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PatMarrNC - all messages by user

2016/4/3 23:54:43
Some new animated foilage? braj wrote:
But if you don't want the default cartoony trees, you are stuck. Some upgraded foliage would be nice. Alternately, if we could add textures to the existing ones, that would make for a lot more variety as well.


Braj,

I want to start by saying how much I respect your creativity, and your ability to think up clever ways to make Muvizu do what you want. I envy that, and I hold that ability in very high regard. Its something you just don't see in a lot of people, but you have it in abundance. Having said that...

Based on the things you say and the trouble you go to in order to make Muvizu not look like Muvizu, I have to think you're spinning your wheels on a product that isn't what you really want.

Pretty much everything you say you want is already available in iclone, and NOT available in Muvizu.

The Muvizu environment is cartoony. All of the accessories are cartoony. The actions are exaggerated, cartoon style. Except for projects directed by people who are willing to model virtually every prop in their videos in order to get a different look and feel, Muvizu productions are destined to look cartoony. If you don't want cartoony, then you have basically two choices:

1) resign yourself to modelling every prop in every scene in order to get the look you want or
2) switch to a product that natively offers the look and feel you're after

My suggestion for you is to put iclone on your charge card so you can have it today and pay as time allows. Right now there's a sale and you can get Iclone 6 plus the 3d exchange and some other stuff for $349.. the 3d exchange is what lets you import models, and I'm thinking you would want that.

http://www.reallusion.com/store/product.html?l=1&p=ic#iC6Studio
2016/4/3 18:24:42
Nuts Amok #3 thanks for the clear description! It worked VERY well! Great job all around!
2016/4/3 16:07:11
Changing duration and other points ritsmer wrote:
To solve sole of these issues I have 2 mice of the very same model (Logitech G3) and their speeds is set differently using the program Eithermouse.
That gives one fast-but-not-so-precise movement-accelerated mouse - plus another very-slow-but-more-precise mouse.The fast mouse has movement acceleration because else it would be too troublesome to work with my 40" UHD + 30" half-UHD desktop.


Clever!!
2016/4/3 16:02:49
Nuts Amok #3 emergencysquirrel wrote:
ziggy72 wrote:
This is trippy... love how you varied the lighting to match the real world. Freaky fun Big Grin


Thanks Ziggy, yeah, the lighting is the trick to creating realism. In the bus scene I had a moving backdrop casting shadows on the characters to simulate the moving light from outside the bus, then it slows and stops as the bus does. But the masking is the hard work: frame-by-bleeding-frame!!


VERY CLEVER stuff you're doing! I notice you even lined up the shadows to match the length and direction of the real shadows in your video! GREAT attention to detail!

Please say more about the backdrop casting shadows in the bus... I'm not sure I understand what you did there....
2016/4/3 15:57:27
Camera Cuts Rocque wrote:
Now if I can get the camera cuts down and make something where more than one camera actually shows up in the time line, I will be happy.

I'm not sure what you're looking for in the timeline, but there won't be a separate channel for each camera... just an event marker / keyframe that denotes a change... something you can slide around on the timeline to change the moment at which the camera changes

Over an hour later and I can not get the camera cut thing right. I have one camera no matter how much I switch them in prepare, direct, and record.


I once had a situation that I thought was exactly what you're talking about... I was changing cameras, but in the Camera window, I could only see one camera's output. Turns out I had neglected to click the ACTIVE tab on the CAMERAS window. (Unless you do that, the camera window will always show whatever camera #1 sees)

Could that possibly be what's going on?
2016/4/3 15:37:09
Nuts Amok #3 ziggy72 wrote:
This is trippy... love how you varied the lighting to match the real world. Freaky fun Big Grin


I would never have noticed that in a million years... but I'm very impressed that your experience with the software enabled you to notice it immediately, and understand exactly what you were noticing. At BEST, I MIGHT have thought "Hmmm, something I like about this, but I can't define what it is..."
2016/4/3 7:15:01
Three (count 'em) three camera angles! You have some interesting stuff going on in this series... looks great to me... although, based on the snippets you've provided so far, I haven't figured out where the plot is going. It really is fascinating to watch Muvizu characters walking around in the real world. I look forward to seeing the finished project!
2016/4/3 7:09:22
Nuts Amok #3 wow, you've really got the technique of adding Muvizu characters to real video footage down to a science! This looks totally believable... right down to the shadows on the sidewalk!

