M dot Strange's blog

As I was working on WATS and wasn't the battle scarred feature animation filmmaker I am today ^ ^ I found these tips in 3d World Magazine VERY helpful at the time... I don't think this text is online so I will post it here... These tips were written by Michael Hegner, the director of "Terkel in Trouble" This is from issue #54 of 3d World Magazine... I reread them recently to reinforce the microstudio ethos... I omitted some steps and text cause like I had to type it all... track down the magazine to read the whole article.... ------------- Michael Hegner 3d world magazine issue #54 1- Match your visual style to the budget you have available. Photorealism is very expensive and from where I'm sitting, its not a lot of fun either. Whats more interesting is creating unique characters and worlds. Its important to appreciate that you can create really good looking CG with a low budget, and that it doesn't have to involve lots of effects or long rendering times. To

This d00d does some awesome stuff... met him at the Anno Domini gallery back when we both had exhibits up in there... Here's a video about him I thought it was win... I have the same ultraman toys on my desk haha He was in town recently for another show and I asked him to do a quick drawing on my DS in Colors ^ ^

-HSM will be %90 3d animated with none of the remaining %10 being stopmotion animation... So there will be no stopmotion character animation in this new animated feature film... - The film will be 120-140 minutes long... - Str8nime will not be used in this new film... a new technique is being developed instead... - A 3d "We are the Strange" sequel episode that will follow Rain and Ori is planned for release with the DVD of HSM... - I will be releasing 2-3 new music videos for various artists over the next 5 months... - I like computers.

So I totally aggregated all meh rss feedZ...So in this one handy like feed thing you can get... -Meh blog posts -Meh EXCITING Facebook status updates (ex. "I'm so FACE") -Meh youtube videos -Meh Vimeo videos -Meh Blogtalk radio episodes - and much more (actually just like some other xml code that i don't understand) Just subscribe via this link and you can get all that for a low low price of...oh wait it's totally FREE ^ ^

Just so I could sleep at night knowing I made the right decision I tested the 8800gt vs. the 4850 in Xp64... Here are the results compared to the same tests in Vista64... And since its easy to do in Pages here are the graphs ^ ^ In the real world tests the scores were very close for simple scenes... one character dancing around for example... but in the heavier scenes with detailed backgrounds etc the ATI nearly doubled the performance of the Nvidia card... This is reflected in Furmark as well as Furmark is a very intense test... Final Observations: The Ati card is more powerful than the Nvidia and they are at nearly the same pricepoint...How? Well the ATi card at stock idles at 80' but its very quiet... a fan hack is required to up the fan speed which increases the fan noise but cools the card down to 55' idle... The 8800gt has a huge heatsink and fan which keeps the card cool at all times... the ATi has only a cheap fan... So since the ATI is a higher spec card they kept the

Goodnight Vista cause its time to go... Back to Xp64 windows cause you act like a HOE... do do do do doooo Fucked up my drivers for the last motherfucking time do do do do dooooo Whoever made this $hit has committed a crime... Ballmer woo's as they sell wannabe Os X garbage that wastes all my time!! do do do do dooooo Yeh thats right my Vista experience is OVER...back to XP 64... I turned off all the visual bling and was running everything in XP compatibility mode anyway and it still found ways to make me want to kill myself... it would not connect to my other PC's even though the XP one's could see it...and the Mac's didn't work at all with it... SO reinstalling Xp64....yeh....

It's 3:35am now and I've been running tests on the 8800gt and 4850 since like....8pm 0_o First thing I learned is that Cinebench is NOT a reliable Open GL testing platform on Vista 64.... Every time I quit and relaunched it the scores would vary wildly... 5200...4500...4000....4200...5000... stuff like that... so I was thinking that maybe my power supply was faulty so I decided to investigate further... I monitored Gpu-Z while cinebench was running...The Cinebench OpenGL test never pushed the cards past %20 capacity which I thought was weird... I use Cinebench because it is based on the 3d app I use... also Cinebench uses standard OpenGL in its test...and I have learned through my other tests that using Enhanced OpenGL in Cinema4d yields higher frame rates... So I got two other popular benchmark apps that test opengl.... Lightmark and Furmark... First I ran Furmark and monitored gpu-z... Furmark pushed the cards to %99 capacity the whole time AND every time I ran it the scores

