Recent jobs done with A:M

[John Bigboote]

Hey Spliners! Been awhile since I did any 'show-n-tell'...I've been busy, and A:M V15.0E is at the CORE of my operations. Here are two recent jobs, one for Healthy Balance fruit juice and the other for HoMedics new water filter-er. I'm having good results with Yves new ENVIRONMENT SHADER, but I still tend to render with reflections ON anyway. Both of these animations were needed in HD (720P) and average render times were around 4 minutes per frame, totally acceptible for an overnight render. The juice bottle is actually an engineering file imported to A:M as a .OBJ prop, and given dummy attributes right in the choreography(color, transparency, reflectivity, specular, refraction etc.) It was a highly dense 80mb polygonal file, but rendered quick and without glitches- I added the label and cap as separate model files. You may see the Healthy Balance ad in national campaigns, it has people interacting with the bottle...look for it!

 

The water pitcher also came to me as a polygonal engineering file, which we converted to OBJ/3DS- neither of which rendered well. The model was too dense, and too many different parts and many bad splines- SO, I used it simply to generate rotoscope images, and remodeled the pitcher myself in A:M to it's exact dimensions.. I used my favorite Darksim texture (PLUSH) on the white plastic-which gives it a nice 'rimlit' feel, and the environment shader can be seen in the clear plastic. I used a heavy amount of white FOG, but set the pitcher to 'IGNORE FOG' which is a look I like and will use more often. The water is a bump matte animated texture, and the handle holes are a displacement map.

 

BOTH these sequences are straight-out of A:M with little-to-no post-production or color correction.

AMrenders.mov

[TheSpleen]

clap clap clap clap clap clap

[heyvern]

I thought Yves shader was "broken" in 15e? I was trying to use it a while back and it didn't project correctly. Has it been updated somewhere? Or is this a different shader? The spherical mapping didn't seem to work right.

 

Fantastic amazing mind blowing renders by the way. Good grief you would almost think AM is some sort of professional 3D application... uh... wait... it is.... never mind.

 

p.s. Where can I get those genetically modified "coreless" apples? Those will sell like hotcakes.

 

-vern

[Gerry]

Really super excellent work!

[Paul Forwood]

Very nice indeedy!

[robcat2075]

mmm... juice... me thirsty...

 

Looks great!

[Walter Baker]

Wow !!!!

[draagn]

The water is a bump matte animated texture, and the handle holes are a displacement map.

 

Great water, I'm not familiar with a bump matte animated texture, can you explain further?

[nimblepix]

STUNNING!!

[John Bigboote]

Great water, I'm not familiar with a bump matte animated texture, can you explain further?

 

Thanks folks! Glad you like...

Draagn- there was a tutorial on water a few years back...I just looked for and couldn't find it... Jim Talbot or Yves or someone--- it involved using a material/combiner animation that you could then render-out to an animation sequence- and that sequence would work as a good source for making water bumps and displacements. I never really understood the process, but I DID make myself a nice :20 animation sequence that I have used ever since...(my bad)

 

BASICLY- the sequence was a moire of slowly moving soft masses, and applied to a surface (like the surface I have for my water surface) and set to 'bump' or 'displacement' would do a fine job of emulating a water surface. My surface group is also set to be transparent(75%) and highly specular and- most importantly, refractive with a value of 1.25%

 

I'm still looking for that old water tutorial...

[MJL]

Please don't stop looking. And please also, let us know when you find it. Nice work in this vid and nice chicks in the other post.

[NancyGormezano]

perhaps it was this? - OLD OLD Tutorial (ver 8?) - but still has relevance - Babbage Patch Water

 

Nice looking stuff John!

[Gerry]

Wow, Nancy, Great Link! Thanks so much!

[wedgeeguy]

Nice work! Is it cheaper to create stuff in 3d then it is to just film it? Maybe they also needed the models to dance and sing .. or drink themselves in a later commercial spot? I guess they had the models already and just decided to go the 3d route. Maybe it is cheaper then getting a studio together, lighting, camera guys ...ect. ect.? Anywho, it still looks good.

[Gerry]

I've often wondered about the relative expense too. But i think the equation comes down to the fact that the initial creation is expensive, but later re-use and re-purposing becomes cheaper and cheaper, and the models and setups are permanent and will always be exactly the same. Also, changes, alterations and reshoots are easier to do on the fly.

