Test footage from my Trek animation

Here's the link to Vanishing Point's Buck Rogers 'Freebie' page.

http://www.vanishingpoint.biz/freest...ificationID=27

There is a lot of good stuff on their site.

[gmd3d]

Cool thanks mate ..

I calling it a night ...

Night

[Darrell Lawrence]

All I said was yours reminded me of mine, not that mine was any good

[General Phoenix]

I just watched the new vids, and I'm very impressed. Excellent work, Fret.

My only suggestion, and it's a very minor thing, would be to tone down or even remove the lens flare effect on the ship's running lights. It works very well with stars, but seems a bit excessive when used on running lights.

Everything else was great!

Originally Posted by Warrior

All I said was yours reminded me of mine, not that mine was any good

I think you misunderstood me.
I wasn't downing yours in any way.

I'm just trying to connect the foreground to the background thru the use of the volumetric clouds.

Your stuff is light years ahead of mine.
Look at it this way... one of us has downloaded the other one's meshes.
Yah, see?
LOL!

Sorry if my comment came across wrong.


@General Phoenix - Yah, that bottom lense flare was way off and in the distance shot I forgot to set the light to blink on and off. Setting the lights and effects in Carrara is very different than in LWO and MAX though. I had thought about not editing in the shots with the belly light but I figured that as harsh and ugly as the bridge lights were, what harm could the lense flares have? LOL!

I'm trying to find a happy medium with the running lights so they can be seen from a distance but not so much that they're a distraction. I spend a lot of time in the real world looking up at night and watching all of the air traffic overhead. I live by two International airports and so I have a lot of air traffic to watch.

One of the things I like about the lights though is that they are not all blinking at the same time.

I really do appreciate all of the feedback you guys are giving me.
I've said it several times but I have no training in any of the apps I use and I just run by intuition. Anything that can help make the shots better is cool by me. That's also a reason why I'm showing y'all my test footage. When the real version and scenes are rendered the mistakes and other 'sharp edges' will have been addressed.

Most of what I've been working on today has been bridge lighting and computer screens. I'm rebuilding all of the computer graphics in Photoshop CS2 and importing them into my video editing software where I then turn them into animated files so the computers look more dynmaic instead of static.

[haruchai]

Great clips. Really liking the volumetric clouds and the colour making it seem 'elsewhere'.

Nicely done and look forward to seeing more.

[Raymar3d]

That's a really nice piece of work. When I first viewed the animation, I thought of Afterburn in 3ds Max. To read that you got it to work in Carrera is very impressive to me. I own both programs, but I got sort of discouraged on Carrera early on, when I tried loading some of the content for it from DAZ, and it just kept crashing on me (the country road and some other natural environments).

I am going to take another look at it now.

I too agree, it's not the tool, it's the artist. Good tools can make it easier for a good artist, but a good artist can usually make something incredible with any tool at their disposal.

I hope to see this film!

Ken

P.S. Character Studio in 3ds Max takes some time to get the hang of, but once you do, you can do a TON of good stuff with it. I have used it for years. Any time you want to trade tips and tricks, I'm always up for it!

[Darrell Lawrence]

Originally Posted by Raymar3d

P.S. Character Studio in 3ds Max takes some time to get the hang of, but once you do, you can do a TON of good stuff with it. I have used it for years. Any time you want to trade tips and tricks, I'm always up for it!

My last post here:

http://www.3dgladiators.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=22780

[Raymar3d]

Originally Posted by Warrior

My last post here:

http://www.3dgladiators.net/forums/s...ad.php?t=22780

Thanks for the link! I knew there had to be one here already.

I'm catching up, but it takes awhile. I spent a few years off writing instead of doing 3d, so getting back into the game takes awhile, but I'm glad to be back!

Ken

[gmd3d]

Great to see you back at the cgi

Those are really impressive Volumetric Clouds, shame about the wmv compression, would be great to see them in full hi-def glory

CGBMike - here's a link to an avi version. It's much cleaner than the wmv.
You'll need the DivX codec to view it.

