saving so others can watch

dholm

Ok I can now make an animation of a ball bouncing. Now I will add a person bouncing the ball. What I would like to know is how to save it so others that do not have any 3D software can see how I spend my time. (learning how to make a movie of someone bouncing a ball). Please keep it simple as I'm still learning. Thank you.

WendyLuvsCatz

try camstudio if you want a screencapture of you using software
and also render it out from studio as a video to share the finished scene,
under render settings image series is best as you can do a gif using Gimp or other software or make an avi video with virtualdub as well as share single frames

John Sims

In addition to your 3D software you will need some video editing software. While most 3D software will render out a movie file directly this can be problematic as, if the render crashes part way through, you can waste a lot of time.

Set the animation to an appropriate number of frames per second (I use 25).
Save (render) each frame as an image - most animation software will do this and give the image file a suffix to the name indicting the frame automatically.
In your video editing software go to preferences and set the default still image duration to 1/25 second.
Select all the images and drop them on the time line. You now have an animation.
You may need to render the sequence out to get it to play smoothly. It can also be easier to edit conventional clips than individual image file sequences.

This approach has many advantages. If you save the images as .PNG files they can retain their alpha (transparency) information which means you can composite the shot without needing to chromakey it.
You can speed up rendering by rendering the background and character separately and then combine them in the editor. If the camera is stationary you only need one frame for the background which you can then stretch.

Steve K

dholm said:

Ok I can now make an animation of a ball bouncing. Now I will add a person bouncing the ball. What I would like to know is how to save it so others that do not have any 3D software can see how I spend my time. (learning how to make a movie of someone bouncing a ball). Please keep it simple as I'm still learning. Thank you.

I think you mean just saving a little video file of your animation that others can play in Windows. (I.e. not actually watching you create the animation). I routinely render short animated clips directly from the 3D program, saving them as AVI (animation.avi) or as Windows Media Video (animation.wmv). You should be able to select one of these options in the Render menu of your program, after selecting "render video" or "render sequence" rather than "render single frame". Then the files can be played back with the built-in video player in Windows.

There are other choices, e.g. Quicktime (animation.mov) which is a nice format from the Mac world that can also be played in Windows with a free player. And various forms of compression to keep the files small. But first just try the above, using the defaults to start.

John Sims

You can, as I noted above, render out a movie file (most often an .avi file) but the advantages of rendering an image sequence are so significant as to be considered best practice.

These advantages include:-

Speed - where appropriate you can render foreground and background separately which makes the render quicker. It also gives greater control in post.

Stability - avi renders can crash part way through. If you have set a machine off for several hours rendering it doesn't help if you come back and find it crashed as you will have nothing. All the images in a frame based render are usable up to the crash and you then only need to render the frames subsequent to the crash.

Control - You can review the frames during the render to check - you don't see an avi until it has finished. You can also fix individual frames if need be (if you get show through for example).

You can retain transparency without the need to chroma key.

You can extend first and last frames to give fade in/out.

You have greater control over the render quality of individual frames against time.

Steve K

John Sims said:

... the advantages of rendering an image sequence are so significant ...

Yes, no argument. I render image sequences fairly often. I was only trying to "keep it simple" as the original poster asked. Maybe I kept it too simple ...

:smirk:

Also, I enter the 48 Hour Film contest which puts a BIG premium on time required (a five minute animation in 2 days). For a routine short clip, its quicker for me to use short video clips than to add an extra step for image sequences.