3d Animations and Still Images
 

Here are some examples of what I've been doing with Maya.

My strongest skill with the program is modeling. Skills required to make a good quality video would include, rendering, texturing, lighting, animating, and the actual video creation.

Yes, these examples are simple as shown here.

These first two clips are of the Old Detroit City Hall, which was demolished in 1962.

Nice :)

Thank you Lola Bunny.

Everything that I create now seems to have major flaws. That's the learning curve that I'm fighting.

As my skills improve the clips posted here should be much more interesting and entertaining.

I haven't heard of Maya.

What made you take interest in Maya and learning how to use it? Do you have a plan for this going somewhere, or is this more of a hobby?

I've fooled around with Sketchup, which is very basic, and it would be tricky and take some significant time to do anything like that Detroit City Hall model.

This is Autodesk Maya. It's a rather expensive animation software that has been very popular in the past few years as the demand for video and 3d animation product has increased.

It also has a competing software, Blender, which is free and may well be as powerful of a creation tool but with much less instruction and training available.

My previous life has been that as a contractor of engineering services in the US. Mostly fortune 500 companies. All on contract basis.

I'm not an engineer, I'm a mechanical designer. My role as a designer would be to prepare computer models and assemblies for use in mechanical analysis, use in manufacturing and assembly of the new products that I would design under the direction of a staff engineer.

I do all the technical legwork and the engineer guides the design and approves it. Once approved, the designs are made into prototypes. Once the prototype is tested and approved it moves into mass production.

All products start in the computer as a model. I have previously been responsible for much of that electronic modeling process. Concept to production.

Maya is similar to the engineering software UGNX which I've used for 20+ years in corporate America but is not an engineering software. It's an artistic software. UGNX is used to make cars, planes, computers, medical implants, etc. Maya is used to create 3d animations for demos, training videos, "explainer" type videos, etc.

A seat of UGNX software costs approx $25,000 with some basic additional plug ins. Maya software costs approx $5500 with some basic additional plug ins.

I'm interested in Maya because it's a complex program that I can afford and use on my own to create my own company in the Philippines.

My plan to take this activity to a serious business was stopped when all my seed money to get things started went to my inlaws' medical disasters in 2013.

If not for those medical disasters this business would be much further along. Meaning, it'd look and feel like a legitimate business with all the necessities. We'd have clients and regular work to be done. A business.

I'm in the process now of launching this new venture now with just a fraction of the money originally allocated.

There are 2 main challenges for my new company at the moment. The first is the skill required to create 3d animated videos. My skills are weak in Maya but are growing. The second challenge is that I've been an employee for my whole life and having a job is much different than running a company.

Most of the expenses like the licenses and office furniture, training videos and the like are paid for. We have very little debt for the venture. The difficulty is now attracting customers with marginal skills in video creation and business skills.

I don't know much about Sketchup. It's a less powerful version of Maya?

It is true that modeling the DCH was time consuming and difficult because of my lack of experience. The things learned while doing that have been a big help. Future projects will most likely be just as or more complicated. It's cheaper to do things here in the Philippines. That's a part of my "advantage" of starting the business here.

Lower labor and office space costs but with other significant challenges.

Our skills now are not great. That's terribly frustrating because I've had complete command of the UGNX program and for many of my contracts in the US was a "go to" guy for tough projects. Going from complete mastery to begginer level isn't fun. In the long run though, it should be more than profitable enough to keep me out of the US long term.

That prospect makes me very happy. :)

Keep an eye out here on this thread though. As you see the product improving you may know of something we can provide for you as a company. With our low expenses, our services should be very competitively priced with better than native quality.

In you "previous life" you were half of a designer/engineer team. Will your new venture require you have an engineer in house? You know, someone to sign off on technical specs and materials, or will that be the clients responsibility?

cool!

slang, what would be the usefulness of a 3D printer for this kind of work? it could take the models you're talking about and make a real object from them, for small objects, of course.

For all the companies that I've worked for there are two types of structure. Designers that work for engineering as a department and those dedicated to a specific engineer and/or project.

One engineer may have 5 designers working on their project. Or they might not have one dedicated at all, in the case of something small.

Designers working out of a pool will have more work to do but less experience doing a given type of work. Dedicated designers have a lot more experience with all the specs of a project but might not be terribly busy all the time.

It would probably be better if the client were to be involved with approving each phase of the creation of the 3d animation. Those would be artwork, modeling/texturing, animation, lighting, and sound. That would apply if the client has a clear vision of what they want. If they are flexible with the content then it wouldn't be necessary for them to approve every step.

The size of the project would also be a big part in the client's involvement.

As for having an engineer in house, as soon as there are more people than just me filling all the positions, yes, someone will have to sign off on everything to ensure that all the content is per the client's vision.

