@batboy853 - Your render looks much better! Are you able to apply some depth-of-field to lightly blur out the background behind the main speaker?
AndyP's Trek building thread
- Thread starter batboy853
- Start date
@blssdwlf To be honest I experimented with depth of field early on in my project, because I'm relying on Optix and denoising it did not look so great. However I did not try using the compositor at that time.
This weekend we are getting an Airbnb with some friends to get out of the city for the weekend (we are all fully vaccinated), so I'm hoping I can re-render my bridge scene while I am gone. It rendered the first 150 frames with no issue, then I switched laptops now it keeps crashing every 10 frames...
This weekend we are getting an Airbnb with some friends to get out of the city for the weekend (we are all fully vaccinated), so I'm hoping I can re-render my bridge scene while I am gone. It rendered the first 150 frames with no issue, then I switched laptops now it keeps crashing every 10 frames...
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^^^ I was just about to suggest that (the depth of field). I keep kicking myself that I didn’t enable that in Octane until you suggested that... with octanes lightning GPU speed, it’s stupid not to turn it on; it’s such a (seemingly) little thing but subconsciously it adds SO much to the overall finished product 
For what it is worth, I showed your latest images to my better half who hates everything science fiction and spitefully he refers to my hobby as “my Star Wars thing”
I mention all of this just to give you some context on his comments. Since he hates anything that is even faintly Star Trek-ish, he is able to look at the images purely on their technical and artistic merits, and he definitely immediately noticed the difference. so for whatever it’s worth, you’ve definitely made visible noticeable improvements with these changes.
I continue to hate you because of the amazing progress you’ve been making with frakkin’ animated PEOPLE
compared to my glacial pace, but that doesn’t change the fact your shit is fabulous.
For what it is worth, I showed your latest images to my better half who hates everything science fiction and spitefully he refers to my hobby as “my Star Wars thing”
I mention all of this just to give you some context on his comments. Since he hates anything that is even faintly Star Trek-ish, he is able to look at the images purely on their technical and artistic merits, and he definitely immediately noticed the difference. so for whatever it’s worth, you’ve definitely made visible noticeable improvements with these changes.I continue to hate you because of the amazing progress you’ve been making with frakkin’ animated PEOPLE
compared to my glacial pace, but that doesn’t change the fact your shit is fabulous.
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@Professor Moriarty thank you to you both for the compliments! I mean the main reason how I am able to do people with my animations, I used Adobe Fuse. Before Adobe killed it off, I was able to export a decent amount of characters ready to animate with facial shape keys. The uniforms were made from the base character mesh, with the details in UV mapped textures. For facial animation I use face cap on the iphone (bought my partner's old Iphone 11 + XL max pro whatchamacallit), and then use animation nodes to transfer the shape key animation from iphone blendshapes to the mixamo shapes. For the body animation I use mocap from Mixamo (Adobe still supports uploading characters, and downloading their Mocap), then I transfer the mocap using Rococo's blender add-on. For things not in mocap, I've found the (I think new) auto-IK feature in blender for certain things, such as a comm badge tap.
If I were to approach it differently today, as in literally today, I'd likely use Meta-human Creator, it came out this week, it's free, and it was designed with the iphone mocap approach. The downside is that the fine print is that all characters must be rendered in Unreal. Guess that is something I should learn next then. Character creator has some really cool features, but it's also extremely expensive and billed annually. Other options I considered: Blender human generator, released a few weeks back, first feedback I gave to them was that not having the iphone ARkit blendshapes as an option out of box was a deal breaker for me at the present moment. Of course I could always use that app in conjunction with Faceit. Additionally Daz studio is free, and I could always use my animation node approach for transferring shape keys. One of my characters was made with a trial version of Keentools Facebuilder.
Some other really cool things coming out: Nvidia Audio2Face. Nvidia had their GTC conference last week and I watched the showcase for this new project, the concept is that you import your character, then you map certain points on the character to line up with the pre-trained model, then it animates the face based on what the audio is. It was pretty cool, could use some improvement, but its still in development.
Once I have the final project posted my plan is to do a tutorial series on how I made everything. After that will likely go back into a modeling phase (the bridge In these renders I built almost 2-3 years ago, could be improved.)
Back to the topic of Depth of Field. I 100% agree that my scene would look that much better with it. I had to sit through an entire lecture on the importance of depth of field in my college films studies class. I don't think I am going to implement it for this first go around. I'm tired. I feel like I am spending so much time trying to get my animations to not crash that it is exhausting. This is my pandemic project, and the pandemic is almost over, fingers crossed. (One of my projects for work right now is to prep the office space for eventual return to office life) BUT that being said hobbies will still be hobbies.
