HAVE YOU BEEN LOOKING?
Have you been checking out the galleries on some of the sites related to Vue or Poser lately? There really is a revolution going on and it seems to be going on quietly outside of those communities. The creative power put forth by these latest tools or versions of tools is really changing things.
Think back for a moment. Remember a time when we looked at the best of game intros from Capcom or Konami, seeing the cinematic scenes of Soul Blade or the movie style opening of Onimusha. We knew that a major effort went into the creation of them, requiring enormous manpower and highly skilled artists, usually using very expensive tools.
Today, images like this are found in the daily gallery on the Vue 6 Website. There are equally telling images on the Cornucopia 3D galleries. This is the future! Not done by large teams or by using extremely expensive tools that have been around for over fifteen years, but done by the artist at home with tools becoming more and more accessible to everyone everyday.
One thing that is as yet telling is that we don't see enough animation at this level from the home artist. Render times can be a deterrent even with some of the faster computers today. Still there are ways to circumvent this issue as well. The price of machines is such that a small 5 unit render stack can be put together for the price of one main machine a few years ago. Or one can get a second, single top of the line box as a render engine and keep working on their current machine.
And then there is IClone 2. The next generation characters in the IClone realtime machinima creation software are starting to look rather amazing. They are much higher res and will only continue to improve as computers become faster and more powerful. They now have really nice scenery generation tools as well. Remember, in IClone you pretty much have everything to create complete machinima movies in one package. It's only a matter time, as we can see from the latest XBox or PS3 games, before IClone allows one to hit Final Fantasy quality.
If you haven't been looking at what's going on in these galleries, take a look at what's out there. Some of this stuff is more than worth keeping an eye on. If you ever find yourself limiting your creative desires because you are worried about what's feasible, a trip through some of these galleries might be the inspiration you need to remember that there are no limits today!
Think back for a moment. Remember a time when we looked at the best of game intros from Capcom or Konami, seeing the cinematic scenes of Soul Blade or the movie style opening of Onimusha. We knew that a major effort went into the creation of them, requiring enormous manpower and highly skilled artists, usually using very expensive tools.
Today, images like this are found in the daily gallery on the Vue 6 Website. There are equally telling images on the Cornucopia 3D galleries. This is the future! Not done by large teams or by using extremely expensive tools that have been around for over fifteen years, but done by the artist at home with tools becoming more and more accessible to everyone everyday.
One thing that is as yet telling is that we don't see enough animation at this level from the home artist. Render times can be a deterrent even with some of the faster computers today. Still there are ways to circumvent this issue as well. The price of machines is such that a small 5 unit render stack can be put together for the price of one main machine a few years ago. Or one can get a second, single top of the line box as a render engine and keep working on their current machine.
And then there is IClone 2. The next generation characters in the IClone realtime machinima creation software are starting to look rather amazing. They are much higher res and will only continue to improve as computers become faster and more powerful. They now have really nice scenery generation tools as well. Remember, in IClone you pretty much have everything to create complete machinima movies in one package. It's only a matter time, as we can see from the latest XBox or PS3 games, before IClone allows one to hit Final Fantasy quality.
If you haven't been looking at what's going on in these galleries, take a look at what's out there. Some of this stuff is more than worth keeping an eye on. If you ever find yourself limiting your creative desires because you are worried about what's feasible, a trip through some of these galleries might be the inspiration you need to remember that there are no limits today!
7 Comments:
It is amazing what can be done now using off the shelf, cheap programs.
With Poser in hand, Vue, and Silo you have the whole kit you need to make a movie that could in essense look almost as good as Final Fantasy Advent Child and many cut scenes from video games!
There is a lot of power there that can be utilized.
Poser also works with with the Optitrack Full Body Motion software and cameras! I used raw bvh from it and Poser ate it up just right.
The power is there and I hope to see animation thrown out.
I wanted to share a movie utilizing the methods we talk about
http://www.destinymovie.com/
Good news on the Flogtales front! I finally got an artist that seems to be working out! I will know for sure in about a day or so! Yay!
Yeah I saw that Destiny movie when someone posted a link to it here before. This is exactly the type of thing we need to see more of. As more artists produce quality work in the off-the-shelf programs and especially as more realistically rendered material shows up, the big guys will certainly take notice. The paradigm will have to change.
If your home computer doesn't have the horsepower to render animations, there is a solution. There are companies and render farms that can process your animations with multi-machine renders for a low price. If animation is the direction you want to go with the new and powerful tools that are available to the home user, an online render farm may be your answer.
That's avery good point. I completely forgot about the online render farm solutions out there. I believe we (at work) looked into them once before. That might be worth another look just to see what's available today and what kind of rates are going around.
Nice!!!!!!!
If it's possible to create something that looks better than Final Fantasy,then what about pixar's finding nemo? could anything top that CGI quality?
I thinks it's possible.
-Travis
2 of my many blogging sites...
www.myspace.com/omnimegnalon
www.xanga.com/zencrono
Hey Shawn...
So you're animating in Poser now?
How is it for animation?
Thanks!
I have nothing against Poser and I use it for background characters and such and maybe even for rigging and importing BVH.
I mean at the end of the day you have an animation and rigging program with cloth and hair and Vue is the scenery and rendering.
I have used it in the past and think it will be good to do my motioncapture testing with.
I'm going for C4D but I think the quality between Poser and Vue could rival or get you a good looking movie.
My movie simply calls for more stylized characters. :)
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