Gerry Posted April 4, 2004 Posted April 4, 2004 It's been awhile since I posted here as I've been busy moving from NY to North Carolina, and looking for work. I may have a shot at a job designing an employees' instructional website for a home improvement chain, so I did this animation of a deck assembling itself as a portfolio piece to impress them into hiring me. My 3D animation page I used toon line rendering for the first time and it worked out really well! It was perfect for the appearance I wanted. I like to post both .avi and .mov versions for my website. The original render was about 11 megs. I was astonished to see that the .mov version compressed to 680k with almost no loss of quality, however I couldn't get the .avi version any smaller than 4.5 megs. Any smaller and there was a total loss of quality. I use QuickTime Pro for my compression. If anyone has any pointers for compressing a Windows version smaller than what I've got I would really appreciate hearing it. Gerry Quote
Grubber Posted April 4, 2004 Posted April 4, 2004 Hey Gerry! This is so cool! I like toon lines very much! Quote
ZachBG Posted April 4, 2004 Posted April 4, 2004 Gerry-- Beautiful piece! I especially liked the squash & stretch on the vertical pieces. I wonder if there's some way to do that on the other pieces, too? As far as compression: what platform are you on? If you're on Mac OS X I can give you details on a pipeline I use to create MPEG-1 movies that compress reasonably well, and they're completely cross-platform. If you're on Windows, I canna help ye. But there are plenty of documented ways to get MPEG-1 via TMPGenc and the like. Zach Quote
Gerry Posted April 4, 2004 Author Posted April 4, 2004 Thanks Zach and Grubber! Yup I am on OSX so let me know what you can dude. I could have gone a lot further with the s&s I agree, I banged this out in two or three days and may keep working on it. I've got a second version ( the "director's cut") with a different ending that I may post. Gerry Quote
pally Posted April 4, 2004 Posted April 4, 2004 Hey Gerry, nice work! I use QuickTime Pro for my compression. If anyone has any pointers for compressing a Windows version smaller than what I've got I would really appreciate hearing it. Dunno if you've tried it, but FlashMX has a video import from Quicktime that gives you more granular control on the compression. It uses the Sorenson algorithm and it worked pretty good for my newbie project in AM. For example, my first animation since picking up AM about a week or so ago cut the file size in half using Flash MX. It outputs as a .swf file and naturally can play embedded with a browser that has Flash installed which is almost all major browsers. Depending on how much clarity you want, it might just work out. Try it out and good luck! Quote
Admin Rodney Posted April 4, 2004 Admin Posted April 4, 2004 Gerry, Very Nice indeed! I'd hire you! As I was watching your deck assemble itself I was thinking "this is just what Popular Mechanics needs to put together for it's website". Not that I've ever been to PMs website. Hope to go back and look at some of your other animation soon as well! Great job... and good luck on getting the new job! Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted April 4, 2004 Hash Fellow Posted April 4, 2004 I was astonished to see that the .mov version compressed to 680k with almost no loss of quality, however I couldn't get the .avi version any smaller than 4.5 megs. Any smaller and there was a total loss of quality. "ah... codec trouble!" I DL'd the MOVs and AVIs of your "deck" and "patent" anims to see why you got such different results. Here's what I got... Deck.AVI is compressed with Cinepak while Deck.MOV is compressed with Sorenson. Sorenson (not available in MS Video for Windows) can compress far better than cinepak (written long ago for very slow CPUs with slow CD-ROMS) So why are the "Patent" anims so similar in size? While patent.AVI is also in Cinepak, the patent.MOV is "compressed" with the "Animation" codec. "Animation" codec is a mostly lossless thing. It's usually set to "no compression" and used in situations where the footage that comes out of your 3D app needs to be taken into some other compositing app like Adobe After Effects for use with other visual elements. It is good for this purpose because it's the only codec I know of that preserves the "alpha" channel. But once the project is finished it is compressed with some other codec to reduce the distribution size. "Animation" codec does not produce small file sizes. It's really