TWO QUESTIONS FOR A:M PROS

[Neeblesquibb]

Hello all. My two questions are...

 

1) How do we model/animate a natural moving/looking/behaving METAL CHAIN? Complete with links, and all.... what's the best way? or short cuts? tips? tricks? actual pre-made model someone might have to wanna give?

 

And...

 

2) How many passes are suggested for a BROADCAST QUALITY slightly-more-than-good end product (maybe just under great, but above pretty good).

 

Okay, maybe three questions....

 

3) Anything I should know about final format for editing in Final Cut Pro HD (on the Mac), with the desire for an HD or WIDESCREEN compatibility?

 

Many thanks in advance for your help.

 

-Jim

[KenH]

1) http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16884&hl=

Also check the thread on the second page link in that thread.

 

2) I think the minimum is about 5x5 passes. (Don't sue me if I'm wrong!!!)

 

3) Don't know.

[MiddleKid]

1) Personally, I have no idea, but I think it's been done before.

 

2) Ditto - 5x5 gives you smooth shadows and almost perfect anti-aliasing. Though the new "soften" option in v12 might get you the same results at less than 5x5.

 

Of course, the regular A-Buffer renderer is fine for most things. In my experience, multipass gives you much nicer ray-traced shadows and motion blur, but takes much longer. If you haven't already, you might want to do some side-by-side comparisons and see if multipass is worth the extra time.

 

3) If you have enough space and CPU power, render and edit at the highest resolution you think will be used. You can always shrink it later. At work we experimented with "up-rezing" old footage to HD... Looked like crap next to actual HD footage.

 

Presets for 1080i and 720p are already in the render panel.

 

Also, to save time animate and render at 24 fps then use FinalCut or AfterEffects to do a 3:2 pulldown. It looks just as good and can save you tons of time and disk space on large projects.

[humbleworm]

Hi Jim,

 

For your first question regarding animating a chain, you might want to look into using a physics plug-in written by Steffen Gross (see this topic: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...hl=physics&st=0)

 

I'm not sure if that link will go to the right topic, but you can do a search for 'physics' and it should come up.

 

There is a sample on his web page that shows a chain. (It's about the seventh on down on his samples page.)

 

Chris

[ChrisThom]

For the chain here's a post and project file I did a few months ago using dynamic constraints.

[Rodney]

Run... don't walk to the following post:

 

Bicycle Chain Project by Dan Hartman

 

The link for downloading is still good.

This project file was slated for inclusion on the Extra CD but I don't think it made it.

[ddustin]

The Bike chain project is excellent!!

 

Well done!!

 

David