Carrara Community Movie Project Year 1 -- Story Ideas Welcomed
Rashad Carter
Posts: 1,799
Carrara is pretty much the sweetest bit of software on the planet. And who better to let the world know this than us, the Carrara community?
With the onset of 2013 we have a great opportunity to start the year off "right." Keeping it positive by keeping ourselves occupied, busy.
This is the first of what I hope will be many years of Carrara Community Movie/Film Projects. What we need at this time are story ideas. Here are the guidelines:
1. The story must be complete, in that it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
2. The length of the piece may vary depending on the technical considerations, so try to think around the 10 to 20 minute range. That's a lot of time. We can and will edit it later.
3. The story needs to lend itself well to being produced in "Chapters." This enables ebbs and flows in production without derailing the logic of the piece.
4. Stories need to be poignant, however, it would be good to avoid overt controversy. Kid friendly story lines are best. The sad ending to the Blender movie was a great example of giving the people what they want and surprising them at the same time. Not that our story needs a sad ending, but I'm just saying that a good story has elements of both good and bad, losses and gains.
5. The story needs to be visually appealing, it needs to lend itself well to different locations.
6. The story can be shaped around a central character so long as this character finds himself/herself in lots of situations.
And that's it so far as story requirements that I can think of off the top of my head. Please submit your ideas in this thread. In a few days, lets say January 10 we will have a final vote and determine which story to go forward with.
All ideas are good ideas at this point, so please lets all keep an open mind. Fun fun!
To kick it off, I will propose an idea that I mentioned already in another thread:
One quick story idea could be of an alien traveling toward the Earth from outer space. It’s always fun to open with a nice open space shot. Anyhow, the alien ship breaks apart into smaller ships, and each of these pieces travels toward a different location on Earth. traveling down through the clouds would be awesome to animate. One pod travels to the Valle Alpina, where we see flowing rivers and streams, gorgeous mountains and deep blue skies. Another one of the pods travels toward the temperate regions of Europe, strolling along the Country Lane. Another takes us to a Dystopian City or something, Another arrives in a tropical location and another underwater, one in the polar regions. Almost like a series of little vignettes each displaying a graphically specific and unique environment where fun things can happen. Broken up into pieces this way, the film could easily top 10 minutes. A team of 2 or 3 persons would be assigned to each location, and each would contribute 3 minutes of final footage by a date long from now, say July 1 2013 or something. Anyhow, the pods after gathering information about the planet then return to space, reassemble themselves into the original vessel, and leave off flying toward the Milky Way.
Thanks to all community members who are willing to participate in any way in this project. By helping you are doing your part to ensure that Carrara gets some long overdue exposure.
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Comments
Copngratulations on a great idea - I mean the Movie Project ! I think it will stimulate those interested in Animation.
There is a lot negative feeling being expressed in the forum about Carrara and Daz support ( and I dont want to start any debates here about that) but a Movie Project would be an excellent way for users to take Carrara foreward and maybe even Daz will sit up and take notice, be proud of what the community has done and support it with the development everyone craves. I like your vision of " many years of movie projects to come" as I may not have the skills to contribute right now but maybe in the future.
Presumably there would be someone overseeing and coordinating the project _ how do you see that working out?
I think parameters need specifying too - ie dialogue ? Would postwork and other software( Daz Studio ? yuk ) be allowed or should it be entirely Carrara ? Personally I think Carrara has enough power to have the entire movie made and rendered in Carrara - naturally a video editing software is needed to composite the final.
Some time ago I thought "Carrara Animation" needed some exposure and made this site http://animationplayhouse.yolasite.com/
Later I broadened things for animation in general but there maybe some useful information there for someone
Rashad-
Its great you have started the proverbial ball rolling on this. It is not an easy undertaking and in fact any community project has its inherent obstacles. Obviously, we need to start with a story as you have suggested but there are maybe some asset considerations and technical considerations that might be worth discussing before the stories .
