This is neither a request for help, nor does this message contain any interesting links or announcements. I'm just ranting, so you may want to skip this, unless you're bored.
 
I love animation. Any kind of animation. When I was a kid, I'd take my allowance to the convenience store down the block and buy pocket notepads and markers and make flip books in school when I was supposed to be learning something or other. I got hold of an old super-8 movie camera and tried to make animations without a tripod or a single-frame switch. I devoured every book on animation the library had on the subject. I saw every animated movie I could beg, borrow, or steal my way into. In college, I programmed the line terminals to display animations of ASCII art. When I got hooked in to the 'Net way back when, I got POV-Ray and learned animating in 3D, and I bought Poser (version 2) and did all kinds of silly things. I got Anime Studio at some point.
 
In the wee early days of 2009, I finally decided to get (what I felt were) some decent tools for making animations. I had some ideas, but I wanted to do them up right. I had Poser (version 7 by this point), but it just didn't do enough for me. So, I read some recommendations and settled on Carrara for making 3D animations. While learning that, I decided to move up to Premiere Pro so I could add some postwork effects and have more control over sound layers. I bought a decent microphone and voice-morphing software, so I could extend my range of characters. I upgraded to Photoshop so I could make better textures for my models. I bought Silo so I could make better models. I wrote lots of animation scripts, and sketched a few storyboards.
 
Then I was having trouble getting Carrara to do everything I wanted. So, even though Carrara was already a big improvement over what I'd been using before, I decided to get Cinema 4D. Somewhere in there, I decided that I needed to make my own sound effects, so I got Sound Forge. Almost immediately I realized I was going to need music, so, being on a serious DIY kick at that point, I picked up Acid Pro. I heard such great things about Particle Illusion that I decided I had to have it, too. This, in turn, led to an incredible desire to have After Effects, so I got that, roo.
 
At this point, I'd been scouring the 'Net, looking for tutorials on all this great software. Not finding out things fast enough, I then also invested in a lot of books on the various subjects. I read myself to sleep almost every night, trying to pick up a new technique for this or that.
 
So, last night, I'm sitting at my desk, having just ordered some Christmas presents for my family. I'm thinking about maybe upgrading C4D, or getting zBrush. I looked up my credit card balance, and (no big surprise) it's kind of a smoldering ruin after all the software purchases over the past year. This gave me pause. Then, like the Grinch atop Mount Crumpit, I had my blinding insight.
 
Why it didn't come to me before, I don't know. I looked back over the past 12 months, and I realized that in that time, I made one, solitary animation. A pretty bad one, at that. In February. I've been wrapped up in a cycle of:
 
A) Here's an idea!
B) Get new software to implement the idea
C) Try to learn new software
D) Go to step (A)
E) Make actual animation
 
Note, of course, that step (E) is never actually reached.
 
sigh
 
Worst thing is, I don't even really know how to use all the stuff I bought, yet. Cinema 4D is mostly a mystery, I don't know a thing about Acid Pro, and none of it matters, because I'm not making anything. If I had a frying pan handy, I'd whack myself in the head with it, in the hopes that I'd knock some sense into myself.
 
sigh again.
 
So... having got to this point, what to do? Here's what I came up with: I have resolved (yes, I know, it's 17 days early...) to do one animation a month in the coming year. No matter what the software, no matter how disgustingly amateurish the quality, I will enter the holiday season next year with 12 animations done.
 
Thanks for listening (if you did) or at least not throwing things. I feel better for having ranted, and perhaps my resolution will hold more water than my usual ones.
 

Its not MAKING an animation thats important. (unless you being paid )
its collecting the toys... er TOOLs that will let you create the next greaT EPIC.

For what it's worth Cap'n, once you have frames to play with, the other stuff will start to come in handy. You can use that one as a helpful reminder; until you have video, audio is worthless. Until you have footage in the can, editing and post is worthless. Until you've keyframed, rendering is worthless. And so on.

And except for exchanging Vue for Carrara, and SonicFIre Pro for scoring and Audition for general mixing instead of the Acid line, you have good taste in software..... :P . Assuming you have a rack. Do you? That was my latest timesink away from actually creating. Well, I still have to get a good microphone and pop screen. And save up for the Arena mocap rig... (which is so long term it doesn't enter into the 'Next Toy!' paradigm...)...but yeah, I know the prevarication waltz. But next year......

That's really what I'm after, I think... just making some frames to animate. I actually think I'll focus on just moving things around, rather than trying to tell stories (epic or not). To use a piano student metaphor, more like practicing scales than learning songs. I think I really need to be making something, rather than thinking about making something.

No rack, just me and the computer and everything I plug in to it. I got a Samson C01U microphone, which is pretty inexpensive as mics go, but I get really good sound with it, for my voice. It's got a pre-amp built into it and it plugs in to a USB port, so I don't need a lot of extra audio equipment, since I'm not recording live music. I'm not much of a musician, although I've got a decent mid-range keyboard that I could use. For the microphone, I've got a box with sound foam that I put it in, and it gets rid of ambient noise really well, at least for voice. I do want to get a nice shotgun mic and a field kit (zepellin, boom pole, flash recorder) so I can get out and record my own sound effects.

However, all that's gonna have to wait. Must animate. :biggrin:

Let your friends know you'll let them dump their old kit on you. A few recycled computers cut down to bare bones can make rendering ever so much faster.....not to mention being able to set one up for things like the net, or audio work while the main box is chewing away on your frames. 

Always a good plan.

I've got an old box with XP on it just sitting around collecting dust, come to think of it. Might as well put it to use...

Just make sure to bare bones it. Yank the audio card if you aren't going to use it for that purpose, and if it has onboard video, yank whatever video card. For that matter, turn off any and every thing you aren't going to need (printer port, unused serial ports, onboard audio, etc...) You may only get a percent or two improvement from not loading drivers, as opposed to simply not using them, but those couple of percents add up (and I rather suspect you know all this, but for the newbies to renderfarming....... :P ). 

