New Face mapping

Welcome to the holiday season!

Just a quick note to check out the Christmas pack.It's very cool.

Our first quadped ! Some very funny clips can be made using the reindeer and biped animation!

Also check out santa's face map, now we can customise left and right sides! Let's hope this is the way all maps are done!!

Of course the first thing I tried was to try and swap out a horse geometry for the reindeer, no luck there, (the horse doesn't have a skeleton, so it's a prop not a character.)

Here's a test using crazytalk5, there's got to be a way of getting this onto my antics santa,

Maybe if I write to Santa.......Dear Santa, I know I've been kinda good, any chance you'll let me project textures onto geometry or something......

Merry Christmas!!

Comments by Scott Squires

Here are some excerpts from a correspondence I've had with the wonderful Scott Squires who is an incredible visual effects veteran. Some great critque and tips for all previz artists.

Hi Tony,
You've got some nice work. Most of the previs work done here is related to visual effects and heavy stunt work. That usually means some type of action sequence .......

(article continued in comments section)

Antics 3d - GAGTRABWTFDAH project.

Antics has a very strong design function which allows you to pin a character's hand or foot to a prop. I read in the manual way back in version 2, something about a bicycle. So I thought I'd give that a go. Let's call it my "Get a girl to ride a bike, with two friends, down a hill project" ..................
(Continued in the comments section!!!)

Update: It's done and on youtube. Great music too.
GIRLS ON BIKES

ANTICS 3D - PERFECT!

Well, I've started on my next little project. I thought I'd go all out and try to make the coolest most elaborately staged film sofar. So here's a sneak preview at how it's coming along. I can't tell you too much about the story (not yet) but I'm hoping to do something kinda cool with this multistory apartment block I've got stuck in the middle of an ocean!

You just gotta love ANTICS. what other progrm will let you build a tower in 30mins and then let you simply click on a guy at the bottom and say 'walk to the top buddy' and then watch him do it. Through doors up stairs etc. back to it...........

Halon Entertainment

The Big Guns.

superman previz

lighting a whole city

On the Antics forum there was some discussion about lighting. This is one of my favorite parts of doing a sequence. Lighting can add so much atmosphere to a scene. But what about lighting an entire city! Well I still think it comes down to the framing of the camera as to what you should light. Antics has 7 lights available, even full sun requires many lights to help "model" subject matter. The key to making the scene interesting is using some touchs of colour. Early light or sunset (Magic Hour) is most favored by cinematographers as it provides good shadows as the source of the light is low in the sky. You can have lots of success if you experiement with the properties of the lights. Another tip is to set your icons to 500 when you have a camera so far away from your set. That way it'll be easier to adjust light positions.

Send in your lighting rigs, I'd love to see them.

previz articles

the power of previz Computer Graphics World : Article By Audrey Doyle

Pixel Liberation Front (xsibase.com)

Kent Seki
The Creative Director of Pixel Liberation Front talks about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, The Matrix Revolutions, the process of Previs and the cg industries in California and New York

Interview with Colin Green
Pioneer of Previsualization and founder of Pixel Liberation Front Colin Green talks about the early days of cg, modern filmmaking, the importance of previs and how it all began. Credits include Fight Club, Panic Room, Eraser, Matrix Reloaded, Matrix Revolutions, Minority Report and Superman Returns among others.
April, 1st, 2007, by Raffael Dickreuter

aliens!

Well, as usual I've sat down to write a quick bit on my latest clip, and ended up back in Antics creating some other stuff to post on the blog! Just like the frames in this article I used an ALIENS technique on the "Autopilot" music clip, which I just finished last night for "The Selfish Gene". Lucky for me they were after something weird and 2001 ish. I'd been playing around with swapping out geometries on models and got some fun effects. The alien character especially has a cool look. To achieve this effect, start by adding baby fred to the scene your hero is in. Then display your hero characters properties panel. In the geometry area there's an option to 'add', select a baby geometry (baby_fred.k3d). Now your hero's geometry will be replaced by the baby geometry. All animation will be available. If you like you can experiment with different combinations. I found that all the assets will match, but it can be fun. I like the dwarf character you can get by adding male geometry to the baby property!!

Back to the music clip, I built a number of rooms which contained the alien guys and some chairs. These rooms where then duplicated and rotated slightly. They were lined up to form the inside edge of a huge cyclinder. A bit like the rim of a wheel. Each room edge lined up so that one alien could actually walk around the whole rim!

The clip was done in about 2weeks (part time). It's pretty weird but that's the appeal. let me know what you think.

antics official forum

Great news, ANTICS 3D now have a fab new forum! Also there's soon to be a new website along with the official release of V3. I can't wait!! I'll still be here offering my two cents worth.

Spieiberg On Previz

Here is a nice article on how the previz process helped Mr Spielberg.
The War of The Worlds Dvd has some great previz material also.

CrackCreative previz

Check out the fantastic previz clips from Crack Creative. Those guys have developed some great realtime rendering examples and a cool interaction tool also. Not Antics but still very cool!

'Antics Animated Music Video Contest'

AboveTheLine has teamed up with the industry leader in pre-visualization and animation, Antics! For all you animators out there, or even those of you who wish you could learn animation, Antics is simply the easiest tool out there to create animated graphics for your videos or storyboard visualizations before your shoot.

