Popcorn Island » Tutorials

MoGraph Physics and Hair Dynamics

Ross — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 02:57:02 +0000

I have been exploring Cinema 4D more and more, and I have really become excited about the MoGraph Rigid Body simulations. The Maxon people have made is extremely easy for users to add physics simulations to your scene. This in combination with the already powerful MoGraph module really makes for some really cool possibilities. In this tutorial I run through quickly how to get physics up and running and interacting with the hair module.

The hair module is a really powerful generator. You could easily generate hair, grass, etc and create very realistic behaviors. Like I was saying this is just a quick look at how to setup a scene with MoGraph rigid bodies falling into hair. The MoGraph bodies will interact with the hair.

I will also take a look at a cool utility called Clone Info Hierarchy, this will allow you to attach null objects to different MoGraph Instances. For example if you have a cloner object with 15 spheres, you could quickly create 15 nulls that follow each instance exactly. These nulls can then be exported into an external compositing tool, like after effects, which can then be use to track items with your cloners or maybe attach a particle emitter. In the tutorial I mention color correction on an object but really that isn’t very practical, using object buffer would be much more useful for that. Regardless there are all sorts of possibilities for using nulls.

So if your interested in dynamics and hair interactions then definitely check out this tutorial. Thanks a lot for stopping by and we hope you find this useful!

Watch the Tutorial: Cinema 4D – MoGraph Physics and Hair Interaction

Cinema 4D – Irradiance Cache File

Ross — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:03:03 +0000

So I have been working a lot in Cinema 4D over the last few months, and I decided to take advantage of this holiday break and fill my head with as many tutorials and article’s as I possibly could. Overall I can say it is definitely worth it Cinema is an awesome program and is going to be an extremely helpful application in my Motion Graphics toolbox, if not the go to tool itself. I want to make sure to thank Nick Vegas of Greyscale Gorilla and Rob Redman of Pariah Studios for all there tutorials and openness with support. Seriously the work they are doing is awesome and saving me hours of headaches. Thanks to them I have a huge jump start on Cinema 4D.

Now into why you are here, Global Illumination or GI. GI is consider an effect in a C4D render but it really is a dramatic one. The quality of lighting, reflection and overall look of an image can be made by using this and some basic understanding of materials and lights. The downside to GI is render times. A normal render time in C4D can quickly blow up when adding GI, and the more lights,, materials, reflections, etc you have the crazier those times will get.

So this tutorial is more of an exploration for me as I have been messing with GI for a while now and looking for efficiencies on render times. I had always seen the Irradiance Cache File tab, but never really explored what it was doing, or in this case not doing. In the following tutorial you will see how to use the IR cache file as I understand it and hopefully it will spee dup some renders and give you a better understanding of how it all works.

if your interest in Global Illumination from a technical overview check out this post on Greyscale Gorilla – The Science of Global Illumination where you will find a link to an awesome article breaking down everything you would want to know about GI. There is also information on what properties can be changed without having to recreate your IR cache file, so you can get an idea of the limitations that come into play when using it. For those who want to be lazy here is a quote from Michael Vance’s Gi Tutorial

” A saved cache is a wonderful thing. Once saved, provided you haven’t changed the scene, and once the Auto Load setting is activated, you can rerender with different AA settings, different multipass settings, different resolutions, zoomed in, and in some cases even different materials, all without having to wait again for the cache to rerender. If you leave the cache lock setting unchecked, even different camera angles can be rendered and only records for areas not seen in previous cache renders will be added to the existing cache, saving a great deal of time, …”

Alright, well I hope this tutorial is helpful, and those who are more advanced in C4D if I have made a horrible mistake please let me know. I would love to know more about the cache file and the proper way to utilize it! And make sure To Check out Greyscale Gorilla and Pariah Studios for some awesome tutorials and information!