Hey by all means get on the stick and get animating. That is what I did pretty much put stills on the backburner and made all assets i make animation friendly.  I am working on a simple story now and trying to get it done there will be no voice track. i have run into difficulties I cannot string my animations together right now i am working ot the scenes and rendering them but lack the software needed to string them together but oh well i am animating all things in time.

The original reason i got the software i did is because of animation. It does that well (messiah) bt it does not do a lot of other things well or at all but i like that. it is more focused and cost me quite a bit less than what people spring for other high end packages. Anyways I am 30 seconds into a 5-10 minute epic.

Well their Captain. In a lot of ways, you have done everything I've done. But the big difference is I write my stories, then animate them. I buy everything I need as I am animating. I have about 8 stories that I want to put into production. I am finishing up on an animation that should be done in about 3 more months. I use Poser, Vue, Adobe CS4 Aftereffects, Premiere, Illustrator, Photoshop, Encore. and the rest of Adobe. I have silo, and Cinema 4D R11.

I do every aspect of the movies I make. the first movie I made was about 15 minutes long. The next movie was about 20 minutes long. the next was about 45 minutes long. and everyone I've made since has been 1.5 hours long. I can't get enought hours in the day to do what I want to do. After I finish this current movie. I'm hoping to Do some 3 movies I plan on selling that are all connected. 

I am hoping to get someone later this year that can work with me that is good in Cinema for this project. I already have a partner that does what I don't want to do, because I have to learn things that take me away from animating that he does.

The overall point is Make a small movie say 15 minutes. Don't doodle, make something you can be proud of. That is not as hard as you may think. No I'm not talking about a show stopper. But write a script. Something you are interested in. Don't just make something that is moving. make the animation have a direct purpose. When I got Poser I made test animation clips just to learn how to animate and how to learn what you could do in Poser. 

From their. Once you start a movie. if you like animation as much as you say. You will not be able to stop. Sometimes I animate till 8 am in the morning, or when I can't stay awake. I am trying to break that habbit, and get a decent amount of sleep. You lean so much about the whole process of an animation when you make one. Example. Sometimes I make an animation sequence that I would like to streach it out. Everything is the way I want it, but I want the sequence to be slower. Normaly I would do what had to be done with the animation. but becasuse of animating a few movies. I learn the other programs and example. Instead of reanimating the timing of the rendered animated clip. I will use Adobe Permiere to slow down or speed up with just a couple of clips and works out beautiful. {Saving me mabe hours of correction time.}

Go for it. You will be hooked. Make a short movie on something you have an intrest in. start putting your clips in Adobe Premiere right away. so you can see the whole progress. I find it helps keep my intrest and can't wait to finish each segment. The hardest part is writing for me. I'm a natural story teller. but I have to have someone correct my spelling, I have dylexia and me has making a number of mistakes. But I'm not discurraged, as long as the story in good, the rest is easy to correct.     Good Animating. go for it. It sure beats the old way of animating, painting each sell over backgrounds. I use to know how many Cells to make a 15 minute movie, plus $ $ $.

Thank goodness those days are gone. I like it to happen correctly, but not take forever to make that it did the old way.

Attached Link: Star Trek: Aurora

I agree with Slowhands--just jump in. Write a story, and then animate it--if you try to practice and perfect your technique, you will just end back up in your loop. When I started my project, I did just a few tests to make sure I wasn't completely insane to attempt a dramatized animation, then just started it. The best way to learn, I found, was to try to solve a real problem, not a theoretical one. Is what I've made so far perfect? No. But I have learned a lot, and I feel like the work has gotten better over time, and I have done things I never even attempted before--like composing music--and mustn't have totally stunk at it since I got requests for mp3s and regularly get emails from fans. There's even a guy building a scale model (in actual plastic) of the space ship from my story.

So, the short answer, IMHO, is: just go for it.

--Tim

PS: I do have an ARENA system, and have been using it extensively for the next part of my project, which should be coming out in February. It's pretty cool--still a bit of work and has its own challenges--but overall I think there's a marked improvement in the animation.

 Tim;

Does the mocap speed up the creation process as much as I hope, or do you lose most of that saved time in clean up? And which configuration are you using....the camera tripods, or the skeleton frame they recommend for 8 cameras and up (I'd have to find a place to rent to set up the latter)?

Hey Dale B,

In my experience, nothing speeds up the creation process as much as I'd hope!  ;-)

Seriously, tho, overall I'd say that mocap does speed things up, but it depends on what you're capturing. Ironically, it does much cleaner tracking with large, continuous or even fast moves than it does with slow, small movements--has to do with the way the cameras track the points. So the upshot is that in a capture with a lot of movement, little stray movements are less obvious, where as in a character not moving much, the noise is more obvious, so, ironically, you spend more time cleaning up a capture with very little movement than you do with one with more movement.

For example, in a scene I'm working on now, I have one character moving about and talking/gesturing at a wall screen, and not only was it faster to animate, but the walking around in this manner (forward and back, turning etc.) would be incredibly difficult by hand. The characters sitting and watching him required a lot more work since they were mostly sitting still (but not completely) until they talked and gestured, so I really have to get rid of the noise.

It's also a bit of an arms race, too--with capture capability, you end up doing more complex moves than you'd have attempted by hand, so you end up moving the goal post on yourself because you can. All that said, I'm really glad I have the capture system, and I'm pleased with how things are turning out in this part of my animation--there's a lot more feeling in the mocap stuff than I ever had in the hand-animated stuff. It's still not perfect--I get the occasional awkward move that I just can't seem to be able to fix without just starting over--but overall I think it's a definite plus, and I 'm assuming I'll get better at it as I go along.