So I'm running Vista 64 on my rig with Aero and all the visual bling crap turned off... I have an MSI 8800 GT... Weird stuff happens... I've documented the Open GL performance weirdness on this blog before... I got decent Cinebench Open GL scores with version 177.26 of the nvidia drivers BUT I get some weird screen tearing in Cinema 4d and other 3d apps crash a lot... video apps and 2d apps are fine... except Open GL freaks out in After Effects from time to time.... So I decided to try other drivers to see if I could find a performance/stability sweet spot... Here's the drivers I've tried to far.... 169.02 Poor OGL performance 169.28 Would not install 175.16 Poor OGL performance 177.26 Good OGL Performance Sketchy stability 177.66 Poor OGL performance 177.73 Poor OGL performance 177.79 Poor OGL performance 177.83 Poor OGL performance 177.89 Poor OGL performance Decent Stability The difference between Poor and Good OGL performance is about %40 by the way...so it makes se

If you want to make animated films the way I do you must know its NOT glamorous... for example right now... its a Saturday night and its like 70 degrees outside and for the past 2 hours and probably the next 2 I will be installing gfx card drivers..benching them... uninstalling them... installing different versions...benching them...uninstalling them....etc etc.... I was going to make a new animated video test tonight BUT these nvidia drivers on Vista 64 are buggy as FUCK so I'm trying to find a combination of performance and stability with these drivers but.... there's lots to go through Hope your having fun ^ ^

Well tonight my projector broke in a freak accident involving the paper clip that saved my laptop from robbers a few years ago...but anyway.... being desperate for money I checked into my youtube partner payment account which I never had done before annnnnnnndddddd.... I was surprised to find some money in there?! So now payments from my youtube partner account will cover %10 of the budget of my new animated feature film now in pre-production... My budget is next to nothing and I posted it here before so you can figure out whats in my YT account ^ ^ BUT I just think its WIN that a portion of my budget will be paid through youtube profits... As things move along in this whole self distribution/new media/1000 fan/longtail thanG it would be great to have %20-%50 covered by YT profits and other audience generated revenue.... but I'm thankful for anythang and happy to be able to just make my films my way....

So yeh i finished my 2 day test of the new workstation and Cinema 4d 10.5.... If I had version 11 I would have done a whole music vid but I HATE copying and pasting keyframes so I'll probably do the rest when I get version 11. Here' the video in kinda HD at Vimeo And the YT version A special gift to yall blog readers...this FULL 1920x817 quicktime version ..its 169megs Right click the link to download it

So since I have to stress test my stuff and make some animations I decided to make it useful... So I'm creating a short promo for the band "Rabbit Junk"... really liking theY new album and I modeled that weird rabbit so like yeh... All the animation is done...just waiting on renders so I can composite the last few clips.... I did it all really quick but I like the way it turned out... I used Cinema 4d 10.5 which doesn't have the NLA tools so I was copying and pasting keyframes which isn't that fun... but with some of the new texturing features and judging by the way that rabbit turned out... I could easily create my "Rain" character from "We are the Strange" in 3d now... Actually if I made WATS today it would probably be %90 3d...So for those of you that wanted a "We are the Strange" sequel... I can say for sure that those characters will live again in 3d in the future ^ ^ I'm figuring out how to make my 3d look like my gritty sto

Speaking of Cinema 4d! Here's a speed freak video I just made....enjoi

One of the best thangs you can do on Windows when you have more than one CPU is too optimize your workflow by setting processor affinity... If you open the task manager and right click a process and choose "Set affinity" you'll see what I mean... You can make it so specific apps can access specific CPU's.. For example I just finished animating about a minute worth of stuff for my test... I was running the C4d app, the C4d render server and C4d render client on my 8 core workstation... If I didn't set the affinity they would all fight over the CPU's making my work slow down... you can also use priorities to help with this but what i decided to do is this... I gave CPU's 1-4 to the Cinema 4d app and I gave CPU's 5-8 to the render client... So as I continued to animate shots and work in Cinema 4d the renderer was chewing on shots in the background utilizing 4 cores at %100.... it was pretty efficient and nothing crashed or even got slow at all... There wh

So after outlining workflows and planning production pipelines today I decided it was a time I tested a few things....like real tests, testing all this new stuff under stress...stressing both hardware and software... So I modeled some evil hammer handed rabbit guy real quick rigged em up and painted him... made a real quick set with Cinema 4d primitive items... It has nothing to do with HSM or my new short film FACE btw just something made for a test... So tomorrow I'll toss him into the Cinema 4d 11 demo and really test out the motion clips and animation layers and all that... too bad the demo can't save or render anything out... IF I really feel inspired tomorrow night I'll make a music video for this d00d in the set I made ^ ^ Can't use C4d 11 though so would have to use the old one....

