animation with moving people : best solution???

[mac3d]

Hi Guys and Gals!

 

What program/plugin combinations do you think handles an architectural walkthrough animation with moving people? Lot's of polygons.

MAX w/rpc's

VIZ w/rpc;s

Lightwave, c4d, etc...

 

Or has anyone tried compositing in people after animation is completed?

 

Comments?

Suggestions?

 

Thanks!!!!!

MAC3D

[John Dollus]

Max/Viz with Marlin's moving people maps on planes. No plugins and small files.

[mbr]

If you use the rpc 2.5d people (I think that's what they are called), they look good (although I have not used people in video myself). The walking people look fine from far away, but horrible up close.

 

The marlin ones look almost perfect, but they are planes, so if your camera rotates, forget it. But if not, they really look nice.

[tcorbett]

probably beating a dead horse with this one, but I actually like using Poser. The people don't look as real as RPCs, but they react better to the environment, especially lighting, and you can view them close up, or from other angles, like overhead. Also, clients do not have to see the same woman standing behind every info desk in the portfolio. :???:

[STRAT]

i use marlin studios peeps. great they are

[behemoth]

I would tackle it shot by shot.

 

Depending on your camera movement, different products fair differently.

 

For birdseye, I'll go full 3D

 

For forward movement without much rotation, I'll go marlin

 

For shots that rotate, I'll go for RPC.

[Ernest Burden III]

probably beating a dead horse with this one, but I actually like using Poser...clients do not have to see the same woman standing behind every info desk in the portfolio.

Which version Poser? I am always threatening myself to use it for figures, but never do. I stopped upgrading with v4. There may be enough extra in v5 to buy it. What are you doing with it?

 

Poser HAD a plug-in to host its scenes inside C4D but it only worked with v7 C4D, not 8, so that doesn't help me.

 

I have thought about using the Poser walk-composer to record my own version of the Marlin animated, matted figure. It would only take a few minutes to do, the walkcycles provided with the program are MoCap and loop perfectly. All you need is a static camera, or, for the adventurous, an attempt at matching a shot in your animation.

 

I have noticed that in arch. animations that use moving people, even Chen's, MOST of the figures are still static with only a few actually moving. At least they bluescreen theirs custom.

 

There was a sample posted a month or two ago by... Muzzy?...that was very well done.

[muzzy]

Ernest, Thank you for your compliments.

 

This will boost my consantration to finish master thesis " Simplified Green Screen Techniques for architectural Animations" by this May. I am trying to finish but I hope to find a job

 

This can be an alternative solution to Marlin Studio & RPC. I do the same thing as Marlin Studio did.

 

Here is the video as Ernest mentioned. This time I include background information like a documentary.

 

Comments & Critics Welcome

Green Screen Techniques Animation 5.85mb Divx

 

[ February 28, 2004, 10:12 AM: Message edited by: muzzy ]

[JimL]

We just finished an animation where we composited the people after, using rpc's and marlin (not ideal as you are stuck with the library and they are a bit wooden and badly dressed). But compositing after is much better as you can keep changing the people without having to re-render the whole scene. This is the technique that worked for us:

 

1. Render scene as sequential image files.

2. Add the people to the scene where you want.

3. Render people sequence without any scene info.

4. Give all solid scene objects bright white material (except glass that you see people thru), turn the map off for the people and leave black alpha. Render sequence. should end up with silohette of masked people.(this step has got easier with max6 - just render elements - matte with id buffer for people to create alpha mask.

5. Composite the 2 people sequences together in After Effects and render back out to tga sequence that should leave you with the people with an embedded alpha.

6. In adobe premiere composite the new people sequence with the animation scene sequence, with alpha channel on in the people transparency.

 

Might seem long-winded but the render times of the people are very fast, so you can quickly change and adapt.

[Frosty]

I completed an animation toward the end of last year and used the marlin libraries exstensively. They proved quite easy to set up and use in my software (cinema 4D) and added very little to render times.

 

The benefite to the marlin set is that they will work in any 3d package. The Archivision products require a special plugin which does not work on all software.

 

A sample of my animation is available here:

http://crucialperception.com/demo.mov

11MB