Howler Motion Trails

by Dartanbeck | Apr 29, 2014 | Tutorials

FM9sDkZqhHU

To me, Project Dogwaffle Pro: Howler is the perfect addition for applying post-work to my rendered animations from Carrara prior to the final production editing. I plan to do more video tutorials on some of these subjects, and discuss them quite a bit at the Carrara Discussion Forum at DAZ 3D.com

In this tutorial I slowly proceed through the process of using Howler’s Roto tools from within it’s curve tool to create an animated selection for the use of adding a post-work motion trail to the part of the animation where I want the effect to take place. In my own production, I would take less time doing the process, but would focus more on the final result, rather than just getting to the end of the process. For example, if I kept going with the project as it was by the end of this tutorial, I would undo the animated effect that I end with, and tweak the settings or perhaps even reshape the entire animated roto selection and start from scratch. The end result of this one was just a simple run through so that I could explain the tool, not focus on a great end result.

That all said, I find it much easier, faster, and much more predictable to add blurs and such to final rendered animations, rather than to use the included post working in Carrara. But in times before owning Howler, this was not the case, and I got pretty far with doing much of my work using only Carrara, as it has the ability to load it’s own end results and work with them further, and render them again to a new animated clip. So I’m not trying to discount Carrara’s fine features, or the fact that they are included in the amazing Carrara software. It never ceases to amaze me at how much work can be done without ever leaving it.

There are times when we’ll get a perfect rendered animation with the exception of a few little flaws. These flaws can create the need to destroy the render and try again, often trying to increase some setting or other in an attempt to correct the inaccuracy, or whatever went wrong. This adds even more time as now the render times per frame are also increased!

Since I’ve owned Howler, however, I would far rather use this amazing roto tool setup to quickly correct the issue with the original render. In my learning how to do that, I’ve found that we can truly do limitless wonders to our clips without the need of the really expensive alternatives to getting our hands on abilities like these. And the ability to save lengthy renders has been a huge blessing! Project Dogwaffle’s Howler is a lot more than I would have imagined it to be, and I’m really grateful to have found it.