If I were to approach it differently today, as in literally today, I'd likely use Meta-human Creator, it came out this week, it's free, and it was designed with the iphone mocap approach. The downside is that the fine print is that all characters must be rendered in Unreal. Guess that is something I should learn next then. Character creator has some really cool features, but it's also extremely expensive and billed annually. Other options I considered: Blender human generator, released a few weeks back, first feedback I gave to them was that not having the iphone ARkit blendshapes as an option out of box was a deal breaker for me at the present moment. Of course I could always use that app in conjunction with Faceit. Additionally Daz studio is free, and I could always use my animation node approach for transferring shape keys. One of my characters was made with a trial version of Keentools Facebuilder.
Some other really cool things coming out: Nvidia Audio2Face. Nvidia had their GTC conference last week and I watched the showcase for this new project, the concept is that you import your character, then you map certain points on the character to line up with the pre-trained model, then it animates the face based on what the audio is. It was pretty cool, could use some improvement, but its still in development.
Once I have the final project posted my plan is to do a tutorial series on how I made everything. After that will likely go back into a modeling phase (the bridge In these renders I built almost 2-3 years ago, could be improved.)
Back to the topic of Depth of Field. I 100% agree that my scene would look that much better with it. I had to sit through an entire lecture on the importance of depth of field in my college films studies class. I don't think I am going to implement it for this first go around. I'm tired. I feel like I am spending so much time trying to get my animations to not crash that it is exhausting. This is my pandemic project, and the pandemic is almost over, fingers crossed. (One of my projects for work right now is to prep the office space for eventual return to office life) BUT that being said hobbies will still be hobbies.
Fascinating. Since the camera will be getting close enough to my shuttle that you'll be able to see inside (at least while the blast shields are open on the forward portholes), I'm already starting to think about how I'm going to populate the shuttle with passable-looking people. Your post gives me lots of possible avenues to explore... thanks!
@Professor Moriarty I just realized that I forgot to mention mb lab
It's specific to blender, it is a little rough around the edges, but it was the route I had initially considered for character animations, 2 years ago.
It's specific to blender, it is a little rough around the edges, but it was the route I had initially considered for character animations, 2 years ago.
It's been a few weeks since I have been able to work on this. My fiancé and I broke off our engagement, but are still living together. I have spent the past few weeks re-organizing things and in general trying to figure out what to do next. Life has sort of felt like I have been facing my own Kobayashi Maru. I am starting to get back to a point where I can have time for hobbies, and am getting back to this project.
Where things stand: Even though there are a few shots that I wish to re-work, I think I am going to call the renders that I have completed the finished product. I am working on tweaking the audio currently. After that I will be moving on to music scoring.
Where things stand: Even though there are a few shots that I wish to re-work, I think I am going to call the renders that I have completed the finished product. I am working on tweaking the audio currently. After that I will be moving on to music scoring.
Ouch. Sorry to hear that man. Are you two still okay with each other; like, is there even remotely a chance of a future together? Was it the stress of not being able to get out due to covid? I hope everything works out for you in the end. Don't forget: Kirk cheated his way out of Koba. Maybe a little life hack here and there can get things better for you...
To be honest we are doing a trial period to see if we can live on as roommates, we both want to save up so we can each own a place in the next year. When it came down to it we both want different things out of life, and my fiancé just was not ready to settle down it felt like the opposite. And with how much effort I put into getting this appartment a year ago, getting all of the appointments to get furniture a year ago, getting the place setup including smart lights for entertaining..... I don't really want to have all of those months of stress on my life be for nothing. I could have refocused that energy on so many other things. I had thought about getting my own appartment, but a small one bedroom in Chicago is $1200 and up, a studio would be too small. I had also thought about moving back to Wisconsin over the summer, but I wouldn't really be saving much money in terms of rent / moving if I were to do that. There was also the issue of the cat we adopted together, I'm not ready for a custody battle for my cat.
Sorry to hear about that BB853. But a trial run is definitely a smart move. If you can't work things out in a short period of time, just multiply that by infinity (marriage, the ultimate goal of engagement). I wish I had done that with my first wife, because then she probably wouldn't have wound up being my first wife! My current wife and I did do the trial period and...well... 10.5 years later, we're still together with hardly an issue - at least, certainly not the kind of issues that plagued my first marriage, so the best of luck to you. The BBS will always be here for your eventual return.
He's a little occupied right now with real-life things. You might want to read his last post. It might be a while.
Hey @jose680 unfortunately I don't think I have the working in-game version for it anywhere any more. it might be on the hard drive in my closet that has a thick coat of dust on it... I think the only versions I have are what is on my sketchfab page, but was not planning on making that version publicly available. I might also revisit the design in the next year so. I've named the nova class in my short the Envoy, but have been debating changing that so that I keep the Envoy name with the Envoy class.
