WarLord's WarBlog

We’ve probably all faced this scenario more than once:
We need to accomplish an animation task we’ve never done before. Then we find out there are no specific tools to accomplish this.

My question is when you are faced with this what do you do?

1. Do you put in a feature request to the software maker?
2. Complain the software does not do enough or have enough functionality?
3. Find a work-around to try to get the job done?

I guess being an old-timer I always look for the work-around immediately. One thing about working in 3D animation is the fact that we all do things on almost a daily basis that we’ve never done before. Being an old-timer that has worked through early versions of 3D tools I was just glad for what the software could do and never really gave a lot of thought to what it couldn’t do in terms of built in features.

It just seems natural to me to accept any limitations then try to move beyond them with unique or well known workarounds. On the other hand I seem to be running into more freelancers and 3D artists that think everything they need to do should be covered by a specific function or tool. Wolf of the Wolf & Dulci Hour calls it like it is. There is no easy button or at least not for every situation.

Somethings we just have to figure out and do for ourselves.

I understand that newer users have grown up in a different culture. Before the inter-connectivity of the internet we were forced to make things work to meet a deadline. There were a few bulletin boards way back when but they were expensive to connect to so you certainly had your questions ready before you logged on. No leisurely searching or surfing at that time.

I guess this leads to a different attitude when using software.  The old-timers like me had to do everything and we knew it going in. We knew there would be work-arounds and other requirements. Again… we were thankful for what the software did and never really gave much thought to what it didn’t do.  It was a mindset.

Flash forward to today. Someone that has never animated before may run across an affordable 3D solution like iClone. It looks good. They present it very well on the website and have plenty of great animations to show what can be done with the software. This may lead to a belief that the software has a button or function for everything you might possibly need to do. This is not an entirely mistaken assumption. In fact there are many tools, features and some “easy” buttons but not for every possible scenario under the sun.

Most of the 3D’ers I work with are all too familiar with work-arounds and they all go about it differently.  A question was posed.

How do you even get started on a workaround?

Well that’s certainly a loaded question. It would depend on what you are needing to do. For example we’ll take the shaky cam physics rig. I wanted to reproduce the shaking within iClone, first to see if it could be done and second to have a freely available option for iClone users without having to go into post work.

In this case I needed to reproduce a shake and the Reallusion forum mentioned using the Prop Puppet feature. It worked but not really what I wanted. Didn’t give the feel I was looking for. Physics then came to mind. Will the camera attach to the prop and work with the physics? It did. It attached and worked as hoped. I put a chain together with the physics blocks to impart motion. Then the motion was too wild… too uncontrolled at which point I placed the dampening props on the side. I then experimented with the top block of the chain changing from dynamic to kinematic. Finally found a solution.

When you look back at it… it was a natural chain of progression that started with the Prop Puppet and moved to what features within the software might actually be able to help. This doesn’t mean its the only way because I didn’t try anything else once I got the results I wanted.

When faced with this scenario the only advice I can really offer is to envision what you are putting on the screen and what tools come close to doing it for you… even if its just a little portion of the overall scenario it is a starting point.

Under no circumstances should you declare it can’t be done without trying. You won’t get far with that attitude. Instead think of how you are going to get this done with failure not being an option. Of course… its amazing how powerful a deadline with financial incentives or penalties can be for the “no failure” option but that’s how it is.

Remember… if you can’t do it… someone most likely can… with the same software! So what was the difference? Most likely an open mind, a work-around mentality and a get it done attitude.

What a year this has been. A roller coaster year of highs and lows like most people face. On the up side it was great year in terms of contract work. On the down side I met more deadlines than I ever have.  I also worked on a wide variety of projects from cover art for music to posters, sales brochures, tons of animated props and scenes (even some… ugh… character work too) along with a lot of video editing work… something I really hadn’t planned on but being a freelancer, at least for me, has meant a constant evolution of what I do day to day. I can look back over the past twenty plus years of work and see that I have always evolved in my work from C++ programming in the early days to the fringes of entertainment work today.

A beginners course on animation for Community and Junior colleges is under development with a green light to the next step. This course involves using iClone as the tool for the classroom with my part in it all being the laying out of the coursework and providing example and “build-out” videos. The class watches a short 10 to 15 minute built out video of a scene then they are assigned to build out that scene themselves during that and subsequent classes with instruction along the way. Will be very interesting to see what the different approaches to the same subject will look like from the students… particularly the work of the students that build out a scene better than I do!

On top of the regular contract work and the college course project I also published the iClone Beginners Guide with the help of Packt Publishing.  The publisher and I agreed to a contract after their initial contact with me and I was able to work at a pace that averaged three pages a day. Packt provided the format in a Word document and after a few chapters the writing was very quick and easy.  All of it on or ahead of schedule until the release of iClone 5 which then had me on a pace of writing basically the same number of pages in one third of the time to still meet a decent publishing deadline. The book grew from 250 to 508 pages covering both the previous 4.31 version and the new 5.0 release.

