3D characters, AWA, and AMV's

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 9:02 pm

I'm a bit in the same boat. I decided to a Gravitation/Yaoi Anthem AMV but I wanted footage of Ryuchi rocking out on stage with a huge audience going nuts and lots of lights. That footage really doesn't exist in the anime... So I'm building my own stage to fill with lights, cheering idiots and stuff. Mostly for far off panning shots of the audience enjoying the AMV on the jumbo-tron TV. ^^

HoshiNoKaze · Post by **HoshiNoKaze** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 7:55 am

That's pretty awesome Izumi...are you going to try and do the characters in 3d? or use 2d stills mapped to 3d objects?

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:05 pm

My goal is 2D only and I'll be using the stage as a background for masked layers. So I can use different close up head shots of the characters on stage from the anime and change the background to have the 'Jumbo Tron' behind them projecting things as well. I want to avoid over using the stage cause it'll look cheesey if I do.

Here's an example of just making the lighting play to my music.

http://rapidshare.de/files/35506095/lighttest.avi.html

I'll mostly be using short stage cuts cause like lip synch it loses the effect the longer you have a single shot on screen.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:35 pm

Using the 3D background with the mini Seguchi removed and a close up shot at the right angle used instead. I can even layer Seguchi with himself and his keyboards and 'zoom' in a bit to add depth.

This also seems to break the lipsynch rule, while normally you can only lipsynch a character who doesn't move much for like 2 seconds tops before it looks too static and more like a puppet, if you show the same scene but rendered in different angels, close up in person, projected behind Seguchi on the LCD or an extreme close up of the LCD you get varity while still recycling the same lip sync animation.

HoshiNoKaze · Post by **HoshiNoKaze** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:58 pm

That's looking pretty nice...but your lipsynch comment is right on...that's one of the reasons I'm wanting to try some totally 3d characters if I can get them to look right, so I can really animate them with detail.

Anyway, looks awsm, can't wait to see the final results.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:59 pm

I just got this, with the audience. Also taken from a live action sillowette animation from the anime itself, I layed it in 4 times to get it. I havn't done the animation yet, I'm waiting to upgrade to AE 7.0 and set my laptop up to assist in rendering.

Infinity Squared · Post by **Infinity Squared** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:04 pm

Hmm... either the audience are giants or the stage isn't as big as it is (and consequently, the characters on stage look small), but right now I would say maybe make the silhouettes more varied and smaller to emphasize on size. But still, that's looking really awesome. I'm definitely looking forward to the final product.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 11:35 pm

Well, those are hands up in the air not heads. But you may have a point. However the audience does look better animated than in a still frame.

I'm working on upgrating to AE7Pro from 6.5Pro right now to get an efficency boost.

DJ_Izumi · Post by **DJ_Izumi** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 3:36 am

http://rapidshare.de/files/35559426/Stage_Test.avi.html

The following test render is 15 seconds long.
It took two computers, an Athlon 3200 XP+ and a Celeron M 1.3ghz 2hrs together to render it in Adobe After Effects. It's just part of what I'm planning.

Infinity Squared · Post by **Infinity Squared** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 7:11 am

Holy flirpin schnitzel!

I see what you mean with the crowd looking better when you do get around to the animation. That is looking hawt already. I'm assuming you'll make such things as the spots move around too? Damn, seriously, now I'm inspired to keep working on my video