It's just me performing all the roles at the moment. The structure as you mentioned is an important point. I'll think more on the subject.

This is new technology and I'm not too familiar with it yet.

My guess would be that engineering type programs such as AutoCadd would be better to have physical models made from electronic models. They normally use ".stl" ( stereo lithography ) files to product physical models and I've not seen that format available in Maya.

Having physical models from something created in Maya does sound pretty exciting though. Doing that you could create video content and then offer something trinket-y as a real life likeness. That could be very helpful in branding new or smaller businesses. Or local business for that matter. Maybe you don't want to go global. Here's a way to stay at a local scale for much less investment.

Kinda like how the fast food companies advertise movie characters and then offer the gizmos and such in their outlets.

That's something that I'd not thought much about but it's an idea with some interesting possibilities, V. As a promotional campaign on a small scale ( thousands of $s not tens of millions ) that could be very good for a smaller business or project.

Did you have something specific in mind?

This clip is of the old Dime Bank in Detroit circa 1912. It's now called the Chrysler House and looks much the same as it's original construction.

I created several buildings in the Campus Maritus area of Detroit for a friend. He's originally from Detroit and wanted a recreation of the campus during it's heyday.

The windows and floor levels are detailed but it's far from complete. The city blocks are seen without buildings.You can hear the same LAME music on this one as the others.

It's an improvement over the Detroit City Hall video posted previously in this thread. Mostly because of the addition of the sun and sky.

Best viewed at 480p quality.

Fascinating stuff, Slang...and hi! Longtime no see.

Is SteveDallas still around? He used to be into stereography, and I'm considering purchasing an inexpensive 12mp digital stereographic camera. I'd like to discuss.

Hey Ep! You're too kind, fascinating? Thanks but it's simple. :blush:

It's been a while, yes. I'm back posting my vids.

Last visit: 12-13-2013

He doesn't post much.

I'm glad you two are back. I wish Steve Dallas would get back in here too.

Here is the "almost complete" version of my new video that promotes the Cellar and the people here.

The complete video will be posted in a few days. It's about 2:30 long.

It's taking much longer than anticipated to complete videos because the process ( as I'm doing it ) is so unforgiving. Make a mistake or need to make an adjustment...it takes a LONG time to re-render or recreate the final video.

Every time consuming mistake is a lesson and I've been learning but it's still taking a lot of time.

On the upside this little video has a theme that we can all relate to, the cellar.

As I learn these lessons and reduce the time required to make BETTER videos quicker, I'd like to continue on the Cellar theme and make more videos that promote it and the people that live here.

One video a week is my target. At this time, it's a very difficult one to meet. With that one video a week, my work can be put to good use for specialized Cellar promos and I can build my library of items, scenes and clips for use on other projects as well.

My work is getting better and quicker but is still far from what I imagine it to be in the coming months.

If you think of a theme or have a script for something Cellar related post it here and we can develop it into something cool.

Thanks in advance.

Almost forgot. The voice is Clodfobble. She's got a great voice and has been very helpful with the scripts for this project.

Interesting! I never visualized the cellar in such a concrete way.

I'm intrigued to see more.

Clodfobble has an incredibly sexy voice

Waiting for the doors to open.

Slang, That was excellent, I wish I was smart enough to do that.

Maybe it's more basement than cellar. Anyway the idea is that you come down the cellar doors into the cellar and see these strange things going on and places to visit. Done as a non-urban theme too. We need more hillbillys here at the cellar.

Yes, and it's almost as if it's computer generated. :blush:

Ah, very cool. Stand alone characters. That will be a nice addition once I get there.

The cellar characters will need to be unique and not a copy of anything else. That's a challenge with all those TMed things out in the market.

Thanks fargon.

It's unclear if smarts is what it actually takes to make videos like this. Focus, determination and the reality that every time you make something that you think is interesting you really know that's it's much less than what a 13 year old Indian kid is doing in his spare time. :biggrin:

Do the best you can...see the project's flaws...research how to do it better...improve with the next project. Repeat.

Not to go off on another tangent, but I just saw this over on FB.

Pretty neat.

This is a big deal. When you can create editable models from a photo and do it quickly you have a powerful tool.

A few years ago there was something similar to this in process for one of the big engineering softwares. I can't remember if it was UGNX or one of the other big 5.

The quicker that you can model a proposed concept and then go on to make a rapid prototype to put that concept in a real world model into someone's hands, the better you will be*. This 3-sweep software also specifically describes itself as able to create editable models. This is another important detail. It also seems so simple that ( not to be unkind here but ) the marketing people could easily use it and dial in exactly what the customer or research group would most benefit from. That would save much design time*.