I have an 8 wide-angle camera set up in the corners of a 14'x14'x7.5' space, on mounts screwed into the walls. I started with 6 in a circle, but the capture area was tiny, so I had to go to 8 (which in a 14x14 space gets the cameras more like 18' apart). This seems to do a pretty good job, tho I think I suffer a bit from the low ceiling. Yes, finding that much space is tough--I have to move out the bikes etc. when I capture--but the permanent mounts are nice since I don't have to set up the space and point the cameras every time I use it. That said, there's generally a lot of time between captures--a couple hours of captures can keep me busy for weeks or even months, so in your case, if you had tripod cameras and access to a large space with a cement floor just for a day or two now and again, that could be enough, as long as you plan ahead and make sure you get all your shots at your capture session.

Oh dear.....

Optitrack just moved up the priority list......

:D 

The tack I've decided to take is that I'm going to make animations of something every few weeks, more or less like doing calisthenics. I don't expect to give myself enough time do anything with a story to speak of. Mostly, I imagine these will be exercises of a minute or less in duration. What I want to accomplish is to get to the point where after a small (but hopefully sufficient) amount of preparation, I begin animating. Then I finish what I start (always a bugaboo with me) and move on to the next one.

To begin with, I'm mostly just going to make things move. As much as anything, I'll be commiting the features of my animation tools to "muscle memory" (if I may invent a metaphor) and as a result, I'll be better able to make stories at the end of the tunnel.

I've already been at work on my January animation, it's rendering now. I got a little crazy with the quality settings, but it should render in about a day.

I have made myself log my steps and workflow, too. I think that building a list of what I did as I go will be helpful in reducing the amount of time I spend planning to animate while increasing the usefulness of that very important step.

Once I get several things animated, I think I'll be able to go back to all my scripts (there's a bunch) and turn them into something I can show off. Don't know if there'll be any gems in the pile, but I'm having fun so far. And that is, when all is said and done, the point.

Oh, and I do indeed appreciate all the encouragement.

If you are not sure of getting the charactures to move, then by all means practice going through all the motions to learn from. But if you have the basics down a good bit. I wouldn't mess with making a little skit without a story.  It don't have to be a deep story. thing of something simple like. A girl walking down the street turns and looks into a store front. A guy walks up to her and pulls a gun. "I don't know what you have in lipsinc, (I have Mimic Pro) but that is important to have so your story will more directly comunicate with the audiance." The guy says your money or you life. A guy comes up behind and hits the bad guy in the head and call the police. meantime he starts up a conversation and the couple walk away and make a date.

Something simple to YOUR liking. There is enough in my short little skit to get camera angles, close ups. Action. One thing that a lot of people overdo, that is not necessary. is they like to do a lot of full body shots of them walking. It is important to be able to make sure the feet don't slide, but if you know how to do that, then you can save yourself a lot of time by not messing with showing the feet just to let people know you know how to do it. It is more important to get up close and personable than to loose that where you are not connected with the people. This connects with the audience much better. All you have to do is look at movies. Most of the good movies have a lot face shots, a lot of half body shots, and the full body shots are left to the dramatic, or captureing the lage scope of a scene for the most part.

You make the most advancements is in putting a story together. It don't have to be long, but it needs to have purpose. The reason for this is you will see things as to why you need to plan ahead for the next scene. that dosen't sound like much but it coordinates your movie to flow better. It is a good practice, and will become automatic after awaile. These are the little things that pop up threw-out every movie that you will learn from. If you put some clips together with movement. You will never be happy with the results, as they don't mean anything. UTube has a ton of clip that are a waist of time to watch a person walking. Nobody care that you can make a person walk. The care if you can capture their minds, by making something that has a little meaning to it.

I'm into storyboarding my scenes. This is done by the big studios, as they have to have everybody on the same page when making a movie. They start designing sets, camera angles, and mood of the shot. When I write a story. I allready have the visual in my head. it that reguard, I don't need a storyboard to get everybody co-ordinated. I know the scene in my mind. But I like to do it because, 

1. I have my setup of all my charatures that will be in the scene. I can set it up in the most dramatic fashion & setting. This may sound like a lot to learn, but you don't learn all this at once. you start learning after  you whatch you 1st movie spot. You see what you did that could be done better. And each movie you do afterward you try to make what you can see that needs to be improved that you never see in moving people around. 2 people walking around for the practice is nothing. 2 people walking to meet and talk to each other has purposeful start.

Their is no such thing as perfect. But their is making something that is very good. Making it the best you can each time is part of that learning Process. After awhile you won't even think of it as wow that is a hard thing to get right. You will think in therms of this is what has to be done, or it won't look correct. You'll then know you've advance another step.

I push making a short movie with some small plot, because I know if you don't, you will be saying the same things again. I'm not making any movies. Hey there are a lot of people how are witers here at Renderosity. Ask them if they have a little Maybe a TV ad that didn't work out well. I'm sure someone will have something they can donate. I'm sure I have something laying around that I wrote that you could use if you need a quick story. A note about my writing. I have dyslexia, so I make a lot of spelling mistakes and gramer errors. But I have a proof reader to clean up for my final large movies. Plus, I write as fast as I can so I don't loose the mood, or the emotion of a scene. 

I really hope you go the quick short story route, as I know you will be 4 times happier with the results, than moving people around.

Well, I appreciate that perspective, I really do. My problem, as I see it, has been that I'm not making anything. I get a story idea, I add in an element, and I research how to do it, and by then I've got another idea, and nothing to show for it.

I have every intention of making stories; I don't know how many scripts I've written so far, but most of them are short (five minutes or so, on average) and workable. But making scripts, while important, isn't actually animating, and that's the hole I've found myself in.

All I'm trying to accomplish, for a few months, is to snap out of the always-planning-but-never-animating slump I'm in.