Watch the Tutorial: Cinema 4D – Irradiance Cache File

Info : Global Illumination IR Cache Test Results

Update :: Well ask and you shall receive! Response video from Nick and Rob on GI Cache files, they give a great explanation of all the check boxes and exactly what they do! Check it out and Speed up your projects at Greyscale Gorilla – A Quick Guide on Irradiance Cache Settings in Cinema 4D

TextMate for Actionscript 3

Ross — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:34:40 +0000

I recently taught a class at the MGFest in Washginton on animation with Actionscript. In doing so I had to find a good way to teach students using both windows and OSX how to program AS3 in an External Editor. For windows I was very comfortable showing FlashDevelop, a free open source editor, and personally my favorite to work with. Having started to work at home on OSX and having to teach this to other I decided to research a good editor.

The obvious leader is FDT from Powerflasher, who has an eclipse based solution that is well tied to the Flash IDE and the mxmlc compiler. Having used Flex builder for a while now I felt pretty comfy in this environment. the problem is I don’t like eclipse. the program itself is made to accomplish so much and I see this as its advantage and its downfall. it has always felt a bit bloated to me, and I have had slowdowns and simple problem with just color schemes I would like to use.

So with that I started to look at easier solutions. TextMate has always been a big favorite of mine for editing all sorts of documents. From PHP, HTML and CSS, and now to ActionScript I have found TextMate to be lightweight and simple, yet powerful. So I started a hunt for a bundle to help do As3 Development. that’s when I cam across a Blog post by Simon Gregory which included his Actionscript 3 and Flex Bundles which have since then been placed up on github.I ended up forking this project and started to work on some variations of my own. Nothing too amazing, just simple things I was use to in FlashDevelop, now I could accomplish in TextMate.

To make this easier I decided to do a Video Tutorial on getting everything setup. I apologize in advance as I have been sick and still decided to record this thing, so if there is some sneezing and stuffy nose madness, well I am sorry. Either way, the following is a link to the tutorial and all the assets I used. I really hope this is helpful for people getting started in Actionscript programming, and stay tuned for more on why I see Actionscript and Flash in general starting to push its way into Film, Motion Graphics and Television!.

Watch Tutorial : TextMate for Actionscript 3 Tutorial

Links

Elgato Turbo.264 Review

Ross — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:07:28 +0000

We just snagged ourselves a new piece of hardware known as the Elgato Turbo.264. It is a USB h.264 hardware encoder, allowing compression offloading to this device instead of your computer. We have been testing it out for the day re-compressing a number of our own videos and looking through the pros and cons. This is that we have come up with.

The Elgato Turbo is a very small USB stick, much like a jump drive. Usage couldn’t be much simpler as you plug it in and fire up the software. Though right now there is an updated version so you will want to download that from the Elgato site.

Inside the software you will find a pretty intuitive interface .Drag and drop a video file into the program, then select a format from the dropdown list of predefined formats. If you need more control choose the “edit” option from the drop and and start to go through the various controls. The first apparent downside is the resolution limitation. The Elgato can max at 800×600 in the Apple TV preset, Followed by 640×480 in the iPod high setting. This really isn’t much of a limitation as it is designed to deliver to the web, and mobile devices. Most of which cant handle much more then that anyways. Though the Apple TV is the exception with being able to push HD720 out, so you will not be able to do that with the Elgato.

Our main purpose for buying this (it only costs $99.95), was to speed up our “to web” workflow. We use the web to post all reviews for our clients. Compression times in compressor can get very long, and then eat up your computer time as it works away. The Elgato solves both problems by offloading the compression work and its speeds were more then impressive.

Our First Test
Our Normal work-flow is to into Compressor and output. We used a resolution of 600×337 and the 800kbs h.264 setting. Our original file size was 1.2Gb for a 3 minute file, and the audio was set to 32k at 96kbps. This resulted in a file size 26megs, and took about 32 minutes to process.

