Attached Link: http://www.rickwade.com/test/ani_7.wmv

Okay, I feel Im pretty close to getting the cel shade look right, but Id like some opinions as to what I can do to improve. Any tips, comments, critiques, suggestions, etc. are all welcome. Ive been in the lab for awhile now and I felt it was time I illicit some help from the friendly folks here in the Rosity forums. Ive provided a link to and a screen shot of a 10 sec. clip from an animation Ive been working on. Here are the production details: Vue dEsprit 4.11 was used to create the buildings, sky, rocks and energy ball. Poser 4 Pro Pack was used to create the female (Posette) and her animations. Music was created by me. Vegas Video 3.0 was used to put it all together and add extra sound effects.

Clip size: 729KB
Format: .WMV (Should play fine using IE and Windows Media Player)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=923132

I thought the clip looked great. You also proved a favorite point of mine that when it comes to animation, you can't beat the ease of using the P4 people. You might want to check out the cel-shader (or "toon" shader) capabilities of P5 (which allows you to use textures). The above link gets you more info. Great work! --jjsemp

That is an extremely cool video, you even added sound! It reminds me a lot of a Playstation game called Fear Effect. I don't know if it will help much, but I wrote a tutorial on creating an anime/cel shaded look in Poser (just for still images though), and it's in the Tutorials section here on Renderosity. Maybe something in it can help inspire you somehow. :) Thanks for sharing, excellent work. SnowS

Nice job so far... I was ready for more... As jjsemp said.. it's hard to beat the P4 figures if you do a lot of animation. The hi-res figures are great for close ups and stills, but it's a lot of overhead for an animation if you don't need it. BTW have you tried using Mover and rendering in Vue? Might be another way to get the effects you're after. Be sure to keep us posted on your progress. I would like to see more of this. Ed

What they said! NICE!!

Impressive!! good work!! -Wolf359, Founding Member of the "12 animators"-

Excellent job! What did you use to actually render the animation?

Neat. Very similar to something I recently tried out...I'm still a newbie, but I'm working on it. Can you please explain how you used both Vue and Poser to make this animation? Again, I'm kinda new to these things and I don't really know it all... Evo

Evo you will need mover for Vue to bring in the animation. Unless someone else has a different way of doing it. Marque

Can you elaborate on how you put it together? It looks great.

I'm curious to see at whom she's about to fire that Kamehameha wave.

First I'd like to thank everyone for checking out the clip and for all your kind words and suggestions.

jjsemp, I have Poser 5, but after reading all the problems that people have been having with it, I've been scared to install it. My PC isn't exactly cutting edge if you know what I mean. I have a PIII 800MHZ, w/512MB of RAM, running Windows ME. So far the Pro Pack has been good to me so I'm not complaining. I'm saving for a new system though and once I get that, I'll be definitely cracking open Poser 5.

SnowSultan, I checked out your tutorial and our processes are very similar. There are a few differences in techniques, but the basics are all the same. I really admire your work, so it's good to know I'm on the right path.

EdW, MadcapMac, Evo, Jkm, I have Mover and it is a fantastic product. That being said, I don't use Mover in my cel-shaded animations. The reason being, it's very difficult to pull off a cel shaded render in Vue d'Esprit. It takes a lot of tweaking to get a cel shade effect on the buildings and landscapes and even more tweaking to get an imported Poser model to look cel shaded.

As far as my process goes: First, I do two separate renders. I render the characters in Poser and then I render the backgrounds, special effects, etc. in Vue d'Esprit. Once I have the two separate renders, I combine them together using Vegas Video. Then I do one final render in Vegas, which outputs a combination of the first two renders. Of course there are lots of tweaks, settings, etc. that have to be done for each app, but that's the basic process in a nutshell.

Little Dragon, I'll be able to post a link to that clip hopefully sometime soon. When I said I'm working on an animation, I've actually been contracted to do an animation and the company is very finicky about what I can and can't show and talk about. They didn't have any problem with me showing the above clip and that's why I came to all you guys and gals for your opinions, to make sure I'm on the right track. This is my first paying animation gig and I don't want to start off on the wrong foot. Wish me luck :)

Great clip, Darkskills! Really has an anime feel to it

Very cool. I love that look. How do you like Vegas Video? Rocks, doesn't it? :) I agree jjsemp, the P4 figures animate great. And so do the P5 ones, they're just as easy to work with. --silver ...another of the "12 Animators"...