Attached Link: The U.S.S. Melbourne Homepage

I'm the Captain of a Star Trek PbEM, my plan is much the same as many others I've seen. I hope to make a movie trailer for my ship, with music composed by myself (I've been a musician most of my life, this graphics obsession is new). Nice thing is that I don't need to make up character concepts, my players have done that. I just need to make them. I'm a novice at just about everything, but have these ideas. As I learn, and go along, and maybe get this done. I'll be posting the scenes, characters, and what not as I go. I would like to thank all of you in advance for any help you might give during this ambitious process. Just from what I've seen in my wandering throught this site, a tip of the hat to the immense talent displayed here. The link is just to my website, nothing there as far as revelant to this site goes, but it IS my site. :-)

Do you have any Klingon in ur crew? If u ever want one, just tell me!!! Im a natural born klingon. Im not a star trek fan, my ex gf is... im just a klingon :)

Yes, in fact I have a Klingon Chief Medical officer, which makes for some interesting storylines. I also have a half Klingon half Vulcan Science Officer. The inner turmoil for that guy makes what Spock, or Torres went through seem like a picnic. :-)

Greeting, Stak. I'm realitively new myself at trying to animate in Poser and Bryce, but I'll try to answer any questions that may come up. I hope to have ny first animation ready for posting in a week or so (I'm currently waiting for a person to send me the recorded voice files that they kindly did for me). Question: Since you are a musician, would you be interested in doing a simple score for my (non-commercial)animation. The entire thing is only 2 min 58 seconds long,including opeing and closing titles/credits (which presently have musical background that could be replaced by something that ran the whole lenght of the anim). You'd be give prominent credit in the anim. The composition could just be a simple theme that varied depending on the action. Nothing complex is required (it's a simple anim telling a simple story), just some musical talent of which I am completely lacking. I could transmit you an pre-release copy of it if you are interested. Anyway, welcome aboard. And, just for the sake of increasing your exposure to as much help as possible, you might also want to try the Poser animation forum at the PFO (link here on side of page). Both forums have wonderfully talanted people willing and able to help us newbie animators.

I would be honored, and would love to give it a try. I'm looking for a good excuse to try out some of the new programs I've gotten. Would a Midi be ok? That's the best I can do right now. I'm still getting recording gear together. If you have a good sound card Midi sounds great. Send me the pre release. I'll see what the muse whispers in my ear. send to stak@vcn.com or if you have ICQ, I am sometimes on. username Stak, #38018501

Fantastic! First I've gotta go ahead and compress the file so it is of manageable size to email. Are you PC or Mac? (The answer will determine the compression method that I use.) The file that I send will still be minus the character voices, but I'll tell you the key parts when I send it so that it may help establish more of the intended mood(s) of the animation for you to score. Yes MIDI would work fine. However, because I'll render your music into the final animation in Adobe Premiere before compressing it for final posting on the internet, I'll have to convert the MIDI file to "wav" format (Premiere doesn't take MIDI for some strange reason). That's OK, though, because I have a conversion program. However, it only has 64 instrument-conversion capability, so the resulting wav files often don't sound as "deep" or harmonic" as the original MIDI files. But it works OK. I dont know how long it will take to get around to compressiong the file, and I think it takes about a full day of computer crunching for it to compress. But I'd like to finish the animation before the end of the month because I'm going to be moving and I'll lose time and I am really really anxious to post this darn thing for others to see. No commitmen here (I just need to plan my time), but how long do you think it would take you to send back via email the sound file from the time you receive the animation? I'm looking forward to this!

I'm PC. Considreing my schedule, and other things I have to do most of the time. 2 weeks to do something that I would not be ashamed of. That's a high estimate, but better safe then sorry.

Well, I'd better get busy and email a compressed file to you asap. I'll try to do it tomorrow before work. I'm going to compress it into a Quicktime movie file so you should be able to view it whether on a Mac or a PC. And don't feel pressured to get it done by a certain time. I lost interest in photography when I tried doing it for a living. The deadlines killed my passion. You'll see from the animation that it only needs light touches of music to highlight some moods. (The moods swing from innocent curiosity, to happiness, to sadness, to dispair, to fear, and back to happiness in less than two minutes.) Whatever simple variation on a theme that you envision to accomodate these moments (and maybe serve in the opening and closing title/credits) will be just fine. (Oh, and also feel free to extend the score a couple or three seconds longer than the animation as I could use more time to slow down the crawl on the closing credits so they'd be more readable.)

Stak, I compressed the file (but see my post below regarding my displeasure with te way the compression came out), but I didn't get a chance to email before I had to leave for work this morning. Its a big (11 meg) file that will take time for me to upload it and you to download it via email. Will your email program or IPS have a problem handling a file attachment of this size? (I know my home computer doesn't, but the server at work chokes on passing files larger than a meg or so.) In any event, I'll try to get it in the email to you tonight.

Stak, I tried sending you the animation by email, but discovered that my ISP (Earthlink) only allows file transfers to be 280kb in size! I'm stuck until I resolve this frustrating problem. Can anyone please suggest an ISP that allows file uploads in the tens of mb size range?

E-mail me, and I'll give you instructions on how to upload the file to my website, then I can just pull it off of there.

I emailed you.