Third Floor - FXGUIDE SEYMOUR ARTICLE

listen to interview

Hi guys, found this fantastic article on The Third Floor. It is written by a fellow flame artist in Mike Seymour for fxguide. The Third Floor did the previz on such films as • Beowulf• The Happening• Cloverfield• Eragon• Chronicles of Narnia, Prince Caspian and are currently working on • Avatar• Star Trek• Starship Dave• Chronicles of Narnia: The voyage of the Dawn Treader• X-men Origins: Wolverine !!!!!!

If you get a chance checkout the article. It's not Antics but it's very interesting. (BTW check out the level of detail in the Narnia material, gone are the days of GREY BOXY PREVIZ, The King is Dead, Long live the King!!)

Antics for Previz

Today I want to chat about using Antics as a previz tool for production. As you may know, I run Ammo Previz as a service to directors and producers who wish to communicate creative concepts to particular audiences. Many of you may have travelled down the same road as I did in researching and developing skills to service this growing trend.
(more in comments)

bouncing ball

There are a number of ways to get your props to move (animate) in a scene.
One way is to 'direct' the prop to a given point in the room and another is to have the prop follow a path which you have created on the floor.
This article goes through some other approaches.

KEYFRAME METHOD
Using a "freecamera" and "attach" combo, it's possible to not only keyframe the move but also you get the advantage of a curve editor as well.
Experiment with attaching a prop to a freecamera. Now open a new viewport for that camera, and use this to control the freecamera, BUT use your master camera view to see what you are doing. If you do this whilst in the direct mode you can keyframe the freecamera. Once you have the move worked out, select the element on the timeline and choose "edit curve". Note, the first and last keyframes can't be adjusted so be careful with where you start and end you camera move. For those not familiar with a curve editor, it shows you the values for the x,y & z position of the camera over time.
You can adjust the curves to achieve different values for the camera position and the way the camera moves from position to position.

In this example I create a camera move to mimmick a bouncing ball.

If you pan the freecamera you will also get control over the rotation of the prop.

An extension of this method is to tell the freecamera to target another element in the scene, in this way you can achieve some dynamic properties. For example, aligning a prop to a specifc angle regardless of position. You can try doing this whilst the camera is on a path also. This is how I got the soccer ball to spin in the Skull Shot clip. (attach the prop to the freecamera, tell the freecamera to follow a path, get the camera to target some things during the travel).

It's my hope that these animation functions become possible in the next release, until then...

Have fun.

T.

Rigging a Skeleton Character

To create your very own Skeleton Character you will need, 1 pair of sharp scissors (get your mum to help) 1 sheet of white paper and 1 pencil.....
oops sorry wrong blog....
To make a skeleton character for ANTICS 3D you only need Antics and Sketchup.
Start by finding a skeleton that you like the look of. Pick one which is standing upright and in a T-Pose or close to the rest pose of an Antics character.
Once you've got the skeleton in sketchup open up Antics and bring in a character. (I used the robot).
What where going to do is to move between the two apps for every limb and bone set.

1) The first thing to do is select the desired bone in sketchup then follow these steps, "ctrl c" to copy, "ctrl a" to select all then hit "delete" to clear the page, now choose edit "Paste in Place". This will give you just the bone. Now save as .skp and name it something usefull. (like Lfoot.skp) ok now "ctrl z" to bring back the full skeleton ready for the next piece.

2) in Antics, import the Lfoot.skp and do not move it. (you may want to apply a scale as you import if the object is too small, do the skull as this will help set the scale value) Now notice that in the props list you have a Lfoot file.

3) go back to step 1) and repeat many times....until you have the whole skeleton in.

