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Any FX people here????

  • Thread starter jm82792
  • Start date
So I leanred Maya pretty well like I know everything(I know but am not too good with) about it although my skills are not that good compared to other people(like freelancers). Anyways I'm learning blender and matchmoving.
Anyways is there anyone else who does this for fun or work ?
Being 16 gives me lots of time so I'm trying to be productive with it :jester:
I'd love to see some of your work renders and or anything "cool",,,
 
I've been messing with Blender a bit as well, although I have no idea what matchmover is. I used to be a 16-year-old Rhinoceros(the original NURBS modeling program) pro, Although all my old work got killed in a tragic my-Dad-thinks-he-can-fix-a-computer-by-erasing-everything accident. So ask away! I haven't had time for any 'cool' things but I can explain concepts and methods for different things you may need to know
 
Well I understand concept my problem is learning enough to be considered "good". In our small town we hold a film editing "class" it's free and I have acess to after effects. They make films pick out the good ones then play them at the theater(I'm on the Hamakua coast if that means anything). Anyways I'd like to be good enough to make a short that involves matchmoving,a photorealistic character(one of the 2 people who knows blender is pretty good at rigging unlike myself)and try to get something together with 2 other people who know more(I ditched maya PLE and am learning blender) about blender than me but less about modeling,materials and the overall concepts.
Here is a wikipedia article on matchmoving
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_moving
It isn't easy but if I can do it right I could only use a A grade character plus good footage and make something pretty neat with 2 other people who would like to get something together.

What were the most intricate or complex models you made with rino ??
Just curious. .....
 
The most complex was a forest scene with about 75 light sources, it took 12 hours to render on my old 1996 comp XD

Other than that I made a lot of fairly neat robots, most notably the golems from the Secret of Mana series. I've only really messed with the basic tutorials and animations in blender, and have been trying to master particle effects. If I can manage it, I've got an idea in my head for making an intro movie for the original Act Raiser game(P.S. It's sad when you can age yourself by saying Act Raiser was sooooo cool back in the day).

I did some faces that weren't especially to my liking except for one I did of a RL guy purely out of nurbs curves and surfaces, but only cause the person taking the pictures knew what I needed and took about 12 pictures of the guy from slow-rotating angles.

I'm trying to find a video on Youtube right now that had a really good example of what you're talking about, except in reverse where there were digital creatures in a real videotaped environment. It's ever more so relevant since it was done as a High-School film project. I'll post it when I find it, but all I can say for matchmoving is that, from what I know, it can be remarkably tedious if you want it to look just right.
 
I have gone through all the major software for matchmoving but it has to be free or after effects :)
It is very tedious,it will take me a year before I can get a cool reel together with the other 2 blender /after effects guys.
The main part of the tediousness of matchmoving is the lighting/the bledning of fake into a real shot(environmental textures have to reflect the real footage.
Learning all this technical stuff makes me(I think) not knowledgable,but I keep hoping to get good enough to interest somebody with a eventual sweet demo reel.....
 
I'm learning Softimage in school right now.. Still don't know a whole lot, but becoming more familiar with the program.
I'd probably learn it a lot quicker if I wasn't always sleeping in through first period. :jester:
 
Take this with as many grains of salt as necessary, But what makes you knowledgeable is experience and experimentation. Aptitude is attained when you can perform a task and not be able to explain the process (psychological textbook definition. A shieldsmith Cannot detail every hammer strike he's made to metal, all he nows is that he makes awesome shields)

Secondly, don't hope for it, work for it. ;)

It's only tedious when you start. Then it gets easier. Repetition makes mastery :)
 
Yep :)
Small projects tons of small projects to understand every feature
then go onto something else then combine it all together make something really neat....
For now more learning and experimentation until I get burned out then not
do anything with blender for a month then come running back to it again :D
I do keep on second guessing myself,like Blender isn't the standard unlike 3D Max,
Maya or Lightwave but I can apply my knowledge if I have to learn though...
Well Blender is free,very capable(cloth,liquids,great poly modeling,pretty much everything you want with it's own quarks)
and isn't that hard to learn so I must be doing something right..
 
  • #10
Yep, compared to some of the screen shots I've seen of old 3Dstudio interfaces, Blender is amazing.

Also, yeah, free is better than $800-$1500
 
  • #11
I thought I wanted to get Lightwave 9 (around $1000), I stumbled cross the Blender book & CD set at the bookshop and brought it home... I'm waaaaay too stupid to deal with all that! lol! :-D

I'm not a numbers & mesh person, I'm visual / hands on that's why I like sculpting and painting. I'm slowly working on getting the hang of Digital painting with a Wacom Intuos tablet. I've read that Zbrush or Mudbox is more like something I can get my head around to use, no numbers or meshes just pushing and pulling "virtual clay". But at $700 I had better really like it! That's what keeps me from just giving it whirl. I've been playing with Bryce 6 doing environments but not enough to say I really "know" anything. I made a 3D model in Bryce of the freestanding terraium design I want to build from melamine and glass. I just need a house with enough room to build it, at least I can look at a empty model of it on the computer and imagine it full of plants and frogs!
 
  • #12
Try it for free :D
Like 30 days seriously....
Swords it isn'
t above you it just is a total pain to learn and when your over the curve(like 4 months) then your cherry :)
I still miss the awesome shader network Maya had I could make a photorealistic texture with a few clicks.
In Blender it is totally cryptic to me but I'm understanding it...
 
  • #13
Ah... I miss rhino. 90% input of commands was in text form.

Origin

Line(0,0,0 0,15,0)

Line(0,15,0 15,15,0)

Line(15,15,0 15,0,0)

Line(15,0,0 0,0,0)

SelectAll

ExtrudeSrf 15

There! a cube in rhino! Well, you could make cubes with the mouse easy with just one button, but a lot of rhino was typing because the snap function sucks, plus it helped for measuring.
 
  • #14
Well I would die from that :)
GUI is my friend blender's needs more help...
 
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