PatMarrNC - all messages by user

2015/12/19 18:12:54
HOLIDAY SHOWCASE 2015 Wow! Great stuff! My comments shown in same order as your list of videos:

1) VINCE DEMANDS MORE SATIRE
I like the use of a graphic for the background... very resource-efficient, and it opens up a lot of possibilities without a lot of model-making. Regarding the pun:

CORNY-O-METER
0____________/_100


2) INDEPENDENCE AMD FUSION
I like the use of audio manipulation to make the voices interesting.. although, as an American I have a hard time understanding some of the dialog, considering the accent combined with the audio manipulation. In this one I especially like the use of lighting. I also liked the intro text animation.

3) MYSTERIES OF SCIENCE 3
oh wow! This one's my favorite so far! Where to begin? The scenes are all framed VERY well, and the cameras are used to good effect to make the framing even more interesting! The use of music and sound effects was REALLY good, and I liked the way you threw the audience a curve by revealing that what was first perceived as background music was actually the crewman's personal music playing too loud. Clever. Your portrayal of speed through the combined use of sound, implied vibration and scene positioning is just outstanding! But I think the crowning glory of this video is the way you captured several spectacular space vistas... the scene in which the earth is surrounded by alien ships is particularly awe-inspiring! The way you built tension by muting the actors and playing trance-like music as the ship approached earth was also very effective. And your use of effects like fire, explosions, thruster rockets.. all of that was totally believable! Good job! And the way the chick rolls her eyes at the crewman who is still rocking out to his personal music is great comedic relief after building the tension! Just textbook use of tension-relief! Even the credits were very high energy... normally I'd stop watching at that point, but you drew me in. And finally, the teaser at the end with a destroyed planet and a chick... the raised eyebrow was perfect! Two enthusiastic thumbs up on this video!

this is getting long, I'll continue in another post
2015/12/19 17:39:50
How to install ase exporter in sketchup! from Sketchup's help center:
The Extension Warehouse and SketchUp were made to work together. In most cases, to add an extension on your local copy of SketchUp, you simply click the Install button on the extension details page and wait a moment while the software does the rest of the work.


on my windows 8 machine, the install path is as follows:
c:\users\your name\appdata\roaming\sketchup\sketchup 2015\sketchup\plugins\muvizuaseexporter.rb

If you manually place the file there, you'll probably have to change your permissions to see those directories. By default, I think some of them are not visible
2015/12/19 17:20:43
Buzzball Day 3 MrDrWho13 wrote:
PatMarrNC wrote:
Since we're less than a week away from Christmas, how about a special holiday showcase of your favorite muvizu clips? By posting links in a forum post, we can comment like so many did on Artpen's Buzzball video. Yeah, we may have seen them before, but we may not have had the opportunity to COMMENT.

Interesting idea, so we post our favourite videos made on Muvizu?
I'll happily participate if you make a thread for it.


Done!

https://www.muvizu.com/Forum/messages.aspx?TopicID=5370&MessageID=28224#post28224
2015/12/19 17:19:13
HOLIDAY SHOWCASE 2015 In the spirit of the season, I invite everyone to post their favorite MUVIZU video here... then I hope people will ooh and aaah and say how awesome it is. ;-)
2015/12/19 17:16:06
Buzzball Day 3
Anyhow when it comes to this issue I tend to pick a tool that will let me use the script I wrote instead of writing a script for the tool. So this is why I do some stuff in muvizu, some in crysis and some in iclone.


Urban Lamb, I really like the way you think!

A truly creative person doesn't have to be bound by limitations... whether they are imposed by software, actors, money, whatever. There are workarounds and options galore!