badly named because it leads many to think that's what they should use for their animation. So, you're patent.mov could be much smaller if you redid it in Sorenson. MS Video for Window (AVI) really doesn't have any good codecs built in. Divx (an add-on codec) compresses very well, but: - most people don't have it installed - many are confused into thinking they have to buy it when they go to the DivX site to get it. - Some people never get it to work. If you need to publish a PC-flavored file, how about downloading the FREE "Microsoft Windows Media Encoder" from the MS site and use it to create WMVs? Microsoft Windows Media Encoder has great audio and video compression, really about the best there is right now. And every PC owner already has what they need to play WMVs. Quote
Gerry Posted April 4, 2004 Author Posted April 4, 2004 rob, thanks for a tremendous amount of good info. Codec's are something I need to learn a lot more about. this is a good start! Can you tell me if the MS Windows Media Encoder runs on an OSX Mac? And Pally thanks for the headsup on the Flash export. Something else I will play around with. Here's the "DC". My wife thought the ending was too whimsical for my intended use so I cut it. But I had (still have!) plans to have the deck entirely furnished by the end. Maybe I'll still get back to it. The Director's Cut Quote
Gerry Posted April 4, 2004 Author Posted April 4, 2004 Robcat - just checked the MS website and that encoder is Windows-only. Thanks for info though! Quote
xor Posted April 4, 2004 Posted April 4, 2004 Awesome job. I hope you get the job. The movement and all is nice and smooth. That's plenty of wood there. I bet you're glad they aren't expecting each nail and/or screw to be animated. Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted April 4, 2004 Hash Fellow Posted April 4, 2004 just checked the MS website and that encoder is Windows-only.Sorry! Completely missed that you were on a Mac. Quicktime is really a great cross-platform thing, but it's gotten so huge lately that it's getting tough to convince PC users to download and install it. MPEG-1 is a "safe" choice, but its almost as old as Cinepak and will never be as small as QT Sorenson. I've seen a few MPEG-4 clips floating around here, but they've looked bad or were excessively large. Real and Flash are Mac possibilities, but they're not free. My wife thought the ending was too whimsical I guess that's like how women don't think the Three Stooges are funny either. Quote
ZachBG Posted April 6, 2004 Posted April 6, 2004 Well, Gerry, you inspired me to write my first tutorial ever, on using Mac OS X to convert a Targa sequence to MPEG-1. http://www.hash.com/users/zachbg/Tutorials/MPEGtute.html Hope it's worth your while! Zach Quote
Gerry Posted April 6, 2004 Author Posted April 6, 2004 Wow, I inspired THAT? I must be awesome!! Seriously this is great info Zach, I did read *most* of it, down to the audio encoding stuff. I use the terminal for only a few functions, haven't learned much more than you could write on the back of a business card. Keep meaning to learn more tho. I was reading the Hash Fellows section yesterday. This is something new since I stopped posting a couple months ago and it got me to thinking...there should be a lower level of honor called "Hash Fellas" (or "Hash Fellas and Gals") for us little people! You Hash Fellows should always remember that you're standing on the shoulders of, well, not giants, but a bunch of stacked up midgets! Gerry Quote
ZachBG Posted April 8, 2004 Posted April 8, 2004 Cool, glad to help. You Hash Fellows should always remember that you're standing on the shoulders of, well, not giants, but a bunch of stacked up midgets! Trust me, this Fellow is a midget himself... Quote
Zaryin Posted April 10, 2004 Posted April 10, 2004 THat is execllent. Man, the planning that had to take. Just great. Quote
Gerry Posted April 10, 2004 Author Posted April 10, 2004 Thanks Jeff. I feel like I could build an actual deck now! Planning it all out on graph paper and using precise measurements was key. Now that I'm getting back in the saddle with AM after an absence, I've been inspired to recreate my avatar image in 3D. I'll be posting some images on the WIP board shortly. What I really need to do is get to some rigging and movement with a figure. I can model just fine, and the deck of course required no rigging, just modeling and keyframing. Of course it's the end effect that counts and I'm pretty happy with the result. Quote
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