My only disappointment is that it was only 2 minutes long! I was ready to watch longer!
2016/4/3 1:37:06
animation fans HOLY MOLY! Check out this other product by the same company!

http://www.thebest3d.com/archipelis/index.html

This would be great for people who don't know how to model, but they still want to create custom content for Muvizu!
2016/4/2 21:25:17
animation fans WOO HOO! ;-)

I found out how to make the background transparent so foliage images can be used in MUVIZU and you can see through the foliage as characters walk behind a bush or tree!



This video is a tutorial for a sister product called Howler... Particle9 is a subset of Howler, so the menus won't be the same, but the concept will work in Particle 9, you may have to experiment with the brush tool settings

Speaking of Howler... in my opinion this is one of the most innovative software packages I've seen in a long time! It's very object oriented and rules based, and the user can create their own rule sets that define how foliage and brushes and 3D landscapes and virtually everything is created!

And they have a way of starting with a flat graphic of fractal noise, then adding peaks and valleys to it based on light and dark colors to produce 3D topography, which can be exported as a Wavefront OBJ file! That would be very useful with Muvizu!

Given my philosophy that finding software which plays well with other software is the preferred way to build a strong set of creative options and tools for your video-making toolbox, I rate this software very highly! It adds capability that Muvizu doesn't have natively, so used together the result is bigger than the sum of the parts
2016/4/2 17:12:44
some combustibles great idea posting content like that on dropbox now that MUVIZU doesn't host models! You're right ... having the props available to use in a variety of ways opens more possibilities than getting them in a set where they are already used in a predefined way.
2016/4/2 17:07:21
Changing duration and other points ukBerty wrote:
primaveranz wrote:
.....but the ability to change the duration of an action on the timeline by dragging the end of the "block" would still make a huge difference to the ability to create accurate animations.

It's not quite the same but I always record actions by hitting the action I want then I press idle as fast as I possibly can. This terminates the action.

You can then adjust the position of that idle block to terminate the action where you want.

Depending on the action you can get some pretty good results this way.....

that's an excellent idea Berty! The idle block effectively becomes the tail end of the action that can be moved around! Maybe an "official muvizu" solution would be to set up the actions so that an IDLE event was inserted immediately after the event was inserted.. that would give even slowpokes like me the maximum control over the duration of the action.

Of course, we can just keep manually doing it... but the older I get, the harder it is for me to respond quickly. If I ever catch on fire, I might not realize it for 15 or 20 minutes.... ;-)
2016/4/2 4:23:22
Changing duration and other points primaveranz wrote:
the ability to change the duration of an action on the timeline by dragging the end of the "block" would still make a huge difference to the ability to create accurate animations.



+1

several little timeline adaptations like what you just suggested would be wonderful.

<broken record>Copy and paste on the timeline would be great too. </broken record>
2016/4/1 23:33:12
animation fans cool stuff, Braj! I probably wouldn't have thought to do that in a million years!

SO many interesting ways to use this software!
2016/4/1 21:48:36
animation fans drewi wrote:
Pat... return to the Gaotd download page and read the users comments.it seems there are no layers in this version.
There are directions to an '8.2 dog waffle learning addition' which does have the plant particle brushes and may have layers. i don't know what restrictions it may have though.


I was planning to save foreground, Background and middle ground as separate graphics with transparent BG, then create distance between them by putting them on widescreen backdrops positioned at different Z depths... so for my purpose I don't need the program that generates the foliage to have its own layers.

I emailed the owner and he claims its possible to do what I want, but I didn't get a warm fuzzy feeling that it would be as easy to obtain a transparent BG as it is in most graphic programs.

