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Showing posts from May, 2009

Plugin drive over thank you everyone!

Thanks to everyones purchases and donations I was able to buy all the plugins I needed ^ ^ I posted the above image so you can see I really did buy plugins and am not wasting it on like monocles or something ^ ^ So what I got was the new Cactus Dan plugin suite ..character animation tools $250 Zblur2 which is a plugin to do depth of field blurring etc $79.00 Splinespread ... I'm going to use this to do some crazy particle stuff 69 euros Scoobycam tools ... A camera rig..does steady cams and all kinds of other awesome things 49 euros Again thanks! Now back to read the manuals ^ ^

Old WATS stuff for saLE to raise money for plugins

UPDATE ! Thanks to the donation by Cathy ^ ^ I got enough to buy the last two plugins.. SO thanks too everyone who donated! Adam, Ricky, Dean, Cathy and SamueL! Please no more donations as I got the plugins and I know we are all strugglin these days. Thank you my friends! I really appreciate it and you know I will do my best for you ^ ^ You can still buy the remaining images and DVD's... thanks to everyone who bought those too! ---------------- I have to buy a few hundred dollars worth of Cinema 4d plugins before I begin production and since I had these these ghetto printed on my photo printer prints laying around I figured some people might want them and it would help me raise money for the plugins.... Since the Mdot-augraphed images are one of a kind please email me to buy one at Mike@wearethestrange.com... Just tell me what # you want... Paypal would be best but I can take checks too thanks!... These are all from the "We are the Strange" art show at Anno Domini Galler

Balancing the polygon budgeT

When working in 3d you have like a polygon budget... your system can only display a certain number of polygons on screen until it gets all glued up and you want to punch yerself in the face... you can get around this by using Subpolygon displacement to add fine detail at render time BUT this takes up more memory at render time AND adds significantly to render time as its a single threaded process that needs to be calculated every frame 0_0 So sometimes your working a long making stuff and it looks great AND THEN you notice how much memory its taking up or it takes FOREVER to render a frame so you must adapt your approach... and this goes on the whole time... enthusiasm and creativity THEN stifling technical limitations and calculations back and forth back and forth you must grind until all the shit is worked out and you can render a frame in a reasonable amount of time without your PC melting down... So yeh I was tweaking in the same character model for the past 12 hours doing this po

Why is everyone else complaining?

I was reading this blogpost linked on some other film marketing blog I read... It's just so odd... all these "independent" filmmakers complaining and talking how their opportunities are going away in this new digital world... well I have something to say to them all.... PEAS OUT! Haha... We are at probably the most exciting and interesting time for media makers right now and if you REALLY been doing your best for a long time and you still can't find an audience for your film or anyone who is interested in it... well then you and what you make probably sux0rs... thats the truth no one wants to hear BUT thats the way it is in this new world... you can't pretend... the audience either loves it, hates it or the WORST OF ALL they don't remember it at all... there's no faking because with the internet and the people on it well ummm... they are honest... its terrifying to a lot of filmmakers I talk to but its like if you can't stand the heat then DAMN you sh

The reaL deaL

As you might not know I'm a fan of MMA and K-1... So tonight the half Brazilian half Japanese Lyoto "The Dragon" Machida dominated and KO'd an undefeated American champion and took his belt...he made the other guy look like an amateur... Both fighters were undefeated so how did Machida totally outclass the other guy? The other guy was 18-0 and hella hyped up... Because Machida is on a whole other level... The other guy got into martial arts late in life...because of a reality TV show 0_o Now what does this have to do with film? Well... before a fight theres all this hype and all the "experts" talk about how great a guy is... and how he beat all these other "good" fighters...... and people buy into it and believe it... Just because someone has a belt... it doesn't mean they are a true champion.... Now think about a Hollywood movie... before the movie comes out... there all this hype..."expert" reviewers *paid off* talking about how gre

Concept art 2 point Ohhhhhh

So after I finished my layout work for the day I decided to set up one of the characters for animation...just for fun... well after messing with it for a bit I realized the style in which I've been modeling the characters has a FATAL design flaw and they are not usable for animation ... So I will will remodel them all... NOW these things happened for a reason... My original idea for the character design/style got lost amongst computer problems and rushing things... My original idea solves this problem and fits the film so much better soooooo... I will remodel them with my original plan which I should have just not rushed and done in the first place... So I'm looking at the current models as Concept Art 2.0... I'll keep a couple but %90 will be redone... So yeh sometimes these things happen and you just have to look at the upside... at no point did I say "OH NO I HAVE TO DO THEM ALL OVER??! BOOHOOO!!!" I said to myself "Whatever, I'll do them over and they

