Thinking about getting Carrara - Where is Mimic?
PVGames
Posts: 69
Hello all,
I am giving some very serious thought about picking up Carrara pro to do more professional-looking animations, and one thing that would be necessary is Mimic. I read in the forums that Carrara 8.5 has its own Mimic plug-in. I was curious, where would I find this? The only Mimic product I found in the store said it was for DAZ Studio. Any help would be appreciated.
And on a slightly related note, would anyone have any recommendations for content packs or plug-ins for Carrara 8.5? Any good beginner tips to get into it?
Thank you kindly! :)
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Comments
There is a Mimic plugin for Carrara. I would hope that it's updated for C8.5. There's also a standalone Mimic. I'm not sure which is better since I have neither.
I'm not sure what tips I can give you, since I don't know what CG background you're coming from. I will say that Carrara has some nice animation features, such as a graph editor, multiple tweeners, motion paths, NLA (Non-Linear Animation) clips, etc. Plus many (if not most) shader functions are keframeable as are the modifiers and deformers. There's also the built in physics solver as well as Bullet.
Here's a link to my Youtube account. Anything with CG was done in Carrara. Most are proofs of concepts, WIPs or tests that I wanted to try because of ideas that I had after reading forum posts here.
http://www.youtube.com/user/Evilproducer01
Here's a couple of more recent animations:
http://youtu.be/79fyKOSUTsg
http://youtu.be/iS-sNje4k0o
http://youtu.be/nkWBRuJlQhA
Here's a list of Carrara plugins with commentary by Hollywetcircuit:
http://www.3d.wetcircuit.com/editorials/essential-plugins-for-carrara/
She also has some other amazing Carrara tutorials there.
Thanks for the reply evilproducer :)
I really liked your Aiko 3 animation... for obvious reasons :) Very nice walking animation and good work with the jiggle deformer. I also really liked what you did with your space animations, particularly the black hole arrival sequences.
As for my background, I have used DAZ Studio a lot for renders and basic animations, Poser for more complex animations, but overall I have not delved super deep into the realm of animation but I would like to try more, and Carrara seems like a very good tool for a reasonable price - and the fact that my DAZ content will work in it is a big plus.
At any rate, if anyone can weight in on the Mimic thing, that would be very awesome! Thanks!
Glad you liked the videos! There are others that do some neat stuff as well.
I think Wendy may use Mimic. I know Hollywetcircuit does. Dartanbeck may use it.
Holly has been posting in this thread about some improvements to C8.5s handling of audio tracks and specifically mentions mimic, so that may be a great spot to ask some questions as well.
Mimic plugin for Carrara works great !
Windows 7 - C 8.5 - that's what I use .
test -
http://youtu.be/67j94IDm1hg
I will be using mimic for Carrara, but I haven't yet aside from this silly test with a voice file that comes with mimic. I just tossed it together a couple years ago, I think.
I'm not certain about this, I I think that now, when you buy Mimic Pro for Carrara plugin, they also give you the stand alone Mimc Pro as well! I got it, but only bought the plugin for Carrara.
The really nifty part about Mimic in Carrara is that you get to use the power of the NLA Pose feature to truly identify each character (if you chose - you get get as involved or not - as you like) by giving them individuality in the visemes and expressions thhat will be automated by Mimic.
Of course, Mimic Pro is a handy stand alone device as well - as it outputs animated pose files in Poser's PZ2 format - which can be incredibly handy for Carrara out out of Carrara. But why animate anything outside of Carrara? LOL
The first minute, forty seconds of this video doesn't have any mimic, but it has some fun in Carrara while adding some special FX using Dogwaffle Pro: Howler. The lightning and flares and a small amount of grading - but I'm still learning Howler (and Carrara).
This one shows the plain Genesis figure transform into my Rosietreats character
This one is called: Just a Bit of Fun
This is a six second test - animated textures in Carrara - I've got better results on the animated textures, but not released to video.
Personally, if you like the idea of animating 3d stuff, and like to have a vast selection of ways to do it - Carrara is one excellent answer.
First of all, nearly everything in Carrara can be animated easily. It quickly becomes apparent that all of Carrara is designed around that idea. For example, the fire, ocean, fog, clouds, sky, atmosphere, and more, all have simple settings for getting them to animate. You can then take it further and experiment with mixing it up a bit and blending them - directly within the same scene, or using your renders within Carrara again and compositing.