[robcat2075]

Is it cheaper to create stuff in 3d then it is to just film it?

 

Smooth camera moves, with motion in different axa at once like we see in Matt's animation, are pretty difficult to get "for real".

[John Bigboote]

perhaps it was this? - OLD OLD Tutorial (ver 8?) - but still has relevance - Babbage Patch Water

 

Nice looking stuff John!

 

 

BINGO! Thanks Nancy! Now THAT is an OLDIE but GOODY!!!

[Fuchur]

Nice one you got there...

 

I recently did some animation for Pfizer Animal Care (a division of Pfizer, which produces the little blue pill some may know ) with Animation:Master.

The "100 Tage Programm" (100 days programm) of Pfizer is a special programm to decrease the amount of illnesses which some of the milkcows are suffering from while making their life more pleasant.

My company 3We GmbH did an about 90 minutes long educational movie to help farmers to get the best out of the milk-cows with species appropiated methodes.

 

I produced about 16 min of 3d-animation with Animation:Master(v15) for the movie (all of the 3d-stuff). Additional to that I did most of the 2d-Animations in After Effects and / or Animation:Master for the whole movie.

A little preview can be found here: www.premiumfilm.de at the "Animation"-Part of the website. (first entry) and the "Film"-Part (3rd entry).

 

The DVD is now translated in several other languages and can be sold by veterinaries. Hope you enjoy the little peak.

 

See you

*Fuchur*

 

PS: Videos are a bit cropped... I'll talk about that with my guys and see if it is possible to get rid of that problem.

[John Bigboote]

Wow- there's some great stuff, Fuchur! I could'nt watch the 'lasik' animation anymore.

[heyvern]

I think the question of "what is cheaper" to do, real vs. computer isn't about the cost. In some cases it might be the same cost to film real objects as opposed to using 3D. The benefits of 3D come in for absolute and total 100% control over every aspect. PERFECT product shots, PERFECT lighting, PERFECT camera moves. Nothing left to chance. Also in many situations the product may not even exist yet. A product might only exist as "blue prints" or "cad" designs. Being able to get a jump on the advertising in advance of production is always good. They do that with cars all the time. Print ads of cars for the next years model are often not real, just 3D.

 

I remember having to do some stuff with a product that technically existed but... the production had changed slightly. The plastic was a different color. The shape had changed slightly. They didn't have any prototypes for photographing at all... so... had to use 3D. Real photography was not even an option at all.

 

-vern

[Wegg]

A very nice clean render. Very nice.

[Fuchur]

Thanks We had fun producing it.

 

Just to mention it:

You may consider a texture for the apple-internals... it looks a bit unfinished there.

 

*Fuchur*

[agep]

Hi quality work Matt!

[Fuchur]

Nice work! Is it cheaper to create stuff in 3d then it is to just film it? Maybe they also needed the models to dance and sing .. or drink themselves in a later commercial spot? I guess they had the models already and just decided to go the 3d route. Maybe it is cheaper then getting a studio together, lighting, camera guys ...ect. ect.? Anywho, it still looks good.

 

Normally they want it to look very well and cool... and that is the factor that makes it expensive to film it. Productshots are often not made with the acutal product but with a real-life-model made from wax or plastic to make it more controlable and look better. These models are very expensive to create. (more expensive than 3d-renderings). These techniques are often used when they have to shoot pictures from strawberries for icecream or yoghurt-commercials/advertisments, etc.

So if you take that in account, 3d-models can be less expensive. In the end: It is most often equal or more expensive to create the stuff in 3d but as Nancy said: Often it can be reused for other stuff too, which is not that possible with pictures or real-life-movies. You would have to set up your studio in the exact same way with same lightening, etc. which is not very easy to do to get the same look. In 3d-programms you just reload the project and voila.

 

Anyway both methodes have their advantages and disadvantages.

*Fuchur*

[John Bigboote]

Is it cheaper to create stuff in 3d then it is to just film it?

 

Smooth camera moves, with motion in different axa at once like we see in Matt's animation, are pretty difficult to get "for real".