64 bit 0_0

When making WATS my workstation had 2gb of RAM and my render nodes had 1gb... and I was using 32bit XP so I would get out of memory errors a lot in Cinema 4d when scenes got around 2 million polys... So now I'm using 64bit XP with 64 bit Cinema 4d and my workstation has 12gb of RAM and my render nodes have 8gb... The scene I'm laying out right now has 6 million active polys and tons of spd and it renders fine 0_0 THERE is a pitfall to this though... The scene looked suite with 4 million polys then BECAUSE I COULD I added more things in the scene to push it to 6 mil and it looked worse SO more is not always better ^ ^ I took it out and left the better, simpler version... I can't let me myself get seduced by the tech and start making massive scenes for no reason... I have to remember that the solo feature filmeratOR_ER needs to be light, efficient and FAST...these heavy scenes will just slow things down AND I want this film to be an exercise in minimalism... The design is ver

Finally decided on book

Even though I've been too busy to return the query letter to the publisher that was interested in me doing a book for them 0_0 I'm going to do a book and figure out how to release it when its done... but yeh I've decided that the best thing I could right now is to make a guide to making solo animated cg feature films... because there is no book for that... I'll release the book when HSM comes out so then I'll have made 2 animated cg features alone using my process which I will share in the book... It will be both technical and motivational/philosophical... think of a mix between "Rebel without a crew" and "The war of art"... So yeh thats what I'm gonna do... I'll interview the other people that have made solo animated feature films as well and put them in the book... My goal with the book is to turn you into an unstoppable one man army animator ^ ^ I will share all my techniques and tactics... Y0 Thorgin! I just posted the complete c4d/Z

The home for solo animated feature films?

Ya know I used to visit the Terrence Walker's site to keep up on tools and techniques for solo animators doing longer form projects but he quit blogging years back and now I'm wondering where would a person go to get information about how to create cg animated feature films alone... I know two other d00ds who have made or are finishing up animated feature films alone... Jeff Lew wif his notorious KIller Bea n and Dave4096 and his forthcoming "Archon Defender" Oh yeh I forgot about my paL John Bergin and his "From inside" Are there any other people out there doing solo 3d animated feature films? I know the mega hardcore Bill Plympton has been kicking out solo 2d features for years ...he's amazing.... but yeh any other 3d people out there doing features? The reason I'm asking is that I think to help others do the same.... we, the psychopaths who have done should share our process and techniques with you so you don't make the mistakes we did.... So

There's always a catcH

So one of the big reasons I was so excited about using Cinema 4d version 11 on this new film is because of the NLA system in it... I had tested out creating some motion clips and all seemed to work fine... then I was reading in the cgtalk forums about people having poor viewport fps when converting animation to motion clips... So I got some of shots from the MSI video I did years ago and converted them to motion clips... Shot1: Normal: 37fps Motion Clip: 20fps %46 slowdown Shot2: Normal: 35fps Motion Clip: 30fps %15 slowdown Shot3: Normal: 35fps Motion Clip: 28fps %20 slowdown Shot4: Normal: 38fps Motion Clip: 20fps %48 slowdown So based on this short test it seems converting to motion clips which you need to do to use the NLA system negatively affects viewport performance from roughly %15 - %50.... AND for everything Cinema 4d does GREAT which is a lot of things... the viewport performance was NOT one of the great things... and so it seems using the NLA system will make it even wors

Not enough time in the day...

So to stay on schedule I have to layout and light 36 sets in 20 days... I'll have to cut out all human interaction pretty much haha... I seriously would be more productive when working on a film if I lived on a deserted island or something... to do this stuff you pretty much have to get lost in the world of your film and its nonstop challenges... every time you interact with a real person it takes you out of that world and it takes time to get back in... UNLESS your talking about OpenGL problems and the best way to render volumetric fog that interacts with geometry... I technically finished modeling all the 3d elements BUT I've found myself redoing things as I'm laying sets out... I rushed a bit through some of the models and I find myself remaking them in a much better way of course ^ ^ So far things look good and my system is dealing with the sets ok... just have to keep grinding day in and day ouT.... I know the way...

WHen your not satisfied improvise...

