JOURNAL: alternatefutures (Jim Schuler)

previous page next page
  • DINCF 2001-12-19 21:41:19 Since I last posted here quite a bit of progress has been made on the AMV. Of course, considering it's only 5 seconds worth of footage, you may not understand how that could be considered a lot of progress. This 5 seconds worth of footage is the composition of over one gigabyte's worth of data. Just think about that for a second. Got it? Good. Now this 1 gig worth of data has been merged in to a relatively small 60meg HuffYUV compressed avi. This is the culmination of about two weeks worth of work. The hardest part about this was deleting the footage, because I always have the feeling that I will suddenly realize I forgot to do something, and there goes two weeks worth of work. Fortunately I put this little baby into Premiere and did a rough positioning on the timeline and rendered a test with the music. The result was better than I had anticipated.

    Now, is it going to take me two weeks per 5 seconds worth of footage? Fortunately, no. Going into this project I figured I had about four extreamly work intensive scenes. Three of these were five seconds long, one is about seven seconds long. Now, one of these is complete. Keep in mind, I am going to have a bunch of other work intensive scenes, but these won't be nearly as demanding (probably one or two days worth of work each). Once these scenes are done, I'll be able to get to the editing part of the project, but until then I need the hard drive space to work on these.

    So, this is the question. Will all this work pay off? Who knows. So far original 3D animation hasn't been used much in AMVs. Possibly the most extensive use so far is the "Virus in the Shell" video, the creator's name I currently forget. However, that's simplistic compared to this. Hopefully this vid will get more people using 3D, as I know there are people here with Lightwave and Maya and 3D Studio Max, programs which are lightyears beyond what I have. Well, when all's said and done, we'll see... 
  • I'm not dead... 2001-12-14 17:31:01 ...but I am angry. Will someone explain to me why software designers upgrade their products in order to make them worse than before? I've been playing around with Bryce3D for a while and decided finally to get the patch for it. This eliminates Bryce's annoying habit of randomly positioning, resizing and rotating objects when you load a file or try to alter said objects. It's a great thing, but so far I haven't had any of those problems that couldn't be easily fixed. I really upgraded so that I could take advantage of a different fractle terrain generator. The problem is that I've found that terrain generator is useless in Bryce 3.x, I need Bryce4's terrain tiling ability to make it look halfway decent. So, they've added what turns out to be a useless, but cool, feature. The upgrade also allows me to set negative value for lights... I guess that makes them "darks". Well, that's usefull if you want to make things like planetary eclipses... or planetary eclipses... perhaps planetary eclipses, oh, and I can't forget planetary eclipses. So, they added another feature which isn't really cool, is unnoticable and has limited usefulness. Well, beggars can't be choosers right? So why am I upset? Because, they removed the one feature that was actually useful. I can no longer animate a scale trnsformation in a texture. Translation? Waterfalls, gone. Moving starfields, gone. Exhaust, gone. Flames, gone. Get the idea? Now, I had been doing a lot of surfing concerning Bryce, and this failing never came up anywhere. Could it be just me? Possibly, but if you look at what the self described "Brycers" are doing, only about 5% of them have any experiance animating anything. Hell, a lot of their tutorials involve importing a rendered image into photoshop and airbrushing. Sorry, I thought you said "Bryce Tutorial" not "Photoshop Tutorial." Anyway, I've come to the conclusion that the "Brycers" are all a bunch of idiots who have only learned to use half the program, and that's why no one mentioned this defect. I can't tell you the number of sites I've been to where none of what they suggest would work in an animation. It's sad really. So, now I've got two versions of Bryce3D installed, just in case I get wierd and must have that quick and dirty planetary eclipse. You know, if I have a brain fart and completely forget how I did it before negative lights. 
  • Uncreative Lazy Bastards... 2001-12-06 02:45:04 I just realized something today. Here I am, editing some footage for my next AMV when I get a crazy idea for an aura effect. You've seen it in anime. The outline of the characters slow begins to glow some bright color. It's pretty much all the same thing and looks remarkably similar to a glow you can quickly and easily create in Photoshop without any effort. Occasionally they may overlay a pattern onto it and make it scroll to give it a shimmering effect, but overall it's pretty standard stuff. Now, this isn't applied by the cell artists. They're too busy hand drawing the cells to be bothered with such a mundane detail. So it falls to some guy whose in charge of the special FX. It is normally one person, as there generally isn't much call for special FX in an anime series. So you have one guy whose job it is to do the same thing over and over. You'd think he'd eventually want to spice it up a bit and show off, but it never happens. Perhaps it's the director keeping him on a leash, but there must be at least ONE director out there who would be happy to let the FX guy go nuts sometimes. Perhaps the FX guy doesn't want to approach his boss and say "I have developed this neat effect which you may find useful later one". Whatever it is, the glow is always the same. Now today as I'm playing with one of the frames I dig out an old Photoshop action I downloaded a while ago. Before I got it I had been trying to do a starburst effect that I could never get quite right, but this did it without much hassle, but it only worked on text. So I did a little overhaul on the thing and viola! Beauty! Of course, as it was the effect was unusable. You couldn't tell what the image initially was. So again, back to editing the action and adding about thirty more steps add I'm left with something that looks spectacular and takes me seconds to apply. The best way I can describe the effect would be something akin to a cross between the standard DBZ SSJ look and a supernova. Now, if I can make this up in about an hour, why can't these SFX guys who are actually paid to do this work think up something like that? Why? Because they get paid the same whether they are creative and take the time to impress you or they just use Layer>Effect>Outer Glow. Anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about after ACen2002... perhaps I'll make a wallpaper with it, you never know. 
  • WDTIG 2001-12-04 03:51:48 Well, I'm going to go a little rant regarding my current AMV project, what I did over the weekend, and the AMV I just downloaded... simply because it's late and I don't know how coherent I'm going to be. Anyway...

