Attached Link: My GiNOZilla Animation

I'm just wondering if anybody else around here uses Carrara for animations.
I've used Max and Lightwave but I love Carrara for a couple of reasons.

1) Pre-Rigged characters!

1. The interface works more like a film set than it does a CG app.

Here's something I did just for fun.
It took me about a week or so from start to finish.
I spent roughly 10-14 hours a day working on it.
Some of the simpler scenes took around an hour or so to render but most of them took roughly 5 to 7 hours to render.
The original version is rendered at 800x450 however YouTube doesn't like that and so it compressed it down to 720x486.

Anyway - have a look and let me know what y'all think.  :)

Helldorado13 - AKA - Fretslayer

You will find a lot of Carrara animation/movies about. The attached is one site where Carrara has been used since Versions 3 and 4.

http://www.markusrothkranz.com/carrara_3d/index.html

You work on the movie is very impressive though a bit dark with the lighting for my taste.

Look forward to seeing more.

Brian

Thanks for the feedback.

About the darkness of it - I've seen it on different monitors and on some it's dark and on others it's as it looked when I created it.

I did want it to be somewhat dark as the original Gojira film is a bit dark and - well - monsters are always scarier at night. LOL!

Thanks for the link - I'll go have a look at the site and see what it's about. :)
If you want to see some other stuff I've done, check out my YouTube channel.

www.YouTube.com/fretslayer

On a side note, I recognize your avatar from the Daz3d site. LOL!

That was as good as the original Gojira. In fact, you have the flaming things much better.  :)
Is the word "Savatage" your own invention?

Sueposer, Thanks for the comment. :)

As much as I'd like to take credit for 'Savatage' it was actually something my friend Criss and his wife Dawn came up with.

Savatage is a band that came from my home town. Friends of mine.
It was formed by two brothers Jon and Criss.
Around 11 years ago Criss was killed by a drunk driver.

If you've ever seen any of the commercials that has the house with the Christmas lights all going to the crazy classical sounding song, that's 'TSO - Wizards in Winter' - TSO is the guys from Savatage when they're doing a little side project of theirs. If you google TSO or Savatage you can hear their music.

I wanted to slip the little Savatage thing in there as a way of remembering Criss.
I'm not really an animator, I'm a guitar player - the jam during the closing credits is me and my friends playing live one night. :)

Thanks again for taking the time to watch and comment on it.

Dan.

Just to add---- "Food for the minds Eye!".

Can not "dark" images still have a vibrancy that, perhaps, are more visually stimulating?
Just a couple of quickly found examples , if of value---

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=669620

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=586825

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=524391

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=137&t=498738

Brian

Attached Link: Star Trek - Universe test animations

I'll bet they put a lot more time in those single images than I did in entire scenes.
I was not going for comic book perfection.
I was just messing around and having fun.
I guess this was a bad example of something to share since I haven't put nearly as much effort into it as I have other projects. I only did this animation as a way to show my gratitude to Scott for building the mesh and to Little Dragon in hopes they'd do a walk cycle for the Delgadosarus.

But back to the still images.
As great as they are, and they are...
There is no doubt that when you are only rendering 1 frame you can spend a lot more time on it.

It's no big deal to let a single image render 12-15 hours...but when you have 300 of them per scene and 20 scenes and once computer it's not practical.

Fantastic images though.

I wonder how long it would take them to do a short  film with those render settings.
That would be something I'd like to see.

I'm still looking for ANY Carrara animation that I take to my Lightwave friends and say 'See, this is just as good as your app.' - Hasn't happened yet. I have not seen one single 'Daz Guru' who can come close to touching this animation.

If you can point me in that direction, that would be something I'd like to see!

Had you looked at any of this?

http://www.jaegercat.com/

http://www.markusrothkranz.com/carrara_3d/3d_gallery_icebe.html

There also seems to be, almost on a daily basis, Carrara vid stuff coming up on the likes of youtube

Hey, your works good but, as you say yourself, quality improves with that "time" factor!
 I am one who can not spare any time for doing animation--I am far to impatient!
I admire those of you who can.

Brian

I saw that animation myself and rather liked it. I'm putzing around with Carrera 5 Pro myself and hope to make some stuff soon.

I have tried to do some movie stuff (In Carrara) even so.

This is one that I am fairly happy about

http://cid-ba41079cd9142857.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public

Just having a bit of fun about all those things we will "Getroundtuitinthe
fullnessoftime"

Brian

A large proportion of the Images AND Videos at this older gallery site are Carrara generated.

http://forums.polyloop.net/gallery/

Brian

Attached Link: Trek WIP file

Its a WIP file and yes, I know the figures are not moving and bridge lighting is yuk.
When I made this a few years ago I had about 2-3 hours experience with Carrara.

I am self taught by trial and error.
I own no 'CG Bibles', have taken no classes, have no degrees, have had no tutors.
In reality, I am not a CG artist, I am a professional guitarist in a hard rock/metal band.
CG is one of my hobbies.

The Starship is a kitbash - Its Chris 'Evil Genius 180' Martin's Enterprise Phase II with the nacells from Dennis Bailey's 1701-A (version1). The bridge is Will Jasper's ST:2-TWoK bridge.
When I made this I was teaching myself volumetric clouds.
The first couple of space shots were done before I was 'rendering to image' and the lack of image quality is obvious.

http://forums.polyloop.net/gallery/browseimages.php?catid=4&ltr=nonalpha&c=4

The full Polyloop Gallery is quite large but, a lot of great works that can be inspiring--

Brian

I like that WIP movie--good work.
In August 2002, at the age of 72, I was shown the on switch tor a computer and left to my own devices to teach my self--a STILL, vertical learning curve!

Ha!---showing my age!---I was 70 in 2002, not 72.
Brian

Hey Fretslayer, For a pro-guitarist you make a pretty good film editor! I liked the timing of your editing and cuts, and the music and animation work very well together. The quality it is now is still very effective for telling your story. I like your style on this. I didn't think it was too dark, and that it successfully emulated the feel of the original film which was also dark in the night scenes. I tried to watch the second one, but I was only able to listen to the music, no picture. I must need a codec update.
 
  I'm a musician too, and the original reason I got into 3d, and animation was to add something different to the show; graphics for CDs, video for performance backgrounds, or a promo DVD we had planned. Now my band has disbanded but I still love messing with Carrara.
Keep posting your stuff. I'll be happy to give it a look and a listen.

Looks cool, considering what was involved. My one crit is that the city is a bit dark even before the monster showed up. Where's the famous powerline scene (in just about every other classic 'zilla flick) that then causes the blackout? Oh well, it was still entertaining...

I've done a vid or two, but they're restricted to very small shorts (like under a minute) because of my old hardware and lack of a renderfarm, also because I want to do other stuff with the computer besides render all week. (Or more likely all month? lol)

What I think would be neat is to get a group project together to really show off Carrara. The Blender folks managed to collab and get nice results for Elephant's Dream and Big Buck Bunny, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. That way some people can work on storyline and plot, then others can work on modeling, another team doing rigging, another doing staging and lighting, etc., and if someone has a decent renderfarm up - that would keep the timeframe for completion reasonable without sacrificing too much quality or effects.

BTW, my favorite Carrara vid is still that Mars 2020 Springtime. (Let's just say it's comedy gold in the spirit of the ol' Chuck Jones/Tex Avery classics.) And that was done using an old version that doesn't have the things we do now.

You're right about the power line scene.
I had planned on that going after the ship attack but I was running out of time and I had to wrap it up. This is something I was doing in my spare time and it sort of took over a large chunk of it. LOL!

I had also planned on a news report style piece where they explain the power outage and the evacuation of the city (to explain the lack of cars, people and garbage) but again - it was a matter of time and lack there of.

I've shared this clip on a few different forums and since I've gotten more positive feedback than negative, I've decided to add a 'Part 2' .  Odds are I'll work on it this week when I can.

I'll add a 'flashback' piece to that in order to explain the blackout and stuff.
Also, 'Part 2' will have an appearance by another monster. :)

I can't wait to see Part 2!

gino anim. very good IMVHO.

There can be a lot of lighting ideas gained by analysing the many lighting "contests" at this forum.

This particular thread whilst taking time to work through, may show how dark /mysterious need not necessarily lack detail and a lively interest to the eye.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=185&t=436232

Brian

the part I like about carrara pro is that it makes it easy to animate unrigged figures.

Quote - the part I like about carrara pro is that it makes it easy to animate unrigged figures.

I've used a lot of CG apps and Carrara is by far the easiest of them.
I don't mean that in a bad way, just that if you can grasp the interface (and believe it or not I know people who use Lightwave and Maya who can't wrap their mind around the Carrara interface) it's such an easy tool that it makes it simple to create scenes without thinking about the creation process.

I don't do animations so people can tell me how wonderful this aspect or that aspect is (I can care less than nothing about those things) I do animations because I like to tell stories and IMO one of the best things about Carrara is that it allows me to tell a story without having to spend countless hours obsessing over minute details of CG art. 

I've turned a few people on to both D|S and Carrara for that very reason.
In the GiNOZilla: Part 2 that I'm working on I'm using both Carrara and Lightwave.
I have a fantastic Ghidorah mesh that's LWO and its movie quality modeling. Outstanding really.
So I'm doing compostite scenes with it edited into Carrara shots. I did a lot of composite stuff on the GiNOZIlla animation so it should work. If you watch the scene with exploding hummer there is a whole bunch of composite layers at work there. :)

@ pauljs75 I just took a look at your ShareCG page and I'm going to be using the space shuttle in the GiNOZilla: Part 2 thing. It's a really nice looking model so I wrote a scene around it. :)

Sounds cool, now I'm curious as to how it's going to work out.

Quote - Sounds cool, now I'm curious as to how it's going to work out.

Well, without giving anything away, I was bouncing around a  few ideas for how Ghidorah makes his arrival...after seeing your shuttle the scenes just wrote themselves. :D

Here's shot of the Ghidorah mesh composited into a Carrara scene.
The sky/background - Ghidorah - Buildings are each separate elements layered in After Effects.

One of the modifications I've done (that doesn't show in this shot) is to create alpha maps for the windows. I then place 'rooms' inside the buildings so when the camera passes by them they appear to have ...well..rooms.. inside. I'm only doing that though for close up shots since it's a ton of extra work.  Anyway... here's a quick image.  And this is from before the power plant gets destroyed. LOL!

Some interesting looking vids there Frets.

btw Savatage was an inspiration to my own short lived music career (before wife and kids ruled my life, lol)

I just started using Carrara for animation, after all it seems to be a great hub for all of my apps (TrueSpace, Hexagon and Poser) and works better with those 2 apps than Vue.

I'll be uploading some of my "craft" soon enough, I hate releasing something unfinished or not to my expectations. Carrara has been an easy app to get along with. did you upgrade to 7?

Magnatude,

I'm using Pro 7 but I really don't see much of a difference between 6 & 7.
I went with 7 because of the COLLADA feature but I've not been able to get it work with my Lightwave (versions 9.3 or 9.6) so I'm sort of disappointed in that regard. I've looked all around for tutorials on how to make it work but so far it's just not happening. But that's a different story. LOL!

As for my stuff... LOL!
The 'Dark World' animation is a full on animated short that will clock in at roughly 40 minutes and will be released in 3 chapters. Chapter 1 (Accident of Fate) is nearly finished and I'm doing post work on it now. I still have some scenes to render and a few bits and pieces here-n-there to record but it's almost ready to set loose upon the world. :)

The BSG intro is the beta version for an animation I'm doing for Dan over at battlestarfanfilms.com. It's rougly 30 minutes running time and done with both Carrara and Lightwave - Particle Illusion 3 for particle effects and After Effects CS4 for post produciton effects.

But the 'Star Trek Mystery Solved' is one of my favorites. My guitarist Kenny and I were hammered one night and we actually had a conversation about where the heck were the bathrooms on the TOS enterprise... I mean, they had a bowling alley but I I couldn't find 1 toilet. The transporter seemed like the obvious choise. LOL!

Plus it's always cool to meet up with other fellow rockers/musicians who do the CG thing.
I'm lucky that my musical career ran close to 20 years. m/
The music during the closing credits and the 'ship falling' scene are me and my band jammin one night over at a friend's house. No special anything - just a laptop with a mic, a couple of amps, a drumkit and too much to drink. LOL!

Pretty impressive.  Nice scene cuts too.  Good eye work on the camera.

Cheers

I've started building my own Goji mesh in ZBrush.
It's being built on the 'Bio-Goji' suit.

When I'm finished with it I'll share it if anybody is interested in using it.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the design, here is a pretty nice example of the 'Bio-Goji' suit.