That's a big part of what I like about this community is watching how the various Muvizu users actualize their visions, even when what they want to do isn't built into Muvizu. You can imply action... create the action in other software.... use onorthodox methods inside Muvizu to simulate animation by changing attachments or graphics... etc etc its all good!
2015/12/19 15:12:18
Buzzball Day 3 Since we're less than a week away from Christmas, how about a special holiday showcase of your favorite muvizu clips? By posting links in a forum post, we can comment like so many did on Artpen's Buzzball video. Yeah, we may have seen them before, but we may not have had the opportunity to COMMENT.

This is a great community of users, and a showcase celebration with comments would be a real community builder! It might also be good advertising for the product. (Remember the concept of "sell the dream".) There is no greater sales tool than a collection of positive reviews! And our positive reviews of your Muvizu creation will reflect favorably on the product as well as on your own personal creativity.

The Band In A Box software I use has a User Showcase forum on their web site, where people post the songs they've created with that product then others comment constructively. It is the most active forum on the web site. People help one another and get inspired. hint hint.
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/12/2015
2015/12/18 18:12:20
Buzzball Day 3 toonarama wrote:
Artpen
So much to admire and like about this but I think the best thing about it is the way you have truly nailed the head and expression animation. I don't think anyone has made such a good job of this with Muvizu before and considering the limits of the software you have done an incredible job. You have also made him a believable character.


Yes, the way the character looks away when he speaks conveys body language that reveals more about the character, but which most animation software would make so difficult that the animator would probably not bother. Very cool!
2015/12/18 2:43:13
Buzzball Day 3 I'm curious to know.. why isn't it possible to comment on the videos displayed on user's profile page?
2015/12/17 20:25:26
Buzzball Day 3 excellent in every way!

I especially like the concept of a clueless "defender of the innocent" who interferes in situations he doesn't understand and makes things worse. It's really not all that far removed from local politics.

I also like the idea that the clueless hero hosts an online blog defending his fiascos by spinning what happened into a version that makes him proud and all the more a self-sacrificing martyr... Again, not much different than the current political reality. ( Except they use the mainstream media for their spin, not just a blog.)

As already noted, the dropped camera was a great idea, one I wish I had thought of first (but since you thought of it first, I may have to steal it later) ;-)

I also liked the way you used the Hitchcock technique of IMPLYING his climb up the ladder by showing the onlookers watching with heads raised. What a great workaround for any scene that would be hard to render with the built-in muvizu actions!

I thought this was masterful in so many ways, you inspire me to take this a lot more seriously. The true craft here is really in the directing, and since muvizu frees us from getting bogged down in the mechanics of making the animation , there is leeway to work at a higher level. Your work is a good example of that. As I watch this (and some of the other forum members works) I realize that my own thinking is still trapped in the old paradigm of simply animating a scene. But what YOU and others here are doing is to create something much more imaginative and compelling! Great job! More!
edited by PatMarrNC on 19/12/2015
2015/12/16 16:43:36
Another new video with 'live backdrop' nice mixture of real footage and animation!

Do you combine them in the MUVIZU environment? Or in a video editor?
2015/12/16 16:39:09
when trying to direct head and eye movements... clayster2012 wrote:
Yea I have the same issue, but if you copy and paste the character it also works


unfortunately by the time I discovered the problem I already had a bunch of character movement recorded. Switching to a pasted version of the character would have lost all that. Too bad it isn't transferable.

But my NEXT scene will benefit for this advice! Thanks Clayster!
2015/12/16 16:35:03
A Star Wars Christmas Short you did that in 30 minutes???? You da MAN Clayster!! How did you....

1) create a cape that actually moves like a cape instead of being a rigid attachment?

2) create the projection scene?

I think the framing of your scenes is very creative... like showing a view of the gift with Darth Vader's shadow superimposed over it. I would never think of that in a million years.
edited by PatMarrNC on 16/12/2015
2015/12/16 2:54:58
Kitten cool Drewi! With Muvizu eyes they will be perfectly at home with other characters!