I have written that we need to be realistic in the communities capabilities and I think part of this relates also to the partial purpose of doing this short community movie. If one of the purposes is to showcase Carrara , then should we not have some defined elements we want to cover in the movie ? For example in my opinion some of the things that should be showcased via the storyline for example are vegetation and plants (lots of them.......Carrara's plant editor is a gem with the right textures) , Volumetric clouds ( Start rendering yesterday -) but another thing Carrara does pretty well. Basically things that will showcase Carrara toolset. And conversely -------underuse any of the things it does not do so well.
I'm not saying folks should be only making a story around the tools but we should make sure we do in some fashion get these things into the film. And conversely lets not write something that the community just cannot pull of very well. I have no doubts we could do almost anything but....and a big but -----it really needs to be of a high quality. Otherwise ---we should not be doing this. So , lets not have 10,000 characters storming a castle etc ---- Just some things to keep in my.
Since we are making the story ---I think it is just prudent to keep some of these ideas in your head as you write ---
And additionally ---I think this was mentioned but I would assume we need to get some kind of approval for use of any content assets in a community movie. And I guess just the whole idea of content ----is it a mixed bag of carrara created assets , daz content, or all daz content or all carrara created assets. And again not sure how the license work if it was from Smith Micro , or other venders.
And at some point soon also the technical aspects of the Movie should be ironed out. The Movie's pixel dimension, fps, length --render settings or aesticss etc.
Also I think the assignment of "scenes" is another area to discuss. I really am a firm believer in getting jobs in the hands of those most committed to doing the work ----so almost rather than assignments of scenes a more volunteer or bid for system. And really be flexible because real life can get in the way and disrupt things ---so the director(S) need to be able to move job scenes around. And I would even suggest----that more than one group or person do any particular scene. and the best one is used - unless bob or mary's first submission just kills it . I'm just saying ---its a community project ---you want to get as many folks helping but you also want the best product possible.
Of course, because otherwise the project would be dead before it starts ...
Animation without dynamic clothing? Nah.
One question should be answered first: is this a) a community film/movie project or b) a project to show Carrara's capabilities?
Some great points made - look forward to starting !
Of course, because otherwise the project would be dead before it starts ...
Animation without dynamic clothing? Nah.
One question should be answered first: is this a) a community film/movie project or b) a project to show Carrara's capabilities?
I think it's a community film/movie project to showcase Carrara. This is just my personal opinion, but if you want to use D/S or poser to bake cloth sims for use in Carrara that's great, but (in my opinion) Carrara should be the primary tool and renderer.
3d view,
I do agree with your overall message, however, in my opinion, you can enter the Daz3d store and look for environmental products that work with Carrara and see a great range of superb renders of the plant editor and volumetric clouds - so we shouldn't really limit the project based on the features that Carrara is known to be great at - but also demonstrate that Carrara can do 100% of the video footage.
Still, I love what you're saying and agree... but without actually assigning assets based on Carrara, but rather on the story and what we feel the audience would love to see. Carrara is indeed capable of completing tasks that can absolutely blow one's mind!
Rashad and the rest of the CCMP team,
Just the short bit of ideas of story examples, my mind is already teaming with shots that I may begin to work on (take 'em or leave 'em ;) ) that could be used generically in any modern sci-fi - just to give story writers and action/set directors ideas to use as examples.
Really quite excited about this.
I am truly a believer in that Carrara is an excellent cg movie producing software, and I'd love to help prove that!
Put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. ;)
edited because no story idea :)
I think it's a community film/movie project to showcase Carrara. This is just my personal opinion, but if you want to use D/S or poser to bake cloth sims for use in Carrara that's great, but (in my opinion) Carrara should be the primary tool and renderer.
Yup, wise answer (that I'd expected from you).
Carrara should be the center but should also get all the help it can from other sources.
If (!) this project starts then Carrara should be responsible for:
- shaders
- lighting
- landscape
- assembly
- rendering.
That C is capable of all those things is shown by Howie's scenes. That has not to be proved.
Adding some V4 or V5 or M4 or M5 into the mix with dynamic clothing (which is in my opinion not only essential for animation but stills, too, which makes 90% of the clothing stuff sold at DAZ unusable) requires some help :)
I have all the Optitex stuff but I don't think it will be sufficient at all. So maybe we will need some tailored clothes at least. I have MD for that and I have Fenric's mdd-import tool to get those stuff into C.
