Television campaign built in Carrara - Polyloop

ThePixelMines · 17th November 2005, 19:40

This is a campaign promoting the 5pm to 8pm block of programming on the tv station I work for. We call it the Laugh Pack. View the images here and open/download the spot here.

Or go to: http://www.freewebs.com/thepixelmines/LP4_Explain_m.wmv

It's nice to finally find other Carrara users. Nice to meet you all.

crazy wabbit · 18th November 2005, 02:30

Nice

18th November 2005, 04:32

Very nice animation.
It is good to see Carrara on TV.

Also you may find more Carrara user at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Carrara/
We have over 2,800 carrara users as members.

JuST · 18th November 2005, 10:36

Nice to meet you too! I like your animation.

AWBenson · 18th November 2005, 17:02

Welcome to the group! :-D Can you discuss any of the development issues/cycles that you have with the Telelvision Studio with the use of Carrara, Storyboarding, Rendering Setup, Time spent on this, etc?

AWBenson

markbremmer · 18th November 2005, 18:11

Love the action. Great job.

ThePixelMines · 18th November 2005, 19:27

This is one of our larger productions in the 3D realm. Attached to this message are the storyboards for the whole thing. Most of our use of Carrara in commercial/promotional material is for titling or a shot to illustrate an idea so this project was huge in comparison. The piece was also driven by the score which is why we have action cues on the storyboards that are specific down to the frame.

The piece was broken into 14 shots (each its own .car) and animated sequentially. My only complaint in this regard was the inability to change the starting timecode. I had all of these cues to hit (determined in Cool Edit Pro) that I had to figure out starting from 0:00:00:00 everytime. To insure I met the cues I cut the music into shot sized .wav files and placed them into the timeline so I could hear the music in the draft renders.

This project is not the first of its kind. It's actually the fourth Laugh Pack spot I've made. Believe it or not, the very first LP was conceived and created with Infini-D 4.5 (my introduction into 3D). It wasn't until version 2 that I moved everything to Carrara 2.0. Since then the story has evolved. In version 1 there was only a six pack of cans in infinite/impossible space. Each of the six half-hours was a can. In the second version there was a wall set (brick wall, sidewalk, bench, garbage can) and the addition of the vending machine. By the third one I had modeled the building and the apartment for a fly-through. During the fly-through the camera goes into a can and the shows are highlighted on bubbles floating in the can.

The reason I bring this up is because on this generation all I had to do was attach the hands to the character. I skinned the bones to the hands and actually used IK for the arms. I had never used IK before (and I don't know if I ever will again) so it was a learning process. What I learned was that it's not always worth the trouble. The biggest complaint regarding skinning and IK is that you cannot copy and paste from composition to composition. So, for efficiency, I created one master scene that contained every object and every can character to start a shot from. From there I would work backwards and delete anything that wasn't important to the scene. Even that was a pain because I would have to "unskin" every character's hands just so I could delete them.

Okay, beyond Laugh Pack, like I mentioned earlier, we use Carrara sporadically and casually. For instance, we just did a spot about HDTV and Plasma Screens for a local electronics business. For an establishing shot of :03 I pulled a plasma screen model from "Dosch 3D - Furniture V2.2" and filled it with CG. It was a last minute decision and it took about 1.5 hours (including render time) to get it in the spot.

I have more I could talk about the process, but I don't know if this is the thread to do it in. I hope some of this provides the answers you were looking for.

robertzavala · 18th November 2005, 19:41

Wow, very nice work. Thanks so much for the inside look at the making of the animation

Selocic · 19th November 2005, 00:52

Nicely Done! It's great to see Carrara at work in the video world.

Btw, how long did this particular spot take for you to complete (modeling, animating, rendering)?

Also, I am a video professional as well and have had to do a lot with crunching and adjusting timecodes (resyncing, start time readjustments, etc.) and I wondered if you use a timecode calculator? A few years back, there weren't a lot of TC calculators (at least not manu for free), but nowadays, there seems to be a nice collection of them. The one I like is called WinFree Time:

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/freetime.htm

I definitely wished I had this little app. years ago!

Thanks for sharing.

ThePixelMines · 19th November 2005, 02:46

This project took about two weeks from the completion of the storyboards. That was animation, compositing, and assemble. I had no modeling to do this time around because everything had already been built awhile ago or purchased. (There are a couple Dosch buildings in the background.) In essence, this scene has been built in pieces over the past three years as I learned the program. I've been building everything in Carrara 2 to 4 so now that I'm trying out Hexagon it would appear that I've been slowing myself down. Hexagon is proving to be quite impressive.

I'll give that TC calculator a try. I've tried two freebies so far but they've been terrible.

ThePixelMines · 23rd November 2005, 02:29

Everyone,

Apparently, some folks are having trouble playing the Windows Media Video. If anyone wants to see this in Quicktime format just email me and I'll send it to you. It's about 5.5MB.