I am very pleased to say it received great reviews (four and five star at Amazon) and very positive feedback so far. It even peaked at number 35 on Amazon’s Top 100 Best Sellers list for multi-media titles. The book is also being translated into foreign languages with a Chinese version being distributed by a different publisher under agreement with Packt.  It is being considered as a textbook in several markets.  Many, many thanks to the iClone users community for their support as this would not have been possible without it! We are discussing updating the book to a full 5.0 version and doing a few more specialty books involving iClone.

The book contract and publishing  also opened a lot of doors including a new project for me… writing a science fiction novel with a different publisher that came to light during the writing of the Beginners Guide. Its amazing to me how things can fall into place but I’ll be the first to say its taken a lot of long hours and hard work to be ready when these doors open. The book will be mainly a sci-fi military affair with all the battles and trappings of that type of book. Pure testosterone but then what would you expect from a guy whose screen name is WarLord?

I’m the guy that thinks John Wayne was disrespected and still wonders why Chuck Norris hasn’t gotten an oscar! So what if he could barely speak audible english in The Octogon… he’s Chuck Norris… he’ll kick your ass and Oscar’s too if you don’t give ‘em some respect!

Anyway… I digress.  Actually three outlines were created and all three were liked in some form or another so I’ve basically been given a choice and I think what comes easy to me will be my first attempt. You don’t get many shots at this so I’m going with my strong suite and jump on the military express.

Now… Outland… the forgotten series. No it’s not forgotten and was in fact well on its way to being in the can when version 5 came out and before that I got busy and then there was the trash to take out, the lawn needed mowing (which I don’t do but I still use it as an excuse) and let’s not forget the terrible Texas Drought. So with all that in mind… I will finish the thing! The voice acting is too good not too including a killer bit with Ricky Grove doing Joseph Goebbels “Big Lie” in three very convincing and very different takes! Which one do I use????

Anyway… there is a lot more going on but I can see your eyes are well glazed so I will end this year with a simple “Thank You” to all my friends… and a sincere wish that all my enemies have a better life in the coming year… maybe then they will get off my butt and live their own lives!

God Bless you in 2012 and coming years!

I really didn’t think I’d have time to put together a Christmas greeting this year… and most will probably wish I hadn’t after watching this.

This all came about from playing with soft cloth in iClone and converting an existing bad ass Darth Vader model from www.scifi3d.com.

It gave me an idea (didn’t say it was a good one) and one thing leads to another so here is my 2011 Christmas greeting to all that celebrate it.

Like I’ve said elsewhere… it’s five minutes you’ll never get back!

From my descriptions on the various video sites:

This is the result of what happens when a 3D animator gets bored… should be working on something else… but instead makes something totally worthless then posts it for the world to see.

Not taking bets on how long this baby will see the light of day but it sure was fun to make. Sometimes you just gotta do your fan film thing even during the holidays.

Suggested viewing in 720p at full screen.

Lumion 3D is a great tool based on the Quest3D engine for architectural renderings and visualizations. This software is extremely easy to use with a very small learning curve for anyone with prior 3D experience.

Lumion has a great look to it, fantastic plants and terrain shaping system that is the best I’ve seen. Don’t like the terrain you are looking at… just reshape it… in the viewscreen.

Want to add some animals or birds… easy… dump ‘em into the screen and they automatically start their behaviors.  Birds will even orbit. Setting the time of day is as easy as moving a slider, the same with cloud density.

Just drag and drop assets or import from the popular models including Collada from the free version of sketchup. File extensions include FBX, DAE, OBJ, 3DS. I used OBJ which worked flawlessly and also imported a model from 3D Warehouse into the free sketchup version then exported in DAE format for use with Lumion. No problems with this route either.

This is literally one of the easiest pieces of software that I have used and the instant gratification of seeing the results in realtime is wonderful.

The only problem is the price. To get all the bells and whistles you are looking at around $1800 USD for the Ultimate version and about $1100 USD for the Basic version. The basic plus all the plug-ins for the trees, people, effects and other stuff is about the same price as the ultimate edition with each plug-in around $250 USD. The basic gets rid of the watermark and I would hope a bit more but not sure about that.

Anyway… its worth the effort to download and play with the free version and yes… its playing because its fun.

Why can’t machinima engines be more like this????

 

I’m constantly reminded now of the things I CAN do in iClone that I used to do in Max and import to iClone. The physics alone really enhance what can be done in iClone and how quickly. I just posted a new tutorial on how to use physics – gravity in particular – to scatter objects and also how to move them such as a strong wind blowing. This all came about from the need to have bodies and debris floating out the hole created by an explosion as a space freighter passes by the camera.

