Draises trueSpace

3rd February 2013

Post

Shot 006

I have complete a rough animation for Shot 006. I am now running it through post processes and will soon add it to the sequence. I could do a better animation, but I wanted to get it done asap. I think I need to start working on other angles of the project, get things up in more frequent manner.

I think I can have one more shot, a look away shot of what grabs his attention, then I will leave it at that. I will also work more on the folley or have my friend work on it tomorrow.

Then I will work on strictly characterization animation and clip animation to store in a library, making future animations quicker. It’s good to think ahead.

I also need to sit down and think up some good stories, idea. I would love your input!

Tagged: alkathoskminlisshot progressanimation progress3d animationreal time animationfree animationmini webseries

12th January 2013

Post

Working on the Audio

Finally have some sample auditions and voices that I think will work for the webseries. Now going to soon animate the final sequence for the first sneak peak episode.

Tagged: alkathosk update

7th January 2013

Post

Recorded the first voices!

Me and a good cyber friend of mine from the  trueSpace forums have recorded the first sounds of our trusty old Minlis. He’s starting to become something, and it’s very very exciting.

Coming soon will be some sound to the sequence, and an interesting end to the starting shots!

I have to work harder on scripts, stories, a whole series. I also.. have to characterize and store libraries of animations for this strange quadroped cyclops!

Tagged: minlisprogresssound recordingvoice recording for a webseries3d webseriesopen source 3d projectalkathosk

3rd January 2013

Post

Free Motion Blur

This tutorial takes focus on stopmotion image sequence or game-engine rendered image sequences and adds a motion blur in post-production, for FREE.

The need for motionblur in a progressive-frame image sequences (in other words a video) helps the audience perceive the video’s movement as something smooth and natural. Whether in a shootout, in a car chase, or just trying to reach for a falling plate before it hits the ground or looking at someone’s face talk, our eyes naturally develop what we sometimes know to be something like tunnel vision, with a dynamic focus that increases frames per-second on the area most important meanwhile the rest is processed at a seemingly lower framerate, molding images into a non linear blur within our brain. Light information through time is stitched together dynamically with an average of 15 or 16 frames per second, but sometimes we can perceive up to 100 or more frames per second depending on the stimuli. Our brain does a lot of post production image processing almost realtime and dynamically! (It even removes your nose from your common eyesight when needed!) Further more, under stress, or adrenaline, or even viewing someone we don’t like, our brains can compensate and increase the interpretation of light through time dynamically according to need. We do this to work better within 3D space and time.
In order to simulate this in common media and with normal cinematography, the sense of movement is captured with high framerates from 24fps to 30fps to now the new 48fps or higher, for example games are typical for having very high frame rates also from 30fps to higher frame rates of 125fps. All this about frame rates is not including the shutter speed, the interlacing methods and other systems to simulate fluid motion to our eyes and thus deceive our brain. I recommend reading up on it, it’s fascinating.

But it is understood we perceive fluid motion post 20 frames per second. It is difficult to find the common belief that we cannot see higher frame rates than 30 fps, but due to our biological nature of how our eyes work and how our brain processes images and where technology pushes itself prove the latter otherwise.

References:
http://amo.net/NT/02-21-01FPS.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

But without further to do, we are sticking to 30 fps for typical HD media, from youtube to the television.

But we still need to simulate this dynamic approach to our eye’s visual post-processing. When we view 3D animation or stopmotion without motion blur, we often perceive it to be choppy, unnatural or artificial, which is true due to the density of frames flashed in front of our eyes. We need to do some of the work for our brain and create dynamic melding of our sequence of images, where something that moves quickly or where our surroundings change quickly become blurred.

But to do this in stop motion or in a sequence of frames with no blur is difficult.

A quick solution is onion skinning, but like the example below, it proves to be still quite jarring:

But understanding the concept, using frame blending, is a simple solution.. but it is not good enough for our taste. Sometimes our eyes see the jitter, and it will look to be of very low quality.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_blur
http://www.examplesof.com/photography/motionblur.html

So we need to begin using MV tools with VirtualDub and Avisynth.

• First things first, install the latest version of VirtualDubMod, then install the latest version Avisynth, they are all free.

• Download MVtools2 and extract them to the Plugins folder within Avisynth. This is also free. I’ll provide links below

• Afterwards, you then need to open a text file editor of choice (notepad will do fine) and write the following code:

directshowsource(“_______________.avi”)
super = MSuper(pel=4)
backward_vectors = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, lambda=1750, truemotion=true)
forward_vectors = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, lambda=1750, truemotion=true)
MFlowBlur (super, backward_vectors, forward_vectors, blur=75, prec=1)

• Write the filename you need within the text file and save the file as an *.avs file.

——-Beware, before continuing you may need to save your video in a YV12 or YUY2 codec as it may request it from VirtualDub before the filter. I encoded the prior video as a YUY lossless codec (free) without any problems to then run the script in VirtualDub. (link below) Generally it is best practice to use standard definitions with multiples of 16 pixels by 16 pixels and you won’t have any problems.——-

• Load the script in VirtualDub or VirtualDubMod and viola! Save the AVI as you’d like (I recommend the Largarith Lossless Codec - also free for low AVI file sizes and no loss in quality)

• Convert to a high quality MP4 (h,264) file and upload to Youtube using FreeStudio free avi video converter.

The final result will look something like the following below:

Many thanks to Taylor Thurlow
Reference Tutorial Reference:
youtube.com/watch?v=hhCAINA8_Y4


*******DOWNLOADS:*********

VirtualDubMod: Used for video compression and final rendering
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubmod/files/

VirtualDub: Used for video compression and final rendering
http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdub/

Avisynth: Used for motion blur options and scripts
http://avisynth.org/

MVtools2: Motion blur toolkit
http://avisynth.org.ru/mvtools/mvtools2.html


CODECS
Lossless Largarith - http://www.lags.leetcode.net/codec.html
YUV lossless - http://www.filecluster.com/downloads/YUVsoft-s-Lossless-Video-Codec.html

Other:
http://www.free-codecs.com/ACE_Mega_CoDecS_Pack_download.htm
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow/?source=dlp
http://codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

——————————————-

WANT TO COLLABORATE?
http://www.draisestruespaces.tumblr.com/Alkathosk/Project

BLOG
http://www.draisestruespaces.tumblr.com

FACEBOOK
http://www.facebook.com/Alkathosk

TWITTER
http://www.twitter.com/alkathosk

GOOGLE+
http://www.gplus.to/Alkathosk

Tagged: motion blurfree motion blurpost process motion blurforced motion bluralkathoskfree tutorialvideo processing tutorialavisynthvirtualdubfree video processing