Textures can be easily animated, and they even include a special particles shader that allows you to select how the shader animates along with the particles. Speaking of Particles, Carrara's particles emitters are fun and simple. Of course, they are also very complex and can do much more than what initially meets the eye. Like spawning more, smaller particles upon collision of other objects and/or themselves.
Another incredible thing that I have really come to love about Carrara is it's speed. If I just want to test out how my character looks outside, I can either load in a preset environment, or I can toss one together with a few clicks. If either of those are the case, and I use the realistic sky, I can easily adjust the scene lighting either by rotating the sun within the scene, or by going into the handy realistic sky editor and literally dragging the sun around the sky in a little built in sky dome! Super awesome, the position of the sun changes the brightness of the sky and where the light comes from. Now, in a simple scene like this and a character, you can create amazingly realistic shaders for that character - since you can easily and very quickly use the global illumination with indirect lighting. Your reflections will look as they should now, since you have a surrounding sky. I like to save out little vignettes and such just for some added interest, which also helps me to get things set the way I like them.
Now is a great time to mention the browser - because the key to speed of setting up your animations is to save everything! Tidbits that get used over and over again - if not in the production - for the setting up of things. Carrara has an insanely simple way of cataloging that each user can set up as they wish. I have some articles here about thhat type of thing
This way I can keep a uniform look and feel so that when I stitch together my clips, Light, dark, indoor outdoor... lighting changes but there's a uniformity because I'm using the same lighting structures except where I really want that change... a spectacular event.
Having babbled so long - without yet hearing if I'm way off track or not, I'll leave you with one more thing: my aniMating in Carrara article, which just gives some fun examples of speeding up your animation process by not reinventing the wheel - so to speak. It explains about using pieces of aniBlocks that you need and discarding the rest. Say you want your character standing still, but not motionless. Well you can import a walk motion, for example, and get rid of the keys from the hip down. then delete some others if you like. Perhaps only keep five keys out of the whole thing that you then drag around in the timeline, copy/paste them and then give that actual bone of the rig a subtle rotation here and there - done. Quick, easy and convincing - perhaps. It all takes practice. But the aniBlocks sold here by GoFigure, and the animated Poser Pose files by PoserMocap are professionally reconfigured motion captures so you really get some natural movement to borrow from and switch around. Now DAZ 3D also picked up SKAmotion, which are beautifully set up cycles - and I believe that those are hand crafted - as are Cliff Bowan's. I like collecting animations. College trained 3d animators might give me a bit of crap about it. But some of them are right there with me on this whole idea!
Oh my - look at the time.
Sorry I didn't hit this thread earlier. Going through some stuff right now - but I saw evilproducer's name posted and then bigh (you should hit the "Animation" portion of the forum and see bigh's "This Be My Stuff" thread!) - so I knew you were in good hands! :)
Thank you very much for the replies!
@Dartanbeck: Thank you for the lengthy responses :) I much appreciate them. I have actually checked out some of your youtube videos and such to try and get a better idea of how to do certain things and they have helped. So thank you very much.
I am still rather new to this software (I went ahead and took the plunge and got it), and it seems to have a steep learning curve (at least for me). I am having a very hard time finding all of my content from DAZ/Poser. I can find some of it, but quite often I can only locate the folder that contains the files but then nothing actually shows up, so I can't load a lot of things from my DAZ library into Carrara. Then, when I do load something that I was able to find, it comes out...strange. For example, I loaded Stonemason's ruined building #3, but the end result was basically just the very, very base of the whole thing, and it looked blurred and odd.
Maybe I just need to play around some more with this. Would anybody happen to know some very, very basic tutorials to help get oriented with the software?
Thanks again!
I use C7.2 Pro, so if this is an issue with DIM and CMS I can't really help.
One thing that may be helpful to know is that Carrara can open Poser files natively, but not .daz files. Carrara can open DUF files, but I think they are created in DAZ Studio and then exported using DUF.
Something like Stonemason sets should be in a runtime structure. Try looking in the Content tab of your Browser to find them.
If you go to the browser's "Content" tab, there's a little black button (looks like a black 'page' icon) on the far right, just above the browser window. Click that and select: "Add Runtime" from the list and navigate to one of your runtime (poser) folders. Hit OK. Repeat for any rintimes you might have. This Article might be a bit overkill, but it explains a bit about runtimes and such. If you're not installing new runtimes using the DIM, just ignore those parts.
Oh... shoot... this is all out of order here....
Yo, Welcome to the Finest CG art and animation software in the whole, wide world! Yeah!
