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Nature... Beautiful place!
Wow. Four years go by pretty quickly, eh?
It's going to be twenty years, this year, that we've been married and we're still madly in Love! She's still my Best Friend in the Whole World!
She is my inspiration, my hero, my reason for living!
Wendy and Friends, Rosie wanted me to send you a Big Hug from her... I want to send the same from me!
So since we're going back in time, here are some things from back when I first started with YouTube, which was not long after getting started in Carrara
Wow... now these are some Stiff movements! LOL Just horrible!
...and Daz3d released Mimic Pro for Carrara!!!
Working a lot of overtime back then (in the HOT summer sun) did have its perks. I got the aniBlock Importer for Carrara and started collecting aniBlock packs. I started working with them and tweaking them which eventually led to my writing the first version (in the old, Old forums) of my AniMating in Carrara thread, which has changed slightly since then. Some of these animations were still from myself, before I got that stuff. Some of my pals here were teaching me what is entailed to take these individual clips and stitch them together to make a movie. I was using Windows Movie Maker, which used to be much better (in my opinion) than what it turned into when I finally got Windows 7. It might be better now, but I've replaced it right away so I'll never know. But this was my first attempt to use Movie Maker, and that was the end of my using it before moving on to Vegas - and now I'm looking into DaVinci Resolve 12.5 as a main editor, but will likely keep Vegas and Corel's Video Studio Pro too. They each have their benefits.
Oh... that was bad. But it was also a lot of fun. And those clips were all just test renders anyway.
Then I started asking questions about star-filled backgrounds. Not happy with using NASA images in the background, I went to the world-wide web. Hmnpf... seemed everyone just uses NASA images. So I created my own star system and, after some major tweaking and deep, deep thinking, I came up with something that eventually got me published at Daz3d! I couldn't believe it!
Yeah... bad animation, and Starry Sky has evolved from this version before it got released. But I wanted to show it off on YouTube
So then I was working with the beautiful Daz Millennium Dragon 2, and decided to create an animation construction kit for it. While showing the results of several of the animations run in sequence together, I also had some fun trying my hand (for the first time) with motion graphics - the effect on the Carrara Render panel, which was pasted on a plane, and I just animated a light with an animated lens flare effect on it. Oh... by this time I'm getting really addicted to using Carrara - still working a LOT of overtime.
It had some glitches that I wanted to work out before submitting it to Daz3d for their opinion. I do a LOT of testing.
Oh man... DAZ_Spooky came into the forum announcing Carrara 8.5 Beta... oh... oh... Hmmm... it was still not quite there yet. But wow... we could load Genesis in Carrara!
I got into a conversation with Jonny Bravo about getting away from Movie Maker Live - the new solution offered to Windows 7 users instead of what I considered to be a far superior version that came with WinXP Pro. I was looking into Vegas and that was waaaay beyond my pay grade. But Jonny introduced me to the Vegas Movie HD series, where I could get a Platinum Bundle for just over a hundred bucks - even less when I bundled it with the computer parts order which became what I now call my Carrara Beast!
In the first couple of days of the 30 day trial of Vegas Movie HD, I made what has become my favorite thing I've made so far. Just for Fun
Okay... I do this entirely differently now. The issue was that we cannot animate whether or not an item is parented or switch parents along the timeline. This was something I've been successfully dealing with for a long time back then, during my animation tests. Nowadays, I just have two versions of sword, one parented to the back, one to the hand, and animate the visibility to switch to which sword we see. But back then, I actually used two figures! LOL One with sword on back, one with sword in hand, and I'd switch visibility of the entire figure... check it out!
Whoa! Cool! Daz3d accepted and published my animation kit for the Millennium Dragon 2!!!
I needed more animations for Dartan... and decided to build another construction kit. Hmmm... these things are really cool... maybe I should make more of them
Rosie decides that she Really wants a bird bath. I look. She looks. We can't find anything we like. I happen to specialize in making things that attract song birds for famous artists that live in our northern tranquility - so I put on my thinking cap (our yard is Tiny!) and made a babbling brook for my Rosie!
The sickly-looking fern-leaf Sumac in the foreground never snapped out of it, and has been replaced by Jag (I name our trees), a really nice miniature Fox River Birch, and is really looking great these years later!
I think EnvironKit - Woodlands was still in development when I made this video of a product I've never finished. It's a small dragon-like creature which can morph into a bird or an insect. Here shown as a flock of Seagulls
Adobe decides to go subscription. Screw that! I said goodbye to that company and never looked back - something I really thought I'd eventually regret and eventually change my mind. Nope! I remembered seeing something crazy in the Daz3d store called Dogwaffle... yeah... there it is... Project Dogwaffle!