17th November 2005, 19:40	#1 (permalink)
ThePixelMines Owner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Spokane, Washington, USA Posts: 32	Television campaign built in Carrara This is a campaign promoting the 5pm to 8pm block of programming on the tv station I work for. We call it the Laugh Pack. View the images here and open/download the spot here. Or go to: http://www.freewebs.com/thepixelmines/LP4_Explain_m.wmv It's nice to finally find other Carrara users. Nice to meet you all. Attached Thumbnails

18th November 2005, 19:27	#7 (permalink)
ThePixelMines Owner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Spokane, Washington, USA Posts: 32	Our "process." This is one of our larger productions in the 3D realm. Attached to this message are the storyboards for the whole thing. Most of our use of Carrara in commercial/promotional material is for titling or a shot to illustrate an idea so this project was huge in comparison. The piece was also driven by the score which is why we have action cues on the storyboards that are specific down to the frame. The piece was broken into 14 shots (each its own .car) and animated sequentially. My only complaint in this regard was the inability to change the starting timecode. I had all of these cues to hit (determined in Cool Edit Pro) that I had to figure out starting from 0:00:00:00 everytime. To insure I met the cues I cut the music into shot sized .wav files and placed them into the timeline so I could hear the music in the draft renders. This project is not the first of its kind. It's actually the fourth Laugh Pack spot I've made. Believe it or not, the very first LP was conceived and created with Infini-D 4.5 (my introduction into 3D). It wasn't until version 2 that I moved everything to Carrara 2.0. Since then the story has evolved. In version 1 there was only a six pack of cans in infinite/impossible space. Each of the six half-hours was a can. In the second version there was a wall set (brick wall, sidewalk, bench, garbage can) and the addition of the vending machine. By the third one I had modeled the building and the apartment for a fly-through. During the fly-through the camera goes into a can and the shows are highlighted on bubbles floating in the can. The reason I bring this up is because on this generation all I had to do was attach the hands to the character. I skinned the bones to the hands and actually used IK for the arms. I had never used IK before (and I don't know if I ever will again) so it was a learning process. What I learned was that it's not always worth the trouble. The biggest complaint regarding skinning and IK is that you cannot copy and paste from composition to composition. So, for efficiency, I created one master scene that contained every object and every can character to start a shot from. From there I would work backwards and delete anything that wasn't important to the scene. Even that was a pain because I would have to "unskin" every character's hands just so I could delete them. Okay, beyond Laugh Pack, like I mentioned earlier, we use Carrara sporadically and casually. For instance, we just did a spot about HDTV and Plasma Screens for a local electronics business. For an establishing shot of :03 I pulled a plasma screen model from "Dosch 3D - Furniture V2.2" and filled it with CG. It was a last minute decision and it took about 1.5 hours (including render time) to get it in the spot. I have more I could talk about the process, but I don't know if this is the thread to do it in. I hope some of this provides the answers you were looking for. Attached Thumbnails

19th November 2005, 00:52	#9 (permalink)
Selocic Extrusion Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 161	Nicely Done! It's great to see Carrara at work in the video world. Btw, how long did this particular spot take for you to complete (modeling, animating, rendering)? Also, I am a video professional as well and have had to do a lot with crunching and adjusting timecodes (resyncing, start time readjustments, etc.) and I wondered if you use a timecode calculator? A few years back, there weren't a lot of TC calculators (at least not manu for free), but nowadays, there seems to be a nice collection of them. The one I like is called WinFree Time: http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/freetime.htm I definitely wished I had this little app. years ago! Thanks for sharing. __________________ "Selocic" - 3D: when 'Flat' just isn't good enough! - S'il vous plaît pardonner mon français. C'est la courtoisie de services de traduction en ligne et les classes de français d'école primaire.

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18th November 2005, 02:30	#2 (permalink)
crazy wabbit Now, I learn animation Join Date: May 2005 Posts: 1,381	Nice

18th November 2005, 04:32	#3 (permalink)
Ringo Monfort Guest Posts: n/a	Very nice animation. It is good to see Carrara on TV. Also you may find more Carrara user at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Carrara/ We have over 2,800 carrara users as members.

18th November 2005, 10:36	#4 (permalink)
JuST Pixar want to hire me! Join Date: Jul 2005 Location: Braunschweig, Germany Posts: 500	Nice to meet you too! I like your animation.

18th November 2005, 17:02	#5 (permalink)
AWBenson Box modeling Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Miami, FL Posts: 292	Welcome to the group! :-D Can you discuss any of the development issues/cycles that you have with the Telelvision Studio with the use of Carrara, Storyboarding, Rendering Setup, Time spent on this, etc? AWBenson

18th November 2005, 18:11	#6 (permalink)
markbremmer Escaping to 3D worlds... Join Date: Jul 2005 Posts: 176	Love the action. Great job.

18th November 2005, 19:41	#8 (permalink)
robertzavala Vertex Join Date: Oct 2005 Posts: 1	Wow, very nice work. Thanks so much for the inside look at the making of the animation

19th November 2005, 02:46	#10 (permalink)
ThePixelMines Owner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Spokane, Washington, USA Posts: 32	This project took about two weeks from the completion of the storyboards. That was animation, compositing, and assemble. I had no modeling to do this time around because everything had already been built awhile ago or purchased. (There are a couple Dosch buildings in the background.) In essence, this scene has been built in pieces over the past three years as I learned the program. I've been building everything in Carrara 2 to 4 so now that I'm trying out Hexagon it would appear that I've been slowing myself down. Hexagon is proving to be quite impressive. I'll give that TC calculator a try. I've tried two freebies so far but they've been terrible.

23rd November 2005, 02:29	#11 (permalink)
ThePixelMines Owner Join Date: Nov 2005 Location: Spokane, Washington, USA Posts: 32	Everyone, Apparently, some folks are having trouble playing the Windows Media Video. If anyone wants to see this in Quicktime format just email me and I'll send it to you. It's about 5.5MB.