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How to make the animation less plasticky?
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How to make the animation less plasticky? // Roundtable
Post by davidjohnson // May 21, 2008, 10:08am
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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I have an animation that looks kind of plastic. Any tips or tricks to give it a more film-like look?
Also, I have rendered the animation using uncompressed - but when I bring it into an NLE and use the DV compression, it really looks awful...any people find this as well? |
Post by jamesmc // May 21, 2008, 10:13am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I have an animation that looks kind of plastic. Any tips or tricks to give it a more film-like look?
Also, I have rendered the animation using uncompressed - but when I bring it into an NLE and use the DV compression, it really looks awful...any people find this as well?
Use the force Luke...
Not sure what you mean by plastic looking. Perhaps a screen shot or a short clip? Can post avi or wmv here on the forums. |
Post by TomG // May 21, 2008, 10:42am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Getting good compression settings can take some work. Its a balance between quality and file size. What codec are you using? WMV does a fine job these days. If you are determined to go the AVI route, then DivX or XVid can do a good job too. In almost all cases, you will want to experiment, as it depends on the amount of movement etc in your scene as to how much compression you'll want and how often to keyframe things in the codec.
Note it is often best to compress a short section of the movie so you can test out compression settings quickly and easily before waiting for the whole thing to render :) This is another reason why rendering to invidual separate image files is useful rather than rendering out to an AVI (easier to import and render small sections of movie).
For the plastic look, not sure what is meant. If you want it to look like film, you could see if your video editor supports adding film grain (or batch process in a 2D editor).
If you mean the objects look plastic, then it comes down to good lighting and material work in trueSpace. Look to add good texture maps, ensure specular isn't too high, layer shaders so surfaces vary in shininess across their surface, and get good lighting set ups for a realistic look to the lighting. You can test this in a still image without needing to go to the movie. You can also share that image here in the WIP section for great tips on specific things that can be worked on for improvements :)
HTH!
Tom |
Post by frank // May 21, 2008, 11:17am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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For a less plasticy look try increasing the Diffuse and decreasing the Specular.
I render to uncompressed TGA, bring that into After Effects, do color correction, and export to either uncompressed AVI or TGA. That sequence then gets exported to a lossy format such as DV-AVI or MPEG2(DVD). I've had good success with that, and from what you describe, you are doing the same thing: taking uncompressed renders and exporting the sequence to DV. I assume the frames look fine straight out of trueSpace. ? |
Post by davidjohnson // May 21, 2008, 11:50am
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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That is great advice. They look fantastic out of truespace (besides looking too video and plastic). I will do that exporting as a TGA into AE and see what happens. |
Post by davidjohnson // May 21, 2008, 2:06pm
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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I really like the HALO'ing around the planets here in this video for the opening of the movie CONTACT
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PLQF-4uyD4Y
Any suggestions how to obtain that HALO effect on the 3d planets I have? |
Post by frank // May 21, 2008, 2:50pm
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Any suggestions how to obtain that HALO effect on the 3d planets I have?
Have you tried using a Diffuse Glow filter? It can isolate the brighter areas in the image (assuming you'll have some highlight/rim lighting around the edge of the sphere) and just glow that specific part.
If you don't have a Diffuse Glow filter for your NLE, and don't mind setting up batch processing in Photoshop, check out Richard Rosenman's free Diffuse Glow filter here:
http://www.richardrosenman.com/software/downloads/
...along with a few other nice, free Photoshop filters. |
Post by frank // May 21, 2008, 3:01pm
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Any tips or tricks to give it a more film-like look?
P.S. If you are wanting to achieve the entire cinematic/film look, keep in mind the following:
- 24 progressive frames per second
- Shallow depth of field (can be achieved in trueSpace, but better quality can be had by exporting Z-maps/depth-maps and handling it in post)
- Careful lighting of scenes (I'm being vague here, but read up on basic 3-point lighting and go from there)
- Curves adjustment / color "sweetening" in post
- Possibly some type of softening (One trick: duplicate layer, set top layer to Overlay mode, 50% opacity, and blur it to your liking)
- Camera pans at 24fps are more subject to a strobing effect than 29.97fps/60i (video), so for any scenes with camera pans, render a playblast and be sure it looks ok. There's acually a cinematographer's handbook that folks use to determine pan speeds and other things like that.
Hopefully this isn't a too-much-info post! Perhaps some of it may be useful to you or someone else. :-) |
Post by davidjohnson // May 21, 2008, 5:00pm
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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I like the idea of doing in photoshop, but I am unsure how to set up the batch processing.
Vegas doesn't really have the glow that I am looking for, so the NLE might be out of the question. |
Post by jamesmc // May 21, 2008, 5:10pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I like the idea of doing in photoshop, but I am unsure how to set up the batch processing.
Vegas doesn't really have the glow that I am looking for, so the NLE might be out of the question.
Does Vegas handle the FLM (filmstrip) format?
If it does, you can use all the power of Photoshop to use any effect and then export it back out in the FLM format.
It's a per frame deal, but a nice quality result. |
Post by davidjohnson // May 22, 2008, 2:00am
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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No, I just checked online and couldn't find a reference to the newest Vegas importing flm... |
Post by jamesmc // May 22, 2008, 2:40am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I recall reading that you wanted a Halo Effect and have After Effects. Hope that's correct.
Anyways, here's a tutorial at Andrew Kramer's website on an exploding planet and the exploding 'halo' effect around it.
http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial.html?id=90
Basically uses an elliptical mask, feathers it, sizes it and rotates it as a 3D layer to get the effect over time. |
Post by davidjohnson // May 22, 2008, 9:34am
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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I have watched that. There are a couple of issue
1) I am working with a fly-through animation - so I would have to track it
2) I just want that sun over the horizon look and I would prefer to do it in Truespace if I could.
The sun in the background is a GLOW FLARE LENS effect, so in effect objects that pass in front of it don't cover it up. Therefore, I had to render out the sun separate from the objects covering it up. Also, because of this, the flare doesn't light up the objects in front of it and I can't get that halo around the edges of the planet.
I am going to try to add some lights and see if that helps, but I would have hoped for something that might do the trick in TS out of the box |
Post by jamesmc // May 22, 2008, 9:59am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I have watched that. There are a couple of issue
1) I am working with a fly-through animation - so I would have to track it
2) I just want that sun over the horizon look and I would prefer to do it in Truespace if I could.
The sun in the background is a GLOW FLARE LENS effect, so in effect objects that pass in front of it don't cover it up. Therefore, I had to render out the sun separate from the objects covering it up. Also, because of this, the flare doesn't light up the objects in front of it and I can't get that halo around the edges of the planet.
I am going to try to add some lights and see if that helps, but I would have hoped for something that might do the trick in TS out of the box
Have you used layers when you added stuff? I mean if you add an effect in layers, it will affect the scene, but will be more easily be touched up in post process. |
Post by davidjohnson // May 22, 2008, 10:45am
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davidjohnson
Total Posts: 169
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This is the nice look I am going for. Right now, I am using multiple spotlights to try and achieve the affect, but it does have the SOFT glow to it.
http://home.tele2.fr/auroreblender/gimp/planet_en.html
Right now I have a load of spotlights doubling for the glow from the sun. I would like to export this glow only and bring it into AE to make the glow more pronounced but I guess I will have to get Ipak for that.... |
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