    I headed up to Wisoncsin on the 1st for an occasion known to a whole twenty people as "Jewish Kwansa." No, we aren't Jewish and we don't celebrate Kwansa, it's just a funny name. It was an event full of booze, spirits, media, spirits, booze, media, booze, gin, red ballons and booze. Getting the picture? Oddly enough, only one person became intoxicated by the devil's drink... and he was already drunk before he arrived. But, that's not the point. Durring parts of this gathering we all sit by a computer monitor or tv hooked up to a computer and watch various small productions. 90% of the time these productions are made by the attendies, and 80% of those involve, of course, alcohol (begining to see where "Ode to a Drunken Cabbit" came from, aren't ya?). Another 9% of these movies are Dahler Mehndi music videos, which is great because that's the time when you can watch all the inebriated people dance along with the Indian popstar. Yes, none of us can dance, but neither can Dahler Mehndi, so it's cool. 1% of these videos results from us finding something online that we absolutely have to show everyone else. This year, the host found out about Evangelion Engle vid... you know, the one everyone's always raving about? Well, I can't say that it's undeserved... but maybe I can. I honestly thought it would have been much better. Like Evangelion itself, it doesn't live up to the hype. Great lipsynching, but it can still only receive a score of 9 as there were several noticable moments where the lips didn't synch... but I'm not here to rate the AMV. So, back to the story. Being mildly under the influence I jokingly remark that "oh, we're going to watch that piece of..." before we watch it. Of course, the alcohol had the tendancy to remove much of the sarcasm from that statement, so it was taken seriously. The host then challenges me afterwards that if I don't think it's the best AMV out there, that I should find a better one. Now, during the amv I was polishing off another beer, so the alcohol was talking even louder now. "Give me three months, I'll make a better one." Well, never mind that I was off by two as I really wanted to say "five" there 'cause I was referencing AnimeCentral 2002, but now I've just made the claim that I can top Engle to a room of fellow video editors. Now what do I have to back up the statement? Two relatively decent AMVs... Well, now that I'm sober, I'm looking forward to seeing if I really can... my reputation is now riding on it.

    So, of course I was thinking about my upcoming video. I was thinking my video will be to digital effects what Engle was to lipsynching. I think it's a fairly realistic statement, and who knows, it may even turn out to be true. So, I decided to make sure that I'm not underestimating the competition. Now, I've seen Virus in the Shell. It's a good AMV that makes use of a 3D chemical model. This was introduced to me when I first asked about 3D in an anime music video. At that point in time I was thinking on a much larger scale than VitS's CG use. Someone else talked about their vid which used 3D arrows. I wasn't too interested in that as those would have to be some arrows to compete with what I currently have. What concerned me at the time was one made by rubyeye who talked about a CG mask in his "Key the Metal Idol" video. Here's a guy with the gall to claim that his AMV is the only one with a CG model, nevermind that there are at least two others. Well, at the time I couldn't download his video. It made me think that perhaps he was talking about something REALLY advanced and he just didn't consider the other 3D sequences on par with his. So, the unknown "Digital Key" video was now my competition. I just finished downloading that vid. The CG sequence consists of a still shot of a 3D theater mask overlayed over sequences from the anime. THAT was what I was competing against? I wouldn't be this upset if it wasn't for that "This is the ONLY video in existence to incorporate a 3D Model" remark outlined in stars in his video discription. It's not like he doesn't know there are others. He posted in the same thread where VitS was mentioned. I don't even know if he made the theater mask either. It's not that hard to find a mesh of it online... and if he actually spent the time to make it for such a short sequence... well, does the phrase "waste of time" mean anything?

    So, right now it looks like I am safely moving into uncharted teritory. Please, if anyone else has an AMV with CG in it that's downloadable, don't hesitate to drop me a line. I don't want to go through all this effort and just wind up rehashing what someone else did. Allow me to learn from what you've done and improve upon it. Hell, I'll probably wind up writing a review for it (but keep in mind, I know how to make a mesh too)... but please, don't make any statements about your video which are just factually wrong, otherwise I might just rant about that video too. 
  • EFZDF 2001-12-01 01:01:33 Well, I did a little search to see how "original" my idea still is. Now, I ran this search when I first thought up the idea. The song had not yet been used. I ran this search when I started editing, still, the song had not been used. I ran this search a month after, and lo and behold, someone else had picked up the song. And finally, I ran it tonight, and now there are two people using that song. Now, the thing that makes this even worse is that the band who wrote the song is involved in no other AMVs, so when I'm through with mine it will seem like they are a one hit wonder. In reality, they're pretty darn good. But, they get a lot of radio time (all with this same song, of course.) Well, feel pitty for those other vids, as mine will crush them :) The good news is we're all using different anime series... for now. If this trend continues there will probably be two or three more such videos by the time I'm done. Just so that you know, I am sacrificing a percieved originality score for the overall quality of the vid... gee, you know, I might have just given you enough information to figure out what song I'm using... Dramatic Outlaw Star video set to a song that's played often on the radio that has been used twice before by a band that has also only been used twice before... well, that should narrow the field down for you a bit. Good hunting! 
previous page next page
Current server time: Dec 27, 2024 12:57:27