You'll see that the learning curve, while never-ending, is not so steep. Carrara, itself, will help you find your way as you discover the amazing simplicity built into the interface. It can literally guide you along on your path to directing your own way through. Everything else will become a huge bonus as you learn that you can literally do anything!
►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄ is stickied to the top of the forum. As far behind as I've become in keeping this amazing learning resource up to date, it remians to be a good way to get around this forum and other spots on the web for ways to learn, get questions answered, hang out, write your findings or questions... blah blah...
But I've also found it to e incredibly helpful in help others to get their immediate concerns seen to. If I know that there's already an open thread discussing someone's question, I find it in the ► Forum Help Links, copy the link to the issue, and send it in a reply to lead the questionier to an ongoing discussion, even if it has lapsed for a while. Because it might just help and, if not, they can ask in that thread, which will send an e-mail to everyone watching that thread, making that thread become even more beneficial - and we all grow together.
Anyways... on with the Poser content:
As mentioned above, adding your runtimes, even if you only have one, or say, your Daz Studio library can be displayed as well, just answer the popup as you add the location to what sort of content the folder holds, be it Daz - it would be "Content" or Poser directory will be Runtime, and so on. Once this is done, go back by that black button, and follow the icons to the left. One will make your icons large, the other makes them small - depending upon your screen real estate ;)
Since you're brand new to Carrara, though... why not go to my largely unfinished ► Carrara Walkthrough and have a browse through those articles. Like the one about Your Carrara Browser, which is great to know right away, so you can build yourself a beautiful file structure for yourself, for which to save the stuff as you make it. I've already linked you to Daz Install Manager - Installing Custom Poser Runtimes above, where I blabber on about runtimes and using the DIM to make them - just in case most (or all) of your content comes from DAZ 3D, the DIM makes a nice way to control where it lives and keeps it clean and up-to-date, so long as we don't drop junk in there ourselves! Which we can do if we want - but that stuff is out of the DIM's hands for uninstallation and such. Navigating in Carrara is only a basic start. But that start can be everything, when you're new to Carrara! I'm not sure I'll recommend Shaders - A Basic Walthrough (video of me babbling) yet, because I've never finished mastering the videos - so it stops in the middle. Well as I started to master the next series, I'm noticing that I don't like the raw footage at all, and want to start the whole thing over again. Hmmm... Thanks. You've just persuaded me to remember to do that! lol
But beyond my own articles and experiences, I learn most everything from evilproducer, PhilW, Head Wax, Roygee, Holly Wetcircuit, McGuyver, Gareth.... the list continues and continues and it's a list of frequent (and sometimes not-so-frequent) posters here, in the Carrara discussion forum. That is why a lot of that 'manual' is an assortment of links to other pages of this forum. Too bad the old forums are so slow to sift through, since it contained an enormous wealth of Carrara studies, experiments, tutorials and discussions. But this new one truly is off to a great start.
Some of our rather ambitious forum members got together and started The Carrara Community Movie Project which, while it never actually lifted off the ground - at least, not yet(!) - has created an excellent source of peering through many feeling on the subject, with opinions on story boards, model creation, story writing and just a vast selection of topics that can be a great bit of experience reading (or even skimming) through the various pages that I saved links to - so it never has to die! :)
Welcome to the betterment of humanity... welcome to Carrara! :coolhmm:
You need to experiment more with it yourself, for the sake of experimentation. This is easy to do provided you have a means of getting sound into the computer (also known as a "microphone"). It might even be built in, and you likely even have recording software somewhere. If you don't, consider using Audacity, a free program.
I'm not sure what it says about me, but the quote I use for Mimic tests I recorded myself: "The best thing about a well-done focus pull is nobody ever has to know you're not wearing pants."
I want to thank you guys again for all of the help. Especially you Dartanbeck, for hooking me up with some of that documentation which has been very helpful so far.
I have been able to grasp the very basics at this point and I whipped up my first initial animation. I could use some pointers though!
You can check it out here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSz5UtnmhH4
I have a couple of specific questions in regards to how to improve this. Firstly, it is way too obvious to me where the camera pivots. I wanted a nice, smooth camera transition to slowly spiral around the central building, but instead the camera drifts from point to point, changing its course in a more rough manner. I tried applying the smooth animation filter, but it only worked slightly. Any tips on how to make smoother camera movement?
Secondly, is there a good/easy way to extend the ruined city without consuming a ton of system resources? Right now it looks rather empty since it consists of just the center buildings and some replicators.
