agape opened this issue on Dec 21, 2013 · 15 posts
agape posted Mon, 23 December 2013 at 12:44 AM
Since I am only doing music videos for now, here is what I do.
I start with my own storyboard process. I break down the lyrics in Excel and determine where my scene changes will be. I prefer to do a change at each phrase in the song. I also look at the lyric content to see if there needs to be extra scenes included. For example, in the Hippo video, The change came at the beginning of each song phrase except when she sang: I'll feed him there, I'll wash him there and give him his massage. There was 2 seconds for feed and wash and four seconds for the massage. 2 seconds is manageable.
Then I go and plan my scenes, making notes in Excel at each phrase of what I would like the scene to look like.
Next, I create my characters. Usually they change a couple of times.
Once my characters are done, I begin to build my scenes. I have found that many times what I was thinking changes as the scene is being built. During this process, I end up having to hunt down items I don't have either in site freebies, like here and on freebie forums like ShareCG. If I can't find what I want for free, then its time to hit the product sites like Rendo, Daz, rdna and Content Paradise. I have just finished all the scenes for my next music video. Most of them are elaborate outdoor scenes. One garden scene has over 300 objects in it. I am thankful for DS 4.6 and 16g of Ram. 2 years ago, DS would crash and my computer would hang up. Now I have the resources to build big scenes. Even though I have collected ALOT of plants over the past 13 years, I found I didn't have enough. I ended up going to some of the specialty plant sites, like Xfrog, and downloading all of their freebies. I could use several instances of the plants and trees by changing their texture to make them look different.
Once my scenes are built, I will bring a character into each one, render it then put the images in order as the will appear.
Then I go back to my characters and work on clothing/costumes. I usually save a file of each character in each costume.
I usually save the animation for last. I use every animation resource I can get my hands on. I hate manually keyframing but will if I have to. I can tear apart a purchased aniblock and use bits and pieces. I have Ipi Studio2 with a Kinect so I can do my own motion capture. I use MimicPro for my lipsync and am learning how to fine tune the syncs. I purchased iClone this year and am running some animation through there into DS. I purchased Graphmate and Keymate but haven't gotten a good handle on them yet. Someone from the forums suggested I do my animation in another file and not in the scene so that's what I have been doing. I create the movements in an empty file and fine tune them. I save it then merge it into the scene file for placement.
I render the scene to images. I do this because its easier for editing. I bring the images into Photoshop (CS6) for edit (lighting, effects, etc) then export it as an mp4. I have an oline subscription to Photoshop and Lightroom. Going to play with Lightroom for editing this time around for a dreamy, romantic look.
Have had trouble in the past with getting a clear final product so I use Photoshop to assemble my clips for the final render. CS6 has a basic movie editor, certainly adequate enough for now. I can insert stills for titles and credits then create the final movie.
There you have it! My basic work flow.
Here is the garden scene I was talking about earlier.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p95/jaebea/02a-GardenPath_zpsfd8754ca.jpg