Requesting production advice, for a cgi movie?
Mistara
Posts: 38,675
Requesting production advice, for a cgi movie?
It seemed pretty straight forward until i actually tried to start
found this 4 Step Guide to Digital Movie Making for Beginners - Steve's Digicams
but need a lot more than 4 steps
says to have camera blocking in mind, seems like a good idea.
production was supposed to start 1/2/2020, i'm already behind schedule.
decided on 1280x720 30 frames a second.
actual voice actors are out of my budget. vox software comes out pretty bad.
I'm heavily invested in daz content. 
so scrapping the whole idea is too late.
and Sony sound and video tools
animating in the other daz software, Carrara. has the script.
the importer animates add on.
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I've worked in animation production for over 25 years and the one bit of advice I'll strongly suggest is to focus your attention on a decent voice track and music. You can do a show with animations made on used cocktail napkins, stop motion using legos or literally scratched on the emulsion of old film and no one blinks an eye, but if the audio's not good, modern audiences aren't going to stay in their seats. Even the most brilliant silent movies like the work of Fritz Lang and Buster Keaton have a hard time keeping the attention of modern audiences without having some kind of music and effects track playing.
The good news is that you probably overestimate how much voice actors cost, as the starting professional rate is around $35.00 an hour, but there have been plenty of low budget productions where actors have worked for less. If you live in any town that has a population of more than a few thousand people or that has a high school, there's going to be some kind of theater base you can tap into, and unlike live action films, the actors in animated films don't have to record at the same time and can record multiple parts on a single show. Ever watch the original Bullwinkle? Every episode from the original run recorded by three guys and one girl sitting in a room with an ancient reel to reel tape recorder, and one of the guys was just the narrator. The English cast for Speed racer was one woman and four guys,and they squeezed in recording two episodes a day in the afternoon after recording an episode of Marine Boy in the morning. Venture Brothers is one of the most popular shows on Cartoon Network, but if you look at the credits, you'll see that two guys do the vast majority of the characters.
"Silent films were never silent."
The Sound of Silents
June 20, 2014 by Mike Mashon
https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2014/06/the-sound-of-silents/
AFAIK thats why old theatres had pipe organs
some had a whole orchestra
Cybersox's advice is absolutely right. Most people just click off when low budget animations have software voices. But one thing I want to add as well, is do your animation in 24 frames per second, not 30. Films are shot in 24 (or 23.976 if shot digitally these days). It will save you render time since you won't need to render as many frames per second.
Also, after recording your actors, you should edit together a storyboard version of your movie. Make a still image for each shot and cut that together with the dialogue (you can add temp sound effects and music if it helps). You should really get to a stage where you have the whole movie laid out without animation first so you can see what needs to be done. In the industry this is done so we don't render scenes that won't be in the movie. You edit the whole thing with stills or animatics and then watch it through many times - get feedback and find where the movie is playing slow or where more information migh be needed. You need to get a real feel for the flow before you ever start animation.
Cheers and good luck with it! It's a huge undertaking, but very exciting and rewarding.
Oh! A few more things (and forgive me if you know all this stuff already):
In an animation class in University (I am not an animator - but I work in the film industry) we looked at the Flintstones as an example of how to cheat things. If you've ever seen the Flintstones you'll notice that it plays almost like a radio play - you don't need to even watch it to know what's going on - it's all done with sound!
But one thing I never forget is that a lot of actions that would be more complicated to animate were done "off screen". A specific example showed Barney at the fridge (first shot the fridge is closed) he is talking to Fred. We cut to Fred and then when we cut back to Barney the Fridge is open and he has a giant sandwich in his hands. We never actually see him open the fridge and make the sandwich.
The lesson is don't spend time animating really complicated things that you can cheat. If it's not important to the story - cut away and then cut back.
Also, the Flintstones was famous for reusing backgrounds. Now - you probably don't want to do that, but consider breaking down your shots and seeing what you can do in layers. If you create a static background for some shots and then just animate your characters separately and composite them later you will save a ton of animation time.
I've been playing with creating my enviroments and then rendering them with a 360 camera. Then I take that 360 image back in and use it as the HDR background for close up shots. You could also just do something similar with planes and regular images - or composite later as I said.
Okay... that's all I can think of for now. Again, good luck!!!
Those Flintstones cheats work on more serious shows as well. The orignal network broadcast version of Jonny Quest (which only finally got an uncut, uncensored release on the recent Blu-ray set) is still one of the best adventure shows ever animated and it's full of the same cheats, as well as the famous "Jonny- slide", where rather than carefully animating animate Jonny pivoting and running around corners, the animators whould just have him hit a still pose like he was braking, and then the animation camera operator would slide the same cel across the frame like he was slowing to a stop, then the animation would pick up again with a new (but probably recycled) shot of him running from a different angle.
