3D Animated silhouettes

[alfienoakes]

I am going to be putting together an animation similar to the one on this website:

 

http://www.sunesisbuild.co.uk/products/schools/designs/video.php?id=1&type=Primary&subtype1=1%20Form%20Entry

 

If you look at the video, these are the ones I'm after. I've not seen them before, so am unsure where they come from. Has anyone seen anything like these, or happens to know where they are from..?

 

Cheers in advance..

[Scott Schroeder]

The movements and the "pancake" hands leads me to believe the took some 3D people, rendered out their movements to a sequence of frames and just used an alpha channel on a card to create the silhouetted people. Or rendered them out in a separate layer and just used the alpha. I think those are custom.

 

I do it a lot when I need people, but hate the 3D people that are on the market or that I'm willing to pay for. You can take 1 person and populate a site many times over using that technique.

[erickdt]

The movements and the "pancake" hands leads me to believe the took some 3D people, rendered out their movements to a sequence of frames and just used an alpha channel on a card to create the silhouetted people. Or rendered them out in a separate layer and just used the alpha. I think those are custom.

 

I do it a lot when I need people, but hate the 3D people that are on the market or that I'm willing to pay for. You can take 1 person and populate a site many times over using that technique.

 

+1

 

I've also used animated RPCs and rendered them out with the rest of the scene as matte objects and then composited their alpha channel in After Effects using it as a matte for a white solid layer that goes over the rest of my passes.

 

E

[alfienoakes]

Interesting..

 

I do have some RPC moving people in my collection, but have never tried this process before. You wouldn't have a link to a tutorial or something similar would you..? If I can make use of what I have, it would make sense.

 

Cheers

[erickdt]

Hi Andy,

 

I don't know of any tutorials on this process but I can give you a quick walk through. First, I am using vray FYI. What you do is add the RPCS to you scene. You then select everything but your RPCS and right click in the window to get your quad menu. Go to vray properties and check matte object and set the alpha contribution to -1.0. You can then render out an image sequence in a format that carries an alpha channel. To speed things up, I typically will apply an all white material to my model (not the RPCS) so then you only have to worry about MAX loading and unloading the RPCS textures. Do not use an override material from the global switches rollout as it will override the RPCS textures. I also disable all lights, disable glossy effects and refraction and reflection. All of this results in frame times of about 4 seconds.

 

Once you've rendered out your image sequence you import it into After Effects and add it into your composition. I usually put it underneath all of my other layers because we don't want to actually see it, we're only going to use its alpha channel. You then create a new solid layer in black or white depending on the look youre going for. Under effects go to channel, set matte and use the RPCS alpha channel as the basis for that matte. For the white solid option I typically will set that layers blending mode to screen at 75%. For the black solid option I typically set the blending mode to multiply also at 75%. Oce you've done all this you should have perfectly cut in, moving people silloghettes.

 

You should definitely do some test renders at different points throughout your sequence before you render out the whole thing. RPCS appear ungrounded or look like they're floating in mid air if they're not carefully placed.

 

Hopefully this helps!

 

E

[alfienoakes]

Cheers Erick,

 

Thats a great looking tutorial..! I will give this a go. I am currently trying to gather all my old RPC content and licenses / dashboard etc as I haven't used these for ages.

 

Good thing is, the guys over at Archvision are some of the best support I have ever seen, so hopefully I will be up and running in a few days.

 

To add into the mix as well, I have access to after effects (which I have never used), but the last animation sequence I put together was in Adobe Premiere.... Luckily I have about 5 weeks to get this all done..

 

Cheers

[alfienoakes]

Ok,

 

I found out that you can silouhette the rpc's within max and render them. Tried all the ways archvision suggest and none of them work properly. They have suggested rendering out in scanline and then comping. Problem is, I have never comped anything in an animation in my life. The description above is a big help, but I'm not even sure what to do with the original render, without the rpc's..

 

Do I render out to tiff, the standard animation without rpc's, and then carry out the process in the above posts just for the rpc's..? I assume then I can some how line up the frames, like for like in a new channel within ae, and then apply some sort of mask to combine.? I haven't use ae before either so am really on a hiding. I was hoping I could use premiere as at least I know how to use that.

 

Appreciate this is a sort of confused question, but 4 weeks ago, I found out I could use the rpc's within max, and now they don't seem to work properly.

 

Thanks