Jellyfish (Organic Motion Animation)

[MinDBenNdER]

Here is a jellyfish animation I made:

QuickTime:
http://www.motionndesign.com/jellyfish.html

Flash:
http://www.motionndesign.com/jellyfishf.html

Due to the fame of the new Pixar/Disney underwater adventure; I plan on making a full underwater environment complete with fish, sharks, and underwater plant life. That of course will take me ages to do.

Hmmm. That sounds like a good idea for the next 3D challenge.
An all underwater theme.

[muijefr]

delicate and fluid motion. Have you thought about packaging your animations as screen savers and pedaling them or been there done that or doing that now.



:p

[MinDBenNdER]

thanks muijefr.

i thought about making one for my own CPU; but i never thought about selling them. that would be a good idea. offer a few for free shareware, and then sell a full pack.

does anyone know any good free software that can turn video files into screen savers?

i know of some that turn Flash files to screen savers, but they are not free.

[muijefr]

RE:
does anyone know any good free software that can turn video files into screen savers?

Don't be discourage if you don't find any free screen saver applications. You'd probably want to buy one that provides a universal commercial license. A screen saver application usually involves a nice professional installation appearance and one that interfaces for/with multiple operating systems. Usually not condiments. A better question might be does anyone know of a kick *** screen saver application that is reasonably priced ($150 U.S. or less).

[MinDBenNdER]

Or, should the question be; "Does anyone know of a kick *** screen saver application that I can rip off Kazaa?"

NO NO! I'm just joking. :p I'm no pirate.

You'd probably want to buy one that provides a universal commercial license. A screen saver application usually involves a nice professional installation appearance and one that interfaces for/with multiple operating systems.
Yeah very true, you get what you pay for, and I'm sure a shareware app like that must not be as good as a payed for one. I just wonder how you can take such a huge video file thats at full screen res. and make it small like most screen savers are (under 1MB).

[muijefr]

RE:
I just wonder how you can take such a huge video file that's at full screen res. and make it small like most screen savers are (under 1MB).

The screen savers I offer are old school, made with high quality full screen .jpg images, 18 geometric variations, variable display time properties, ten to a set, and generally require 1-2 MB of storage. How would I reduce the size of my screen savers. First, I probable would not worry the problem too much, but I could make the size of each image smaller, include fewer images, and use JPEG2000 rather than .jpg(generic/Windows JPEG2000 support is currently problematical). And here's the clue to "smaller" video screen savers, file compresion, as in the MPEG4 format. It requires about 10% the storage/size of an original but here's the crux, finding a screen saver installation package that supports MPEG4/DIVX. If I sound like a fish out of water that's just what I am.

Why do you think your screen saver(s) should be under 1MB. Remember, screen savers live in a PC where hertz and MB are not the problem of the day (anyway for newer machines). I know, not true in Bangladesh. And what is a Kazaa.



:p :D :p

[MinDBenNdER]

here is one:

"Axialis Professional Screen Saver Producer (http://axialis.com/ssp/) is a powerful tool to manage, create, compile and distribute screen savers for Windows®. It has a fully integrated workspace that permits you to work efficiently and create professional screen savers in minutes."

$59.95 for the Corporate Edition. Not bad. But you can only make them for Windows PCs. :(

[muijefr]

I'm sure jj can provide some insight about the size of the Windows PC market base, and I'm not a greedy man, but if I could sell a screen saver to all Windows PC I would for sure be a happy man.
RE:
But you can only make them for Windows PCs.
I book marked the Axialis URL. I did not see, other than as marketing verbage, that it supports JPEG2000 or MPEG4, nor did I see what versions of Windows the screen saver installation supports (this is different than what version of Windows the screen saver producer needs).



:p

[MinDBenNdER]

"Screen Time (http://www.screentime.com/ScreenTime_F/screentime3.html) the worlds #1 Professional Screen Saver Creation Tool is now even better with full support for Windows 95 through XP, a Flash everywhere™ interface and support for everything from multiple monitors to your own custom icons."

That's the one I had seen around before, but never bothered to look at the site till my soon to be boss showed me the other day.

$199 for a limited license of 10,000 screen savers.
$299 for unlimited license of unlimited amount of screen savers.

You make the screen saver animations in Flash, and Screen Time turns the SWF file into a screen saver. Plus it has interactive features that you can build in Flash, such as sound, links and buttons.

What I didn't understand is if it runs on the Flash plugin, there for the screen savers can be installed in multiple operating systems (Win and Mac). If that's the case then its worth the $300; beacause I have been looking for a app. that will export a cross-platform screen saver, and have not found a good one.

I would have to turn my QuickTime files to .SWF files first, then convert them too screen savers.

I plan on downloading the trial versions in the next few weeks to see how they work out. I'll keep posted on that.

[muijefr]

but this product seems more in line with your talents (if it fixed your breakfast and dressed you - you'd have to name it mother - but not the other mother).

I don't know how hard and fast this rule is

but it requires: a swf created by Macromedia Flash 3 or later.

would that exclude all other .swf files...ya, keep us posted.


