3D – Page 5 – Strider’s Web

My Mardi Gras Float, 2015

Laissez les bons temps roulez! This year I decided to become a Mardi Gras float and join a parade which took place in a Steampunk Variation of New Orleans somewhere around the 1860s. The parade was held by the Crewe of Scribes, the theme was favorite Victorian authors, and I had a tough time deciding between Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. But Verne was fully in the era, while Wells only caught a bit of the tale end of it (not misspelling, just a really bad pun), so that is what I went with. I always enjoyed his underwater stories the best, so when I assembled my float I used coral alpha textures on a transparent prim, some seaweed flexi prims, and one of the best little Steampunk submarines I have ever seen. When it was finished, I put the float on as my avatar and joined the parade; what a lot of fun that was! Thanks to the Mayor of Mieville Perryn Peterson, and all the other good folks of the Steamlands, for a truly fun holiday. In fact, I have to get ready for the Mardi Gras Ball now; I will be back soon.

DAZ Quick Start tutorial

I have sat through a lot of tutorials about how to do things in a 3D CGI modeling and animation software package before, and this one just made me grin. Jay Johnson has a kid who had an animation project in mind, which he shared with his dad. Dad installed the full free DAZ Studio Pro software suite on his computer, the child beat on it for half an hour getting nowhere, and gave up in frustration. Jay then showed his kid how to use the software to make his project come to life in about 20 minutes, and he reports that two days later the end result was amazing according to dad.

That event caused Jay to assemble this 20 minute Quick-Start Guide for DAZ Studio Pro, paring the process down to just those components needed to get a project started and come up with a final product. Mind, he did jump to the various library segments that he knew held the components needed for the specific project to hand, so you can expect to spend a bit of time looking through each area for the building blocks required for yours. But the important part is the way he trimmed back the process to just the bare bones required to complete the task. Follow that process, and save your work often under incremented file names so you can go back to any step of it later. Once you get the first one built, you can go back and tweak any aspect of it to your hearts content until you get it perfect, but this tutorial should help you get started (and finished) a lot quicker than you expected to.

Create Your Own Film Noir; Tutorial

This is another excellent tutorial from Small W Studio with a Halloween slant, because the topic this time is Film Noir. He covers a number of different aspects of the CGI 3D animation process, but the two I got the most out of were resources and techniques for building the set, and using lighting to set the mood. The later is particularly important for Noir, since it is all black and white, and what is in the spotlight or in the shadows helps advance the story, not just create the atmosphere. This particular tutorial was created for the Reallusion iClone software suite, but the principles and most of the resources will work with any 3D modelling and animation package you have. That includes free projects like Blender and DAZ, so don’t think you have to pay an arm and a leg to get creative and make your movie.

E-On Software Competition Winners

I wish I had permission to post the winner’s images here, because they created some amazing places. You will have to visit E-On Stoftware’s 3D Environment Competition Winners 2014 to see them, but they are worth your time to check out. They were all created using VUE Infinite, the professional environment creation software suite from E-On. When I say professional, I am not kidding; check out their 2013 customer showcase video below to see just how many times you watched their product in a movie that year. But while their top of the line software is a bit pricy they have a full range of VUE 3D creation products including versions that range from VUE Pioneer priced at FREE up to versions priced to $500 for those of us not trying to create a feature film. And even the free version comes with full support including an active community, also priced at free.

SIGGRAPH 2014: Emerging Technologies Media Tour and others

Wonder what the technology you are going to be able to buy and use 3 to 5 years from now might look like? Visiting the SIGGRAPH Emerging Technologies exhibit each year should give you a pretty good idea, and this year there are a few particularly interesting ones collected on this video out of the 26 on the floor. The annual event ends today, and I wish I could have been there; perhaps next year. The other SIGGRAPH paths I enjoy are the Art Gallery and the Studio, so I am also including their trailers for this year.

Something to Do: Movies, 27Jun14

There are several interesting choices this week, with Transformers: Age of Extinction topping the list. Let’s face it, I would watch any Michael Bay Transformers movie, even though I never cared for the original Japanese animation series trying to promote toy sales. As the series evolved, Beast Wars came out, a story line built on evolution itself. It looks like Michael is finally incorporating that aspect of the franchise into his movies, and I can’t wait to see where he takes it.

Also this week, the truly twisted and paranoid Philip K. Dick masterpiece Radio Free Albemuth goes into general distribution! This gem has been going around the film fest circuit for a handful of years, it is nice to see it finally going into theatrical release. If you are in the mood for an After the Apocalypse kind of film, then Snowpiercer will give you major class warfare trapped on the Orient Express, with an international cast of favorite actors. If you are hoping for something a bit more light-hearted than any of these, there is a limited release of the 2004 animated classic The Incredibles, finally available in 3D.