Third, what can I do about the obvious plane horizon? Going with an infinite plane made the whole thing look weird to me. I figure maybe the solution to the second issue would provide a solution for this one as well.
What about better lighting techniques? I like the overall 'feel' or 'mood', but the whole image comes out a bit too murky for my taste. Further, the quality seems slightly lower than it should be - it all looks a bit too grainy. Maybe my render specifications are off?
And an additional, non-related question. I figured out how to paint my own textures for models, but how do I export them so I can use them in DAZ studio? I took a genesis figure in Carrara, made a new texture, painted it and then used the export option (.obj with texture selected) and I see the texture files in the folder, but Studio wont actually let me use them at all (not to mention the .obj is completely useless since it is essentially an unmoveable, unposeable statue when placed in DAZ studio). So any tips or information regarding this would be *very* helpful!
Thank you very much everyone!
Thank you very much everyone!
I have never wanted to do this, so it's beyond my scope of knowing. However, what you did is the correct method. The image files that got exported are not DS shaders, but they should work within them as an image map.
As Dart says, the tweeners and the graph editor are your friend, but so is the motion path. Especially for a fly-through. Plus, you can manually aim and bank the camera as it moves through the scene as it moves along the path.
Select the object (in your case the camera) and at the top of the Camera's Motion tab, select Keyframe and change it via the dropdown menu to Motion path. Carrara will open a dialogue telling you that keyframes will be lost and asking how closely you want the data converted to a motion path. Since there is no animation for the camera at this point, don't worry about it.
With the camera selected, you can now use the pen tool that appeared with the other path tools to extend the path. Clicking will add points which you can use to control turns and elevation. The can be moved side to side and up and down. They can also be curved.
When you have your path, move to the end of the timeline and in the motion menu slide the Distance Along Path slider to 100%. I would leave the bank and align options off if you're animating your camera, because you'll want to aim it yourself at various points along the timeline.
I use the the align to path when animating a plane or car, but usually leave the banking off as I prefer to do it myself. Looks a bit smoother in my opinion.
Dart's advice about creating real instances from the replicator needs a caveat. The reason he suggested that, is because rigged objects can't be duplicated on their own. Many times, Poser items, including buildings are rigged. for opening doors, windows, sliding walls around etc.
If you have a non-rigged object (or even a group) you can duplicate it and it will save on system overhead.
You can use the x, y, z boxes in the replicator to randomize the rotation of replicated objects.
You can hide the visibility of the object being replicated and still see the replicated objects. This saves on light calculations especially helpful if using any type of GI.
If you use the non-surface replicator, you can replicate a terrain and check the seamless check box and the terrains will be joined seamlessly.
Fast Solution for ya!
Go and get evilproducer's Carrara Freebie: Fantasy Village.
Here is an example on how you can install it and have it show up without hassel in the browser:
Extract the zip file to Program Files > DAZ 3D > Carrara8.5 > Scenes > and pick one of the existing folders, and even, if you like, into a new folder within that folder. I used Program Files > DAZ 3D > Carrara8.5 > Scenes > landscape > New folder in the name of the author, this case: evilproducer
If Carrara was open during installation, go to the folder in the browser where you installed it. If the new stuff isn't there, go to the little black icon upper right corner of the browser window, and 'update Folder'.
Go to the Fantasy Terrain 1.7 folder, open the hierarchy and go to Fantasy Lights
Outside of Carrara, go to where you installed Fantasy Village(or just open the zip again) and open the Fantasy Terrain Manual.pdf!! Yikes!
Okay after you're done running your eyes over the beauty and fine authorship of his manual, head to page twenty and enjoy a very nicely written instruction manual on the light rigs. Two major different global light rigs are included - both of which are excellent!
The "Distant Light Rig" version uses less lights and gives a very nice 'no fuss' means to truly tweak the appearance of your scene. You can select multiple lights and change them all ant the same time, or select only a few, a couple, or just one and make it brighter, dimmer, more red, less green, remove it's ability to cast shadows, turn it off, anything you want - quickly and without fuss. Very handy at times when you want to simulate, in your example, lights beyond realistic sky, like the glows of toxic fire, or glow of neon, anything you want/need. Oh... and Carrara lights are so fun to animate too!
There's also a light dome system which is a different method. You either use the previous rig or this. Combining them might be fun, but is not in the design! The light dome uses more lights casting shadows, making for... I'll let ep tell ya in his manual! :)
Besides, you probably need a nice Medieval colony anyways... who doesn't? ;)
Thanks for this ep!! Whoa!:coolhmm:
Okay, speaking of evilproducer's Carrara Freebie: Fantasy Village, I've never realized how much stuff he has in his Freebies store at ShareCG! What a lot of very nice stuff!