But the best cheats are even more subtle - anything that at least partially obscures the characters' mouths means you don't have to do tight lip synch. Bug's Bunny's carrot and Popeye's pipe and Bluto's cigar don't just add character, they also let the animators not have to worry about accurate lip work. When Warner Borothers slashed their animation budgets in the late 50s, Yosemite Sam quickly replaced Elmer Fudd as the main Warner Borthers bad guy because that loose, flowing beard, moustache and cowbow hat made him much easier to draw than Elmer Fudd, whose eyes and mouth would seem to wander wound his head unless the animators got everything exactly on-model.
For Sci-Fi animation, the key is to have your characters fly everywhere rather than walking. The entire genesis of the long-running Thunderbirds franchise was that the original shows featured puppets that could talk and wave their arms with relative realism, but always looked weird when they walked. And, needless to say, use lots of radio Voice Over and helmets that hide the mouths. That's the only thing that makes dubbing a machanima show like Red Vs. Blue possible. Telepathy's a great dodge too. :
Hmm. The perfect SF vocal scenario - Make one of your characters a Telepath, a second a mute alien with no visible mouth, the third someone who almost always wears a helmet and then have them take orders from a computer or a robot.
I soon learnt to frame the shot above the shins walking up stairs
95% of my animations don't use voices actors , Its true i use a lot of animals and such but most animated comedic shorts do not need a lot of dialogue. I am currently working on a animated short now with no voice actors. so the actors are nice but not necessary. and forget those Ai robot voices eww.
steps I use to complete a animation.
step1 create your work space & folder layout to keep you organized.
Step2 create a story board or concept art. ~ I do mine by actually creating my storyboard using my scenes directly in daz studio save them as scene1, scene 2, scene3, etc.this way each will be ready for animating and.render.
Step3 animating your scenes . I found sometimes less is more. when it comes to time length pre scene such as a 2 second,60 frame scene may work better than a 5 second,150 frame scene. Short 1 or 2 second scenes work great specially if you have a lot of action scenes. a short 1 seconds high motions impact scenes can be much more dramatic than a 15 seconds scene of character just standing there holding a gun.
Step4 rendering. I render in Iray at 1920 x 1080 for 1080HD .. I found it does not take anymore time to render at 1080 than 720. But you get less grainy & better results rendering at larger size for your final edit.
which brings us to step 5 film editing . this is where you put your skills to the test. in film editing you will need to put all the renders png's frames together to make your film first , then you will be able to start adding in sounds like music and sound effects , and if you areusing voice actors you will need to match the actors voice sound file with the lip movements in the rendered film., etc.
I use Adobe Premiere cs5 . But Hitfilm express is just as good and its free. If you render at 24 keyframes pre scecond or kps , try to keep your cut scene short as possiable. I found most 24kfps animations takes on a stop motion effect especially if you upload it to youtube in HD. Where movie & The film industry standard frame rate for video camera, cell phones and film editors with HD outputs are at 29.9 Keyframes per-second. So for a smoother fiinal video 30 keyframes per seconds will kgive you much better results .
just remember that rendering scenes will take a lot of Hard drive space so make sure you have enough room . just one folder containing 300 PNG is 300 frames of renders = a 10 second scene. in the final cut at 30 keyframes pre second . so my adverage folder size with 300 png's is about 4 gigs for 1 folder and my films tend to have about 20 or more raw scene folders on adverage. so you can see how huge these folders can get fast.
I do all my animations work accept the film editing using daz studio and this has been my technique of creating animation with daz studio for over 10 years. Other people may have other solutions. But this has always worked best for me,.
So if all else fails I do have a 3 hours video course on beginning a daz animations https://www.daz3d.com/daz-studio--getting-started-with-animation
you can view my work on Youtube,. They are all animated short story's, not the typical render test videos you see.. https://www.youtube.com/c/IvySummers
Good Luck.
Thanks. need to give the telepaths bigger roles, lol
anti gravity boots should save on walk cycle work
i havent actually tried it yet, audacity supposedly can remove background noise
animates a big help too, the v8 belly dance moves
thanks wendy for teaching how to bake keyframes
It works, but it's better not to have any noise to begin with. I've recorded ADR for both movies and TV series in improvised sound booths made up of hanging blankets or foam while the engineer recorded from another room or while wearing headphones, and some friends of mine once recorded the vocals for an entire rock album in the bathroom of a Super8 motel.
i tried some of these sound proof foams https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B078WM2V2L/
didn't work that great, unfortunately
can hear the heat pipes pinging and the refrigerator,
plus all the air traffice from JFK and LaGuardia. and the LIRR diesels.
atleast there no crickets this time of year
Thanks. do you go thru the steps of camera blocking?
working on perspectives for space travel. in theory doesn't seem so hard, until trying to do it
I do not use camera blocking techniques per-say. I hand keyframe my camera tracking using a camera parented to a "null " and track the keyframes and movements for the camera using "null" with key-mate or the graph-mate plugin for movements of the camera Its easier to keyframe the camera animation with the camera parented to a null .obj than try to animate the camera movements it self with a null you have more control of movements and pins for your rotation and traslations with null so the camera will match the movement of the props or characters that needs to be tracked during the animation cycle. a good example of that would be a person running on the beach and i need a camera to follow them at the same frame rate speed.
if you try to use just the camera by itself to animate the movements or to follow the same track as character, the camera will sometimes move in and out on its own accord because of the perspective of camera where null will be steady and match the same frame rate speed of the character or prop your trying to film as its moving.