Another factor in using this would be the cost of a license. It seems reasonable with the huge savings in time and therefore money in salaries, that the software would be expensive. Or at least it should be since it's most likely going to shave a significant amount of cash from your expense column.

And, I agree, it's very cool.


* - true only if your customer or market research group truly know what they want.

I was talking to the shop teacher at the VoTech part of our HS, he is a former pattern maker and he was showing me some of the cool toys he has in his class room, The 3D printer being the most ho-hum of them all. One thing is a machine that will take a 2D image and make a 3D model of it. It's really insane, all the crap these machines can do in a few minutes to an hour, while the operator needs little more than the skill required to operate a coffee maker.

We all have more capable machines and softwares now. The question is what will we do with them?

And what will sell? What would be profitable now that anyone can afford to make nearly anything?

BREW BEER!

Materials and components. It'll be a while before consumer devices can 3D-print a battery, motor, or microchip, but it probably won't be too long before a 3D-printer pattern includes them, and the printer can insert them.

Patterns will be sold as well, but they are easily pirated.

So the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer?

Hard to look at that and not see people being put out of work. Maybe we can all work in health care? They can't automate that, can they? Somebody has to change diapers and clip toenails.

We live in interesting times.

I dunno, most of that stuff is already made in other countries anyway, isn't it? The question is, can the 3D printer make it for less than a Chinese 5-year-old?

There's been some new developments announced today on stem cell research so soon we'll be able to print Chinese 5-year-olds.

Well sure... It'll be a while before consumer devices can 3D-print a soul, but it probably won't be too long before a 3D-printer pattern includes them, and the printer can insert them.

Here's a little clip with a story.

This is a short video of a logo spinning that I created as a proposal for a potential customer.

It doesn't have a lot of flash but it's the general idea of what he wanted. This was a basic version that I'd jazz up with better textures and lighting once it was accepted. A formal quote was signed and sent. I know that the client had two other quotes for exactly this same work. The higher of the two was double the price of what I quoted.

Today I hear that the client did actually like what I prepared for him as a start point for the project but that he gave the contract to someone else for more than double my price in hopes of getting some extra exposure for the Super Bowl that was included in the deal.

Client paid the cash...never received anything. Not the finished logo and not the exposure at the Super Bowl.

After this job went cold I thought that it wasn't good enough. That turns out NOT to be the case. It's not Pixar quality but the client was happy with it as a start point.

So here it is. Not looking all that difficult but could not be completed on time by someone else at over twice the price that I was charging.

I'm still working on finishing the cellar video.

It has turned out to be more work that I can do quickly. There are also issues that need to be fixed from the teaser video. Like the way the camera moves, very choppy.

It's still in the works despite thinking it was nearly ready to post.

I'm sorry the potential client's mistake ended up costing you a gig as well as emptying his wallet. Did the competition take him out and get him drunk and throw hookers at him or something? What could you do differently to close a sale like this? Your product was apparently there.

The client was allegedly promised exposure via jumbo tron at the Super Bowl. Not the main but the secondaries.

What is that sort of time worth at the Super Bowl?

There was really no way that I could compete with that. On the other hand, would someone believe that they would get any time at all for a few thousand bucks during the Super Bowl? Seems silly to expect so.

What could I have done differently to get the project? It was not possible in this case IMO.

People in the loop ( middlemen or salesmen ) that were able to see what was proposed might have me submit another quote. That could turn into a win.

Those same people also know that I'm at least capable enough to deliver something as described. The formal quote was also a positive too.

Maybe next time? It's possible.

Knowing the prices of the other quotes was helpful too. There is money is this. It may not be flowing to ME yet but there is money in this.

No reflection on you, but it appears the guy is looking for upscale customers... I guess it's clients at that level.
Anyway, I'm not sure the name LOL presents an upscale aura. :eyebrow:

I've seen low price prejudice a lot in the photo and film business. The more you pay, the more it's worth ;)

Seriously though, if your price is too affordable it can raise red flags. I knew a photographer whose business skyrocketed when he jacked his prices up 700%.

The business that contacted me through a friend is also a start up. My friend that I worked with in design was asked if he could create this simple logo with the graphics to which he replied "I make engineering models with UGNX, so no I can't do it...but I know someone that can." So they contacted me.

They are in NYC so they are looking for big $ customers, sure. But they're a start up too with the same bottom up growth strategy that I have.

Yes, I'm one of those people. If it's a low price my expectations are low.

That's not always the case as we know but it's the norm.

Right now I'm trying to get some work at practically any rate just to get things in my portfolio.

Once I have a few more "good" videos it seems possible that I could charge a more realistic rate. Rates like...about $1000 a minute for completely original content are not all that unreasonable.

