OT: 3D animation and video editing

[J. Dan]

I've done some way in the past with Flash, Photoshop, Ulead GIF animator, and others....but that computer crashed and I'm looking for some easy to use scaled down tools for a specific project.

 

My original band has a CD release coming up in a concert venue and we'll have a video wall. We have some intros and song transition videos, but since this will all be triggered live, I want to create some video loops - like band logos with moving light source reflecting off metallic surfaces, maybe moving fog, flames, etc. stuff that can be going during a song with some motion without being necessarily locked to the music,

 

I downloaded Blender but it seems to have a pretty steep learning curve and more powerful than I need. Did I mention this gig is June 28, so I don't have a lot of time to create the material and rehearse with it.

 

I'd be interested in tips and suggestions.

[Mighty Motif Max]

Oh yah, they've all got a huge learning curve. I've used Blender mostly (tried Vue and didn't like it), but I never got to the point where I wanted to be. I haven't done anything for a few years. Way too time consuming for too little results. Plus moving it over to Windows (which should have made things like keyboard shortcuts etc easier) caused such a mess I'm still stuck. Lots of stuff there but I don't have the skill or time to make use of it.

 

Best of luck to you! It will be interesting to hear what others have to say.

[J. Dan]

I'm fortunate that other band members have some skills in this area, so we're dividing and conquering.....all using different tools. One guy is using Flash, another guy is using photoshop and PowerPoint, of all things. One guy is using Final Cut. And then there's me. Hopefully we can pull it together.

 

As an example, I would love to have a camera moving forward through a cemetery between gravestones with fog moving and the moon in the sky and land on the band logo. My video sampler allows a setting where you can trigger a video and have it stay on the last frame when it's over. So as long as the last frame is the logo, I could trigger it and just have our logo up until I trigger the next.

[CowboyNQ]

Hey Dan,

 

One of my bands relies quite heavily on video animation and while I don't have any involvement in making it, I asked our guru what he uses on your behalf. His answer:

 

"Photoshop, AfterEffects, Element3d, Bryce 3d, 3dMax Studio, Poser Pro, Adobe Premier Pro and most importantly a lot of caffeine and nicotine."

 

We project all our videos using ProPresenter.

 

One of my tasks on gig night is to run the videos. With this in mind, feel free to PM me if you want some thoughts on how to sync video to your music, or alternatively if you don't want to sync it but make it look as if you have synced it (that's where the real art lies).

 

Edit: Our guru has offered for you to contact him if you would like any further info

[o0Ampy0o]

You could do it all with After Effects. There are very good You Tube tutorialls. By all I mean create a variety of very interesting light fog sparky electrical logos not all as in each thing you described, no 3D etc.

[J. Dan]

I'm using an Edirol P-10 that I've had for quite some time. We didn't think it would be suitable since it's only 640x480 composite video, but we tried it out with a projector and it looked surprisingly good. It's nice in that it has 6 banks of 12 pads that can trigger video, stills, and slide shows, as well as do realtime speed control and effects and has lots of different modes for 1-shot, forward/reverse looping, etc. and has MIDI control. It would be perfect if it did higher resolution and HDMI. But I have a composite to HDMI converter that automatically stretches to 16:9. So I basically squish everything to 4:3 when I store it so that when it stretches back out, it looks right. Not ideal, but I already had it, and on short notice, this will work perfectly.

 

Oh, it also has an external video input with a pad to select that (and can sample and loop that video in real time). So we're going to set it up where we have some cameras going for solos and stuff like that and can hit the "Ext Video" pad to put up on the screen.

 

Natively, we're doing everything high res so that if we move on to some software or something at a later time, we have it. I'm just using a converter to put everything on the P10.