Tunnels part11 – Carrara to PDHowler
Render a Carrara animation to PNG image sequence with alpha channel.
Human Nature
Human Nature from Nassos Vakalis
An uptight elephant is enjoying a scenic train ride reading a book alone in his compartment. Soon the door opens and a happy go lucky, goofy and free-spirited bear chooses to take a seat across from the elephant and disturbs his peaceful solitude. This is war. Would the elephant tolerate this uninvited guest who seems to have the worst manners and shows little respect for anything? How long will it take for these two to get on each other’s nerves and prove that “human nature” prevails even in the animal kingdom?
View Human Nature on vimeo
https://vimeo.com/90195549
To learn more about this animated short you can also take a look at the C3DE interview with Nassos Vakalis
PySwarm – Follow Terrain Animation
Carrara user Joe Pingleton combined a looping NLA walkcycle with Fractal Dimensia’s PySwarm script, the PyCarrara plugin, and Sparrowhawke3D’s Follow Terrain plugin to create this animation test of multiple figures finding their way across a varied terrain.
He explains the process:
This is another experiment with the PySwarm plug in for Carrara 8.5 Pro and NLA Clips. This time the figures follow the terrain object using Sparrowhawke3d’s Follow Terrain Plug In for Carrara.
I created a “Boid” group that was a figure with a looping walk cycle NLA clip with a duration of 2 minutes. Then I replicated that “Boid” 10 times and numbered the “Boid” groups. Then I used PySwarm to generate a movement script with 10 boids and 1 attractor object. Then I imported the PySwarm script into Carrara. Then I applied Sparrowhawke3d’s Follow Terrain Plug In to make each “boid” drop to the surface of the terrain object. One walk NLA clip and the Pyswarm script control all movement, no key frame editing.
http://pyswarm.wikia.com/wiki/Download_and_installing_PySwarm#Latest_Version_of_the_PySwarm_Package
Sparrowhawke3D Cloth Tutorials
This tutorial covers the basic function of the Sparrowhawke3D Cloth Deformer plugin for Carrara.
This tutorial shows how to use my Cloth Deformer to drape a bed sheet over a figure in Carrara.
A Guide to using Tweeners in 3D Animation
Tweeners are the motion between two keyframes of animation. Here I discuss a range of tweeners.
Without tweeners your animation would be horribly stop-start. The most basic tweener is to make no alteration to the time and distance or route that the object takes between two animation keyframes.
In this case the object with start, move and stop at a constant rate. In the real world there is inertia to take into account (the effort to start up, the slow down before a stop).
Some of these tweeners change the path as well from a constant to formula driven (for example moving in an arc).
I also talk about the parameters for each tweener.
The full list of tweeners I cover in this video are
– Linear.
– Bezier.
– Discrete.
– Formula.
– Oscilate.
– Noise Tweener.
– Spline.
– Velocity.
Sparrowhawke3D Plugins Updated
Sparrowhawke3D plugins have been updated for Carrara 8 on the Mac in 32bit and 64bit flavors, including recent versions of Jiggle and Cloth. The “experimental” Laboratory plugins have also been updated and are offered as a separate download.
Cloth Deformer feature: “Grab Zones”
Follow the progress of these plugins at http://www.sparrowhawke3d.com/blog/
Carrara Community Movie Project
Mike Moir is hosting a revival of the Carrara Community Movie Project. Animators can join the group here on Cafe and chose one of the shots to render.
“If you want to participate with this Easy Come Easy Go test clip just download the assets in the assets thread and then tell us which panel of the storyboard you want to animate. Once you are done upload the finish file and we can edit them together to create the final movie.”
Carrara Community Movie Project