I'm pretty sure even the exercises I animate (mostly) will have some kind of story to them, or at least character, even if it's just something along the lines of PIXAR's Luxo bouncing onto the screen and looking at the camera. (Not, mind you, that I'm comparing myself to PIXAR...)

What I'm doing right now is just a logo kind of thing, and it's mostly practice on lighting efficiently (I still have a problem with that; I keep going for the HDR and the GI before doing the math to remind myself that I won't live long enough to see the animation done on my equipment) and motion, which I've simplified radically for this piece. But, above all else, it's something I can point to and say, "I started an animation, and I finished it". I think with a few of those, I'll be in a better frame of mind to make my stories.

I think I do pretty well at telling a story. One of my hobbies is doing improv theater, and we practice all the time taking the germ of an idea, and quickly making it into a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I always shoot for three acts in my stories, no matter how short. I'll even go as far as saying that I think a couple of my scripts are kinda clever.

I hear ya about perfection, and what I need is a big ol' cattle prod up some sensitive part of my anatomy to stop trying for that very thing. I've got this one going now, and I'm pretty sure in the end I'm not going to like the motion. But the four weeks I've allocated for the project is half over, and I've got to do a 2D bit for it (about two days work) make the audio (probably about a day, most of it is canned) and assemble it (another day, if that). So, I'm gonna call it done next weekend, no matter how bad I think it is, and go on to the next one.

I'm really hoping that telling a story will just naturally come out of all this. But, at least, in the meantime, there are sequential frames being rendered, and the character moves in a way that's very close to what I imagined, and that's what I'm wanting.

You sound like you can write on the fly. That is good. Do one clip at a time of the animation. Then start your next clip. You will have the 1st part of your animations building block. From their just keep building on that. Don't stop and try something else. You will loose continuitity.

The last thing in the world you need to worry about is what other people will think of it at this point. The most important thing is going for it. You can't take the next step untill you take your first step, unless you hop. And if you hop,  you miss how the other foot was suppose to work.

If you have a question. At any point bring it up, inquireing concerning the Program you are using where your having a problem. Someone here will be able to help you with it or direct you for the answer. I know you know that. But You can't let a problem stop you in your tracks because you ran into a problem. get the answer!

Untill I spotted poser, I was very much like you. I would start drawing out my storys. But never could finish them, because I lost interest because it took so long to do, and I could make a lot of apainted cells, that might look like crap. Then I had to paint the backgrounds get my camera setup. Poser was easy. Expince was up front. All you had to do was Animate, then if you didn't like it. delete it or redue the parts that needed to be improved. you didn't have to throw away a ton of painted cells that didn't turn out the way you had hoped.

When I started with Poser 4. I was free to mess up, and learn. noting lost after started other than time. This is why it is so important to have a story that intrest you.

My first Poser animation was about 15 minutes long. It had some good parts in it, and some things not so hot. But this you will find in doing animation. no matter what the animation or how many you have done. There will be a scene that you will have to figure out a way to do it. This is a never ending process. What you haveto work with, it drawing from the knowlege from your previous experiences. That will take you a long way.

I think you have the talent to make a good animation. Some people don't have that. They can move people around nicely, but miss the big picture. With your background, You have the big picture. now it is making it happen and not taking no for an answer. I see a number of talented animators here. A lot are in learning process. But if you really like animation, don't let anything stop you!         Good Luck!

This is the little animation I've been working on for the last couple of weeks. I did this one as a kind of "signature" I could put in front of other animations I (plan to) do, plus it's been an exercise in keyframing subtle movements. I used Carrara and the DAZ Mill Big Cat for the animation (plus some props I modeled myself). The text reveal and compositing was done in After Effects.

"Captain Jack" logo on YouTube

As a side note, the nickname pre-dates POTC by many years, something I picked up in high school. I've just always loved (the romanticized version of) pirates, starting with RLS. Also, I love tigers; I'm pretty sure there's a tiger in my ancestry, somewhere.

That is Very Nice! You were just leading me on that you didn't know how to animate.  What you talkin Bout Willis!  I expected maybe there would be rough edges. There are no rough edges that are worth talking about. There are two things that catch my eye, one is not signifacent, the other could also be that the clip was cut short in the process of loading it onto the Forum.

The blur on both sides of where your starting that effect, and where you end the blur, could be just a very little bit shorter. It looks a little over impathsized. You want to see the blur, but not to the point of being a distraction. If the clip was a long clip, then what you have could work as a special effect that would look like it was done intentionaly for that clip, As it is now, it is to short to make it that obvious. The good thing that you did. was put it in. Maybe it didn't work out perfect. But file that away with the understanding that you know what it looks like the way you did it. That is much more important than the possible minor distraction that hit me.

The other there are a few things that I don't know about your clip. But If the clip is the way you wanted it, then I would suggest that you bring the Tigers head up more at the point where you have his heads motion  stopped. When a tiger roars. His head movement needs to carry on to the very last of the roar before the motion should stop. As I see it watching it, the tigers head stops and the Roar contenue.

But I like very much what you have done. I don't want any excuses. go for it. I want to see what you come up with. I know you are capable of doing some good stuff. Don't you be the one that stops you. This is your dream. Make it happen!

Cool, I'm glad you liked it.

I studied some video of tigers, but I couldn't find any of tigers "in the wild" in the short time I gave myself. Tigers in zoos usually don't roar, they keen or growl, so I did have to guess at the head movements. I did a reference video of myself acting out the head movements, to get the timing, but I'd agree, it's not as realistic as I wanted it to be.

I made a mistake with the blur. I had blur turned on for the scene, but I had it turned off in the renderer, and I thought there wouldn't be any at all. I checked the Carrara manual, and it doesn't say anything about this behavior. The render for about 13 seconds of animation was 25 hours or so. I thought about re-rendering both without the blur and with the blur properly turned on, but I decided that wasn't in the spirit of me trying to just press on.

