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ZachBG

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Everything posted by ZachBG

  1. Darn it; I dinna even know it was happenin'!
  2. OK, it seems that the browser is working better but still not working entirely... it stops just as Week 8 begins, almost as the it can't find the end of the movie. But, given 30 people have downloaded it without complaint, maybe it's just me...
  3. Yeah, twice on the download. But now I'm watching it in the browser and it seems to be doing fine. Strange.
  4. Did anyone else lose the movie past about 1:22? All I get are the last title card and the last frame of the fall in alternating sequence til about 2:22 and then blank white for the rest of the movie. Did I download a corrupted version or should I buy a new computer.
  5. Holy s--- that was good, Robert. Forgive me if this was already asked, but about how long did this take to animate?
  6. Entry fees are (unfortunately) pretty common. (In fact, it's very rare that they aren't used.) I would suggest Googling them to figure out if they're a legit business.
  7. Video only; I can't afford to print to film, nor do I have the memory/disk space to render at film rez. For the new render of Cell-Phone, I used AO for EVERYTHING; it looks really, really good. I also fixed a bunch of animation problems and made a credit sequence for the end (I used a lot of publically available models, and I sure hope I credited everyone responsible). In addition, Jeff did a Dixieland arrangement of a Scott Joplin tune for the end, and Mike gave it all the film grain treatment with a Nattress plug-in. I'll let you know if I ever get famous.
  8. I'm pleased to announce that my short film "The Cell-Phone," winner of the first Mini-Movie contest, will receive its film festival premiere at the D.C. Shorts Festival on Thursday, September 14, 2006. This is a newly re-rendered and revised version, produced with a lot of help from A:Mers Jeff Lee, Mike Stamm, Glenn Antofer, and Rhett Jackson. In addition, my films "<ESC>" and "Soap Opera" will be showing at the first annual Idaho Panhandle International Film Festival in Sandpoint, Idaho. The festival runs from August 24-26.
  9. I don't think I can make it this time. Just too much going on this month.
  10. Re: fades. Although I haven't tried this, Yves once suggested using a Tint post-effect, with both colors set to black, and then animating the percentage from 0 to 100.
  11. In the Buffers tab under Output Options in the render panel, turn the Alpha buffer to OFF. Hey Noel, can that please be made the default again?
  12. In addition, depending on your DVD authoring software, if you're doing widescreen, you may want to render anamorphically so folks with widescreen TVs get the full resolution experience. I use 720x480 with the aspect ratio set to 1.18 (actually 1.185, but I don't know if AM accepts that much precision). The picture will appear squeezed, but if the widescreen flag is set it will look fine when seen on a DVD. You can re-size it to 853x480 to preview this.
  13. Wolf 359 is also seen directly in the first episode of DS9 (it's the battle in which Sisko's wife was killed).
  14. I got burned the last time we did it on Mother's Day, so I'm voting "no" for the 13th. I think any of the other days are good, though.
  15. If anyone's interested, I re-rendered the final shot of this with AO and soft reflections... and added Robert's crowd gasp; thanks, Robert. You can find it here.
  16. My short film <ESC> just got invited to Italy! Specifically, the SEDICICORTO International Film Festival Forlì. I know nothing whatsoever about it, but they have a nice web site. It's in October of 2006. Anyone want to pay for a plane ticket?
  17. Yep. I used a free HDR image which I converted to a jpeg (because I didn't have enough memory to handle the original) and made that the target for Image-Based Lighting. (see http://www.hash.com/users/zachbg/vodcastblog for more info...)
  18. Not much for a tutorial, it's just certain properties that I happened to get right. The ice itself is at 50% reflectivity, 30% specular size, and 100% specular intensity, with a light blue diffuse color. I have a sky dome with a freely available sky image (follow the link from here next to "skydome.zip") over the whole scene to provide a reflection. And in the render panel, I have soft reflections ON with 10% sampling. That's it. I think the low sampling number actually helps it look more like irregular ice. That's a good idea, but later in the animation the ice cracks, and takes up pretty much the whole frame. It's probably a lot less on a decent machine.
  19. Those of you who are familiar with my work know I'm not a render monkey--I love beautiful images as much as anybody, but I'm too impatient to wait for them (or to learn enough about lighting to make them). However, my recent Olympic vodcast got such a good response I decided to re-render the last shot, where Shaggy falls into an iced-over swimming pool. I used Image-Based Lighting for the general outdoor look, and decided to try soft reflections on the ice and see if it would look any good. Hot DAMN! This is with only 10% sampling on the soft reflections, and 9-pass multipass. It really looks like ice, doesn't it? (Of course, at eighteen minutes per frame, I don't think I'll be doing it on a regular basis, but...)
  20. And ya know, I would have done you, too, John, if I knew how to pronounce your last name.
  21. I use Pro Tools LE with an MBox; basically a USB interface with two XLR/instrument jacks. It's fairly expensive as sound interfaces go--$250--but you get to use the same software that Skywalker Sound uses. (I say "fairly expensive" but most ProTools interfaces are in the thousands of dollars.) Then I have an Octava mic which I got for like 10% of retail at Guitar Center (this was two years ago at least, so I doubt that promotion is still running.) But sometimes, if I don't have the mBox handy, I just use a free, open-source sound editor called Audacity and my built-in mic or a headset mic. That's all you need, really, especially if you process the sound with a hiss remover. Hey, the crowd is very quiet during dives! It's like a tennis match, except with water. And no rackets or John McEnroe.
  22. Thanks! There was flickering because Jeff's skylights have a problem occasionally with 24 fps, for some reason; they get out of sync eventually, depending on the number of passes. I've never been able to figure out why. I would have done that bit with AO as well, if it hadn't popped out at 30 minutes per frame. I'd like to re-render it, but I'll probably never get around to it...
  23. Everything except the last shot, which used a Jeff Lee skylight rig.
  24. thanks guys... I swear I didn't pay anyone to write this... (runs away, embarrassed that he'll pull a Sally Field...)
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