Every tool available to accomplish some high-quality production is welcome.
This discussion is off to a good start.
I was hoping that very soon some volunteers will rise up from the group to fill in some of the positions I highlighted earlier. Which reminds me, I need to make one more thread related to this project.
.
Okay some parameters.
Pixel width for sake of speed will probably need to be restricted to 1280x720. However, the Art director will let me know for sure.
Frame rate will probably rest around 30fps But again the art director will decide the final score.
To include as many users as possible, I suggest we produce the final renders in Carrara 7.2, as many do not yet own Carrara 8. Since 8.5 is still in beta, we wont be able to use Genesis which really sucks, we will be stuck with gen 4 figures, which is okay.
Is it a Carrara showcase or a Daz content showcase? Likely, it will end up being a bit of both. Premade content will speed the production process. However, I assume there will be at least a few items built specially for this project, and those items are best modeled in Carrara. So, if for instance we went with the alien visitor, it would be great if the ship was modeled and rigged in Carrara. The alien figure, could also be Carrara native, but again I am not skilled enough to do it myself but if someone is then great! If we used a V4 creature morphed for the alien that too would be cool. It's a win win.
This is also another reason why I hope this project will live on for several years, gives us time to do lots of stuff, as clearly not everything will fit into this one project.
So suffice it to say the project will be as Carrara-esque as possible, but at any point we deem it necessary we will utilize premade content as needed.
I am assuming that most of the Daz staff are away for the holidays, so I dont expect any feedback from them until next week. Until then, keep dreaming and sharing those dreams.
Later klan!
Wow, some good ideas, and I think Rashad has some excellent and very clear guidelines. Clarity like that helps everyone understand where the ship is going, so there's little confusion and wasted time.
My only suggestion is this, although I'm sure the anti-Joe fan club will immediately discard it for whatever reason:
Before you start talking about implementation, and pixel width and which content you'll use, I think it's critical that everyone involved in the project first agree to a very simple statement of Purpose, Goals, and Audience. All the ideas so far are great, and will work well for a myriad of different purposes. The challenge here is that there will be 1.23 bazillion different ideas, which are all good, but sorting thru them will be impossible unless everyone can agree on the ultimate purpose. You can always measure every idea against the single, simple statement.
For example, I *think* the Purpose, Goals, and Audience in this case is something like this:
"We want every existing or prospective 3D artist to be blown away with feeling like 'HOLY COW, you mean if I buy Carrara I can make an incredible movie like this???"
With that one statement you've defined exactly what you want to do, and who you want to impact.
You want to amaze people. You want lots of WOW factor. You want high impact. Which implies short, powerful, gorgeous, awesome, stunning. And to keep their interest, and make them watch the whole thing, you need a simple, intriguing story. Something with a payoff at the end. You want to leave them with their eyes bugged out, their jaw dropped, and their hair looking like it was in a wind tunnel.
And you want, if at all possible, something different. Or at least something that *seems* different. Which is very difficult, considering that audiences are so incredible savvy with visual effects and have seen it all before. And they've seen every storyline before.
You want something short and powerful. Not only to keep everyone's interest and heighten the impact, but for practical considerations. This is going to take a lot of work, and maintaining such a high impact over a long period is EXTREMELY difficult.
Dartanbeck and everyone
as to film pixel resolution -----I think Its either 1280 x 720 or full hd 1920×1080 both are now supported on youtube which I suppose would be the major outlet and or vimeo.
All things considered -----depending on how long the project is -----there's a pretty big difference in rendering times between the two. Now if anyone had some Blue Ray dreams for the movie then 1920 x 1080 would be definite.
Obviously full HD will look better but the trade off is file size and render times. I noticed that Side Effects S oftware Houdini showreel for 2012 was just 1280 X720. So its not like that resolution is thought in a bad light even from professionals.
And for further discussion ---anybody have any story boarding software and expertise ? or ideas who best to work the hundreds of scenes and shots.
And for further discussion on ------ Music is so important as well as voice if there are characters as it sounds like there might be. Do we have any musicians or access to musicians? getting rights or creating original music with rights makes it nice and clean . And bear in mind voice is extremely tricky to get done decently.