 

A GOOD QUESTION:

 

We do DO a lot of live-action shoots of the 'tabletop' variety here where I work. We have 4 'cyc-ed' stages including the largest sound-stage in the midwest, as well as a full compliment of lighting, dollies, crew and cameras (Including the new 'Red' camera that shoots 4K digital) I have been involved in various live-action product shoots for years. They are a bitch, I avoid them at large costs nowadays. The time, manpower, and energy involved is tremendous...throw an 'art-director' into the mix and the timeframe multiplies enormously with little to no gain. The best camera-camera man- dollie- gaffer can NOT make a perfectly smooth camera move. The amount of post-production sometimes equals or exceeds doing it all in 3D. There ARE times when a shoot is the best way to go... for instance, for the water-pitcher video we need scenes of water pouring in slo-mo into the pitcher and into water glasses. We set-up a down and dirty shoot (1 day with 3 begrudged stagehands) and shot 90fps water pours and got BEAUTIFUL results (there will still be a lot of post) but we never could have gotten water THAT realistic using Realflow, A:M or Blender (or any other app) Real is real, after all!

[Gerry]

Since Nancy pointed us to that water tute on the Babbage site I've been trying to get it to work, with paltry results. Since it was created in Version 6 (!) there are some alterations called for, but it just doesn't seem to want to work for me.

 

I created an animated decal for a displacement map but it doesn't want to "move" in the final render. This is obviously not a version issue, but something's stuck and I can't figure out what. I have nothing to post because the renders are extremely slow and I've been aborting renders after only five or six frames.

 

If anyone has any luck with this I would like to hear about it.

 

EDIT: I have gotten it to work, but apparently the relative scale of some settings have changed since v6 so the effect is there but not nearly as pronounced. I'll post a render shortly.

[Fuchur]

Dont use only -20 or something as value... use -200 or so and have a look again... that should be noticeable.

 

*Fuchur*

[Gerry]

Thanks, fuchur. I'll try that tomorrow. The render I was working on isn't worth showing. Something still isn't working just right.

[Gerry]

Hey Fuchur - I'm looking again at this water tute and I wanted to ask you about where to put that -200 value you mention.

 

EDIT: Here's a single frame using the .mov disp map decal downloaded from the tutorial. I'm getting these blocky artifacts as well as lots of dark specks. I'm leaving off this for now to get back to the decaling tute I'm doing in the "Nightcrawlers" thread but any comments on these artifacts would be welcome.

[robcat2075]

The biggest difference between V6 and V-now will be that displacement doesn't depend on mesh density anymore.

 

 

Don't know if that's an issue here.

[John Bigboote]

Those look to be artifacts from the compression of the QT. ANOTHER difference between V6 and V15 is that V15 can now accept 16 bit color depth images, in .png format. What I did (if I remember correctly) was to transfer the QT to an image sequence...open the image seq in Photoshop (using an action) and transfer it from 8 bit to 16...guassion blur it a little to 'clean it up'... and save it as a .png sequence.

[Paul Forwood]

Wowzers, Fuchur! You did a great job on that cow, the anatomy and the effects! Nice, clean and well illustrated transfer of information.

[Fuchur]

I think John is right here... before with the old method to handledisplacement-mapsthese artifacts were not really effecting the appeareance, because they were very small and only the pixels counted which where at the underlying CP-positions... today all the pixels are used to create these sub-pixel / sub-patch-displacements. So like John told you... a blur should clean these artifacts up.

 

There may although be a possibility to turn the old displacement-version on again. Normally the older features can be accessed by pushing the shift-key while creating, but I dont know it this is the case for displacementmaps too... I dont know when you should push the shift-key here... another hint is the legacy-bump-entry. The old Bump-maps can be accessed like that, but the old displacementmaps?

 

The old behaviour is still there for the Terrain-Wizard, but I dont think it can handle animated decals. So I am a little bit stuck what to do to get the old displacement-map-behaviour... anyone else has a idea?

 

Wowzers, Fuchur! You did a great job on that cow, the anatomy and the effects! Nice, clean and well illustrated transfer of information.

 

Thanks Paul

Good to hear that it worked out We wanted exactly that clean and learning-style. It should be strictly informational...

 

Most of the stuff we visualized isn't very pleasant to watch in reality (and most often cant be watched in reality) and for most stuff we didn't have very well suited images to see how it should look. But we asked the payer about it, had a look at some reallife-stuff (you dont want to know it in more detail, trust me ). We showed the animations to the payer and they gave as good feedback on the parts that needed some work. In the end we got to the final result with very few adjustments. I separated the renderings in such a way, that even with the changes I only had to render some parts 2 times, very few things 3 times. The payer was very pleased with the animations and I am quite too. I although liked the variety of features I used from A:M v15.