Now still without moving anything in Antics, Select each prop and right click "edit pivot". You'll want to set the pivot to be where the joint is. (eg a forearm bone pivots at the elbow)

Congrats you have a rigged skeleton!! Now to get the Antics Character to drive it.
The concept here is to closey align your skeleton to the underlying skeleton of an existing Antics Character (AC). The closer your wrist is to the AC's wrist the better
the animation. You can select all the props that make up your sekeleton and scale, move and rotate the whole set into a position 'within' the AC. Ok. Now I used a command to get each bone attached the the AC joint. If you haven't checked out the command console, do yourself a favour. It's in View/Command Console.... once open type (tip... once you start to type you'll see a list of valid syntax, just select the word you want and then press space bar, now you can start on the next entry)
it should read

attach Lfoot Robot_01 Bip01 L Foot

This command will attach your skeleton's leftfoot to the AC's Lfoot. (I chose a robot as my Antics Character)

Do this for all your bones and you are done. Now hide the AC. Select the AC in the character list and direct it to walk somewhere, or do something and you'll have your new character.

If you want another skeleton character, select the AC in the Set/Character list, CTRL D and then Ctrl V.

This procedure of mapping rigid bodies to AC skeletons/joints can also be applied to ANTICS Animated props.

view example

FREE STUFF and SKULL SHOT

A good supply of free motion capture (.bvh) is mocapdata.
Also if you are in need of a no-nonsense audio editor try Audacity

I for one like the term ANYMATION which Overman has forwarded to the Antics Forum. original article I had heard the term used in dscussion here and there and I think it is closer to describing Antics clips than the Machinima label. I don't think it's the best name, I'm just not offended by it.

On another note, I had a little fun with my newly built skeleton dudes, now that's using your head!
T.
(btw, I did the sound also)

WELCOME ANTICS USERS

If you're new to this blog welcome, remember when you get to the bottom of this page there's another few packed full of tips and stuff. Also check out this article
as well. It's makes for some interesting reading. All comments welcome.
Happy Antics -ing!

Skeleton walks - DFA

Today is my birthday and I thought it would be cool to map a skeleton bone for bone with an antics character. Well it took a while but the results are way cool. Now I have a skeleton that walks! Here's a little taste of what I'm thinking of doing with him. cheers. (it's dfa direct-from-antics)

Emotions for Antics!

HOT OF THE PRESS May 23, 2008 •
"..............we now have Ian Wilson working alongside our development team in Cambridge. Ian is the founder and CEO of Emotion AI (http://www.emotionai.com) and over ten years of experience in Europe and Japan of applying technology to simulate how humans react . .....................It will take some time to integrate an emotions into Antics and make them as easy to use as we, and you, would like and fit them in with other developments, so you will have to be patient for a while. In the meantime, don’t forget that there are ways to get emotional impact in Antics videos using music ,camera cuts etc. – Tony Bannan’s videos “Looking Back"...........".full story

Ned Kelly Dance

Ned Kelly is an Australian icon. He was a bushranger, who, to aviod being shot whilst robbing banks, built a helmet and chest plate forged from iron. I guess he was the first ironman! Anyway I've built a little Ned out of lego and animated them in Antics. The pieces are imported separately and linked to various joints on a standard character. Once everything is hooked up the legoman will do everything the ref character does. Then it's a matter of hiding the ref character.

The lego parts are freely availble from Ldraw and LeoCad. There are hundreds of lego style props to import into antics to create your own lego clip! Good luck.

zombie

A zombie effect can be achieved easily when you combine the pin tool with the link tool. The setup is just like the "pushing wheelchair" topic covered in an earlier post, the plan is to create a sphere for each wrist. place the sphere on the wrist and the pin the wrist to the sphere. Now if you link/attach the sphere's to the character then the arm animation will be overwritten (made void). If you place the spheres away from the body then the arms can be set to extebd forward just like a zombie. My favorite zombie films are....I am Legend, 28 days and Shaun of the Dead. Have fun!!

