I am undertaking the huge, frustrating task of making a movie on a home PC using Poser/Bryce/Photoshop and other programs as I pick them up. I believe that it can be done. My idea is to post a journal here in this forum, describing the steps I am taking to produce it. An entry would occur every few days or so as I work a lot of hours and for the time being, it's only a hobby project. Would anyone follow with interest? -Darth_Logice

Yes, That is a great idea. As you may know we will be expanding the 3D Animation forum in the near future. This could make a great addition. Do you have any idea's of how you would like to present it? When your ready send me an email at colm_j@yahoo.com and we can sort something out. Colm...

Yes, I second the motion... Cagey1

Hi Folks! Funny you should ask, Darth! I actually started a similar venture--four years ago!! So I'm very interestde in your project. I didn't keep a diary, but I did use this "hobby" as an opportunity to learn/incorporate a lot of different graphics and animation programs. Now I'm up to more than 10, including several that were discontinued years ago! I'm planning a "world premiere" early next year after I prepare a work print to enter in some regional animation competitions. It's a feature presentation that will be made up of nearly 100 separate QuickTime animations; I'm up to 55 and I should have the remainder finished by early January. Colm, perhaps you can offer some insights on how I could upload the files to display one movie per week once I'm ready to post. Peter (Dr Zik)

Wow, glad to hear someone is succeeding :) I am at the entry level stage, pretty much..doing nice stills but scratching my head at words like "Spline"..eagerly awaiting the Poser 4 advanced book to hit the shelves this month. I have the KILLER idea for the story though, and I sure do wish I could blurt it out...lol -Darth_Logice

Peter I will work on that. Colm...

Let me know I may be able to help.I also am working on a movie.I will be using live actors and 3d graphics.As I am not doing the 3d stuff on this movie maybe I can work on your movie. Don Murphy PS I have some stuff up at www.digital-drivein.com It is not to good as I just recieved poser.I do a lot of compositing using different programs.

Great Idea Darth, I've been playing around with a short animated movie also. Seems like it takes forever to get things the way you want them to look. Maybe this would speed up the learning curve. gregsin

Hi Folks! Darth, what's your end-user medium? I started out thinking my feature was something I wanted to record to videotape, but now I'm planning to burn it to CD-ROM or DVD. One considerable advantage to this is that I can compose my animations at 15fps, render them with Animation codec settings, dispense with concerns about field rendering, and end up with noticeably smaller (although still large) QuickTime files. Peter (Dr Zik)

Dr, You really asked a mouthful! Um...field rendering? lol Well, coming soon I will make the first post here about the steps I am taking. May actually do that tonight or tomorrow. Suffice it to say, I want 30 fps and life-like renders as much as possible. One of my biggest concerns is outputting to film, and the potential to do that. Also, I want to keep the frame size huge...and I want a million dollars too. I'm feeling pretty tough with my Athalon, but I still may be pie-in-the-skying it here. -Darth_Logice

Allie, I think the plan would be to output to film then convert the film to TV video if merited. For now, the whole thing will be internet based entertainment, but keeping big frames with big dpi stored for future usage. -Darth "High Hopes" Logice

I have a cd burner, and a 34 gig hd is on the way for a total of 59 gigs, and on the list of future purchases is a dvd ram drive. Storage shouldn't be too much of a prob :) Having leftover change for food and smokes, now THATS a problem lol -Darth_LOgice

Darth, For a home hobby type of movie production DV is an excellent way to go. You can get a semi-pro level video output board for $2,500 to $3000. You can combine this with Adobe After Effects and an AE plug-i called Cinelook published by DigiEffects to get a very "film look" final video. The problems with film transfer are file size and cost. FIlm resolution frames are over 2000 pixels, file sizes that will suck up 59 gigs pretty darn fast. And your rendering times will be huge. DV frames are 720x480 (or 720x486 depending upon hardware). This frame size renders faster and takes up far less storage space. Any professional video works at this resolution. As to the cost of film transfer, it can cost up to $250,000 to get quality film transfer for a full length film. Film transfer is going to become less of an issue in the next couple of years as DV is gaining a bit more respect, notably thanks to Blair Witch. Many of the film festivals are considering accepting video submissions as there are a lot of artists appearing who where unable to afford producing films on film. You could set yourself up with a mean workstation, excellent, pro level video IO board, a powerful software suite, high quality DV camera (NOT Digital 8) and several rendering machines for $35,000. You could turn out very high quality work with such a set-up (and even less hardware if neccessary). John Hostick

I happen to know of a company that offers custom motion capture for as little as $2.00 a movement.This might making a movie a bit easier. Just a thought....

Darth, I'd be very interested, being that I'm ALSO working on a short animation(about 15-20 minutes). I'm outputting to video cassette @24fps, 640x480. That's the maximum resoltion on a standard t.v. Most video games, like playstation and dreamcast only use either 320x240 or 480x360. Anyway, I'd be interested to read about what you're doing, and how you're doing it. And colm, if you'd like , I'd also be willing to post a journal, if you want.

Wow, this thread is sixteen billion years old. I have long since given up (for now) any hopes of animating so much as my ass out of my chair. Let alone anything in Poser. I barely have time or inspiration to render anymore. My initial experiments with it resulted in total frustration and there is a profound lack of enlightening material on the subject. The various Poser books are not much help either. I hope that the next generation of Poser clears all that up, and finds a way to make animation more intuitive. -Darth_Logice

Darth, If you don't mind my asking, (and opening up an ancient thread) what sort of problems were you having? Maybe I can help. Was this your first time animating anything in poser? Did you do any experimenting before?

Actually, I went on a huge binge of animation experimentation. I was greatly discouraged by the walk designer, and i can't figure out the jargon of splines and all that and using the graphs and charts to make everything work right. At the end of the day, I discovered I just didn't care that much about it. If it should be easier in Poser 5, I will try again to develop my vision, but until then, I've been getting the writing bug and am learning Bryce. -Darth

So then you wouldn't be upset if I started posting a journal here in the 3d animation forum?

by all means!