Running this same video through the Elgato finished in 3 minutes and created a file size of 26megs. We also noticed a significant processor usage hit when using compressor, and as expected the elgato did not hit the computer for much at all.

We were happy with the results, with a fraction of the time and CPU usage the Elgato really was nothing. Obviously the big difference is the brightness. The Elagto has a much darker more contrasted look, and compressor maintains a lot of the original footage. This obviously could be a deal breaker depending on what your video is for. When you need to get videos compressed faster, and your not as concerned with the darkening aspect the Elgato is an obvious choice with almost 1/10th of the time needed to compress.

To sum it all up if you looking for a utility to help speed up your compression process, we highly recommend the elgato. Certainly does make life alot easier for moving to mobile devices and the web. The big limitation’s will be the resolution and image darkening. It also has some quirks about what you are and are not allowed to type into the custom fields. For example certain resolutions will not be allowed, and there is not a very good explanation of why. This is solved by trial and error, and once you have the output setting you need it will save them for you. One thing to note about this is settings are saved on the local machine that has the elgato plugged into it, they do not move with the device. Which is a negative point also. In the end though the elgato is definetly a tool worth having in your pocket for the price point.

Tutorial: Elgato Tutorial

Final Cut 2 After Effects

Ross — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 05:11:47 +0000

The Popcorn Island Final Cut 2 After Effects Script is a simple way to move sequences in Final Cut into Compositions in After Effects. Not only does it allow you to work faster, it also saves storage space. The normal work flow of rendering out from Final Cut and opening in After Effects causes one to create temporary files to pass back and forth between the programs. The Final Cut 2 After Effects script will allow you to bypass that and simply use the footage that has already been imported into Final Cut.

NEWS: Gerard over at strypesinpost.com has put up a tutorial on using this script to move over project to windows! check it out

Links:

Tutorial: Final Cut 2 After Effects Tutorial
Download:
- CS4/CS5: Final Cut 2 After Effects (1.1.2)
- CS3: Final Cut 2 After Effects (1.0.9) for CS3

Features 1.1.2

Auto-Truncate Long Filenames
Marker Import
Cross Dissolve Transitions (v1.05)
Basic Editing Translation
Segmented Clips
Basic Keyframes
Time Remapping
Nested Sequences
Multiple Frame Rates and Aspect Ratios
Audio Channels
Name Length Error Checking
Support for PAL25 and 60

Version Info

Version 1.12 Update
- Re-Work of the Cross dissolve importer
- Dialog for Auto Truncate all Long filenames Option
- Fix to All Transition detection
- Fix for center aligned Cross Dissolve
- Stopped work on Legacy Support (older then Cs4)
Version 1.09 Update
- Center Point bug Fix, footage of different sizes using center point effects now import properly
- setValueAtTime bug Fix, Rounding errors in speed changes addressed.
  - NOTE: I could use any community help debugging
    this problem, though I now have a fix in place, I cannot be sure of the 1:1 frame matching between FCP and After Effects when using speed changes,
    if anyone can run tests it would be extremely helpful. thx!

Version 1.07 Update
- Markers are now imported into a marker layer in after effects. Name is used for flash events, comment for comment (thanks @Guillaume)

Version 1.06 Update
- Updated Frame Rate bug for 50fps (and other unknowns) thanks @daniel

CS3 Version 1.05 Update
- There is an issue with scripts compiled for CS4 using Extendscript toolkit CS4 that causes problems in CS3, the script will fail instantly. So I have had to split this project into 2 scripts. You will now see a script built for CS4 and one for CS3, these have been been confirmed working. Thanks to Kevin Brock for going back and forth with us on a couple scripts as we don’t have a good CS3 work flow here. We hope this helps everyone out! Thanks!
Version 1.05
- FIX: Rounding Error on 23.976 footage causing Single Frame difference from original.
- UPDATE: Top Level Folder will now follow XML Filename, and not “FCP_Import”.