Dang it, this is great information, Evil (and Dart too)! I almost missed all the excellent animation tips and techniques mentioned here solely because of the title of the thread, and not being terribly interested in Mimic at the moment. There should be a thread started which is all about animation techniques and tips and titled in such a way that it's easily apparent - sort of like the modeling thread, which has really helped me learn a few modeling tips :) Last night I tried putting a motion path together for a camera and following it (nothing much really in the scene except for some reference primitives, just wanted to see if I could hash out how to do it an make smooth transitions and turns. It wasn't very good/successful, but it was miles better than I would have been able to do if I hadn't read Dart's post on 'bezier' transitions and Evil's post on motion paths. I've never done much animation, but I'm trying to really start learning how to use this amazing Carrara software I've had for so long. Thank you guys!
Wow, Dartanbeck and Evilproducer, you two are very, very helpful.
Using your tips I have vastly improved upon the scene I was working on. I used a combination of motion path and bezier tweener tweaking (say that five times fast) to get the camera to smoothly go where I wanted it to go - looks miles better than what I had originally.
I also took your advice regarding replicators and creating new instances of the groups I was replicating for better, tighter control over the scene. I was able to more thoroughly populate the scene (and I replicated the terrain as well to extend it further into the horizon).
I was able to play around with the lights more and found some settings that seem to work well. I also took a lot of time and played with shaders and figured out how to do some of the shader domain changes. Whew, your tips have really helped me figure out Carrara better than I could have on my own!
Here is my revised animation (draft 2!):
http://youtu.be/3x8whIvXjno
There are still a couple of things I am not 100% happy with. For some reason, the truck and other objects in the very beginning couple of seconds of the animation don't seem to cast shadows. I am not sure what is up with that considering everything else seems to cast shadows just fine. And I am not 100% happy with how the camera moves at the very end. Not sure what I should do though - any thoughts? And the monster at the end feels too static, what can I do to help liven him up a bit?
I fiddled with the render settings based on some advice you guys gave in another thread (along with other people) and it seems that setting accuracy to four pixels and anti-aliasing to good instead of best really helps make things feel a bit more real since they blur together ever so slightly. But if there are any other tips, I am all ears (or eyes!)
Anyways, thank you guys very much for all of the wonderful information you have given!
That looks really nice. Great job filling out the scene. The lighting is really nice as well. Love the aircraft just sort of hovering there.
I've watched a couple times and I'm not exactly sure what you're seeing with the shadows. The objects you mention appear to be in the shadow of a building, so that their own shadows will be muted.
Another possibility is that somehow you toggled off the Casts Shadows checkboxes on those objects at the beginning, realized it, and turned them back on. If this is the case, and the playhead was advanced along the timeline, it would generate a keyframe at that point.
The final shadows issue is similar to what I mentioned above but has to do with the sunlight's (or main distance light's) soft shadow settings in the light's effects tab. Adjusting those along the timeline will also generate keyframes where any changes were made.
The camera movement at the end will either need to be tweaked via the motion path (if you used that) or the keyframes. If you used the motion path and can't get it looking right no matter what, you could choose keyframes from the Motion menu. When Carrara throws up it's obligatory warning, you'll have the opportunity to set the quality level of the conversion from motion path to keyframes. Set it pretty high and then at the end of the animation, if the camera is moving too fast (for instance) you can stretch them out a bit. If it's another issue, find the last keyframe where you were happy with the camera's movement and delete anything after that and try and animate the camera manually.
Adding life to the monster will require rigging it, if it's not already rigged.
With a scene of your complexity, I'm sure Carrara's assembly room can pretty sluggish, so I I would recommend animating the creature in a separate scene (this assumes rigging- either yours or an existing rig). and saving the animation as NLA cips and saving them to the browser. Open your main scene, and drag the clip(s) from the browser and drop them on the clips palette. You can then drag and drop them from there, onto your creature when you want the animation to begin.
Let us know if it's a rigged model or not, and if you're familiar with NLA clips so that we know the level of detail we'll need to get into.
Again, great job!
Just a quick response to your questions - The monster is already rigged. I am not familiar with NLA clips or how to make or use them.
As I suggested, due to the complexity of your scene, you may wan to create your character's animation in a separate scene and create a clip you can load in your main scene.