Howler, the Pro version of Project Dogwaffle (main difference being the Animation features) has entirely changed my life! I used it to add a bonus animated backdrop to my Woodlands product. Using that bonus backdrop, I made this animation, while also testing Howler to make animated Highlight textures to simulate water drops running down Rosie. It's not right - the drops are too uniform and way too huge, but the technique proved to be sound and I still experiment with this sort of thing when needed.
Man... the Carrara 8 virtual box cover came with a cool Chameleon on it. When I saw that Daz3d had this little Toonimal Chameleon on sale for really cheap - I think it was two bucks, I just had to buy it.
Well... since I'm reminiscing, I might as well show my Badlands ad, since it reminds me of the way TV shows would start back in the late Seventies, early Eighties
Mike Moir keeps running these animation challenges and such... here's one that I participated in
...and then did this one too
...and I still need to add DesertDude to the credits of this one... Argh!
I shall have to rewatch them all this weekend
Nah... I was just reminiscing, is all! LOL
Spending the day tomorrow (me boithday) with Rosie and two of my three my Grandchildren ;)
Speaking of which, I was playing "Just for Fun" for my Granddaughter, and she pointed at my Rosie character and yelled "Meemaw!" and then she saw the Dart character and yelled "Pappa Danny!" She calls Rosie Meemaw... so freaking cute! Anyway, she has a very vivid imagination. When we walk to the park together, I'm the Brave Knight (she calls me "Brave Knight"!), she's the Princess M'Lady, and my little mini dachshund, Miss Celie is a Dragon, and together the three of us have to fight our way to and from the park against evil witches (Seagulls in the sky).
So when the Dragon shows up she yells "There's Celie"!!!
So now every time she comes over, she asks to watch my silly videos I have on YouTube. It's hilarious - and Fun!
Mornin' Gramps! Happy boithday.
I'd not seen this thread at all before, so great going through it - and yes, Happy Birthday Dart!
Grand children are fun. they have an advantage over the children, when they get too much and you've had enough you can send them home. Of course some of mine are now old enough that they are producing their own children............eek I feel old.
Thanks All!!! :)
Rosie (not up just yet) stuck out of bed last night and baked me a cake! LOL
What did I say... Love of my Life! I'm so happy that, after all of those years of searching, I've actually found just the right one. Just seems so rare!
Really? 'cause you're not! :)
Thanks!!! :)
Happy Birthday !!
Cheers!
Mmmmm... Yummy! Thank you So Much you all!!! Love Ya!!! :)
Wow. Funny that this month's challenge has to do with Music.
Okay, aside from this forum, I don't do much in the way of online communications. E-mail, but that's it. So I'm in this thing LinkedIn, which someone pulled me into a while back. It sends me e-mails: "Do you know ___?" and I add folks I know, and some I don't, but who work for places I believe in, also some folks that I believe in.
Quite some time ago, while I was in LinkedIn going through suggested people to Add to my circle, or whatever... I decided to actually Search for someone - a guitarist I worked with long ago, and miss very much. Doug and I spent a lot of time together, even after the band membes got their degrees and moved on with their lives - well eventually the same happened to him and I eventually came back to Wisconsin. Okay that sums up what actually would have been a very long story.
I really wish I still had copies of the hand-drawn posters I used to make for our band: Wings of Steel.. ahhh the memories....
I did a search for Doug... and there were a lot of people with his same name. One of them worked for a place near his home town but had no picture, so I didn't know if it was him or not, but I sent a message asking him. If it was the Real Doug, he'd have known who was messaging him if he read it.
After moving back to Wisconsin, a friend was fairly proficient with playing guitar and asked how to write cool songs. So I bought a Bass guitar and an amp and started teaching him how to play from the heart - play what 'feels' good. Eventually we had 90 minutes worth of material. He bought a four-track recorder so I could lay down drum tracks.
So this band had Wayne on guitar, and I played drums, bass and was also the lead vocals. I did get a lot of inspiration from Trouble, but our sound was still very different. But through this whole thing I also got Wayne really in to Trouble.
Well many years ago Wayne got cancer and it took over completely. His last request of me was to have the Trouble coolection for his dying days, and I fulfilled that request. He put on his headphones and died rocking to our major inspiration.
That was another summing of a very long story.
Anyways, I just heard back from Search I spoke of above - from Doug. It is so cool to be back in touch with him. We exchanged a few short messages so far, just getting back after a lot of years, and I just found out today that he's now the guitarist for the new band featuring the singer from Trouble! Wow! Doug and I went to a Trouble concert way back when... it was Awesome! The new band, Blackfinger, has a sound very similar to Trouble, which is very cool!
Whew... I use a lot of words to say stuff, don't I? Sorry about that! ;)
This is my buddy, Doug!