it is mapping the computer screens to run AVI files so the lights and other stuff moves and blinks and all of that.

Ok, I've written a book... sorry.
LOL!

[evil_genius_180]

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

I know it's not an industry standard tool and that there are some people who look down on those of us who use DAZ tools and products

Well, some people are A-holes. It's all about the software that you like to use. I know a lot of people don't take trueSpace very seriously either, because it's not Lightwave or Max. But not everybody can go out and spend over $1000 on a computer, much less on a computer program. I've seen some great work done in Daz, Bryce and Carrera, no matter what anyone says.

Originally Posted by evil_genius_180

Well, some people are A-holes. It's all about the software that you like to use. I know a lot of people don't take trueSpace very seriously either, because it's not Lightwave or Max. But not everybody can go out and spend over $1000 on a computer, much less on a computer program. I've seen some great work done in Daz, Bryce and Carrera, no matter what anyone says.

Dude, you are spot on.

I own Max v8 and v9.
I own Lightwave v8. and v.9.

I was pretty good animating with both of them but at the same time it was really difficult for me to do some things. Mostly it was character related and rigging meshes to walk and move. I never got past that part with either program because no matter how many hours I spent working at it, I just couldn't get it. It was like beating my head against a wall. Insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. I got so disappointed in myself that I just stopped animating and figured I was too stupid to ever do it well. I could do mechanical things but organic was beyond me and you can't tell a story without 'people' in it.

When I found DAZ Studio I found a program that worked with me - not against me. I was floored that it was free and I used it for probably 5-6 months before I had the extra cash to spend on it's big brother - Carrara.

From the first time I loaded up Carrara Pro 6 I was animating like a pro.

I have nothing but good things to say about MAX and LWO but...
...Carrara... That program is how and why I'm finally going to be able to get my stories out there. I started animating in 2,000 with Bryce 3D when it was still a MetaCreations progam and hit a wall with it because it couldn't animate people. No matter what program I used it always came back to the people meshes - no people, no story. What would Star Wars be without the humans? Not much.

When I got DAZ and Carrara I was able to animate people easily and that allowed me to stop thinking about it and start thinking about the story and how I wanted to shoot/direct the scene.


I know exactly how you feel about using TS because I'm the same with Carrara. I've lurked on some fourms where if you mention that you use anything other than MAX or LWO they taunt you. Well... Once my Trek animation is done, they won't be taunting me. They can try but it won't stick. LOL!

[gmd3d]

Well I have seen work done by both you guys in your respective progs and out perform many lightwave and MAXS users ..myself included .. I can't touch much of the work you have done

so it not the tool its how you use it.

Originally Posted by Taranis

Well I have seen work done by both you guys in your respective progs and out perform many lightwave and MAXS users ..myself included .. I can't touch much of the work you have done

so it not the tool its how you use it.

And I am floored by the meshes you, EG and Warrior craft.
I can't do that - not like you guys do.

And you're right on the money - it's all about the tool and how you use it.

I found my tools and because of that I rediscovered my inner artist.

[gmd3d]

I am going to discover my inner hunger and get some dinner.. catch you later

[Aabh]

Excellent animation!

I agree, the Regula station is awesome!

When you are done, will you be posting a DivX version so we can bask in the HiResolutionness?

Originally Posted by Aabh

Excellent animation!

I agree, the Regula station is awesome!

When you are done, will you be posting a DivX version so we can bask in the HiResolutionness?

LOL!
I don't know about 'basking' but I hope nobody will be calling for my head on a pike. LOL!

Yes, it'll be in DivX and in full resolution.

My asking you to check this thread wasn't so much to look at the animation but to see the comment made by Evil Genius regarind my use of the mesh he created.


Most people who make the models do so because they want to see how other people will use them.

Here's a bit more test footage with some extra shots.

This is a rather large file and needs DivX codec to play.



The bridge shots aren't illuminated correctly yet - they're just lit so I can see my crew and other stuff.