Oh Hail to the Persistance of Vision guys

Incredible reel - lovers of previz rejoice.

Fellow previz artists

Check out this fellow's work. He uses a whole swag of software, including antics.
Please send in your site details too!

Jo had a stalker!

Seems the talented young actress I used in "Looking Back" had a very close fan!

My second attempt

Hi, just thought you might like to check out my second previz ever, It was done about 10mths ago. I'd approach the whole thing quite differently now! Still it's not bad!
"Car Chase"

Straight out of the box

I've posted a comparison page for the "Looking Back" clip which has recieved some great feedback!
It shows what can be achieved straight from ANTICS 3D. HERE

Some tips from the clip "LOOKING BACK"

Check out the "Looking Back"clip.

Hi, today I went through the 'Looking Back' project files and saved out some stills so I could share some behind the scenes stuff. So here goes, the first shows how the swap out the heads trick worked. The central character needed to be 'with child' and I needed a solution which was purely Antics. As with all the 3d content, the whole clip is from Antics library of characters and props. A sphere for a tummy and some shading on a jumper shader did the job. The second image is from the graveyard. Again I was looking for an Antics solutions so every cross is made up of two rectangle boxes. They are then placed one by one so that the followed the contour of the ground. The panoramic view is aided by some cool Sky maps I've got in addition to the Antics library of sky maps. The sky is mapped onto a sphere, this way it can be rotated to put the sun exactly where you want it. In the final outdoor scene of the clip I animated a rotation on the sky so the clouds looked like they were drifting.

The next frame is showing how the path is set for the the camera crane on the baseball field. I draw the path flat on the ground, starting at the end position,(close to the feet) then place points radially out so that the path resembles a snail shell. Then I set the height of each point in a side view. In the shot the boy's grip on the bat was done in the grasp editor and the hat was attached using an attach command.(which was kinda broke every time the scene reloaded). The amy base scene had some paths in the sky for the f-15 aircraft and some more on the ground for the tanks. The real trick here is that the character's head also needed swapping but the helmet remained with the body model. The shot got a heavy post treatment so a billboard blue screen was put in once the shot was worked out. To seperate the guy out.

Lastly I wanted to demonstrate the lighting of the bedroom scene. The shutters were built using the box primitives, the orange card in the tv is for the inset of some vision, the path around the bed show where the camera travelled. Outside, across the road are some buildings with night shots of a city used as shaders. The shutters are setup to catch some of the lights between the slots. The effect was enhanced with a post treatment to make some light rays. A light on a path gives the tv flicker lighting.

That's it for now. I've got a before and after clip here. Or you can check out the final clip here - "Looking Back".

Be sure to bring some tissues!

Tony.

Diamond Chaser

Check out Stefan's latest work, some great action!
I really like the way he did the guy hanging on the back of the tail of the biplane.
I also wanted to say a big thanks for the support.

lights, shadows, yucky lookats and other stuff.

Well I've finished by latest epic, you might catch it on Antics website next month. It's been a big job 11scenes in 16 days. I'd thought I'd write a bit about some new things I tried out.........

Creating more characters

High on my wish list for Antics 3d is the ability to import Poser characters. In the meantime here is a hot tip I've just started using. Find two characters of similiar size. Say Girl A and Girl B. If you'd like A's head on B's body, then animate B to do whatever you want first. When you are done, use the shaders editor to set the head of B to invisible. Now save out poses of B and get A do follow the same animation. Hide A's body (leaving the head!) and you've got yourself a new character. You could try experiment with link/attach the head to B's body also. Good Luck!

desert background

For Stefan who wrote.....Hey Tony, I'm just finishing up on my epic pre-viz. :) As you I'm sure know, It's in the 14'th hour that things get hairy. I had a bit of frustrating day with "goto" paths getting corrupted by "lookats" in antics. Anyway, I will send you a link to my viz as soon as one exists. I'm excited to share it. - how did you do your desert?

A warm welcome to "L.A. Antics 3d meetup group"!

Hi all, thought you might like to hear what Brad Kolacinski, (Antics 3d U.S.)
had to say about this forum,

Hi Tony,
This is great. We will definitely push folks to the blog.
Thank you for setting this up. I love the Reality Hacker trailer...
great camera work and lighting!
Regards,
Brad Kolacinski
Director of Marketing Operations- the Americas

Thanks Brad!
For anyone in L.A. who would like to know more about Antics.........

xray look

A cool look can be achieved by hiding certain objects and then choosing "display Hidden objects". This effect was helped by picking some night shots of the city as texture maps for the buildings. The whole scene is made from library content and took about 1/2 hr.

Reality Hacker previz

I've been using Antics for a little while now. It can be a great tool, the package overall is good. Sometimes the logic is a little unorthodox though.

The latest clip "Reality Hacker" is kinda of a showcase of where I'm at with the program. (www.previz.com.au).

The clip took advantage of some workflows I've solved involving animated texture maps, simulating depth of field, x-ray look, set construction techniques using a photograph and lighting tricks.

I'll post some more explantations and screen shots soon.

WELCOME ANTICS USERS

I've created this blog to share my experiences with Antics 3d.

This is a NON-BIASED blog which is totally independant.

I encourage vibrant discussion on all things related to PREVIZ and ANTICS 3d.