interstellar

Thank you for your opinion, Kurt! My first image was bigger but I couldn't sit far enough back and still reach my mouse to start the clip! Joe

Hi S. Thank you very much for the link! Sincerely, Joe T

Hi Everyone, I need advice on producing 3D (stereoscopic) animations; I know nothing about this and I would appreciate your words of wisdom. I read the Animator manual about rendering stereo, and I rendered a test. I put the left and right views side-by-side in this clip: http://www.joetucciarone.com/a_3D.mov If you cross your eyes, you can merge the images. I know it's hard to tell anything from so small an image, but are my settings approximately right? In my Camera/Stereo Tab, I set the "stereo separation" to 0.2 and the "Converge" to "in Infinity". Who sells software that can merge left-and-right renders? Where would I find glasses to view the merged clip, and do I need a special monitor on which to view the resulting 3D clip? Thank you very much for your help! Joe T

Thank you very much, Mark!

Hi Diego, Whew - that is kind of scary! Believe me, I don't have psychic abilities! I simply chose western Europe because it has a nice coastline and the Atlantic allowed me to use a bright specular map. Thank you for your comment on my use of Smokers; they are definitely an important part of this scene. Best, Joe T

Thank you Tomas, and thank you for the Wiggler link. I've never tried Wiggler or half of the other things in After Effects . . . Joe T

Hi Everyone, I need advice from those of you with camera-shake experience. I'm building a scene in which an asteroid enters Earth's atmosphere. Here's a few seconds of it at half-size: http://www.joetucciarone.com/asteroid.mov Does the amount and duration of the camera-shake look okay? I'm "jolting" the Camera's y-reference channel: the amplitude is 11, the frequency is 4, the damping factor is 1.5 and the duration of the jolt is 2.5 seconds. Thanks in advance for your opinions. Joe T

Hi Tomas, You are right - I use ZBrush to make asteroid models. After converting them and importing them into Electric Image, I use a combination of EIAS shaders like Fractal Noise, Rust and Crumple to add lots of detail. However, I think Richard's idea of photographing a bunch of pebbles would work best for Thomo! Sincerely, Joe T

Hi Tomas, Thank you for the good news! I know Renderama stops stitching at the 2GB limit so I always render my projects in sections to keep the file sizes under 2GB. However, hopefully this problem will also go away with version 9! Joe Tucciarone

Hi Everyone, I have had ongoing trouble with Renderama using EI v8 on my MacPro (8-core, OS 10.6.6). These are the usual problems: (1) Renderama often crashes near the end of a job. If there are other jobs in the Queue, they must wait for me to restart Renderama. (2) Renderama often fails to render a few frames near the end of a job, yet stitches the file anyway, resulting in an incomplete animation. (3) Renderama renders all the frames in a job (the Output Folder shows all the rendered frames) but will often state that the job is unfinished, not stitch the job and move on to the next job. Has anyone else seen this happening in Renderama? Joe T

Hi Scott, Thanks for the detailed information on blur in AE. My knowledge of After Effects is rudimentary and I'm always glad to learn more about it! Joe

Hi Diego, You are welcome! Joe T

I recently found that After Effects has a great motion blur, but it's NOT the Frame Blend effect you activate in their Timeline. If you open the TimeWarp effect, and set the speed to 100%, it won't function to speed up or slow down a clip. But, buried within TimeWarp is a channel called Motion Blur. Twiddle with its values and you can add great motion blur to any clip. Why they bury this function so deeply and keep their lousy Frame Blend is a mystery to me. Joe T

Hi Diego, I have a similar problem with Renderama 8.0 on my Mac Pro (OS 10.6.4). Renderama often quits unexpectedly but at least there are rendered frames in the "Output" folder. Next time Renderama quits, look in your "Output" folder and see if there are rendered frames there. Sincerely, Joe T

Hi again T, Please ask someone about using a crossover cable before you try it. I'm not an expert in networking and I don't want you to blow up your computers! Joe T

Hi Timmo, If you go to the Animator menu bar and select "Help/Animator Manual", you'll find a good procedure for setting up Renderama in the "Network Rendering with Renderama" chapter. Basically, it describes how you copy your EIAS folder onto each slave (which you have done on your first computer), and assign a unique port number to each Renderama Slave (which you've done on your first machine). I think you can directly connect your two computers with a crossover(?) cable between their network ports, but I could be wrong so please ask someone else to verify this before you try it! Sincerely, Joe T

Thank you for the good news, Blair. I do have an old version so I'll be ordering the upgrade in a few days . . . Joe T

Hi Everyone, I was browsing the Northern Lights website and saw a Mondo Clouds upgrade for $30. Does this mean Mondo Clouds has been upgraded to work on Intel Macs? Sorry if I'm "behind the times" . . . until a few months ago I was still using G5's so I wasn't keeping track of plugin upgrades. Joe T

If I remember correctly, you go the a group's "luminance" tab, go to the right hand side of the window and play with the "glare" values. You also have to add your glowing object to a glow list. In old versions of EI, you go to the "Glow" tab of the "World" layer and add your glowing group there. In EI version 8, you open the Camera window and add your group to a glow list there. Sorry this is so vague but I don't use that function often so I forget the exact terms . . . Joe T

Thanks, Mark, and good to "see" you again! Joe T

Thank you very much, Wilson! Sincerely, Joe T

Thanks, Richard, and as always you have a keen eye for detail: there were only 298 spheres! Aziz, I wanted to clarify that After Effects was simply used to bring the rendered passes together. After Effects did not contribute any glows or other visuals to the clip . . . the glows, smokes, textures and stars were all EIAS Joe T

Hi Alex & Aziz, Thank you both for your nice comments! Alex, you are right: sometimes, it is worthwhile to build something from scratch this way. It can make animation a craft, even if it takes a lot of effort. Hi Aziz - the asteroids (and a few small rock fragments) were created with ZBrush. The project was rendered, using EIAS, in 8 passes which were brought together in After Effects. Best Regards, Joe T

Hi Everyone, Here is my newest animation: http://www.joetucciarone.com/a-collision.mov It depicts a collision between asteroids; something thought to have recently occurred in the asteroid belt. What is significant for me is that the dusty, smokey effect was produced without Dante. It required 300 (!) textured spheres. Each sphere was positioned, rotated, moved and faded by hand . . . a job that took three weeks! No, I'm not a masochist - I simply needed a flamey, smokey effect. I was surprised I could do it although Dante would have made this so much easier! Joe Tucciarone

Hi Richard, Thank you for your faith in my work! The new episode is in production so maybe the folks at the History Channel haven't set a broadcast date yet. Joe T