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


Raymar3D - I have the same probem importing a DAZ saved scene into Carrara. You would think they would import nice and neat but nope. I thought it was just something screwy on my end. Even though Carrara will die if you load a DAZ saved scene you can load any DAZ prop/item or scene into Carrara as long as it's not the DAZ save. If you follow me. If not, let me know and I'll explain it better.

I used to use MAX (v8) a lot but I got really frustrated with the character rigging. I spent close to a year doing nothing but and I never ended up with something that was good enough to use.

It was during a moment of pulling my hair out over the rigging that I found DAZ and the prerigged characters. I jumped right on them because it freed me up from having to spend any more time on the rigging and I could jump right in and start shooting my scenes.

I would be interested in taking a look at the Character Studio though.
Everything is worth revisiting IMO.
Thanks for the offer and let me know if you're able to open your Daz stuff in Carrara.
Oh yah - are you trying to open the DAZ file with the 'file' menu at the top of screen or throgh the runtime folders at the bottom?

That's just cool.

That was amazing. How long did THAT take. Awesome job.

Thanks.
I honestly don't remember how long it took. I'm sure I knew back when I did it but that was many beers ago.

Carrara Pro 6 has a pretty fast render engine and so most of these shots didn't take that long to render. They probably took more time to set up. I know the bridge shots took a while to set up because I had to covnert the bridge to Daz/Poser friendly environment and the shots you see of it are my 'lighting tests'.
I'm still working on getting the lighting where I want it.

The starship tests were specular mapping, running lights and volumetric clouds.

I've been asked a few times how long some of the scenes take and so I think I might start logging down that soft of info.

[gmd3d]

I have been lucky enough to see it a while ago . it would be handy for your own interest how long it took ..

Yah. I think so too.

The thing about being self taught is there is no chapter on 'Make sure you do this...'
LOL!

I'm almost afraid to start logging my time because I'll realize how much of it I spend working on the scenes. That could be scary. LOL!

[gmd3d]

it is .. I learned that myself .. but use admirers like to know such things

Judging from what I saw it took Days rather than hours. even with fast rendering a scene like that would take many hours to set to get the light and angle right and then the render time for each part and thne adjusting and so on. heck it could have taken weeks.

Last night one of my bandmates came over and we killed a couple of cases of beer.
During that time we discussed an animated short.
I'm going to star working on it today and I'll be logging it down.
I'm going to try and log down things like setup time and render times (per scene) as well as editing time.

If all goes well I should have something pretty funny to share with you guys in a couple of days if not sooner.


I'm sure it took a couple of days to put it together but if I were to calculate the actual time I spent on it - it's probably short of a day.

The space scenes are something I can whip up in a matter of minutes.
The bridge...that was the time killer.

This is what happens when I get drunk with my guitarist.
LOL!

I hope you guys find this as funny as we did.

http://wabashponies.com/dan/HAHAHA.wmv

[evil_genius_180]

That's pretty friggin' hilarious, dude. (though I'm definitely not following Kirk through the transporter now)

Im a bit surprised at how quickly it rendered.
Each scene was under 10 minutes render time.

There are a few more of these that we can up with but I'm going to stick 'em at the end of the trek animation. Bad out takes. LOL!

A few shots of the bridge.
I'm still messing with the lighting and working on the computer screens.

At the moment they're just images but I'm converting them to AVI files so they blink and blip and all of that other stuff that makes 'em come alive.

[gmd3d]

this is excellent work

For a hack.
LOL!

That's one of the bridge INTs that WJaspers shared here.
I figured it would work well with EG's reImagined ship.

[gmd3d]

works for me

Originally Posted by Taranis

works for me

Cool.

Before I start on the Klingon computer screens I have to finish up a scene for the Enterprise view screen. It comes after the 'aggressive evasive' shot.
We're on the bridge looking (aft to fore) and we see the screen - on the screen we see the Klingon coming at us, out blue phasers shooting back and the Klingon as it cloaks.

...plus what comes next.

Dang Frets, where the heck to they take a dump? The warp core?

That was funny