How to use IES Lighting in your 3D app and how to edit IES lights. (Use them for volumetric lighting). More info and examples at facebook.com/scififunk
IES lighting (Illuminating Engineering Society file type to describe lighting volume, fall off and shape) can be used to add realism to your renders.
After describing what IES is and where you might use it, I show some site which give free IES lights and (more importantly) how to edit them (plus create your own IES lights).
Ultimately you’ll probably have to create and edit your own (to match your work up against a source photo) and I show 2 programs which show you how to do this.
Please note, the pictures look better at http://www.facebook.com/scififunk (the colours haven’t been compressed as you see them on youtube).
ScifiFunk creates a dense city street scene with 132 low poly characters!
How to create walk loops for lots of low poly people, with separate walk loops so that they DON’T look like an army of robots. more info like http://www.facebook.com/scififunk
Now it’s time to put them all in a scene. This is tricky as you’ll be pushing your software to the max (unless it’s been rewritten for 64bit in every internal routine (which I doubt)).
Anyway I organize the figures into columns and use a mixture of replicators to achieve a reasonably realistic effect.
I then go on to talk about the kind of things which might crash the software, and how to avoid.
In part 2, I look into signs that the scene file is becoming so big that Carrara will regularly crash. This is obviously the time to back off a little (delete a few characters, ease up on the groups, or the amount of characters within the groups).
I look at the organization of the file. How to replicate in such a way as to achieve maximum flexibility with the replication.
There will be a fair amount of editing to do. Feet on ground (esp. when walking on the road vs walking on the pavement (sidewalk)), avoiding people walking through each other or through objects / walls etc.
Poke through is inevitable. However the edit within the scene option is not available as these are NOT Daz characters, they are one object file each. Instead the shading domains within the editor comes to the rescue.
ScifiFunk will show you how to cut down the large BVH files from the Carnegie collection into fractions of their original size using BVH Hacker, and how to prep them for low poly (daz based) figures created in a seperate tutorial.
In part 1 we concentrate on reducing the BVH file size. In part 2 we tidy up the BVH file. I look at frame rates and how low a rate you can get away with (again assuming you want to have lots of animated people in your scene). I save out and show you a fantastic (unbelievable) saving in filesize.
The good news is we don’t stop there! Yes thanks to an additional saving within Carrara and the Carrara compression the final file size of the animation is completely minimal. I take you through the basic process of creating an aniblock from within DAZ, exporting it and applying it to a low poly rigged character.
In part 3 I concentrate on how to create walk loops to the length you need (not the length of the original BVH file). How to create a respectable walk loop. It’s pretty easy once you’ve practiced a bit. The technique uses DAZ to create an aniblock, and edit out the start and end so that a loopable middle is left. The technique for finding the most loopable part of the BVH import starts with finding the first frame where the actor places his left foot on the ground.
For some reason the best loops can be found with this method. Perhaps the Carnegie actor(s) were left handed or something? Anyway that foot placement is usually at the same pace as the bulk of the loop which means you’ll avoid speeding up and slowing down in the loop.
The rest of the video shows how to cut the end just right.
To see how to create such a low poly figure please see a pevious tutorial series here. Low Poly People
I hope I’ve inspired you to work with the FREE Carnegie collection!
ScifiFunk discusses “kit-bashing” to transfer one figure’s rigging, to a decimated (low poly) figure that has been merged with clothing props (exported as OBJ), and prepped by stripping out details that don’t show at a distance. The final figure is far more efficient on system resources and suitable for crowd scenes, but accepts motion capture created for the original (BVH files transferred from DAZ Studio by aniBlock).
ScifiFunk discusses “kit-bashing” to transfer one figure’s rigging, to a decimated (low poly) figure that has been merged with clothing props (exported as OBJ), and prepped by stripping out details that don’t show at a distance. The final figure is far more efficient on system resources and suitable for crowd scenes, but accepts motion capture created for the original (BVH files transferred from DAZ Studio by aniBlock).
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.
How to use Mimic Pro for Carrara effectively, looks at this lip sync software and some of the theory behind mouth movements. more info at http://www.facebook.com/scififunk
Non linear animation within Carrara allows you to organize your animation clips or poses into blocks for convenient re-use and alterations within your 3d scene.
One the animation is in an NLA block it can be sped up or slowed down by just dragging the start/end points. It can be looped, reversed, and duplicated – so that ghost copies exist. i.e. Edit one and all change.
NLA “clips” as they are called can also be copied and pasted (as unique clips), for further distinct editing.
The pose clips (a still position) can also be used to animate with as the NLA sequencer will tween between the two poses, thus forming an animation. Couple this with a sound knowledge of the tweeners in Carrara and you have a pretty flexible animation system.
Using NLA Animation for facial expressions in Carrara. Tutorial explains how to work with Non-linear animation clips for facial expressions. more at http://www.facebook.com/scififunk
Non linear animation within Carrara allows you to organize your animation clips or poses into blocks for convenient re-use and alterations within your 3d scene.
One the animation is in an NLA block it can be sped up or slowed down by just dragging the start/end points. It can be looped, reversed, and duplicated – so that ghost copies exist. i.e. Edit one and all change.
NLA “clips” as they are called can also be copied and pasted (as unique clips), for further distinct editing.
In this video I look at using ADSR theory (or envelope theory) from synthesizer programming and apply it to the world of 3d animation. The principle works! It allows you to start up, hold and close a facial expression WITHOUT the risk of leaving that expression “on” when not required later in the animation.
I also talk about ADSR envelopes and help the viewer visualize how an envelope can help you in your animation.