And further discussions on film editing , who has what, who can do what etc . Composition / effects ?
Also the community will have to set up some sort of drop box or file sharing system in the cloud.
Also we kind of need to know rendering capacity and who can render what and when and of course some master list of all the files to be rendered --re-rendered and re-redered and some crazy guru who can organize that chaos. As things get redone and improved and improved uploaded downloaded and improved and again.
in addition ---I suppose there should be some kind of release form from the submission that they have full copyright rights to whatever they submit ? So that if Daz wants this thing for their purposes their legal folks might be able to sleep at night. It does bring up the important issue of copyrights etc ----there needs to be some control and watchfulness here. The more that is done originally the better but we need to be careful with textures , pictures , sounds , music etc .
Oh no, where did your comment go? I was preparing another post when you were uploading yours. I just came back to look at the link and to thank you for the great idea.
The idea that the clown murdered everyone is hilarious, certainly a worthy idea. I love humor.
The "kid friendly" assertion is tossed in there mostly to make it easy for Daz3d to associate themselves with the project, so at this point any idea, even clown murder, should be considered. Its not what we do but how we do it. Fun Fun. If nothing more a pm with a link to that movie would be fantastic. Again, thanks for the ideas!
Hey :)
I realised it was irrelevant. I'll send you the link via PM
cheers!
We should use C 8.5 for sure - never c 7 .
My philosophy is to never, ever use beta software for mission critical applications. Aside from 32 bit/64 bit, bullet, Genesis and a few improvements to the lights, there's not a heck of a lot of differences between C7.2 and C8.x
I don't really see a need to limit the participants to a specific version of Carrara if it's capable of doing what's needed for that person's part of the project. If there's some fancy physics mojo that needs to happen in a particular scene, then that should go to somebody that is #1, familiar with how to accomplish what needs doing and #2, has the version of Carrara capable of doing it.
My philosophy is to never, ever use beta software for mission critical applications. Aside from 32 bit/64 bit, bullet, Genesis and a few improvements to the lights, there's not a heck of a lot of differences between C7.2 and C8.x
I don't really see a need to limit the participants to a specific version of Carrara if it's capable of doing what's needed for that person's part of the project. If there's some fancy physics mojo that needs to happen in a particular scene, then that should go to somebody that is #1, familiar with how to accomplish what needs doing and #2, has the version of Carrara capable of doing it.
I agree - just didn't see the need to just use C 7 .
I agree - just didn't see the need to just use C 7 .
Ah. My bad. I didn't get it. I agree with you, agreeing with me! ;-) Limiting your participants to a specific version of Carrara could significantly lower the pool of available talent.
I agree - just didn't see the need to just use C 7 .
Ah. My bad. I didn't get it. I agree with you, agreeing with me! ;-) Limiting your participants to a specific version of Carrara could significantly lower the pool of available talent.
This is a great point. This is another area that Daz will be critical in. They may or may not be willing to license C8.5 for a few of us to help accomplish tasks only doable in 8.5.
So yeah, makes sense. All versions of Carrara are game.
It looks like the story ideas thread is getting taking over by technical items but the conversation is good and creative so no harm. We still need story ideas and I guess for me one question is how high quality is the target. I mean my own thoughts it needs to be somewhat comparable to some of the Blender movies ----now that's a high high bar......no question. If you have not seen any of these check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ
its" Sintel "------and its breathtakingly good.
Now it had some huge funding and obviously some professional designers and artist voice and music etc. but is this level obtainable given the resources? Or is this maybe just a little bit beyond our reach. I have not seen here very much character animation on this level nor characters---even if we used daz content. The environments given enough modeling resources seem like is possible ......I am not even sure the most maxed out carrara settings can get the renders needed to compete although with the right shaders , textures and lighting -----you can probably get close.
wondered what you all thought of how high is high in quality terms do we shoot for.
I'm sure that there are others who may want this - who may even be more qualified, like having access to a symphonic orchestra with a studio capable of recording them, but...
I am a musician with access to some musicians and a recording studio. Depending upon when the final draft is ready for scoring, I may be available for that. If all goes well with my other, personal endeavors, I may have orchestral scoring software by then (so far, Finale is looking like the best candidate for me) which would then give me access to a philharmonic as well! ;)
Since I am currently putting my own movie series together as we speak, we'll have to see what I can do, and when... but I am very willing.
