Anim8or Community

Hello fellow Anim8ors.  This is possibly my final submission to the Need for Speed contest being run on animanon.com (it's a running contest, all are welcome to submit entries, from all skill and experience levels).  I may add sound effects if I get time before this stage of the contest ends.  The lens effects were added frame by frame in Corel, otherwise the modelling, rigging and rendering were all performed using Anim8or V0.95.

I generally use either Video Impression (came free with my digital camera) or Nero Vision Express (came with my DVD burner).  Neither are any good at video manipulation (changing speed, adding effects, etc) but they do allow 2 tracks of audio and you can whack in pretty transition effects and the like.  For video effects I generally work frame by frame in Corel (it can import an AVI and split it into its constituent frames, each able to be worked on with Corel's graphics tools).  For audio I use NCH WavePad, Audacity (like colclough) and Krystal, all free on the web.  WavePad is good for recording (from a synth or whatever), Audacity has excellent sound processing tools, and Krystal has a fantastic interface which closely resembles a proper mixing desk.  Like Lynn22, I prefer to build my audio tracks separate from the video.

A scene, when created, has a single default light source, set as a distant light, and the "handle", or physical object that represents the light, is situated central to the scene, a little above the grid plane.  The default direction is straight down, but you can change this by selecting the light object and, in Top view, rotating the light object in any direction you wish.  For a distant light, the actual position of the light object within the scene makes no difference, because it defines parallel light rays.  If you are having trouble finding it, make sure wireframe mode is selected and find the object light01 in the key frame editor at bottom left of the screen.  If it is not there (and hasn't been renamed) it might have been deleted, in which case just Build>Add Light and place/orient a new one.

Great work (how cool is Terranim8or, huh!).  Couple of suggestions:  Maybe it's my monitor but both the vids appear a bit washed out, too bright and not enough contrast.  Not sure why this would be, but the starfield background would look much better with higher contrast.  Also, the panoramic background seems vertically stretched (or horizontally squished).  Maybe fiddle with the background parameters, in particular the High and Low settings (which are reversed in V0.95 by the way, a minor bug.  High actually sets the bottom of the image, and Low sets the top).

Other than that, I agree with Hiho and Colclough.  It's an excellent start, and I particularly like the Flash Gordon style ship and the alien terrain.  Very cool!

I agree with Rudy on this one.  Perhaps if anybody finds great texture sites they could just post links here.  There are also a couple of sites set up specifically to provide crits and resources to anim8ors, specifically animanon.com and anim8or.org.  It might be better to put this post on one (or both) of those sites.

(PS: great textures though, and your intention of helping fellow anim8ors is appreciated)

Oh yeah, of course the blue light is from the engine!  Sorry mate, my mistake.  It doesn't matter how you create an effect, like using Star Trek windows, so long as the effect works... and your window effect works brilliantly!

Also, i'm pretty certain "ace" means "good", "excellent", "awesome", or at least it used to.  And I agree that it certainly applies here.  Looking forward to seeing more stuff from you, mate.

Yup, that's pretty much exactly what I did.  Ignoring the camera for the moment, I defined the position of the vehicle in the terrain at certain key frames, which basically defined a spline, which I could modify with the normal spline tools.  Once the motion of the vehicle was defined, I was able to use this for all the views.  For the follow view, I defined the camera as being a child of the vehicle in terms of position, as colclough said, and set its position behind the vehicle, but kept it's orientation a child of the "world". (I used this technique for early test renders, but the view of the rear of the ship was very fixed.  For the final vid I moved the camera's position frame by frame, relative to the vehicle, so it followed the same actual path as the ship, just a little behind, and defined it as facing the vehicle.  This felt more like a follow cam, less like a camera mounted on a stick poking out the back of the vehicle)

For the in-vehicle shots, I constructed a cockpit that was kinda like a film set, with no back wall.  I made the vehicle invisible, defined the cockpit and camera as a child of the invisible vehicle (both position and orientation), and filmed the whole thing again, picking the bits I wanted later, and giving them post-production detail frame by frame in Corel.

Oh, and yeah, Terranim8or is the go for building terrains.  It can build 3D terrains from greyscale bitmaps (white is high ground, black is low ground) as well as fractals and other cool stuff.  It is a free download, is designed to work with Anim8or,  and has loads of other cool features.

Good luck with your project, I like the way you think!  I, and many others, are always ready to help with advice and tips, on this site as well as animanon.com and anim8or.org.

1) Certainly!  If I was 2 years old I would be unable to use Anim8or, and if I was 98 I would probably be distrustful of computers.  Also, my lifestyle allows me sufficient funds to own a computer and pay for an internet connection, and sufficient time to build animations.

2) Probably.  I spend time in Anim8or when I should be mowing the lawn, or washing the dishes, or working out, or any of a dozen more productive things I could be doing.

3) The ART raytracer is fantastic, not so much because of what it is itself, rather because it reminds me that Anim8or is a work in progress, and there is still so much to come.

4) No.

5) No.

6) Good luck with the report.