I set up and name each of my camera parameters for each camera used for the POV to be rendered . I create a null ,parent the camera to the null and animate the null instead of the camera. That has always been the best solution for me anyway
my first goal is 90 minutes trying hard not to slack on the schedule. day 3.
that first establishing shot has to show a nutshell. has to do the job in 4 - 6 seconds? lol
looking back on how 5th element established it's universe.
i had it all in my head, now the indecisions hit.
time for the hardcore decisions, like faster than light speed pov.
i have a 3 day weekend to set my dayjob computer to rendering footage. goal for today is to have it set up to render render 48 hours of frames in less than 4 hours.
.You can build a sound proof booth with waferboard and sound batt insulation (look up roxul sound rockwool ) for voice work recordings.
When it comes to production the Motto KEEP IT SIMPLE works very well. I firmly believe KEEP IT SHORT is important too.
Short and simple is doable even by a small crew of 1.
Just say you're using international/European time formats. That way 1/2/2020 isn't for another 4 weeks and 1/2 days!!
Make sure you use all the obvious time savers with rendering. Limiting max path length to the minimum, setting hard limits on samples. Saving a few seconds (or minutes) on each frame will add up to a massive amount.
One thing that always looks odd to me in 3D films, is how sometimes they completely ignore/don't use DoF on cameras. DoF is a great way of hiding shoddy looking things, while also being good for drawing attention to stuff you want to draw attention to, while looking much more "cinematic" (and is something that all real cameras, other than pinhole cameras have).
I bought one of those H2n Zoom protable field recording studios Amazon link . they have filters built right in . But also I went to a carpet store and they let me take what ever scrps they were going to just throw it away for free.. and i grabbed all the thick piled carpets i could get my hands on to line a small closet to make a sound proof booth with it worked like a charm for making sound recording for when you don't want outside influence or sounds in the recordings. . But for sound effects I tend to record them live as they happen on site for the best results. specially when dealing with recording childrens for voices.
how do you keep a schedule?
stressful when nothing is rendering. >.<
Is that $35/hr of recorded footage or $35/hr flat. If it takes 10 hours to get 1 hour of footage you're paying $350 or are you paying $35. My guess is $35 but as I'm about to do some VO work I want to be sure I'm being paid fairly and want to charge fairly.
Thanks! This was an astonishingly interesting thread.
i watched Marine boy. is like the earliest memory i still remember.
$35 per hour in the studio for ADR, which is much more complex than doing pre-lay. Now, keep in mind, that's the cheapest starting rate that I know of in the U.S., which is Funimation in Dallas. Other studios pay more and outside the U.S. there are studios overseas that pay less, and studios that are working on SAG union projects may pay more. As for how long it takes... that depends on the actor, director, producer, engineer, the equipment/studio setup being used and whether you're recording to finished footage, pre-laying dialog that will be and whether you're working with one actor at a time or with a large group performing in an ensemble. But 10 hours to get one hour of footage with a single actor would be crazy long.under most situations.
Those aren't really soundproofing foams, they're meant to reduce the amount of slap and reverb in a room, but while having a lot of acoustic bagffling will help, the most important thing is the actual pickup pattern of the microphone. Ideally you want a mic with a very narrow field of pickup that can be aimed directly at the actor without recording anything off to the sides. The Blue Snowball is the least expensive mic I know of that works well for this purpose, running under $50 on Amazon, and I know a lot of Actors who use them for sending in auditions over the net. Ideally, you'll also want to record in a room that's completely isolated from any of the exterior walls of the building you're in, with walk-in closets that are still filled with clothes often sounding very clean.... and I still remember doing a gig in Canada when wone of the actors had to wire in a line that they'd somehow missed, and he ended lying on his hotel bed with his mic while covered from head to toe with every blanket and cover we could get outr hands on. He was really hot, but it sounded fine. .
setting the pace, another thing to figure out,
the pace is the time on each shot?
The Zoom products are amazingly good for the money and they recently released what I think will be a game changer in portable recording, the LiveTrak l-8, They're really hard to get right now since they're brand new, but I preordered one right after they were announced and finally got mine just before Xmas. Basically it's a full multi-track production studio that can record multiple chanels of audio all at once or in layers to either an internal SD card or to a PC, and the kicker is that the dang thing can run on AA batteries or via USB power in the field. Pair it with a laptop and you're good to go anywhere for less than $400.
I could do a 90 minute video
whether anyone would want to watch it is another matter ...
thanks.
i editing video and music separate pc
1 8-core for the rendering.
also putting my dayjob hexacore to work. afraid i might burn it out, can hear the fan kick in after a couple minutes of rendering.