I also don't think I spent enough time on the sound. I mixed two different tracks to get the snarl and roar, and I did the audio after the animation, which is really a mistake. I had a terrible time getting the roar lined up. Fortunately, the sound files were of pretty good quality, and I was able to manipulate the attack and volume of the blend to kind of "guide" the sound.

What I like about it was that I thought to carry through the motions of the earring so that it seens to bounce, and I was able to use the facial morphs of the tiger to simulate breathing, without having to make morphs of my own. I think the text reveal came out pretty well, too.

What I may do is go back, say a year from now, and do the thing from scratch again, and see if I've improved any. In the mean time, I've startedon my next one, which will have a story. It's going to be kind of cartoony, and I've already got most of the characters modeled. I'm modeling some scenery now, and I should start setting up shots this weekend. Hopefully, I'll have a few minutes of animation done by the end of February... the animation time should be a lot lower, because I'm hoping to get away with one light, mapped shadows, and a high ambient color for the background.

I liked the Idea of you acting out the Tigers head movement. At Disney, they have their animators act out animals to get a feel of the animal. What I had mentioned above was not a critisim of your work. You had great lighting, and great movement. these were only small things that are easly corrected. If you had bad head movement. That would be more of a problem. But that wasn't the problem.

What I would suggest is do a rough Render of your animation to save time, rather than render out your movie clip. that will point out any movement errors. (Like the tigers head ending before the audio is complete.) I always run my rough Renders full size, others run them at smaller sizes, But I like to check out anything that I might miss if I make the rought to small. Were only talking a few seconds or minutes, compared to hours to get it right, by going straight to the final render.

The thing I needed to be kicked in the pants was I didin't save my animations at different spots. I had lost hours of work because of it a few time. I'm pretty good at not letting that happen anymore. But I started leaning animation on the computer as soon as I got my first computer, and I was self tought. I call it the school of hard knocks.

You approached your animation correctly. I find that the time to be critical of your work is as you are make it. Check the movements, that they are fluid. When you start animating from one pose to another. sometimes the hand, arm, shoulder don't want to do a difficult movement. Sometimes if it is just not working, At this point I find it better to delete all the Keyframes in all 3 or 4 joint and redue them at the start of where the movement starts going wrong, or same with any other body part that is acting up on you.

Here is why making a short movie is so important. I can't remember what all editing programs you have, but I use Adobe Premiere CS4, which I can control the amount, and the timing of the  blur, they also have something that I find very usful, I can change the animation by slowing it down or speeding it up. This is a much faster way of fixing a timing problem in some cases, instead of having to re-render. You can't do that where a person is talking. that would throw off the lips in the audio off.

I did that in one clip place were I wasn't happy with the timing. I cut the clip in Premiere at the point that I wanted to Speed it up or slow it down. changed the timing there. And It worked out beautiful. In the process in making a movie, you lean how to bring all the elements together, and find ways to save time with out loosing quality at times. and also leaned what works best when you switch from one clip to the other. Do I Fade in or out. Dip to black. What makes the two clips transition without you hardly noticeing it.

25 hours is a long time to render 13 seconds of a cat in a hat. I don't have Carrara so I don't know the render speeds. at this point I render in Poser 8 which is 32 bit, and is faster than Poser (7)Pro, which is 64 bit. I will be getting Poser Pro 2010 as soon as it comes out. Then I can use Poser Pro 2010, with my Vue 7 Exreme and Cinema 4D R11. That should let me upgrade my next movie to the next step in Qality and Flexability that I want for my next Movie.

That's why I say keep on. Your doing fine. I'm my own worst critic. But I don't use my critism of what I do as a negative. I just tell my self. Hey I can do better, or this isn't getting it. Even If I have to scrap a whole segment. I can't let something that looks bad to me get out. within reason of course. That by nomeans means my animations are perfect. by a long shot, and reguardless if they were, You'r never going to satify everyone.

You'll have to excuse my jumping all over the place. I am not a technical writer. I live my parts in what I write. That keeps me going strait ahead, with notes all over my story board, to tie my movie all together correctly as I go. I won't even mention my spelling. I have a partner that keep me correct in spelling and keeps an eye on my details. You can't see everything when your dealing with People, animals, Buildnings, writing, and everything else. But hey! I can't think of any thing else I'd rather be doing.

Oh one other thing I forgot to mention. When you are using an audio of a Tiger for example Growing. Put it in an editing program that can count your frames. This will tell you how long the grow is. Then You will be able to start you animation from the were your tigers head is at first till the tigers head and leads into the start of the Grow. Now that you know how long the grow is. You can add that many frames to where you want to stop the animated Tigers head. What ever you want to do with the tigers head after that is up to you. But you will have the timing down.

I do this all the time on tricky audio timing. I have one animation I started but prioty took over from the animation I was wanting to do for kicks. I had the Soul group, the Temptations Singing and dancing in Rythem as they do. in time with the movie. I had the hard part done. Maybe when I get the next movie I do. I will finish it, Before I start on the next movie I have lined up. ( in about a year or so) It takes a lot of time and patience to put a movie together. But the reward is so great.

I did use Premiere, but I just stuck in some black video at the ends, trimmed and faded it a little bit, and layered in the audio. I did put in some key frames for the audio volume, but that was it. I have Sound Forge, and that will let me import a video to match audio up with. Mostly I use it for compositing single sound effects, not for layering tracks. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's a destructive editor, and it's hard to work with several tracks at once. I lke the NLE sound editor in Premiere, but I'm not as used to it.

Is there a motion blur filter in Premiere? I'll have to look into that, I didn't know that was an option. I know AE has a motion blur feature, but I think it may be just for text and shape layers. I could be mistaken, though... so much to learn.