This used to be a complicated shot even in Max. Now that we have physics in iClone we can combine this with the multi-duplicate tool and a few props for instant debris… whether it be bodies, cargo, both or whatever.

The bodies are not characters. They are props and for this test I did not use any built in animations as I was short on time but they will be animated in the final version. I used prop characters instead of actual characters so I could use the multi-duplicate feature to punch out several clones in a hurry. The following test worked for our purposes and the time in which it was created was nothing short of amazing considering what this would have taken a few years ago.

From concept to completion was only a few hours and that included altering the AnnaV prop (from Turbosquid) to add the exploding panel and the After Effects work adding the explosion and masking the fire.

The tutorial is located at the iCloneRevolution.com homepage.  The video below contains the test footage.

Gravity Explosion Test by WarLord720

Those of us that have been doing this PC thing for quite a few years can remember how difficult and expensive it could be to maintain good video cards in our systems. I was a Matrox fan until they just got too weird and too hard to install. I always thought installing a video card should be fairly straight forward but Matrox managed to change that at least for a while.

I used extremely high end cards recommended by Autodesk until the GTX 460 came out. It was incredibly cheap compared to specialty cards and when I plugged it in I fell in love with its render. It not only kept up with the high end cards it surpassed them in some ways. Over the years I stopped building my own whiteboxes and starting using HP. At first I used their workstations because I have used workstations instead of standard high end PC’s since the days of Silicon Graphics and IRIX. I purchased a high end HP pc on sale for home use and was absolutely startled by its performance. I never really was an HP fan either but the price was as cheap as I could build it and I didn’t have to warranty it myself. No more workstations for me. The high end gamer systems work great with quite a bit of savings.

Well several HP’s later I have an office full of them and the only thing I would do is stick to the 460 GTX card with each of them. My last 2 HP’s had custom built 1.8 Gigabyte GTX 460s in a plain black cover that came with them. These were i7, 950 3.07GHz machines. Fantastic computers.

I realized it was time to move up for a number of reasons other than I had skipped a few generations of cards since the 460. I ordered the 580 and promptly found out I had to order a new power supply as the rather lame 420 watt that came in the system didn’t have enough juice or the right connections.

Being a man of course I tried it anyway using power cable adapters. When an attempt to render a video triggered an immediate and hard system reset I knew there just wasn’t enough power. I was so close. It’s tough being a man you know.

A very nice Corsair ATX 850 Watt PSU took care of this. Trouble is it has so dang many connectors I almost didn’t get them all in the case. It felt like I was trying to close a suitcase that was way overstuffed.

The 580 card itself is VERY LONG. A good 1 or 2 inches longer than the 460 it replaced which itself was a big card with a back stabilizer bracket. The 580 also takes multiple power connections from the PSU to run.

So basically I crammed the 580 video card, 850 watt power supply and a huge wad of connectors successfully into the HP stock case. That in itself should merit some reward and certainly lent itself to the satisfaction only a man can truly savor after a job well done.

{INSERT GROWL HERE}

I now sit here fully confident that the machine is running fine… what was that??? Never mind it was nothing… just a temporary glitch I’m sure. I can’t imagine it being eight miles of cable with a tremendously hot video card and monster PSU all stuffed inside a stock HP case.

No. I am not buying a new case. It would then be a whitebox and I don’t build whiteboxes anymore. I am MAN…and I have spoken!

Anway… it does one hell of a render. Very pleased with the 580… very pleased indeed. There is a marked difference to me with my setup and the software I use. Renders look great from a number of applications. So far… so good.

Now if you’ll excuse me I think I smell smoke.

Many, many thanks to the iClone user community for making the beginners guide a best seller on Amazon. The buying surge over the weekend placed the book as high as #35 (that we know of) in the web design category, #42 in Graphics & Multimedia and #95 in Web Development. It was very exciting to see the book break the top 100 at all.

The book eventually dropped out of the bottom two categories then hung on in the first one till it too eventually dropped of the top 100 but we never thought it would even reach anything like this. The only thing that could drive something like this was most likely a buying surge from the iClone community and words are just not adequate enough to express my thanks to this wonderful and diverse group of people.

Though my foray into the top 100 was brief it was an exciting piece of news and would not have happened without the tremendous team at PACKT Publishing, the technical reviewers, Bigboss, Susanne and Joe Pass and the iClone user community.

I am humbled by the response and deeply indebted to those that helped me achieve something I never dreamed of.

PACKT Publishing released the eBook and print versions of the iClone Beginners Guide on Monday. A couple of weeks ahead of schedule. Due to the upgrade to version 5 the original October publish date was pushed back to give me time to work with the pre-release versions of 5 provided by Reallusion.

The book was originally outlined at 250 pages. That crept up to around 312 then came the upgrade and more appendices that upped the total page count to 508! We didn’t expect this and the publisher surely didn’t but they were gracious enough to let me add to the book even though it doubled it from its initial outline.