The studio is owned by a friend of mine who is a contractor, and so for I've been able to pay for his expertise and space by bartering that which nobody ever wants to do... stone work. Hard, grueling stone work. But I like it so if that is available for this, I may be willing. But that time is quite far away at this point.
On another note, I totally agree with Mr. Carter leading the project.
I'm glad that 3d view and Magaremoto are thinking properly about what 'legal' issues need to be seen to.
I've got all sorts of graphical ideas spinning around right now. Don't feel as if I'm pushing any sort of direction if I link up some visual ideas. If I turn out something beneficial, it'll be worth it. Opinions on my tastes don't bother me
...that much! lol
As to the question about Carrara's rendering capabilities, I didn't see anything in there that Carrara couldn't do except fluid sims. There's quite a bit of post work and compositing involved in that project to sweeten the look, which is to be expected. I imagine that the same thing would be done in this project.
There were clearly volunteers judging by the smaller scrolling credits, but also there were paid artisans involved as evidenced by the main credits. Meaning for whatever time the production schedule lasted it was their full-time job.
My advice: Get your story, find a couple representative scenes, decide the look, storyboard them and break down the elements and do a test render, a test composite, etc. That way, you'll get an idea of how to set up your production flow and what is possible with your talent.
Happy to be a grunt. Small tasks, small parts, etc... 3 kids, full time job and not a ton of skill, but willing :) Assign me to a team if needed.
You could also recruit. I've always thought this guy had a pretty good talent for 3d and animation just on his own, using poser. (breaking into blender now) He's got a bunch of how to videos as well. I think he may do music as well. More of an anime look, though...but really, who can resist Aiko. ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhFKCF3lzkY
I am hoping that the other Movie thread generates some volunteers. Since I am almost inept with Carrara, I will need a well versed art director to let me know what types of looks are possible.
Sintel is a fantastic visual accomplishment, along with having a fantastic storyline, it does set a very high bar. Carrara is up to it, whether we as a community is up to it remains to be seen but I am very hopeful.
Sintel is quite long, so ideally, we could pull off something of similar quality, just not nearly so long of a movie.
My initial ideas are to approach realism with the look, but again, that could be tossed in favor of a more toon style. Toon style is much faster to render, no need for clever statistical GI and all.
Anyone interested in stepping in as the art director? It pays nothing, guarantees to be a pain in the butt from time to time, and could add a gray hair or two. Buit its for Carrara, so that makes it worth it I think.
Rashad,
I think maybe there needs to be a little more consensus growing of exactly what is going to be attempted before folks might volunteer their time on a complex position like Art Director .( things even like knowing how many folks may be able to work on this make it useful to know etc.) There really are a number of important topics that have been started but still pretty open.
Also --it might be prudent to have multiple directors. Or at least Leads and Asst. Directors. I imagine that for many folks this is going to be done in hobby time so to expect one person to take on the whole role of art director for instance would seem over bearing and risky for the project itself. Unless there is an unemployed art director in the community but even then is better to have helpers who can rise up if needed .
Agreed totally. That's why I'm not yet too worried about people volunteering, still too soon to know for sure what the project entails. Surprisingly, in the last few hours I have begun to receive PM's from interested forum members, so I am hopeful.
I agree as well that having multiple people involved will aid in the chances of the project getting completed.
I think that of we can get at least 10 people involved in scene building, and another 10 or so to help with final rendering, and then 1 or two more to edit and composite...we are looking at our first movie.
As time passes I am getting more excited. This is gonna be so great!
Sweet! I will investigate that link. In this way you are already proving a help to this project. Much thanks!!!!
These are great considerations. Monday is far off, between now and then lots of things could be set in motion. I hope that next week we will hear something from Daz, and I am hopeful that they will pave the way for us as much as they can.
However, in the case that they do not, not for lack of interest, but of resources, a good plan B needs to be set up. I will shortly present to the community a breakdown of Plans A and B for consideration. No matter what, this project will not derail once it starts rolling!