I've got Pro Tools on my wish list, but A) it's down below several other things, and B) I'm trying not buy new tools this year. I am allowing myself a budget of up to $100 per animation, but that won't buy software. On this one, I did buy a nice royalty free audio library of about 100 animal sounds (natch) so I've got a library of good sound effects started. For the next one, I'm going to model the main two characters and most of the background myself, but I am going to buy a couple of rigged models from DAZ to fill in around the edges.

I've found that, all else being equal, Carrara is usually faster at rendering than Poser. For this one, I cranked up the anti-aliasing, probably way too high. I had some trouble with the hair primitive (the fringe on the hat is a hair object) and shadow maps, so I used ray-traced soft shadows, which is another time-eater. I ended up with only two lights, an overhead light the color of sunlight set to a very high intensity (which adds to the render time, but I'm not sure why) and a shadowless keylight in a green shade from underneath, to give a "foliage" feel to the shot. I turned up the ambience to get away with out a side fill or back light, so that saved some time. I think the intense light and the anti-aliasing hurt me because there are so many parts of the model that have tiny white lines painted on as a transmap (the chin and side fur). There was so much contrast between the solid white lines and the alpha background that it took longer. I should have planned my background color to be black in the first place and rendered on black, which I think would have been quicker, and I think I could have used a lower tolerance on the anti-aliasing, and it would have been just as good.

I have Cinema 4D, which has a faster renderer yet, but I don't know it well enough yet to do a while project in it yet. I've got a Core2 Duo running at 3.16 GHz, which isn't bad, but I am eyeing an i7 chip for my next computer. Carrara in it's current incarnation is only 32 bit, but C4D is 64 bit, and the next Carrara is supposed to be 64 also, all of which will help.

I did an animation (here) right after I got Carrara that isn't very good, but I did put all of the audio together first, and keyframed all of my actions based on the length of the audio. I had one bit where a character comes by on a skateboard, and I had SFX of a skateboard going by on concrete. I worked out the timing of the shot based on that plus an estimate of how fast a skateboarder would be traveling, and used that information to get the character an accurate distance from the camera. I "lip synced" the vocal audio to a robot by keyframing a color change in the face plate to the spikes in the audio waveform. The mic I had was pretty bad, I ended up getting a good one after I made that animation. The new one I'm working on now doesn't have dialogue, just short SFX, so lip sync isn't going to be a problem. I've got Mimic for Carrara, but I haven't used it before, so I don't want to jump in and try to learn it until I've got one or two more animations under my belt.

On the tiger animation, I did several renders using the Draft render in Carrara, which gave me the big movements. It doesn't do textures, though, so I couldn't see the eyes or the fur. Later I did several renders (about 20 in all) at 640 x 480 but without any smoothing or shadows to fine tune the movements. I did the final render at 720 pixels high, then I composited the render in After Effects to 1280 x 720, and added the text reveal.

I've been a software developer for many years, so I'm pretty good about saving my work as I go. I use a sequential file naming scheme to keep things together. For models I create in Wing, for example, I use a name for the model, a letter to indicate the "version", and a three digit sequence number. So, I have a file named "TriCorn Hat A 001.wings", like that. Even if I'm satisfied with a later version, I always keep the old ones, just in case. When I'm actively working on a project, I keep the project files on a flash drive I carry with me (sometimes, on breaks or at lunch, I'll make models at work) and then I copy the flash drive to an external hard drive at home. When the project's done, I move all the files to an external drive, compress them, and move them to an "Archive" folder. I'm hoping to be able to go back and look at the work I've done before, and try to improve my consistency.

I kept a log on the tiger animation, too, to track where I was at with modeling, texturing, lighting, animating, all that stuff. If I put something on the list but decided not to do it, I made a note as to when and why. For example, I was originally going to use an HDRI for the lighting, but it would have taken about 400 hours to do the rendering on my machine, so I scrapped it.

I need a hilly landscape with a road and a creek for the next one, done in a "toon" style, so that's what I'm working on now. C4D has a nice Bezier patch primitive that looks well suited to the task, and it will convert the result to a polygon mesh, so I can use it in Carrara. I think that'll be the fastest way to go for me, and it'll keep me moving, which is the most important part.

You might be right, about Premiere not being the one having the Blur freature. I have both Premiere, & After Effects. So I could get the program that works with the blur mixed up.

I don't know, but I heard Poser 8 was faster than Carrara, but I don't use Carrara to test them. But I do know Poser 8- 32 bit is faster than the Original Poser Pro which is 64 bit.

I have the i7 quad 8 gigs or Ram. When I get back home, I am doubleing the Ram. Then with Poser Pro 1012 I can render with it's 64 bit, and extra speed, I can render in the background while working in the forground. It Renders in the background with Image files. That is the best quality to work with. plus if your computer stops for some odd reason. You can pick up on the last file rendered.

You have that computer background helping you with some important knowlege. I have my Partner do that stuff. He is a computer Programer and teacher. He is not creative, but very technical. I call it a perfect match. What I'm good at he's not, and Visa Versa.

In animation I don't get near as technical in searhing for the Perfect Lighting as Possible. I look more for the effect and mood that the scene needs. And will subsitute what ever will Render fastest if I have a close equivalent of that perfect lighting and it's overall effect. It really boils down to What ever is necessary to get the job done without sacrificing the mood of the scene, and it's overall quality.

Have you ever put a poser figure into Cinema and put hair in their head. It is amazing. It happens right away. you don't have to mess with all those problems of setup that you do in Daz or Poser. The Biggest thing is Designing the Hair. But wow. All you have to do after you animate the scene is Render.

I'm still quite the novice with Cinema. I've worked my way through some tutorials and rendered a few sample scenes, but that's it. Ultimately, I want to switch to it as my main tool. Interposer looks like a good plug in, as I'll be able to use some of this content i've got lying around for a while longer. I'm not sure I'll ever be much of an organic modeler, but you never know.