Oh, btw, I got the texture maps from the web, and the character is a cowboy (you may want to experiment with different walk cycles for the character and slower durations in the timeline).

youtube

Reflections

To create a reflection, like the one in my bathroom scene in Folie or in the pond scene by raybearmass is simply a matter of creating an identical set and then rotating it 180 degrees. Sometimes I like to use the frosted glass texture, (it's from one of the doors), to create a material for the glass, then adjust transparency to suit.
raybearmass also found this great app for making your reflections move

On a personal note, I've now started work in my new job in my new city and so I'll post some of my Antics-Lego experiments soon. Thank goddness for sykpe so I can keep intouch with the family.

How to make a Sketchup MECH walk in ANTICS

There is a wonderful tutorial on the Antics Forum, thanks to Robert Kim and Eric Rosoff from the Antics Team.
You can see a sample clip here

Good Camera placement.

The 180° rule is a basic film editing guideline that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. learn more If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle. Some filmmakers state that the fictional axis created by this rule can be used to plan the emotional strength of a scene. They believe the closer you place the camera to the axis, the more emotionally involved the audience will be.
Here is an image you might like to apply to a billboard. Use the billboard in your scene to line up your cameras if you wish. Just set the billboard to be half as high as it is wide, and set the texture blend property to ADDITIVE and turn DISABLE LIGHTING on.

v3.1

A welcome addition to the Antics/previz armoury is the ability to import .skp from Google's Sketchup application. The latest version of Antics V3.1, just released, allows you to import models and textures into Antics in one simple step. The .skp file format joins the .3ds .fbx and .bvh which are already supported.

Sketchup is great buddy to Antics as it also features a simple yet powerful workflow and fast results. It's a 3D software tool that combines a tool-set with an intelligent drawing system, plus you can create models using real-world coordinates. Best of all, it's also free! Check out sketchup .

Another very cool feature is the Google 3d Warehouse option which is just under the import selection. If you are on-line, you will be taken direct to the 3d Warehouse via a window within Antics. Once you've found something you like, it's as simple as clicking on it, follow the prompts and BAM ! it's in your scene ready to go. The process allows you to download free content straight into the scene. (very cool )

You can find out more from the Offical Antics Blog which has also just been launched. (Thanks Gary.)

Antics Community Callout!

Antics is such a cool program, the developers have really done a fine job of keeping the product user friendly. The latest move to make the application free has no doubt increased the user base.
So now we have a great variety of users of all skill levels. The aim of this blog is to share experiences and opinions about ANTICS and previz. If you have a story you'd like to share, or a subject you would like covered in depth, please leave your comments, or send me an email. (ammo(at)previz(dot)com(dot)au

I'd like to welcome Gary Conway back to the Antics support team. He was fantastic in helping me through my questions when I first started with Antics!

MOCAP and Mr Bones

BVH files are motion capture data, which when imported into Antics, allow your characters to replicate the moves made by the original actor. The data is collected by various means, commonly, markers are placed on the joints of the actor so that xyz information can be extracted. Most often this is achieved with little white balls sewn into a catsuit style garment.The actor performs in front of a camera array to collect the info. Data is constructed by then plotting the movement of each ball. Many camera views are required to get accuracy. Another method I saw recently was a solution designed by a N.Z. firm which utilize little geo magnets. In this way the data is much much more accurate and doesn't induce the problems associated with camera rigs, lighting and limb crossover. In fact this approach allows an actor to get on a horse and ride away in full sun on location! Both the actor and the horse can be rigged with the collectors. If you would like to try out the bvh path with Antics, Mr bones has offered a free sample of a Jedi bvh. http://www.truebones.com/JediBones.zip

animation creation

Here is a video introduction to a free app called qavimator. Developed as a tool for Second Life, it has the abilty to *import, edit and create bvh files. As you all know, with the latest version of ANTICS3D, it's now possible to import .bvh and either have a character "play" the animation or set in the character's properties tab. It's my first vid tut so I hope you like it. I found using the application fairly straightforward. (left click and shift left click and thumbwheel for cam view). Click on a body part and then adjust the sliders on the right. Move your timeline along and set the next pose. A nice feature is the ease in and ease out options with is available for each keyframe. (I'd love for antics to adopt this!) It means your characters movements won't be robotic. If you want to go back and change a parameter then just click on the keyframe in the timeline and off you go. Very clever design, nice job.