So my friend Sean Boyles painted the other side of my new workstation... it looks so WIN now I want to ask him to paint the whole thing like that ^ ^ BUT it might be better as the mixed media freakshow it is now ^ ^ Filmmaker magazine is going to be running some making of stuff on HSM in upcoming issues...here is one of the pics I sent them... If your not a computer geek GOMENASAI for these posts... Lots of d00ds are into cars.... I don't have a car... I had to make a choice when I got out of college... i saved some money from working in construction in the summers and on weekends while I was in college and when I graduated I could of either bought a car or a computer... I figured the computer could take me further than any car could... years later and 12 countries later which I got to visit because of the film I made on my computer I know what the right choice was ^ ^ ALSO thats the brand of sacrifice from BERSERK on the front with a small pic of Guts from Berserk at the bottom as

I was chatting with fellow Killa KaliforniaN Mr. Diva the other day who is finishing up a music video for Mindless Self Indulgence and we got to typing bout lens blur in After Effects... I remembered I did some tests for WATS that I never posted online? or maybe I did?! I da know but here they are... So I shot all the stopmo with a Canon 300d... I did 3d set extensions for my stopmo sets so I wanted the optics to match... So I used similar focal lengths with the 3d camera's to match the 300d.... I also wanted the defocusing and blurring to match... I used the awesome plugin Zblur to generate the depth passes from Cinema 4d and applied the blurs in After Effects... So i did some tests with the two "lens blur" plugins I had at the time which I thought were the best... Frishluft "Lenscare" TinderBox "True camera blur" These blurs are far superior to anything else that comes with after effects btw... So for my source image I shot a photo of some Xmas light

So I just finished going through the first phase of design for all the objects required to mAke the film. It was pretty easy...there were only a few times where I had to stop and think about the designs...most of the time it just flowed... I collected an extensive reference photo collection to help me along... I just go to flickr and search for things I'm interested in...save the photos and put them on my ipod so when I was writing and storyboarding and designing I always go back and look at the photos... So now that the brainstorming and crappy sketches are done I will do less crappier sketches ^ ^ Which will act as the concept art to base the 3d models on.... that is phase 2.

So Xrefs came with Cinema 4d 10.5 so they are not new too version 11 but they are new to me... Lets look at how they are useful to microstudio 3d animation production shall we? I learn when making stuff to help you learn so like I'm being productive ^ ^ So here we have a simple scene with a few objects - tree(xref) - building(xref) - character(xref) - sky - floor Xrefs are like external aliases that we can edit individually and the changes will occur in all the other scene files they are used in.... So here's what the objects look like in the scene browser You can make ANY object an Xref by simply using the "convert to xref" command... They are normal objects until you convert them....I already went ahead and made the tree, building, and character xrefs... So then they become separate files which you can edit as its own project file.... Xref's look like normal objects except they have a few extra options... here's what they look like... I'm going to edit

So I downloaded the demo of the new version as you can here I've been using version 9.1 of Cinema 4d for a long time...since then... they upgraded to 9.5---> 9.6--->10.0--->10.1--->10.5---11 There were a lot of interface changes and the like from 9.1 so its a little awkward for me to use as I have to get used to it.... BUT The new NLA system is powerful! The layer system and motion clips will make what I do a lot easier... If your making an animated feature film alone with this and like SMORT you will try as best you can to use the same rig for most all the characters...that way as your working you can save out the animations as motion clips as reuse them with all the other models as production moves along OR you could take a few weeks to create a motion library ahead of time ( Walk, run, jump, swing sword, crawl...etc) what ever motion you would be using a lot of.... Its like a making a poor man's mocap library by hand except its not mocap and yeh like you did it b