Here's where I wish that a separate mouth could be added (just like ears, eyes etc)... if such were the case, any kind of model could respond to dialog
2015/12/16 2:43:32
when trying to direct head and eye movements... when trying to direct head and eye movements... the record button is inactive and greyed out!

This feature worked fine last night on the same project, different scene! I must be missing something simple here because obviously the program hasn't changed since yesterday so I must be missing a step

Any help will be greatly appreciated, as I was hoping to have this done by morning.

==============update=======

now THAT's interesting.... I added a new character for this scene, and for only THAT character the record button is active! But for all the characters that were in yesterday's scene the record button stays inactive where head and eye direction is concerned!

Could it be that when I cleared all the actions (reset all tracks) from the previous scene to start fresh I also got rid of something I need to make these characters accept head direction? If so, how would I get it back?


I also notice that when I pick the new character, his name appears under the transport buttons in the timeline... whereas that doesn't happen when I pick one of the other characters
edited by PatMarrNC on 16/12/2015
2015/12/15 23:22:27
Kitten on that time frame (and given the requirements you're looking for) I don't think I'll be much help.
2015/12/15 8:53:57
Kitten I guess the answer to that question depends on how much creative license you're willing to accept.

I'm working on a cat series, so I've created a bunch of cat characters already. I used blobs for the kittens, and modeled ears, noses tails and legs to make them look "somewhat " cat like. The ears and noses are the same as the ones I used for the adult cats, shown here:
http://www.muvizu.com/Video/44702/Plea-to-programmers-and-model-makers

maybe I'll go ahead and put together a character pack... sort of a crazy cat lady starter kit.

How soon do you need it? I ask because I can't get to it right away due to other projects that are hotter.
2015/12/13 23:49:15
3D modeling software well... yes (sort of)

If you can save to FBX, it will be in a format that Muvizu can read... so you may be able to bring it into Muvizu.... But there's about 100% likelihood that it won't be sized appropriately for the character who is using it. Sizing imported objects is very reliant on trial and error. (at least, it has been for me. If there is a secret to sizing imported objects correctly on the first pass, I don't know it. )

Going back to the suggestion about asking the manufacturer for a model... they do that quite frequently, so it wouldn't seem presumptuous unless you asked for the full-blown manufacturing assembly model.
edited by PatMarrNC on 14/12/2015
2015/12/13 23:36:12
camera view and object edit are gone! MrDrWho13 wrote:
I put the links here if you'd like a more up-to-date version: http://www.muvizu.com/forum/topic5260-tech-help.aspx?p=f#post27937


MrDrWho, you are one helpful individual! I appreciate all that you have done to help me and so many others on this forum! You da Man!

Regarding my problem, as it turns out I went to lot of trouble for nothing. The REAL problem (ever since my first installation, apparently) is caused somehow by the program being maximized. If I make it sizable and stretch it to fit my screen, all of the aforementioned problems go away. If nobody else has that experience, I'm content to go on un-minimizing the program so it works. No need for a ticket to be issued.

(I'm going now to snag those other versions, just in case...) ;-)
2015/12/13 23:28:20
Issue With Default Camera View MrDrWho13 wrote:
LugofilmLtd wrote:
So I just downloaded and installed the latest update (from 11/17/15) and now when I launch the program, the default view is on the ground looking straight up and it won't let me swivel the view to be horizontal. It swivels in a circle left or right but won't swivel the other way. Help!

Do you have a joystick or extra input device attached to your computer? That might be the cause of the problem.


Wow! I'm very impressed by your quick and accurate diagnosis!
2015/12/13 19:41:14
camera view and object edit are gone! going to try reinstalling after uninstalling... should I uninstall all of the add-on packs too? They all show up as separate installations...

==============update=========

I didn't uninstall the extra content, but I did remove the latest version and reinstalled my original version 2015.08.05.01R (64-

Now everything works again (except keyframing, of course.... hopefully I'll get that back next week)
edited by PatMarrNC on 13/12/2015
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