So its not 7am now and I started working on laying out this scene at 7pm yesterday haha... its finally done now... I came to the point where I wanted some burning tree branches in the scene... At first I tried making it look "real" by using an image sequence of real fire stock I got off the web on top of specially textured wood to make it look like it was burning and some Xpresso controlled visible lights to mimic flickering fire... ahhh the stock fire sucked so I got my Canon hf100, some crumpled paper, rubbing alcohol and matches... it was 5am still dark... I burned some on the back porch and shot it... the close ups of the embers looked really nice but smoke was spewing in my face...my eyes got red and I choked but I still got the shots ^ ^ So then I had to convert and luma key the footage...while AE was rendering that I got a new idea and made some "motion graphic" fire using Cinema 4d's Mograph module...and it was SUITE! ^ ^ So forget the real thing... just

More thoughts on workflow

btw thanks for the comments on my last post... I put my faiL behind me and dedicate myself anew to this wonderful art and make the best thing I can for youZ ^ ^ So I finished laying out the first set... and it looks AWESOME ^ ^ BUT I decided to layout all the sets first then go back and light them... I can tweak on lighting for a LONG time so its better to get all the sets layed out before tweaking too much... Optimizing the scene took the longest... moving the objects in was very fast since I have all the concept art done for the set... I just matched it up to my concept art and added a few other things and there it was... Without characters the set is 2.5 million polys and I'm making heavy use of SPD so at render time the scene takes 4.7gb of ram to render... not bad... all my render nodes have 8gb of ram so that leaves a few gigs for the characters BUT theres very few shots that need the whole set so I hide the parts that are not needed... but yeh if I do a set a day I will fini

How serious?

I'd like to think that I'm very serious about what I do... it is the #1 priority in my life... but even I slip sometimes... I think I am VERY lucky that I get to do what I do... There have been a few instances in the past few years where I can see my own destruction... I am a very extreme and.... well.... I'm a fucking maniac some times... but I just want to let you know... I do what I do for you... I cherish the sincere and heartfelt emails I get when people tell me about what my work means to them... All them years of training and dedication I have put in... but I've realized all the hard work I've done can be lost in a single moment of stupidity... To change my ways I have to stop hiding it... When the WATS DVD's were first made in late 2007 I had just come back from Europe and my first night back I went out with some d00ds I just met and got all stupid macho and drank straight whiskey for 4 hours at this bar.... I don't know how I got home but I woke up

Scene optimization--> Layout---> Lighting

So now that I've finished all the character models for the film...even though I'll probably go back and redo a bunch.... but yeh the character phase is done... and if you've been following along you know I finished all the props and the like before the characters soooo... The next step is to optimize all the models... NOW I could have done this while making them but I wanted to work fast and sloppy... So what is there to optimize? So say I was making a building and like I duplicated a window frame like 80 times and they all have the same texture... well then I will go in and connect all those to make one model and apply one texture to it... C4d doesn't like scenes with hundreds of little objects and it really slows the viewport down...it makes renders slower too.... So the workflow is.... Create project file for scene... lets say Forest.c4d .... then import all the objects needs in the scene...trees, hills, props etc... then I optimize those objects... then I lay them o

You need 200 million for that? ^ ^

I was just reading about James Cameron's new 3d-3d film "Avatar"... he was talking about what a huge task it is even with they hundreds of people and 200 million dollar budget... he said "We have 1,600 shots for a 2.5 hour movie. It's not with a single CGI character, like King Kong or Gollum. We have hundreds of photo-realistic CG characters." That made me laugh because HSM has 2,147 shots and its only 2 hours AND it has close to 100 photo-realistic characters ^ ^ and I'm just one guy.... now I'm using "photo-realistic" according to its definition NOT what has been accepted in the word of cg... usually when people say photorealistic character they are talking about a realistic human character... THATS NOT what I choose to take photos of ^ ^ So my photorealism is a bit different as I choose to photograph fukD little freaky dolls and monsters... But yeh these mainstream types need to get they heads out of the tech because it is trickling down

Exciting times for independent media MakeRRRs Thanks Youtube!

As I've been working on the new feature film sometimes I stop and go WAIT how am I going to make enough money from this thing to make another film?! Because right now I make almost all my money from DVD sales... thanks to FIlmBaby the DVD sales have funded this new film BUT as we all know DVD's are slowly fading away AND after learning about all the costs involved with making physical discs and getting reamed to make them available through retail I don't know how much I want to do that again... OR if I'll be able too.... We all know downloads are teh future.... The holy grail for me like me seemed to be to get your movie sold in the Itunes movie store...we all waited but it never happened and the other download options were cumbersome OR on some site no one visited... So yeh just last week I was kinda bummed out thinking about the lack of options... AND THEN Youtube emailed me saying I had been approved for the new download program which I applied for months ago and for