So it seems Cinema 4d 11 will be announced tomorrow... 11 is a magic number and it seems C4d 11 is pure WIN!!! Here's the new feature I'm most excited about... - Non-Linear Animation Move beyond the keyframe. Animation Layers and Motion Clips tools let users easily build, layer and loop discreet motions containing hundreds of keyframes in complex hierarchies. I had NONE of this when doing WATS... Animation layers alone makes me 9000x times more powerful! I was messin with the new Poser Pro and it has animation layers...really powerful and time saving... and Motion Clips are awesome...Motionbuilder has been using them for years and now I shall have themS... If you do things smart you will create your characters so you can share motion clips between them... I can't do mocap but I can build a library of motion clips to reuse throughout production... this I will dO!!! I'm so fucking GEEK excited I'm gonna post the box image like 11 more times!

w/ custom Sean Boyles paint job $2,400.00 (without shipping and tax) I got the specs for the new workstation I built HERE I changed a few things like gfx card and Hard Drive....and I pin modded the CPU's to run faster... Here the exact thangs I bought to build mine in case you want to as well... Coolermaster case : Its big, strong and has space for everything I need Seagate 1tb Hard Drive : I was going to go with dual Raptors in RAID 0 for a boot disk but that increases my chances of losing meh system drive by %50 so I went with one big drive Lite-on DVD burner: Nothing much to say about it...fast and cheap MSI 8800gt Gfx card: Once I worked out the kinks this standard gaming card is great for 3d app work as well Tyan Mainboard: I wish it had firewire (1394) on board as well but I've had no problems with it at all 8 gigs of A-DATA ram... Cheap and stable Two Intel E5410 Quadcore Xeon Processors: Add a piece of electrical tape and they perform like CPU's costing $500 mo

Was just doing some calculations cause thats what i like to do... I benchmark my CPU's using Cinebench because it uses the render engine from the 3d app I use---> Cinema 4d... CPU power is measured using CB points... The render farm I used on WATS which consisted of 7 machines scored a combined 15,500 CB points... MY new workstation alone scores 21,000 CB points My new proposed render farm scores 72,000 CB points for a combined 93,000 CB points with workstation + render farm... So now I have 93,000 CB points of CPU power with 8 gigs of RAM in each machine as opposed to 15,500 CB points of CPU power and 1 gig of RAM in each machine when I made WATS... What does all this mean???? Your gonna see some CRAY_Z shit MAYNE!!!!!!!!!!

So now that the technical issues are out of the way I am in the design phase... this has to be some of the most fun you have in production... So what I do is..... I have my inventory sheets... lists of all the things I need to build...So I sit there with that list and a sketchbook... I draw out what the things will look like and take notes as to how I am going to make them... I can say so far it will be VERY mixed media...more than I had anticipated but if my braIN is excited about it I have to do it... So after everything is sketched/planned out I will break all the elements down to theY media types... So I have inventory sheets that are the same as the others I posted except they say "3d" or "Stopmo" or... at the top so then I break all the elements down based on media type... then once this is all done by October 1st I will begin actually making the elements in whatever media type it may be... So yeh this is fun because its not based in reality... that is to say

So I still have Vista64 on the workstation.... The After Effects UI is a lot snappier in Vista BUT Cinema 4d had all these screen tearing problems and I was about to go back to Xp64 when I found a Cinema 4d specific post in regard to Vista... Apparently Vista has a "Compatibility mode" option... If you right click an exe and choose the compatibility tab you can see these options... the post I found said to switch it to XP compatibility.... before this my Cinebench OpenGL score would not go over 3600 in XP32, XP64 or VIsta64... I ran it in compatibility mode and suddenly my score was 5241! Thats about were it should be... then I went to the Cinema 4d app and switched it too and now the screen tearing problems are gone! So the CPU heat issues and poor gfx performance issues are gone! Now I just need to decide between Xp64 and Vista64... Xp64 has been dropped with XP 32 so its probably not the best choice for the future... I turned off all the extra bling crap in Vista but it s