I never upgraded to Poser 8; I thought about, but I haven't used Poser for more than a year now, and so far I've found Carrara to be easier to use, and i can load all the same content (there are a couple of things that are a little harder when it comes to posing, but that's never been much of a problem, and I find the animation tools to be much better). I've only done a couple of tests with a 32 bit computer, but in those tests Carrara rendered the same scene in less time, and with more lights in the scene.

I usually do my test renders as AVI, because I don't really care if it crashes; I only run them for ten minutes at most. When I do final renders, I've been rendering to PNG, althought I sometimes have trouble with the pre-multiplied alpha. I'm planning to experiment with TIFF instead, and see if I get a better result. Carrara can also render to RPF files, with several layers of information, but I haven't tried that yet.

Carrara has pretty good hair, but it does slow the render down. I did a test render of an odd shader I made on hair at somebody's request, and it just took forever. I'm looking forward to using the Cinema hair module. I think it's much more flexible, and based on the manual, it looks even easier to use. I never did get my head wrapped around the Poser hair room very well.

I've never been good at rigging. When I model my own stuff, I always move it with morphs, which isn't very satisfying. I'm going to try a couple of simple rigs for the animation I'm working on right now, but if it takes a long time, I'll find some other way. That's another thing that got me interested in Cinema, I think the MOCCA module may be a lot easier to rig models with than other programs I've used.

I priced out a quad core XEON box the other day, but the CPU's alone were going to be about $5,000, and that's just more than I can spend on a computer. I hear really good things about the i7, so my next computer will probably be that (I've been looking at the 960, which clocks at 3.2 GHz; I'm told that some of the chips in the 800 series can be overclocked to 4 GHz, but I'm kinda chicken about overclocking). I don't normally do a huge amount of other processing when I'm rendering, so I'm estimate about 12 Gb of RAM (with the 64 bit OS, of course).

Lighting has always been something that I've rarely been satisfied in my own renders, so I'm always looking for ways to improve. I've been through Jeremy Birns' book several times, and I pick it up now and again just for review. I feel like it's more important for still images than most animations, but I want to look right for the mood of the piece. Of course, with animation, I'm always trying to get away with the least number of lights possible.

I have InterPoser. But I am thinking of Importing the charactures into Cinema and rerigging them so I can get more flexability  with the charactures. Especially with facial expressions. You might look at this Program called Messiah 3D. I think you will really like the concept. Also look at the walk Program the you can get with Messiah. It blows away anything I've seen. They have a video clip that shows you all the easy things you can do with it with little effert once you set up the walk cycle with your characture.

I don't see anyway around it. You will like Interposer. But I would suggest you animating in Carrara before you import it into Cinema. Cinema don't work with IKs on. or at least very well.

I don't have Carrara, but I do use DAZ Studio, and there are 2 things I really like about it. Animate Which I think is the best thing in Animation I've found, and the Parameter tools work much better than the way Posers does. But I don[t like the fact that  Daz don't use IK's. Other than that, I like everything else better than DAZ Studio better, or in a couple other cases just as good.

Well I use Messiah and it works on quite a few levels it is a great program for rendering rigging and animating does not model but it does it all so well for so little. It does smoothing but it is very picky about geometry you absolutly cannot have any Ngons.

Dann-O
What I was thinking about doing is Bringing Poser Charatures into Messiah, and re-rigging them so I could use the Soft IK for animatin, and also use Messiah's great Facial expressions system that it does. I might have to do a little modeling in Cinema to make sure I could have enough geometry to get those Detail emotions, That I don't know. You are the first person that I've heard from in  a long time that actually uses Messiah.

I heard it works well with poser figures back about 8 years ago. but the person that told me that disapeared before I got anymore info.

Attached Link: http://setuptab.com/index.php

        Well you can get some questions answered here. i don't work with poser figures generally I make models for animation in Wings and bring them into messiah and smooth and render and rig them. Messiah is picky about geometry it simplay will not work with Ngons so you will have to fix any mesh if there are problems with Ngons. it will render holes and will crash if you try to smooth and render it. I make morph targets and have a few bones in the face works pretty good for me. i can even do some toony stuff that way.

I provided a link to the Messiah message boards. There are top end pro users there that know way more than me i am just a hobbiest.

Attached Link: http://setuptab.com/index.php

        Well you can get some questions answered here. i don't work with poser figures generally I make models for animation in Wings and bring them into messiah and smooth and render and rig them. Messiah is picky about geometry it simplay will not work with Ngons so you will have to fix any mesh if there are problems with Ngons. it will render holes and will crash if you try to smooth and render it. I make morph targets and have a few bones in the face works pretty good for me. i can even do some toony stuff that way.

I provided a link to the Messiah message boards. There are top end pro users there that know way more than me i am just a hobbiest.

Thanks, I will try and get some more info.

I would love to build my own models, but I just don't have the time to build all the Charactures that I would use in a full length movie. That is why Posers Models are so handy. I morph each one the way I want, Bring them into Cinema. and I can rig them that way. But If I could get them rigged with Messiah, that would be just great. Again thanks.

I wasn't familiar with Messiah until just now... it looks pretty interesting. Since I can use my Poser content without modification in Carrara for now, I'll probably stick with that and try to learn MOCCA as I go along, and try to use it in the future. I'm really trying to stick to my guns and not buy any more software this year.

I've got most of the models for my next one done, including morph targets. I bought two models and I've got one other one. I'm going to try to do some simple rigs for a couple of trees, but I'm not sure how that's going to turn out. If I can't get it to work out right, there is a nice plant primitive in Carrara I might be able to look at.