Also, my crew isn't animated yet.


http://wabashponies.com/dan/TEST-NO-SOUNDS.avi ( 720x486: 40mb file - AVI)

http://wabashponies.com/dan/TREK-WIP-2.wmv ( 640x480: 6.7mb - WMV )

[gmd3d]

having a look see now

[gmd3d]

This I like a lot ..

Originally Posted by Taranis

This I like a lot ..

Cool deal.
The volumetric clouds are fun to work with.

I hope you looked at the large file. The details are so much better.
I added the wmv file again in case EG wanted to see it.

[gmd3d]

I looked at the large one ..

I have loaded Poser into my PC and playing with it .. i am lost . but i was able to export a character to LW . just need to work oy how the controls work

Originally Posted by Taranis

I looked at the large one ..

I have loaded Poser into my PC and playing with it .. i am lost . but i was able to export a character to LW . just need to work oy how the controls work

Does the character rigging export with the obj file?
If you can import a Poser figure into LWO with the rigging intact that's way cool!

I have MIMIC for LWO but I can't seem to figure out how to make it work.
MIMIC is lip synch software.
I use it with Carrara to make my 'people' talk, blink and emote.

[Darrell Lawrence]

http://www.3dgladiators.net/warrior/uss_bonaventure.avi

It's a few years old, but your nebula reminded me of this

[gmd3d]

No .. not that I have seen .. But I am thinking of posing them in poser and export to LW .. and am looking for overall textures for ground crews or techs ... I am going to make the laser blaser from Buck Rogers . and I try to make the uniforms in poser for poser .. onve I work that out..

Originally Posted by Taranis

No .. not that I have seen .. But I am thing of posing them in poser and export to LW .. and am looking for overall textures for ground crews or techs ... I am going to make the laser blaser from Buck Rogers . and I try to make the uniforms in poser for poser .. onve I work that out..

Ok, then you'll get something very similar to what I sent you.
You might want to make sure that when you export them that you export them as one item so that you don't have to deal with X# of body parts Y#textures.

You know - there is a basic Face Shop type of app built into Poser.
You might try your hand at making your own Buck face with it.

Back when I was working in Bryce I used to do exactly what you're going to to be doing with it. I'm still looking for my old Bryce animation but when I find it I'll share it.

I'm curious what everyone else's first stuff looked like.
For having zero experience of knowledge in CG stuff my first animation came out surprisingly good. LOL!

Thanks Warrior for that footage. Pretty cool stuff.
Something I'm trying to do with my nebula is make it look/feel like it's more than just an image far, far away in the background - but instead make it something that feels right up here in 'our space' with us. I think I got that with the 'coming at us - going away from us' shots.

Oh, Taranis - if you look over at Vanishpoint.com you might find some Buck Rogers stuff that might be helpful. I think they may even have a pistol over there.

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by Warrior

http://www.3dgladiators.net/warrior/uss_bonaventure.avi

It's a few years old, but your nebula reminded me of this

Mega .. it great seen these cool animations .. and great TAS model

[gmd3d]

Originally Posted by Fretslayer

Ok, then you'll get something very similar to what I sent you.
You might want to make sure that when you export them that you export them as one item so that you don't have to deal with X# of body parts Y#textures.

You know - there is a basic Face Shop type of app built into Poser.
You might try your hand at making your own Buck face with it.

Back when I was working in Bryce I used to do exactly what you're going to to be doing with it. I'm still looking for my old Bryce animation but when I find it I'll share it.

I'm curious what everyone else's first stuff looked like.
For having zero experience of knowledge in CG stuff my first animation came out surprisingly good. LOL!

Thanks Warrior for that footage. Pretty cool stuff.
Something I'm trying to do with my nebula is make it look/feel like it's more than just an image far, far away in the background - but instead make it something that feels right up here in 'our space' with us. I think I got that with the 'coming at us - going away from us' shots.

Oh, Taranis - if you look over at Vanishpoint.com you might find some Buck Rogers stuff that might be helpful. I think they may even have a pistol over there.

Do you have the full web address I am getting nothing on the Vanishpoint.com