So I checked the tape on the bottom of the CPU's there was a little extra on both that was getting caught on the side of the CPU... clipped that off... cleaned, reapplied AS5, temps dropped about 10'C... then through interwebs research I learned that most all temp reading apps cannot accurately read 45nm chip temps... as they are set for 65nm chips... there is a TJmax setting...the max operating temp for a given CPU... and if its not correct your temps will be wrong soooooo I found out the the TJmax for 45nm chips is 85 so I changed that in Realtemp, the supposed best temp reading app ....and now they CPU's are at 42'C idle and 59'C full load... So it seems the CPU issue is out of the way and like maybe the 8800gt just SUX at openGL... My old PC scores a 2010 CInebench OpenGL score and this one scores a 3600... so it is an improvement..just not as much as I had imagined :( I wanted like over 5000! Oh yeh I loaded Vista but I don't like it...prob go back to Xp6

So yeh did some research... apparently the 8800gt pwn's hard when it comes to directx performance which most all 3d apps and games use but ahem... Cinema 4d uses Open GL... and apparently OPen GL performance SUX on some 8800gt cards...sigh... just when you thought you did enough research....SIGH I rode my bike to fry's to get a floppy and I just flashed the mainboard bios...it was nerve racking! The mainboard kept beeping like a heart monitor and I was all OMG don't crash!!!! But it didn't so now I'm a mess with it some more before trying Vista 64...

So its not a driver issue after all as I installed Xp 32 and got the newest drivers from the card manufacturer... I ran the same Cinebench benchmark and the Open GL scored 3524?!?! The same as it did under Xp 64... Here are some 8800gt scores from an online database... Athlon 64 4800 1.8 GeForce 8800 GT Win XP 4108 Core Q6600 4.0 GeForce 8800 GT Win Vista 64 5109 Xeon quad core dual 2.8 GeForce 8800 GT OSX 10.5.4 6076 And I'm still getting the weird cpu readings?!?! Like in Speedfan the "CPU" temp reads: -128C and the "Core" temps are anywhere from 66C - 70C PC Wizard lists the "Processor Temperature" as : 40 C and the "Cores" from 55C - 64C CoreTemp Lists the Cores from 71C to 81C All these readings are at %0 Load... and yeh the heatsinks are barely warm at all... So its either the mainboard or PSU thats ruining my life meh thinks?!

Installing XP 32 right now to see if that helps solve any of the mysteries... The bios on the mainboard is version 1.00... noticed these fixes in the 1.01 version... * Adjusted thermal control and set auto fan control enabled as default * Fixed and issue where dual VGA cards would show a yellow ! next to the 2nd card under Vista * Fixed an issue where the auto fan controls were not working properly * Fixed an issue where the Front and Rear FAN controls were not working properly * Fixed an issue where you couldn’t use dual VGA options under Windows XP Thermal control? and lots of fan issues? Hmmm I might have to flash that...

Still screwing around trying to isolate the Open GL issue... was doing some stress tests by rendering a complex scene in Cinema 4d last night when the PC shut itself off... That usually points to overheating meh thinks... So now I used 3 different apps to check the CPU temps and all three give different results and all but one are REALLY high... EXAMPLE: Coretemp will say : 70'C SpeedFan will read: 64'C and PCWizard will read: 50'C I cleaned, reapplied ArcticSilver 5, reseated the heatsinks firmly and ran the tests again... same thing?!?! When opening up the case right after... the heatsinks aren't hot to touch, just barely warm... if they were really hitting 104'C like Coretemp reads wouldn't they be sizzling?! About updating the GFX cards bios... MSI's live update feature won't work on XP 64 : ( And yeh MSI has no xp64 drivers... Also speedfan is funky because it reads all fans as 0RPM and trust me they are on.... In Bios it reads the fans correctly a

Ok so workstation is all built...did the tape mod... installed XP64...drivers etc.... The MSI 8800GT I bought does NOT have xp64 drivers so I got the newest Nvidia ones... Its only scoring a 3267 for OGL in cinebench which is half of what it should be... I ran some direct-x benchmarks and those are where they should be... After effects Cs3 GUI also seemed to be a little slow compared to my old rig... So me thinks its a graphic driver issue... Seems Xp64 drivers are kinda rare... Next I'm gonna install Vista 64 because the MSI card DOES have Vista 64 drivers.... I've ruled it out being a power issue as I have a 650w PSU with 56A on the 12v rails... and I only have one Hard drive and 1 optical drive... Could still be a mainboard issue I don't know? Really seems like a gfx driver thing... Why would the direct-x scores be normal with the Open GL half of what they should be? Most 3d apps use DirectX but mine, Cinema 4d uses OpenGL so I kinda need it : ( Besides the OpenGL suckn