I still have to make my landscape and a couple more small models (no rig or morphs) and do some texturing. I think I'll be able to start animating by next weekend at the latest, which puts me ahead of schedule for February. "Ahead-of-Schedule" moments are ones I savor, since they come along so infrequently in life.

Well one thing to me is that people tend to rely too much on poser and fail to even try to make their own characters. I find most home brew characters from the ground up have a lot more personality than those from poser. Accruacy probably no but personality yes.

A lot of people are cheating themselves out of the best part of 3D breathing life into their own characters and bringing them to life straight from their imagination. Poser certainly has its uses adding a quick character or putting a pilot into an airplane etc.

In the one I'm doing now, I modeled the main characters, and a little over half the sub-ordinate characters. I need a couple of minor parts that need more rigging and modeling than I'm up for, so those are the ones I'm using for this project.

I really do want to graduate to running my own rigs on my own models, though.

Dann-O, I would love to build a model from the ground up. But, The biggest thing for me is Making a movie and telling a story. What I hope to do is Put a Poser Charature into Cinema and make them into a master. One Male and One Female. The Facial flexability is the thing I will be working on. Their are a few other minor things. But they can do pretty much what I want them to do with the adjustments I mentioned.

Captain Jack. I agree with you about buying another program at this point. Learn what you have. When you get that down, Then you can see if you there is something out there that fits your needs. I only mentioned Messiah as That program really fits in what I want a program to do.

    Slowhands I think we are of a different cloth. I love making characters and rigging them but find the actual animation process tedious. If you lived in town here and had Messiah we could probably do some cool work together with original characters and good animation.

One advantage to how I do it while it is nowhere near as accurate a character the geometry works better to me I have less problems with polygons sticking out etc. Maybe as a bit of advice if you are doing poser to C4D use a lower res poser character and smooth it that would work better. The higher res characters tend to be more trouble with polygons not deforming right. If you look at some top end pro stuff you would be surprised how low res the mesh is with displacement maps and smoothing taking up the rest.

I've had that problem taking models from Wings into Carrara. Carrara does smoothing much differently from Wings or what I was used to with Poser. I'm finding that a good work flow is to do a little beveling where I want slightly round edges, then taking the models into Carrara, then setting hard edges where needed in there and smoothing.

I've really got to learn C4D. Aside from the otherwise wasted investment, I did a displacement test with it and Carrarra the other day, using the same displacement map on the same polygon grid. Carrara took four and a half minutes to render the displacement (I had cranked up the polygon smoothing in the displacement just high enough to avoid artificacts, but still pretty high). C4D, on the other hand, rendered the same scene at the same resolution in about fifteen seconds. And, it looked better.

I really like Carrara, and I'm not sure I'd get rid of it, but C4D certainly seems to have some advantages.

So far, I've cheated on my "rigging" for the current animation. I'm using all morphs and "modifiers" (function in Carrara that bend, twist, or otherwise distort the object they're attached to). The only rigged models I've got are four that I imported from my Poser content.

I'm a big believer in "do whatever works".

Yeal Dann-o. I would love making my own charactures. I was really good with sculpting with clay. And I've been a fine artist. But there is only so many hours in a day. I will have a need for an Aircraft that I was doing in TrueSpace about 8 years ago. But I never finished it, as I was just learning how to model on a cumputer.

I want the aircraft designed just the way I have it. But rigging the hatch to work correctly and the, doing the interior and Texturing the aircraft. I just don't have that kind of time. I need to do what I do beat, and someone else do what they do best.

I have a 3 movie trilogy that I will start producing the first of sometime this summer. Right after I finish the movie I'm currently working on. So when I get started, I will have a need to have someone build different sets for me. It's all I can do to fine tune my story, line up all the people for the voice overs that are decent actors. there is just so much in producing a movie. If you tried, you know what I mean. I don't mind the tedious time it takes to animation a scene correctly. the reward is watching the results.

So I'm hoping Then to find someone that is good in Cinema so they can build everything I may need in my films as needed. I have about 5 movies lined up. There is no way I can do all that is nessary and finish my movies which is most important to me.

When I'm ready, I will be putting the word out. I all ready have a english college teacher to proof my writing, and being that she's a girl. She can give me a womens point of view with some of the female charactures for my movie which is always good. She has her work cut out. with My dyslexia, typos, and that I type as fast as I can to be in the moment of that scene. I make all kind of grammer errors, and typos as a trade off for capturing the excitement I feel that is needed.

Anyway, I will see what can be arranged in getting someone to work with me in Cinema to help out in what I feel needed that I don't want to mess with.

Oh and Captain Jack. Learning Cinema is where it is at. Carrara is a very nice program. But it is not Cinema in many ways. You will pull your hair out learning it. But when you see and learn what all you can do in it, It will be your number 1 Program. Also, Animations are rendered much faster and better in Cinema. as you found out when you rendered Cinema, and Carrara on the same Scene.

I finished all of the characters I'm going to use in my next animation, and I put up a render in my gallery here. I still need to set up some scenery, but it will be pretty minimalist, since this is a 'toon.

I've also found that Carrara lights don't have everything I want. I'm trying to use shadow buffers for the scene since they render so much faster, but the shadows get too blurred out. I built a rig that has five lights (one for the sun and four for diffuse light coming from the atmosphere) which works okay, but I can't get the color saturation the way I want it. I may have to do some filtering of the video after it's rendered.

I'm also getting specular highlights that I don't want on the underside of objects from my ground bounce light. I really need the light to keep the undersides of the characters from looking they're standing on the moon instead of in air on the Earth. Unfortunately, Carrara doesn't let me turn off specular highlights per light, only in each shader. I don't know if C4D lets you do that, but I bet it does.

I'm going to make some far background props (trees, hills) that are low in detail, and build a creek for the bridge. Then, I'm going to act out some of the animation on video, to get timings the way I want them.

With any luck, I'll be doing actual animating by tomorrow.