You have a good point about pricing. I'll be scheming to get more money for my videos even now as they aren't that impressive.

It seems to me that if you have an effective sales and marketing plan and bring your own prospects to conversion your chances of making MUCH more money is possible. If there is no sales and marketing plan then you are stuck in the online marketplaces where they demand small miracles in technical skill and delivery for very little cash.

The big skill is truly attracting your own clients. Everything else can be outsourced in one way or another.

Here's my latest clip. It's not impressive by any stretch but it IS better than my other videos.

The image quality is BAD. The camera views are jumpy and the script is not well thought out. The voice is GREAT but the script is not great.

As my skills get better I'll look back at this video in horror. This is my best effort today though.

And, there are some pretty funny parts to it.

I'm close to finishing my next cellar promo video. It's promoting the thread "Down here at the pawn shop" and shows some screenshots of a pawn shop with quotes from the thread mixed in.

This one is better. All around better. Really.

The question that I have for someone here is how do I add a link to my video. I'd like to have a click-able link to the thread Down here at the pawn shop at the end of the video. No extra effort required to go visit the place that the video is showing. Click and you're there. Or more accurately, click and you're here.

Youtube seems to have a limitation on the links that you can embed into the videos. Is that right or did I misunderstand it? Having a link directly in the video makes sense for many applications.

Does anyone know if this is possible and if yes, how?

Thanks.

In YouTube, you could use an annotation in the video for the link. You can control when the annotation pops up, I think.

No idea how, though, I've never done it.

ok, thanks. I'll go back and fiddle around with it.

Seems that there was some type of restriction but maybe a closer look will show otherwise.

Yes friends, it's another installment in the cellar. org series.

This one is titled "cellar.org Homebase - Down here at the pawn shop by Undertoad."

"Is it better than that terrible excuse for a video that you posted last time?", you may ask.

Maybe. Look at the bright side, at least Clodfobble's voice is in the vid.

Is that really Clodfobble's voice?

I've never seen her speak to hear her voice but I'm pretty sure, yes. It's her voice.

Yes, it's really me. :)

I've met Clodfobble several times, and yes it is her voice, although...
There's something different about the way she sounds... I Have The Weirdest Boner

That's my standard "narrator voice." If you're in the business of weird boners, I recommend you stay away from my "educational fun for kids voice."

I wanna narrate for Slang!
Although I do recognise Clod is a professional, and it probably tells. She has a gorgeous voice, but I guess that's just the start.

It's like a super power. Do you only use your voice for good? Do you use different voices on different people in real life? I mean, we all do, but do you have some sort of professional voices you pull out for use on real people?

Sure. Send me a voice sample.

More input from dwellars on these videos would be a great help. I'm just not good at directing yet and could use the help for additional voice overs AND the overall scene development, scripts, etc. :)

These promos aren't good at the moment but could be with some creative suggestions.

Not the narrator voice, no. I would sound like a marketing twat. Occasionally I'll use a serious-confident-lawyerish voice on the phone with the insurance company, because I want the customer service rep to feel personally liable for solving my problem. But I don't think it's that much different than everyone else does. The only time I can think of where I really use a completely different persona is when buying a car, because I am a *shit* negotiator, and it helps if I think of it as if I'm actually just playing the role of a good negotiator. That way I can say things that the real me would be too chicken to say, if that makes any sense at all. But even then, it's not really about the voice so much as the words.

That is so cool. :thumb2:

I'll whor--hire myself out to anyone with a script and some money.

At a very good price, I might add. :D

For those of you that given good comments and suggestions on the Old Detroit City Hall, thank you.

The next phase of this project is to clean up the models seen here, to add much more detail to those other buildings in the old Detroit campus meritus and to use them in a video.

I'm working on a script now for the narration as well as thinking out possible camera shots that will be completely new. The target release date for this new video is Mar 21-14 which will be difficult to meet with all the work needed to finish it off.

Stay tuned for updates and more screenshots.

I wouldn't say I've made a business of it. More like a hobby, I guess?

Still working at the Old Detroit City ( circa 1907 ) project. Many buildings not seen here have been added to the city.

Now, much of the layout and setup work has been done and detailing the structures can start.

It seems that I've found my niche with the city buildings instead of making the cellar vids. I hope you like this better.

The Old Detroit City Hall was a cool building to model. Now I'm modeling the surrounding buildings which seems to make the project more interesting. The video that will be made from these seems a lot more exciting although much more work.

The red dot seen in the image is the city hall.

I'm starting to develop a system for creating these old scenes from photos and hope to do the same for some other American cities after Detroit is complete.

Thanks to everyone for your interest and support.

Looks like a lot of work, to me. Just gathering all the information you need would be a nightmare. :rollanim: