Tell me about computer animation

I've been in the very very slow process of writing a book. I've been working on it sporadically, but my dedication to the story is very strong. I love the characters and the plot, and the main character is almost like an alter ego that's been around for a long time.

So, I decided to try and animate some of it. I've had a little bit of luck on the scenery with Vue 8 Pioneer, but not a lot.

Is there anybody here who is talented at computer animation, and can tell me about what need, and how to get started?

2D or 3D?

3d - Sorry for forgetting that, I guess that's kind of a necessary detail. :D

I have done a bit of 3D modelling. It is great fun. And it isn't too hard to get the idea of how to work it.

I used Cinema 4D. I also used Vue as a plugin for it, to make the stuff better quality, but for learning, it isn't really a bit deal.

To learn Cinema 4D, I only needed one tutorial. It was a 4 hour long tutorial on how to make a car. It pretty much covered everything I would need for the basics of modelling something.

I will try to dig out that tutorial, as it was very useful, and fun.

The car you get taught to model in it is a lamborghini murcielago. I think.

You might want to try using Vue after you learn Cinema 4D. Or, some people just use Vue on it's own, in which case you would not need to learn Cinema 4D first. But to be honest, I find it easier to model in Cinema 4D, and use Vue as a plug-in.

Here is the difference between Cinema 4D on it's own, and using it with Vue, just using my own model as an example (This is the car from the tutorial I was talking about):

Spoiler for Cinema 4D on it's own:

http://i551.photobucket.com/albums/i...g?t=1265828625

Spoiler for Cinema 4d + Vue:

http://i551.photobucket.com/albums/i...g?t=1265828450

Wow! That's nice, Slash!

I can't wait to see the tutorial! :)

I use Blender professionally. It's workflow is much faster than anything else, however, because of this, it's got a much higher learning curve.

I did these in Blender

Spoiler for images:

http://img442.imageshack.us/img442/3332/glassesjc9.png
http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/92/0001ya7.png
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...4&d=1230852665
http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/8...ghtroomxb5.png

Each are stills, but I animate too, I could animate any of those very easily.

First model I made was in MilkShape 3D and it was a player model for Half-Life.

It turned out crap, but it was a great start imo. I don't have any screenshots though...

:panic: NINJA! Those are great!!!!

I am getting really excited about 3d animation. the potentials are limitless!

Ok, I found the tutorial.
http://ragingpixels.deviantart.com/journal/18371262/


This is for Cinema 4D.

I like Cinema 4D, the lighting and reflections are much more realistic. Although I have seen a few really good realistic looking things done from blender, it's just a lot harder. Although Blender is probably easier to use than Cinema 4D. I don't really know, I only used it a few times.

Thankyou Slash! You've been a very useful engine. :)

I'll never go back from Blender, it's just way to fast. The problem with software engineering is that you've got to decide on speed of workflow, or ease of use. Blender is for those who can learn keyboard shortcuts :) I wish I could find my rendition of The Raven. I made a cool animation, but I lost it when my computer died. :(

So, you DON'T use blender?

No, I'm good at keyboard input, I'm very efficent at blender. At work I have access to Autodesk, but I'll stick with my good old free Blender. My only beef with Blender is it's render speed, but you can swap out the rendering engine with Indigo or Yafray if you want.

I have not yet used Blender, but from what I have learned, there is a "BURP" rendering farm.

I have access to a render farm, but that's cool to see that they are doing that.

I've done several things using blender, here are some screen shots
However nowadays I'm not using blender anymore. It's fun, but it takes way too much time. I think I already forgot the keyboard shortcuts anyway
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/9646/eend.th.jpg
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/3...ender2n.th.jpg
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4199/blender3.th.jpg
The duck is fully rigged, including face controls
http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/5787/blender4.th.jpg
This was for an animation of a crack in ice (like Ice Age) the camera would follow the crack getting bigger and further, and then at the end there would be a blender logo or something. Final rendering & compositing took about 12hrs I think due to motion blur
edit:
http://img203.imageshack.us/img203/9609/testql.th.jpg

Hey there. I've used many 3d modeling packages (don't ask how lol), but the best in my opinion are Maya and 3DS max. I did it for a school project and liked it enough to stick to it as a hobby.

Well, 3DS max takes a while getting used to, but fairly easy to use once you got a hang of it. Good for modeling things that have low-medium amount of polygons, unless you have a very good computer. It has some amazing plug ins though.

Maya on the other hand takes a lot longer to learn but a very powerful software. It can run smooth at a very high count of polygons (which means more details), while the same amount of polygons will lag like crap in 3DS max.

How to get started is to look at the tutorials, which can be exceedingly frustrating and annoying because all you do is watch the same screen for a long time and the mouse is the only thing that moves and at times it's hard to follow. But you'll get better the more you follow the tutorial.

But if you just want to animate something simple as visualization of the plot of a book, get blender, it's free and very good, although I never used it, I heard good things about it.