Month: July 2009

Main pics of work i made is here: http://tinyurl.com/legvov

Here are a couple of examples:

first artwork i ever did 🙂

intermediate lesson #5 ship on water

First of all: I’m well-versed in computers, and absolutely zero in graphical ability. I have used Paint Shop Pro for a few years, but am not good in using it. I can follow directions very well, but am not so good at grasping things i have never thot of before.

To me, this Robinwood tutorial is very well-done, but made for someone who is already well-versed in graphical terms and concepts. For someone used to painting with some computer program, the points, especially about drawing, would probably not be a problem.

Questions:

1. The hardest things i’ve found to do easily is to get the right camera scene i want, to point lights and cameras, and to select objects. These are very basic, and i wonder if anyone else has problems with these? To be more specific, often i want to have the camera a little bit above the object looking down at about a 45 angle, but often cannot get the camera to that position. Sometimes only “freehand” is available for use, and if i make a quick move, i’ve lost my scene forever. And to select objects, sometimes i find it impossible, even with using the “select all of type” controls at the bottom of the screen. Isn’t there some way to see a list of all objects available for selection, and just select what you want easily? In doing these lessons, many times i selected all, then get royally confused as the perspective camera got selected and materiallized etc. etc. – ha! Lights aren’t quite as bad as handling cameras, but how to point them exactly at what you want, like just the stern of a boat? Use nulls? And to perfectly line up something, it takes a long time of flipping thru all the camera views to get it done (if you don’t want to align).

2. The preset lighting is not very good. I want to see the colors (normally) on new objects i put into a scene, but because of poor preset lighting, sometimes the whole thing is in the shadow, and thus, black. So now i spend quite some time setting the sun’s angle just right in the SKY&FOG palette to make the colors come alive, but still it is not too good. (Note, after completing tut, i set my defaults quite differently than what the originals were. Why set the factory default so everything is mostly black?)

3. I have a terrible time getting the night sky to display showing stars. I’ve followed instructions from several tutorials, and have managed to get it once, but it should be very easy to do.
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In animation:
1. In doing the butterfly animation in intermediate lesson 1, my butterfly gets attached to the path heading backwards. It seems like it should be easy to disattach him from the path, orient correctly, and then attach him again, but even in doing that, it reverts right back to starting off heading backwards.
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robinwood tutorial almost finishedRead More »

Yesterday i ran across a site of a man who made a full-length CG film by himself. He has a nice diary/blog too, which is fascinating reading for someone like me who wishes to do something very similar. A link to there is Laurie Calvert’s one-man movie-making system Actually, he did have many others help with music and recording voices etc., but all the animation is done by himself. He goes at the amazing speed of 4 seconds of finished movie per day, working just 2 hours! I’m not joking, this is amazing, as professional animators only make about 4 seconds a week. OK, so his quality isn’t Pixar quality either, but his comments really strike home.

He talks about how THE STORY is the big thing, and he is not interested in technical stuff. He uses off-the-shelf characters, purchasing some from Daz3D etc., which is exactly what i’m planning to do. Why should i have to spend literally 2 years learning some software package before i can start producing my STORY? So i’m not leading-edge. I don’t care. I want something middle-of-the-road that looks decent enough to look at, without going over the top and working for days to find out how to use the sub-surface specular scattering particle generator! (ok, made that up, but you get the point)

He says: “So I am one man, one PC working for about 3 years. Stylised CGI. My first film ‘The War of the Starfighters’ will be similar in statistics to ‘Monsters of the Id’. It cost about 3000gbp, and was 1,350 shots long, 2,500 hours work, on average over 2 hours work a day saw 4 seconds of finished movie per day”. By comparison he notes: “‘Shrek’ used 500 computers, used 300 animators, took 4 years to make 1000 shots”.

He wrote the above in 2004 when planning the movie, and then when the movie was finished in 2006 he wrote this: “3rd June 2006 – Final version of film is finished pending any last minute changes. 864 days, 920 hours work so far. New music has been added and sounds mixed. 493 Gig used. The movie is looking and sounding really good. Had a Premiere to myself of the final version today. Might be a few months away from being available as it needs to get BBFC certification for release in the UK plus the DVDs need to be replicated. Next step is to talk to a Distributor. Fingers crossed. This film has cost just 700gbp to make.”