The full blown program with layers and a whole lot more features that the particle generator costs $47.99 USD ( no upgrade available from the free version)... if I can figure out how to get the transparency I need, that's a no brainer.
2016/4/1 19:15:42
animation fans mysto wrote:
A great find PatMarrNC! I'll definitely get some use out of this one!


Me too, if I can figure out how to put the trees and bushes and grass on a transparent background... so far, nothing I've tried has worked. I know its got to be possible because they have tutorials on using the alpha channel, but they don't seem to have done agood job of keeping their documentation consistent with the current version, so the examples are almost all from previous versions, and the current version doesn't look that way!
2016/4/1 16:11:50
animation fans I just got around to installing this product and giving it a brief test run, and I think it will be VERY useful for making the kind of backgrounds I need for Muvizu and Anime Studio sets. It's basically a PAINT style program (as opposed to drawing or photo editing) in that it provides a wide variety of brush styles and materials to paint with. A LOT of paint apps do that... But here's what's cool about this one:

Many of the brushes are not just static patterns... they are animated algorithms that change every time you use them! So if you are using a nature brush to create trees or bushes, they all look different and unique! No rubber-stamped look like you see in many apps!

Also, I notice that many of the brushes are motion sensitive... meaning, if you draw faster, the pattern spreads out more, which creates a feathery look.. and again, always different!

The nature brushes alone are well worth the free download!

In the past I have used nature backgrounds that were screen captured from the web, but that's really bad practice for a lot of reasons. With this tool, I should be able to rapidly create just about any background I need... and best of all... put the foreground, middle ground and background on separate layers in order to create a wide vista 3d effect as the camera pans the scene!

Can't speak for everyone, but for me this freebie is a keeper!
2016/4/1 13:34:44
animation fans apparently the 3d terrain creator is NOT part of particle 9, its part of a sister app... particle 9 is a subset of the other app. But the foliage creation alone would be enormously useful in my opinion.

I'm hoping that after registering particle 9 that the other app is available at substantial savings. It's list price is already fairly low, well under $100 USD
edited by PatMarrNC on 01/04/2016
2016/4/1 11:15:07
animation fans I'm posting this here because the thread started out with a FREE SOFTWARE OF THE DAY notice... and here's another one:

One of today's freebees is called PARTICLE 9, and it looks like it would be a useful tool for creating backgrounds in MUVIZU! Based on its demo video, it has a 3d terrain creator, brushes for painting foliage on alpha and a lot of tools for making general painting very fast

The ability to create foliage on foreground layers that characters can walk behind and still be seen partially through the leaves really opens up a lot of possibilities. I'd guess that using layered graphics on multiple backdrops to achieve a 3d look would be a lot less demanding on your computer than filling up a large scene with 3d objects. Plus, you don't need to know how to model if you take this route.

These videos show a background scene being created with Particle 9. It's free today. 'Nuff said.








and here's the link for the Freebie, in case you aren't on their mailing list:
https://www.giveawayoftheday.com/particle-9/

as always, freebee expires after today (4-1-2016)
edited by PatMarrNC on 01/04/2016
2016/4/1 11:04:05
Some new animated foilage? braj wrote:
How about Muvizu releasing some foliage that is more realistic and that is animated. We can add our own trees, but we can't make them sway like the stock props. Thanks!


One consideration here is that nature's default includes a lot of variation. Small tress move in the wind more than large trees. The wind is wispy, and it affects some areas more than others.

Bottom line, just including a few of the default moving trees with some static trees tricks the mind into seeing the whole scene as being animated.

A musical analogy: In a musical composition, including a few audio tracks with some MIDI tracks has the effect of making the the whole song sound more like it was composed with real instruments, whereas a composition consisting of MIDI tracks only will tend to sound synthetic.

Upshot in both cases is that it doesn't take 100% change of elements to create a dramatically improved perception in the audience's mind. Often times a very small introduction of dynamic content makes the whole project seem more dynamic.

(My 2 pence. )
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Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.