simonheffer - all messages by user

2011/10/7 8:58:31
Hello!!! Welcome erosryder! Hope you have as much fun as the rest of us!!!

As to your questions...
I see toonarama beat me to it by a couple of minutes. All I can add is that for moving the house blocks you may find that you cannot move the bottom one if there's one on top. Grouping them would sort this. Otherwise its as toonarama says a nearby object could be in your way, including a ground plane. The collision envelope can extend a bit beyond the visible boundaries of the object so it may not be something obviously in the way.
edited by simonheffer on 07/10/2011
2011/10/6 22:51:43
Hero Fab - particularly liked the spidey kiss!
2011/10/5 22:05:23
The Tomahawk Kid Music video based on the SAHB song of the 70s.
Sea+sand textures - CGTextures
Bird - by Bob on Google Sketchup.

2011/10/3 23:41:08
where the pirate ship me hearties! Of course, the ship is a whole load of parts so you need to use the scene window to find them all.
It's a pity you can't save groups as a favourite as that would be an obvious solution.
There are a couple or pirate sets too so that may help - if one of then suits your film it may be easier to start there and alter that set to suit.
Just my 2p.
2011/10/3 23:37:04
Muvizu Team Hi Tim,
Glad you survived the MRI, they are a bit daunting, aren't they? Still got your GSOH I see!
I'm sure a bit more Muvizu will help get the brain lighting up all over the place!
Best wishes,
Simon
2011/10/2 13:52:15
Feedback on Muvizu - 5th September 2011 (ENG) As we're documenting funnies, an irishman, a scotsman and .. sorry couldn't resist.

My funny is the Create dialog. It got stuck on the effects page and nothing I did helped.Including selecting from the Create menu.

Oh and I've got the mic appearing after choosing shoulders->severed hand then none(as per Dreeko)
2011/9/30 16:53:12
Feedback on Muvizu - 5th September 2011 (ENG) I find something similar with character movement - it always goes a bit further than you expect. So after several tries I end up moving the characters start point back a bit (Not really a timeline issue but a lag issue I guess)
2011/9/30 11:32:18
Just like Danimal? Dylly wrote:


Quite agree - I had a similar issue in my Bond film trying to get the car exhaust to follow the car and gave up after the first couple of scenes as my nerves were getting frayed (esp with the bridge jump!).
You have to experiment with the object speed - even trickier if you have to match a character I guess.
Also think about the camera angles - you may be able to get away with less than perfect match up if the camera angle allows it.
2011/9/29 19:14:40
Road/ground plane collision I wanted to have a puddle on the road. So I added a texture to the ground plane, scaled accordingly and placed on the road.
On the road surface the puddle has a shadow. On the environment ground it doesn't.
If I place it on the pavement it sinks through - workaround seems to be to give the ground plane some vertical scale (the puddle doesn't get deeper, it rises) or float it - still have to careful about shadows.

Anyway I still want the puddle on the road - short of making the road the same colour as the shadows I'm not sure what else to try.

I had a suggestion, which might also apply in this case, for a magnetic texture object.
OK, bear with me. This originally came up on Moon Trip - I needed a porthole on the side of the spaceship.
It would have been good to have a flat texture object which you could apply to an objects surface which would assume the shape of the surface. In the case of the spaceship it would follow the curve. Available in circle,rectangle and strawberry.
2011/9/28 8:20:37
One of my first movizu movies Yes, quite agree - wish I could manage such detail!
2011/9/27 23:12:15
Moon Trip Space girl enjoys an exciting trip to the moon. Textures from CGTextures: Porthole, Moon, rolling starscape. Star backdrop: Nick Risinger, skysurvey.org.


edited by simonheffer on 27/09/2011
2011/9/27 23:09:49
Feedback on Muvizu - 5th September 2011 (ENG) This may also apply to other camera animations but I found changing the field of view tricky to do smoothly when zooming in(my old muscles I guess).

It would be nice to have a way to automate a smooth change eg 'bigger' &'smaller' buttons and a rate of change slider as for obj movement. Or points on the timeline - I know when I need a certain values and I need a smooth transition from one to the next. (sort of like waypoints - oh did we mention those before?
2011/9/18 11:52:05
Textures for imported objects When importing from e.g. SketchUp we are presented, in the object's properties, with a number of colours to choose. Sometimes though the original had textures not colours. Is this influenced by the selected import options or would it make sense to have a texture option for each of the colours? Or is this something we loose due to the import process (export ASE <-SketchUp, import ASE -> Muvizu)?
2011/9/13 11:26:01
What actions would Muvizuers like to have? James Bond (and Ethan Hunt) could do with ...
Climbing (mentioned a while back) but maybe several - up/down a ladder,wall, rock-face, rope.
Hanging (from a ledge), which leads to edging left/right whilst hanging from a ledge.
Crawling - on hands/knees, commando style(with/without knife in mouth

It would also be useful to have properties/actions that only objects currently have:
Floats in air - useful for superheroes, sitting on non-standard height chairs,tables,walls etc, comic effects
Movement as per objects - flying , sliding (slopes, ropes)
Full Rotation - useful for lying down on slopes etc.
2011/9/12 9:28:39
Feedback on Muvizu - 5th September 2011 (ENG) Danimal wrote:
Or how about this, which has nothing at all to do with the latest release:

If a character action has head or eye movement assigned to it, but I move their eyes or head prio ro the action, it cancels out the built in movement with the action. This has happened in every release, I only just now thought of it when I used the "look at nails" action but the character only lifted his hand, he didn't actually look at it.

I'm sorry, I seem to be a bit of a whiner lately...

Yes there are some funnies about. There's the 'no arm swing' thing and if you have seen Better By Christmas, Higgs feet seem to get stuck so that when he's dances only his upper body moves - in fact when he does the break-dance he twists round and round like school-meal turkey (it was quite funny so I kept it in).
2011/9/11 19:40:26
Feedback on Muvizu - 5th September 2011 (ENG) ooh ooh, can the search option please put the focus in the search text box?
2011/9/11 19:15:08
Extras!! So to go with that would be a 'talking' action whereby the lips move without needing to sync with dialogue. Or maybe have unsynched-talk as a dialogue option.
2011/9/10 23:21:21
sketchup models/colour Very kind. It would be nice to use the Sketchup stuff as there's a big 3D warehouse.

For those of us who aren't 3D artists, we need either an easy way to make stuff or an easy way to get free stuff - both of which Sketchup gives. That said, FBX export needs the Pro version at $500 (gulp).
The free built-in ones are KMZ, DAE.

Having been in IT since the war (well it feels that long) I know that hacking someone else's stuff is usually the quickest way to do it 'cos someone's always done it before, which is what makes Sketchup good bet.

This page tells you what other plug-ins there are(Google wants you to know about)
http://sketchup.google.com/intl/en/download/plugins.html

I don't work for Google.

BTW when I reopened the project I got warning messages about the arctic terrain and the upshot was the colour property had disappeared.

Thanks for pursuing this,
Simon
2011/9/10 18:56:58
another transparent video test Fantastic!

Hmm - I've got Adobe Première Elements I don't think that does transparent video
2011/9/10 18:37:54
He's back again

The, er, Director's cut, of James' New Car whereby he gets into 2nd gear and skids about on the ice (there you go, Claire .
Acknowledgements: Theme - James Barry Orch
Arctic sky - code poet flikr
ice texture - http://www.cgtextures.com
edited by simonheffer on 10/09/2011
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