This was quite an experience as there were at least thirteen people that I know of at the publisher that helped me with the book and that doesn’t include Shirley Martin who was instrumental in helping me proof the early step by step sections and get a handle on the format.

PACKT provided me with a Word template that made the writing very easy but it didn’t start out this way. Due to my schedule… the time difference and other factors I didn’t get this template until the day before my first chapter was due so the chapter was reworked to meet the format. By Chapter four things had smoothed out as I had come to grips with the format and actually enjoyed using it. They have a great formula where you create an action section with step by step instruction followed by a “What Just Happened” section about the previous steps. This is followed up by an occasional pop quiz and hero section where the reader is given a task to complete on their own after learning the basics featured to complete that task.

The chapters were sent to the technical reviewers as I finished them, fellow iClone users Guy Langlois (Bigboss) and Joe and Susanne Pass. They in turn left comments that were sent back to me to address. The first couple of chapters were kind of scary. The first one in particular, originally written without the benefit of the template, was eye opening as I opened Word… turned on the comments and was presented with a horde of the buggers on what seemed like every page! These comments came from my immediate editor and the reviewers as well as some layout here and there. The early chapters had some major rewrite to them but then I settled down into a steady pace and it seemed the editorial and tech comments gradually dwindled to where there were entire pages without comments. To me this was as much an accomplishment as anything I had done to this point. I could see dramatic improvement in the tempo of the book.

After the initial rewrite phase it progressed to finals that had to be read once again and approved. These finals were in PDF format in the actual layout of the book and went to a different editor… the technical editor, Pramila Balan, whom like my immediate editor, Reshma Sundaresan, was a pleasure to work with and did what they could to accommodate me. There were times that I had rewrites coming in while doing the first draft of other chapters and the finals ran into the writing of the appendices for version 5 so there never really was a break until just a week before the book was released for shipping and download.

There are lots of screencaps in this book as one would imagine and those were fairly easy to handle with Snag-it which is a great screenshot program. I had to redo a few of the early images but that didn’t last long as graphics art was an early vocation of mine.

There is also a download bundle that I had to provide as I created a few custom props and a destructible space freighter with shuttle craft along with 2D assets and other items.

The inital work for the 4.31 book went well. I was on a 2 to 3 page a day writing schedule turning in a chapter around every two weeks depending on the projected size of the chapter. I got to set this schedule so it worked well for me as I had many other projects ongoing. When the upgrade was inevitable I cleared my schedule as best I could and dove into the pre-release of the software. I was not pushed for an outline and was basically allowed the freedom to set my schedule. It took about a week and half longer than I expected on my part and the initial test versions of the software were delayed by a couple of weeks but that couldn’t be helped.

Now I’m working with Pramila on determining which chapter to use for marketing and articles as they seem to have placed the book with several resellers and its available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble in print form.

This was quite an experience and has led to a few other contacts that may prove fruitful including the possible contracting of a science fiction book with another publisher.

I truly hope that we have produced a book that will help beginners and users that struggle with iClone. My biggest fear at this point is someone tossing the book on pile of other “How To” books while not getting a thing out of it. Those kind of thoughts can keep you up at night so hopefully they tempered me to do a good and proper job of this.

A lot of thought was given to the main project and follow up space scene project that tests the skills explored earlier and there are a lot of one off projects that demonstrate a concept before putting it to use on the main project.

I am very thankful for anyone that even considers purchasing this book as it was an honor to put it together for such a skilled community as iClone.

That’s right… WarLord works with curtains. I like the bright shiny fabrics. Anyway… I just finished posting a quick video tutorial on how to save each of the curtains in one of the iClone 5 demonstration projects. Its a hideously simple solution to a neat little prop and very easy to animate without going from timeline to timeline adjusting keyframes.

Also added to the homepage of iCloneRevolution:

• A short article on iClone asset and search management.
• How to create your own dogfight like Air Duel complete with Toon render settings.
• Ode to the Visual – an iClone Toon rendered piece.

The response to my Air Duel demo has been quite positive and I don’t think everyone realizes how easy this animation was to make with iClone 5. I’ve explained some of the demo in an article on the iClone Revolution website that details the setting of the Toon renderer and the Post Effects that were used. This started off as color… then black and white (gray)… then back to sepia color because I just like that look for this sort of project. I was torn between using a little bit of real color but decided against it in the end.

The MoCap was another story and lots of fun. As I stated in the article I got to play pilot and not feel guilty. Yes ladies… guys feel guilty about things… just not often or for very long. Anyway this toon was incredibly easy to make and could be punched out in one day if need be. That’s pretty amazing in itself.

We are steadily getting closer to the time when almost everyone will be a good if not great animator with the help of software. Great time to be an animator!