What you'll need to do first is decide what is motivating the movement, how long is the creature's animation, etc. It kind of looks like at the end the creature could be snapping, lunging or making some other move towards the camera as it flies in for the close-up. Maybe time how long the creature is in frame, and at what point you want a big dramatic movement within that time.
Set up your scene and it's duration based on the timing from your main scene, then animate the creature, maybe with small movements at first, such as a head turn or some other movement, then finish with the dramatic movement. It's hard to tell someone all the steps to get a hood animation in a forum post, so I'll leave that bit where it's at.
Once the animation is done to your liking, select the character in the Instances palette and at the top of the screen, click the NLA tab. Under, Create, choose, Create Master Clip. When the Clip window opens, you can give the clip a custom name.
To set the Loop offset, it's usually best to use the hip or first bone. This helps if you're looping the clip or combining different clips.
You can choose to have the clip be the keyframe range or the scene range. If you set the time of the scene on how long the monster is in frame in the main scene, then I would go with Scene range. If not, then use keyframe range. There is no right or wrong choice, just what you like.
You can delete the keyframes when converting the clip. It helps to test them. The figure will revert to it's original pose.
If you expand your figure's hierarchy, you'll notice anything that has keyframe in it's chain has checkmark by the name. If you decide you wouldprefer to not have the left leg move, or even just the foot, you can uncheck the box and it's keyframes will not be included in the clip.
Once you are done, click OK.
You should now see a clip in the Clips palette. Open the Clip browser and drag and drop the cip into it to save it. Close your scene.
Open your main scene and select the Clip Browser. Drag the clip from the browser and drop it onto the Clip palette. From there, advance along the timeline to the point where you want the crearture's animation to begin. Drag the clip and drop it onto the NLA track below creatures name in the sequencer. Position as need be. You can elongate or compress the clip by dragging the ends of the clip in or out in the sequencer.
Continued....
First of all,
Okay do you see what I meant (earlier) when I told you that Carrara truly is what you're looking for? I can tell already that you're going to be a life-long Carraraist! ;)
Now, NLA Clips are Carrara's method of storing animation information for specific figures from the timeline (Say that five times fast!) and can be blended together. For a great explanation on how NLA Clips work, have a long in the manual that comes with Carrara. From inside Carrara go Help > Online Help, which will open the pdf. Otherwise, the top few links in my ►►► Carrara Information Manual ◄◄◄ will get you to various online versions. I believe that Carrara 8.5 will open the one I link to called Carrara 7 User Guide Revision G - 11 December 2008. That manual, as with any other version earlier, is an excellent manual. Fairly easy to find the subject matter in the Table of Contents. If you don't see what you want, try looking at something that seems close - or check the index in the back.
Wow... what a difference between the two videos! You certain catch the hang of things quickly, which is where I think that you'll truly enjoy Carrara forever. It's not a matter of features and functions that 'other' software has anymore... because, in Carrara, there are many ways to overcome what you need your video to look like.
Since I mostly work with animations, and am really quite uneducated towards methods on what I can do afterwards in post, I have spent a couple years trying to perform everything within Carrara, with very few exceptions left for post work. Evilproducer started this Pros and Cons of Carrara DOF Vs. Postworked DOF thread, which really got me to thinking... wanting. Well I remembered reading about Project Dogwaffle, and that it (pro version called Howler) has the capabilities of opening avi or image sequence animation files and working with them, rather artistically, and then packing them back up when your done. So I started this thread: Project Dogwaffle, which began as a 'wishful thinking' sort of thing until I finally bought it - which eventually got me to change the first post to help the rest of the thread survive. That thread also includes a link to my own Dogwaffle Video Tutorials - Playlists, which basically put all of the then current videos in the proper order, and I was able to index them, somewhat.
I am still learning and am loving the ride. Howler certainly is a welcome tool in my workflow now. But I do catch some flak for using it as opposed to Adobe's After Effects or other solutions considered to be the professional method. Well the developer of Project Dogwaffle, Dan Ritchie, has worked in 3D animation on special effects at Foundation Imaging and other fine production studios on projects like Star Trek Voyager, Starship Troopers, and other exciting sci-fi productions involving 3D animations and special fx, and his knowledge of what needs to be done is a boon to his amazing and incredibly affordable software. PD Pro Howler is the one that has the 'Animation' menu that allows the loading in, working with, and saving back out of animation files of various types, rotoscoping tools, animated effects with a timeline editor and all of that wonderful stuff.
Oh... gotta go - later