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unlimitedmagic - all messages by user

2017/12/13 7:31:04
Pink Floyd Re-Animated
2017/12/13 7:30:29
Pink Floyd Re-Animated Here's a weekend project that was inspired by the Trial Scene from The Wall.

2017/4/14 19:15:31
Heaven Bound Test Render Here's the final render of Citizen of Heaven with the audio normalized.
2017/4/14 11:23:54
Heaven Bound Test Render Wow, thank you ritsmer. Humbling.
2017/4/13 11:19:15
Heaven Bound Test Render Forgot to normalize the final audio so I'm re-rendering and uploading. Will post when done. Gets rid of all the varying audio levels and smooths things out sound wise. Still have a bunch of little things I could fix with time but there is a point of diminishing returns where I just wanted to keep moving on it and get it done.

This was started as a way for me to learn the Muvizu software. It's funny how simple the animation is in the beginning and how it gets better as it progresses. Some of the first beach conversations aren't tight and when you get to the party scene near the end, Joe's dad is almost naturally speaking with his hand gestures.

The biggest mistake was trying to do this on a very minimal computer. It has an integrated graphics card which really limits how much I can show in a scene. When Ziggy sent me the model for his version of the throne of grace scene, my computer wouldn't even open it. So if you ever try something this long, I recommend a dedicated, current 3D card. I didn't want to change computers until I was done as I've got video files all over the place and didn't want to lose something in the upgrade.

There are several scenes where there was extra processing and effects from Sony Vegas - sparkles and glows. The majority of it though I wanted to come directly from Muvizu. Some shots like when Joe remembers his grandfather at the party needed After Effects to remove his left arm.

The biggest challenges I ran into with Muvizu were:

Need more actions - got tired of having to re-use hand gestures and others to keep the character moving.

It would be nice to be able slice the actions into bits and put them together in various combinations. I found you could cut a full action short by selecting "idle" quickly after a gesture was recorded. This helped tremendously for timing, but it only works on the first part of the action. Would be nice if you could do this at any part of the action. Because this is adding an editing feature to the timeline, it should be easier to update than having to pay for the time to create a bunch of new actions - although it might be nice to have a series of short actions like - left arm forward, left arm up, left arm, left arm back, etc. With selectable hand positions like you have when you attach an object. Just like some of the actions that stay in the position you leave the character in, these would also "hold". This would really open up how you control the characters. I always hate how the clapping action is too short, the hug is too short, etc.

How about a "HOLD ACTION" action? This would freeze the action where you like and then be able to continue when you choose a new action.

I struggled with the character movement interface. It's too random. The walking is too fast for most applications. What happened to the idea of a "stroll" speed? Also the walking is pretty much useless for short distances. If you move the path arrow out, the character pauses until you get a certain distance away and then walks right on by your target destination. Forget about having a character take two steps forward and stopping.

Still don't like the shadow flickering. You either have to turn off shadows or run them with razor sharp edges to fix.

Overall though Muvizu is an incredible product for its scope and use. I had more fun building scenes and animating than any other package I've ever used. You can really get creative when you learn the capabilities of having an open world to build and populate with characters. For what it is and the price, Muvizu is an excellent value.

The forum and member store are also the best. There is a homegrown culture of comradery here that doesn't exist in Unity or Unreal where they either mock you if you don't know how to do something or are going to charge you for simple model examples.

Hats off to Muvizu for creating such a wonderful product!
2016/11/8 10:39:48
Coming to soon to the Muvizu store Love the city set, that's really cool!
2016/10/23 18:08:13
Light Beam Set I might have screwed it up by clicking on Private instead of Public. Will try again and if it doesn't work this time will contact support.

Thanks!
2016/10/23 17:55:34
Light Beam Set ziggy72 wrote:
You know, if that was rendered out as a separate layer, you could then add a transparency gradient to it before you composite it back into the shot, which would look rather good...
edited by ziggy72 on 23/10/2016


If you right click on the mesh, there are also transparency sliders you can adjust but it won't give you the gradient like you suggest. I had put this on the Store around a month ago and haven't seen a few models make it up there. I used to have them up almost a day later.
2016/10/23 13:44:51
Light Beam Set Here's a cool way to show a beam of light as if it were in a smoky room. Download the Muvizu SET file.


edited by unlimitedmagic on 23/10/2016
2016/10/22 20:30:34
Muvizu Halloween Contest 2016 Entries If anyone would like to see how I did the "Last Message" here's the file. It was done as a single take. I did re-edit some of the timing on the camera cuts and added audio in Sony Vegas Pro.
2016/10/22 20:15:33
Muvizu Halloween Contest 2016 Entries I've got an intel (laptop) motherboard. 2.5ghz, 8 gigs of ram, terrible integrated graphics card. It's been a good unit for most things and I've been surprised at how it keeps chugging along - I burden it repeatedly. Part of my fun is seeing how much I can get away with. It forces me to optimize my sets which is kind of cool.

I did one shot in my entry where the walls seem to stretch down from overhead. I had seen this type of shot used in horror films before. They call it a "Dolly Zoom". It's where you zoom out while moving the camera forward. I didn't think it would work in Muvizu but it worked nicely.

Here's a great compilation of it used in movies -

https://vimeo.com/84548119.
2016/10/22 15:44:08
Muvizu Halloween Contest 2016 Entries COOL! I love the opening tracking shot with the moon in the background. Great use of lighting. How'd you get so many fog effects? Muvizu crashes if I put more than two - must be my crappy PC. Jealous. Beautiful job PatMarrNC
2016/10/18 10:24:21
Muvizu Halloween Contest 2016 Entries Here's my entry...
2016/10/15 10:27:20
An open Letter to Muvizu's developers Shouldn't there be a main topic for Desired Muvizu Improvements? There the discussion could be on the many scattered ideas to improve the program and a central place for the developers to respond.

I was just thinking that many of the character actions are too extreme for me. It would be nice to have a slider to be able to set the intensity of the action. I would think that would be a fairly easy improvement as you aren't adding a new feature - more of adjusting the range of existing movement.
2016/9/30 16:02:02
Heaven Bound Test Render I got an idea for an infinity mirror in Muvizu. It would be easy to change this to use for other projects. Hope you like. Here's the result...




Here's the edited render with some ray and sparkle effects.




Here's a link to the set file.
2016/9/28 13:51:32
Heaven Bound Test Render Pretty sure it came with it.
2016/9/28 13:51:25
Heaven Bound Test Render Pretty sure it came with it.
2016/9/28 9:20:25
Heaven Bound Test Render On a fairly recent version of Sketchup on the export FBX, there's an options button on the lower right, under that you can select "2-Sided".
2016/9/26 8:19:41
Heaven Bound Test Render Right, Sketchup.
edited by unlimitedmagic on 26/09/2016
2016/9/26 3:13:01
Heaven Bound Test Render Wish I could say I model that well, but no. Usually hack 3D warehouse stuff from Sketchup. Lots of texture re-mapping, slicing, scaling, and chopping. Finally figured out how to export 2-sided textures to FBX, didn't realize there was an options button on the export. The rest is mostly photoshop select and deleting background from interesting images. I did find a neat trick where if you search Google for 360 or Spherical images, you can get really nice skydome assets that only need to be re-sized. The rest I'm trying to push Muvizu to do most in program. It's really a neat piece of software, I love the challenge. I think the physics capability of the Unreal engine is under-used, just haven't found the perfect need for it yet.
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Muvizu is easy to use 3D animation software that allows anyone to create high quality animations quickly and easily. Muvizu’s animation engine is ideal for storytellers, animators, teachers and businesses looking to engage, enchant and delight audiences with animated content.