Archive for January, 2011

3D Modelling / Animation / Rendering Apps

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

The consensus is that for work-alone people, the most suitable apps are:

  • Daz 3D (free)
    • Seems like it focuses on use of prefab(-ricated) objects and scenery more than sculpting and extruding etc.  Just my initial impression, could be wrong.
  • Carrara (~$150)
    • “really noob-friendly interface”
    • But no dynamic materials, hence for example you can’t drape cloth.
  • Blender (free)
    • Rich in features but confusing to a newbie, easier to move onto once Carrara has been mastered.  Changes its interface every year…
    • “quite a few studios are using Blender alongside their existing workflow”

But for people in industry, who have to collaborate, these are only useful for learning the general principles.  Instead they use Maya

MacBook Pro ExpressCard Port from Windows Boot Camp

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

Doesn’t work for me, so searched around the forums.  Some relevant links:

Mood-Lighting of a Head: Examples

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

http://greywulf.net/2008/04/lettherebelight/

Filmmaking: Reference (Wiki)

Saturday, January 8th, 2011

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Filmmaking

Mac Additional Partitions to Boot Camp

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Special instructions, e.g. to have a data partition alongside Mac OS and Windows partitions:

Avid Tutorials by Douglas – Latest List

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Latest list of Avid Media Composer Tutorials by Douglas (Gaijin-Eyes):

Mac OS 10.6.6 – Upgrade? (No)

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Some people have reported problems:

  • http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12881918&tstart=0
  • <<I upgraded to 10.6.6 from 10.6.4. I installed 10.6.5 a few weeks after it was released and cause under exposing in all Final Cut Studio programs so I downgraded back to 10.6.4. I was hoping that 10.6.6 would solve this issue but it has not!  >>
  • http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2710542&tstart=0
  • << while I edit, I got a “Out of Memory” Error and an “Invalid Operation”. Can’t reopen the sequence on my MacBook but it opens with no problem on a Mac Pro.>>
  • << Did a fresh install of 10.6.6 and no luck. Still the same error. Reverted back to a vault version of the project and worked slowly with it. No errors so far. Seems if I import in a particular PSD file, that out of error message comes back eventually. >>

Mocha

Friday, January 7th, 2011

Great video tutorials giving both overview and details of this track/matte/rotoscoping (roto) product (pronounced “Mow-Kah”), at http://www.imagineersystems.com/products/videos.  Example:

  • http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/steve-wright-mocha-workflow/view
    • Learn mocha: Chapter 2. mocha workflow.  Steve Wright covers the basic mocha track and roto workflow for new users.
  • http://www.imagineersystems.com/what-is-planar-tracking
    • <<<
    • Imagineer’s Planar Tracker doesn’t employ point trackers, but tracks an object’s translation, rotation and scaling data based on the movement of the user defined plane.
    • When you work with the mocha tools, you will need to look for planes in the clip. More specifically, you will need to look for planes that coincide with movements you want to track.
    • The Planar Tracker respects layer priority similar to a camera: Objects in the distance should be lowest in the layer stacking order. Objects closest to the camera should be stacked higher in layers.
    • While the most common planes are flat surfaces, objects in distance or with little parallax form patterns that can be considered successful planes to track as well.  Our customers have been know to get rock solid tracking from unthinkable objects such as faces and spheres.
    • >>>
  • http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/how-to-shoot-for-planar-tracking/view
    • Great demo of what it can and can’t do, when it’s “overkill” and workarounds (usually in-plane markers or casual objects) for problem-shots.
      • Is “overkill” when subject is fixed and relative motion is only due to camera pan/tilt.

Apple Motion

Wednesday, January 5th, 2011

At startup (by default), in addition to “new project” options, it offers:

On my system at least, these load surprisingly slowly, then if either of the above are selected then the Motion GUI closes, leaving the Motion app active (but, as far as I can see, useless).  Maybe I’m missing something?