Here is an ortho of the tug:
https://www.deviantart.com/unusualsuspex/art/Annie-Class-Tug-ortho-454259991
(Andrew Probert at one point asked me to make sure to say that this was based off of one of his designs)
I thought there was an ortho somewhere of the envoy, but can't find it.
Here is an ortho of the tug:
https://www.deviantart.com/unusualsuspex/art/Annie-Class-Tug-ortho-454259991
(Andrew Probert at one point asked me to make sure to say that this was based off of one of his designs)
I thought there was an ortho somewhere of the envoy, but can't find it.
Hey guys!
So this week I decided to not do my own musical score for this short, scoring the short myself was just turning into too much of a struggle with everything else going on in my life. I decided to edit the score from TMP to fit the short.
After that I threw together some credits, not sure the "best correct way" of doing credits at the end of a short so I just did some basic cards.
I want to thank everyone that has posted in this thread over the past 6 months, you all have been very helpful and encouraging while working on this project. I listed a few people in the credits, but really anyone that has posted here should get a thank you.
There are a number of things that I can improve upon for my next go around, and even a number of new tools that have been released recently that would greatly assist with character animation.
I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, and hopefully that means I'll be able to have more to share in the months to come!
So this week I decided to not do my own musical score for this short, scoring the short myself was just turning into too much of a struggle with everything else going on in my life. I decided to edit the score from TMP to fit the short.
After that I threw together some credits, not sure the "best correct way" of doing credits at the end of a short so I just did some basic cards.
I want to thank everyone that has posted in this thread over the past 6 months, you all have been very helpful and encouraging while working on this project. I listed a few people in the credits, but really anyone that has posted here should get a thank you.
There are a number of things that I can improve upon for my next go around, and even a number of new tools that have been released recently that would greatly assist with character animation.
I am looking forward to getting back into the swing of things, and hopefully that means I'll be able to have more to share in the months to come!
Good job on the video! Having recently ventured in the "making cinematic videos" of my work myself, I know how much work goes into it that I before took for granted.
One thing on the environment side I've noticed about your work, which really came through in your video, is how evenly lit all the interiors are. With the higher-key grey of the walls, everything seems very bright. Which, I understand you may be going for, but it doesn't feel as dramatic or inviting as it could. The sets feel cold and sterile, which I think could be fixed with more contrast in lighting.
I was talking to a colleague recently, and we were talking about how a lot of Trek artists use lighting to show off all the details of the thing they're showcasing, instead of using lighting to convey mood/drama/or visual interest. Don't be afraid of some darkness. I would experiment with using pools of light and dark more in the sets through the use of spotlights. For example, in your engine room, you could have more light focused on the warp core and have the surroundings in more shadow. Or in the bridge, spotlights on the command section with the surrounding areas darker. And maybe use slightly cool or warm lights (and a combination of both) instead of pure white.
Just some (hopefully) helpful criticism!
One thing on the environment side I've noticed about your work, which really came through in your video, is how evenly lit all the interiors are. With the higher-key grey of the walls, everything seems very bright. Which, I understand you may be going for, but it doesn't feel as dramatic or inviting as it could. The sets feel cold and sterile, which I think could be fixed with more contrast in lighting.
I was talking to a colleague recently, and we were talking about how a lot of Trek artists use lighting to show off all the details of the thing they're showcasing, instead of using lighting to convey mood/drama/or visual interest. Don't be afraid of some darkness. I would experiment with using pools of light and dark more in the sets through the use of spotlights. For example, in your engine room, you could have more light focused on the warp core and have the surroundings in more shadow. Or in the bridge, spotlights on the command section with the surrounding areas darker. And maybe use slightly cool or warm lights (and a combination of both) instead of pure white.
Just some (hopefully) helpful criticism!
I certainly will take the criticism, that way I can improve.
I will say that with this I used cycles, and lit the scene via emissive materials on the set meshes themselves. I did not use light objects.
Was more so going this route to give a more realistic lighting to how some of the sets appeared on the show.
Which is great and all, but to your point they would have also used spot lights and set lighting to light the actors.
I am planning on getting back into modeling after this and can definitely work on lighting.
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Yeah, there's that line between how a set would be lit in "real-life" versus how it was lit for dramatic representation on our TV screens. I stand on the side of art versus the side of engineering, which is probably why I never shy away from lighting more dramatically. I started lighting with emissive materials once Unreal supported GPU lightmass (pretty much when I started the Ent-E project) and I found myself relying solely on that method versus manually lighting things, and realized I was losing some of that artful drama in my shots. I remember to use all the tools at my disposal, even if it means some of those spotlights don't have actual "sources" in the 3D space.
Thanks for taking the criticism gracefully!