:p :D :p

[MinDBenNdER]

For $300 it should fix your breakfast and dress you in the morning
for $300 i would rather it cook me dinner and undress me at night :p

just kidding :D

[MinDBenNdER]

i tryed some of the apps last night. i posted the results in this thread:

http://forum.powweb.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23053

[paulselhi]

Your jelly fish have it too easy, lets stir the sea up a bit :

exercise with waves 206 kb (http://www.wanbridge.net/stuff/waves2divx.avi)

exercise in buoynacy 331 kb (http://www.wanbridge.net/stuff/wavesdivx.avi)

I am going to try some jelly fishing myself and do some underwatyer scenes, but first i HAVE to do the obligatory shark !!!

For those of you still missing the divx codec :

www.divx.com

[paulselhi]

ok not really that clever, each was abut 20 mins to set up in Maya !!!

And about an hour or so to render.

:D

[MinDBenNdER]

Nice Paul.

You should download a simple boat model to replace the box with it.

I have been busy on other stuff; and haven't had a chance to make my underwater scene. I will get started on it sometime in the next few weeks.

Here is an article on "Finding Nemo" and about what the team at Pixar did with the animation of characters and creating the bright underwater environments:

http://www.cgnetworks.com/story_custom.php?story_id=1389&page=3

Interesting stuff.

[paulselhi]

whilst fiddling around in maya i remebered your underwater project and came across this amazing maya effect.

ok the vid is very basic i was just seeing what maya paint can do, basically you use tubes as in say PSP however these tubes paint 3d meshes which are fully animatable and in this example i did the only thing i had to do was up the turbulence amount

the possibilities here are endless, grass waving in a breeze ( made in a breeze) trees simpley painted on a canvas and auto animated , clouds lightning rain etc etc

take a look, took less than 5 mins to set up and about 5 mins to render

www.wanbridge.net/stuff/seabed.avi

yes, even the bubbles are tubes painted on with a single mouse stroke for each set

[Croc Hunter]

mINdbEnDer
If you do get around to making the screen saver check this out It's not free but versatile. http://www.flashjester.com/index.html?section=tricks_creator

[MinDBenNdER]

i tried out the divix compressor, it worked well.

i got an extremely sharp quality animation at 640 x 480, at only 720 kbs.

that's not bad at all.
Max gave me the option to use the codec after I downloaded it to see the animations.

Nuke Tower (http://www.motionndesign.com/real/Tower_Area_51.avi)

the timing is off at the end. just experimenting with cloud animation, and night lighting.
i also layered the animations in MAX's video post. i don't know if Maya has this feature; but you can render the background, mid-ground, and foreground as sperate files, then bring them together in MAX's "video post". this saves render time, and allows you to switch from scene to scene.

http://www.flashjester.com/index.ht...=tricks_creator

yeah, i have seen the jester before. haven't given it a try yet. I tried out the Screen Time. Works well, and has a more easy to use interface then Axialis. Haven't had time to really tear away at the both of them yet.

[paulselhi]

yes that is maya's obsession, multilayer renders and compositing. It is one of the nags i have with the particle system, most need to be hardware rendered as a seperate layer then put into a compositor with the rest of the scene. Though this is probably a good experts feature it is a pain in the butt for peeps like me who just want to render and go

also after effects is a whole new challenge to learn, and is also not exactly cheap

when will someone come out with a 3d prog that does the lot. not extra plugin purchases, i mean

1. fluid effects for oceans, clouds smoke etc that react to objects- currently maya has the best included in maya unlimited. lightwave uses hypervoxels, not as good and i don't think it easily does interactions, cinema 4d has great effects with pyrocluster but interactions are difficult

2. Cloth and fur, Maya UL has this as does cinema 4d with all the addons

3. EASY particle setup and interparticle interactions, cinema is just to complex for the interactions, maya has all the hardware render hassle

4. Terrains ready to go- so far i see only bryce and vue though they don't have a particle or dynamics system, carrara studio does have terrains and particles, i am checking this out now

5. flocking and AI, many progs allow plugins to do this and it is quite complex however lightwave does it very well, see my "flocking hell" post

6. Rigid and soft body collisions, maya is quite powerful here and failrly easy to setup, cinema 4d seems good initially but again when it comes to advanced interactions you have to get into the xpresso editor and that can get quite complex, however it is very easy to get excited looking at the demo reels and it's another thing recreating them !!!

yes believe it or not i do not have MAX, it seems max can do most things however i believe that this entails another 20GB HD full of plugins. And is Max really that straight forward ?

I suppose at the end of the day it does boil down to compositing, do some of the things that can be done in s/w such as maya, use say terragen or bryce for other things, lightwave for others and then composit, or even do all character animation in poser and import in with yet more plugins !!

[paulselhi]

re nuke tower, are the ribs actually modelled or is it a bump map, or are you just pleased to see me ?

[MinDBenNdER]

believe it or not, i haven't really got into MAX's plug ins yet. most of what i do is strait from MAX itself.

re nuke tower, are the ribs actually modelled or is it a bump map, or are you just pleased to see me ?

haha, yeah they were modeled using the lattice modifier.

when i modeled it, i wasn't thinking "ribbed for her pleaser" but i guess it's all to the good. :p