I wanted my character to move smoothly from the antics sitting pose to the first frame of the custom animation I was creating. So to align the Antics character with the model in qavi, I set up the Camera views in both apps to match, (the window sizes) and then set the qavi tab to 'Not' protect first frame. Now it was simply a matter of posing my qavi girl to match the Antics girl. It took three gos. So have fun, oh I did discover one bug, the app doesn't like all .bvh files. Let me know how you go.

(larger window flash version here)

Update: thanks to JPiazzo

Carnegie Mellon University has a HUGE collection of free motion capture files 2605 in all vailable for download free with no use restrictions. They have a database that you can search and small video files of each motion. They are in tvd, c3d, and amc format not directly compatable with Antics but this tool AMC2BVH, http://vipbase.net/amc2bvh/ will convert them to BVH files also get another free program bvhacker here: http://davedub.co.uk/bvhacker/ you'll need this also.

I downloaded the entire archive here http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/faqs.php once the CMU .amc file is converted to BVH it will import into Antics - but not perfectly. Most of the problem is in the initial arm offset ( left and right clavicle & humerus joints) also sometimes neckalignment. I have had success editing these files prior to import in the bvHacker program using XYZ offsets.(If you try rclavicle z +19, lclavicle z -19 lhumerus z -50 rhumerus z +50 as a start) Also these files are recorded at 120 frams per second which will play slow in Antics. Bvhackers Frame Time function can re-sample the speed though. You can also trim the moves into smaler parts which is a good idea as some captures are quite long but have many good smaller moves like turns, twists, and walk run stop transitions. I'd be happy to do a tut if I figure this all out.

Skype discussion on Folie

There will be a skype chat 1pm Pacific time. march 16th. all welcome
just skype ammopreviz or ricky grove to join in.
FolieProduction notes

Baking Shadows

Not such a new practice these days is baking. No not cakes, it's the term used by 3d guys to speed up renders. The method is to have the app create really cool lighting and shadow effects which can be rendered out as texture maps with the effect baked in. I've done some tests with a simple version of this. Say you want some shading where a floor meets the wall. You can paint a texture map which looks like a very fuzzy black line with a suitable alpha or matte channel. Then place on a billboard and put wherever you want shadowing. The same goes for lighting efects on a wall. Like sunlight from outside. Right click textures, then right click edit, gets you into the (colour texture blend options) controls. Enjoy.

T.
Oh BTW I'm moving cities/jobs (film at last!) so my blog enteries may be a little light in the next 2 months.

Machiniplex - Skype Chat

--------------------------------------INVITE-------------------------------------------
Hi everyone! I am a machinima filmmaker and I manage a site (Machiniplex.com)devoted to quality machinima films. We began in October of 2007 and have "Premiered" 5 machinima films. Recently, I invited filmmaker Tony Bannan to Premiere his film "Folie a Duex" at machiniplex. If you frequent this site much you'll know that Tony won the recent Antics "Medical Theme" contest with his film. I asked him if we could present his film at our site and in addition have a Question and Answer session with him on Skype. He agreed and will be appearing on Skype this Sunday March 16th at 1pm (Pacific Time) to discuss the making of his film and to answer questions. For those who have never heard/used Skype, it is a free internet voice/chat program favored by machinima filmmakers for discussions and collaboration since it can connect people from all over the world via voice or text. Check Skype.com for details. If you don't have a microphone, you can use your keyboard and join a text chat. "Folie a Duex" is an excellent film; well made, imaginative and uses the Antics program to its best. Come by our Skype chat if you'd like to talk to Tony and learn more about this terrific film. -Ricky GroveMachiniplex.com