The new Fluids-particles were used for some of the fluid-animations (for example matter had to be visualized), I used Bird-Flocks for bakteria which would cause illnesses, displacementmaps to create several effects and for the blood and the other stuff in there I used a particlesystem with animations of the 3d-objects of the blood-cells, bakteria and ketons (toxins produced by the bakteria), which were rendered before from real 3d-objects in A:M.

 

It was much fun!

*Fuchur*

[John Bigboote]

The Homedics water pitcher job finished this week, turned out pretty good. It will be used in point-of-purchase displays at BED BATH and BEYOND stores, so look for it this Christmas while shopping for an egg-beater for Aunt Hildegard. It is a newfangled pitcher that uses UV light to kill living organisms that your standard charcoal filter lets pass...bacteria and stuff, and they hope to sell a lot of them in this 'swine-flu' era. I got to use a little AMFluid for the 'filling' action... some but very little After Effects work done on this. In the final edit my animations were covered in text and titles...

Homedics_edited_sm.mov

[MJL]

Great ! Now I can worry about whether or not I've plugged in my pitcher of water!

 

As usual, great work John, (or Matt, ) You set a pretty high bar for us newbies.

[TheSpleen]

you earned your money Sir!

[NancyGormezano]

top-notch - the animation clearly illustrates the process and it looks terrific - especially the water/fluids.

 

I'm having a good time filling in for the sounds as I watch your animation - first the whoosh-gushing sound of water coming from the tap, then the slogging/dripping thru the filter, and then being totally bihzzzit bug-zapped into sterility.

[John Bigboote]

Took awhile- but the entire Homedics water pitcher animation is now live on the Homedics webpage in entirety.

http://homedics.com/restore CLICK THE 'SEE IT IN ACTION' BUTTON

[jimd]

excellent work did you put the whole thing together

or just supply the animation

 

j

[KenH]

Good work! Love the water effects particularly. Is that AM?

[John Bigboote]

Thanks JimD and KenH... I just provided the animation, the edit was done in Flame (discreet) by a colleague of mine. Any water with the pitcher was done in A:M, there are some live-action shots of water we did in a fishbowl on a tabletop using a RedCam in slo-motion(HD) There is also a shot of the cupboard doors opening... they had just shot stills of them open and closed, and dissolved between them... the client said he wanted to see the doors open even if we had to reshoot... so I took the 2 plates and did that scene in about an hour, real easy in A:M/After Effects and they loved it.

[HomeSlice]

Nice commercial Matt. You guys done good!

[itsjustme]

Extremely well done, Matt!

[steve392]

I found myself not looking at the animation ,but interested in the product .I had to watch it a couple of times to just see the animation,so it work's very well .Great work John

[NancyGormezano]

very nice Matt!

[SpaceToast]

I've mostly been busy building the frontend on FoodFiltr.com, but this was a project I did last year. Beantown Project is an awesome local group from Boston. I designed their album art for the "Moving at the Speed of Life" album. The rest of the pics are here.

 

[jason1025]

I've mostly been busy building the frontend on FoodFiltr.com, but this was a project I did last year. Beantown Project is an awesome local group from Boston. I designed their album art for the "Moving at the Speed of Life" album. The rest of the pics are here.

 

 

 

Was that a skycast rig to help get the quality of light you achieved?

[SpaceToast]

*has to check...*

 

Nope, no rigs, just standard A:M lights and 16-25x oversampling.

 

Here is the setup for the cover art:

 

 

And here is the setup for the product shot. Note, with all the reflective surfaces in the image, the use of ambient white "cards" behind the shadow-casting lights:

 

 

Cheers,

-Matt

[NancyGormezano]

16-25x oversampling.

 

Thanks for the lighting info - very handy, neat explicit diagrams - Your final images look terrific.

 

For oversampling - Do you mean 16-25 passes? or rendering at 16-25 times the final size (that doesn't sound right) ? Or?

[SpaceToast]

For oversampling - Do you mean 16-25 passes? or rendering at 16-25 times the final size (that doesn't sound right) ? Or?

 

Nope! Sorry, you're right. 16-25 passes. So 4x4 or 5x5 oversampling.