Digital Art Zone

About six months ago, I worked on a two-minute animated sequence for a music video. Well tonight, it has finally seen the light of day and is partly included in a promo for the forthcoming album Beneath The Waves by “Kompendium” which is a loose collection of top musicians, pulled together in this project by musician and composer Rob Reed.

You can find the promo video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk0bpu5luPo&feature=colike

I thought it may be of interest to Carrara users - and also lovers of good music!  Let me know what you think.

I used many techniques in doing this video, including:
Keyframe animation
Non-Linear Animation
Puppeteer
Hair Animation (using lo-res proxies)
Cloth Animation (with Marvelous Designer via Fenric’s MDD Exporter)
Particles
Ocean Primitive
Lens Flare
Light Cone
Animated light gels

Very nice work Phil! When somebody starts harping about only hobbyists using Carrara I will point them to this thread!

Really beautiful Phil.

lovely work

Very lovely animation - Hope we get to see more of it. I found it quite saddening though. Must have been interesting to make.

Very nice.  The local producer of the 48 Hour Film Project’s “Music Video Contest” was asking me about doing an animated music video.  I declined ... two days is not going to work for something like this.  Arguably, two days doesn’t always work for ANY five minute animation ...

YOU’re right - impossible to do a quality job complex animation in 2 days unless you’re superman. I did manage a 2 ish minute, simple one in about 2 days - for a friend about to go into hospital. With aid of some bhv files.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTLgtwQpvZo

I wish I could do something like this one: (hope you dont mind noisy music - noisy but good!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_1PCGJJ9xA
But the animation clips are taken from a film apparently.  I reccon with enough time this kind of thing should certainly be do-able in Carrara! (I say this possibly too hopefully?)

nice one Phil!

Keryna, I have been watching LOTS of Final fantasy and Kingdom Hearts cut scenes lately too!
thinking how I would reproduce them in Carrara!
(it’s a MMORPG btw, I don’t game and with my crappy 3G broadband online is out!)

Just to clarify, it took me around a month to do two minutes of animation to this standard. I do have a day job too so not a month of continuous work, but a fair amount of my evenings and weekends, with most rendering done overnight (and often into the next day!).

Yes there is more to see of this, this is what was included in the promo…

Stunning work, not only on the Carrara scenes, but also to all the people who went into the music!  Good job on yours, and everyone’s, parts!

Really Nice work Phil .. congrats

keryna - 24 September 2012 12:48 PM

YOU’re right - impossible to do a quality job complex animation in 2 days unless you’re superman. I did manage a 2 ish minute, simple one in about 2 days - for a friend about to go into hospital. With aid of some bhv files.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTLgtwQpvZo

I wish I could do something like this one: (hope you dont mind noisy music - noisy but good!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_1PCGJJ9xA
But the animation clips are taken from a film apparently.  I reccon with enough time this kind of thing should certainly be do-able in Carrara! (I say this possibly too hopefully?)

Yup.  For me, “complex” is out right off the bat for a 48 Hour Film animation (and even “quality” is pretty elusive).  E.g. rather than camera movement around a complicated scene (like, say, one of Howie Farkes’ great landscapes), about all one can do is a large render and then zoom or pan in the video editor (a la Ken Burns).  Otherwise the render time gets unacceptable.

Pardon the repost, but this is my only two day animation that the judges ever cared much for:

http://tinyurl.com/8gj7qbe

Your Gecko fight is nice, I’ll bet your friend enjoyed it.  I’ve got a Poser Gecko and some martial arts mocaps, unused.  You’ve given me ideas.

The Springbok video is way over my head, probably with ANY amount of time.

Great Phil -very impressed with the hair -

quote -Hair Animation (using lo-res proxies)  any video tips on that somewhere ?

0oseven - 02 October 2012 02:59 PM

Great Phil -very impressed with the hair -

quote -Hair Animation (using lo-res proxies)  any video tips on that somewhere ?

You can download my lo-res V4 proxy figure here:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/51666/View/5/3D-Model/Lo-Res-V4-Proxy-Figure

Basically you can conform this to your V4 figure, grow hair from the proxy and ensure that the hair only collides with that and not the main V4 figure.  Carrara hair is stable for animations as long as the collision object is no more than a few thousand polys - it just cannot cope with the tens of thousands that a standard V4 figure uses. It’s faster to calculate with fewer polys too!

There was a Daz Carrara discussion thread with more details, you may be able to find it in the forum archive.

Thankyou Phil and for making the proxy available.
Look forward to experimentting.

BTW - did you experience any problems with grow zones on say V4/M4’s head or your proxy figure IN THE TOP DOWN VIEW.

I found that trying to paint the grow region did not work but tended to pick up areas someewhere below the head.
for example V4 could end up with hair on her chest or buttocks.
Dont know if this is unique to my installation but I did put in a bug report

thanks againt