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Showing posts from October, 2012

How to create fisheye lens distortion in Cinema 4d

I show you how I use the plugin Degamma to apply realistic lens distortion to your renders Degamma is a great plugin-I use it in everything I do- get it at the link below http://www.thirdpartyplugins.com/degamma/

Attack of the made in one day 3d halloween animations!

At first I wanted it to be scary... then it had dancing and then masturbation.... now I don't know what it is but here's mine! As a reader of dis blog, Lance posted his Halloween animation in the comments so here it is! ^_^

M dot talks about Camera choices for narrative purposes in Cinema 4d

I discuss the usage of different camera focal lengths in Cinema 4d and why you would want to use a certain focal length over another for narrative purposes.

M dot shows you how he lights a moody scene in Cinema 4d

I give a quick demo of my lighting workflow in Cinema 4d and discuss the how's and why's of my lighting choices. I don't ever use GIobal illumination as I prefer to light scenes manually for both the speed of rendering and control which I have over the scenes.

M dot's fake cloth dynamics tips with Cinema 4d

I show you a simple and flexible way to do a sort of fake cloth dynamics in Cinema 4d. The cloth simulations look good in Cinema 4d for still characters but I don't like having to re-run the simulation every time I move a character etc when animating...so I use this fake cloth method instead.  Get the project file with example fake cloth here

M dot's character animation helper scripts for Cinema 4d

In this video I show you a few little scripts that I use when animating. You can download them below to use them in your workflow. Download the scripts

When the status quo is totally fucked-why should you do what it tells you?

A person's advice only goes as far as they have gotten... Now let's say there's someone you know who is in bad health and obese that's trying to tell you what you should be doing for your health... Obviously they are in bad health so why take their advice lest you end up like them? If someone is an angry, miserable, bitter person and they are giving you advice on how to live your life and be happy... why should you listen? Being an animator I'm pretty good at reading peoples body language and micro-expressions- and I've met plenty of miserable, unhealthy, fearful, dead inside fucks who have tried to tell me what I should be doing with my life... I never listened... and I never will ^_^ I've met many adults who portray themselves as if they have it all figured out... and I've met many adults that have a difficult time containing the desperate spasms of death, fear, misery and despair that creeps behind their eyes... If you have found your pass

M dot's thoughts on 3d character rig setups

I try to work with the simplest and fastest character setups that I can... in this video I share some things that hope to help you create faster and simpler rigs to make character animation more fun.

The virtual cast is set!

So I finished all 30 or so characters for the new film... they are all modelled, textured, rigged... all have auto lip sync setup and morphs ready to go... they are all ready to be animated! But I must thank my assistant/girlfriend for taking care of some of the repetitive work on the characters... I thought I was going to be able to use the same morphs for all the character heads by setting them up on one head... then using morphs to switch the different heads and then using the jaw rigging/skinning/facial expression morphs that I had setup on the first completed head... it did work BUT it didn't produce nice/reliable facial expressions as some of the faces were so different from the base head... So what I did was create a master face controller rig with all the user data sliders setup for the facial expressions... then I went through and created/exported all the morphs for each character and handed the files over to my lovely assistant... then she imported the morphs and l

Dolls without a voice

I collect odd dolls as well as Cicada skins. I had an uncle who drank a tea made up entirely of cicada skins... for good health. He's dead. Some cicada's spend YEARS under ground in their nymph phase... when they first burrowed under the ground it was probably soft soil... in the city when they come up years later they usually hit concrete and die searching for a way out of that darkness... a sad end to such a long hard struggle living in the dark. All they wanted to do was climb up in the tree's and make some noise. When dolls are your actors you can find a new star in the gutter, in the middle of the street, or someone else can find them for you in a bookstore in Iceland. I'm always on the lookout for new dolls... Self Portrait.

How to rig and skin a jaw with CD Tools in Cinema 4d

I'm using Cactus Dan's character tools in this video but the process is the same no matter the tools. I show the basic process of creating joints for an opening and closing character mouth- then I skin the jaw so that the characters mouth can open and close

How to use Zbrush created morphs in Cinema 4d

Continuing on from my last video I show you how to use the morphs you create in Zbrush in Cinema 4d- using both the built in morphs tools as well as Cactus Dan's Morph tools.  

Request a video tutorial from animated filmmaker M dot Strange

Since I started making little video tutorials again I'd like to try to answer the questions you have about 3d animated filmmaking.  So if there's things you've seen in my work that you want to learn or if there's something that you're stuck on as you try to learn 3d animation/cg filmmaking post your questions in the comments as I'd like to try to help by making a video tutorial answering your question. I use Cinema 4d 11.5, Zbrush 4, After Effects Cs6 and Premiere Pro Cs6 to do my work so if you have any questions specific to those applications fire away! I'd like to provide answers to questions you can't find anywhere else- There's TONS of free tutorials about how to do basic things like modeling a character... So I'm not really interested in answering questions that you can find the answers too elsewhere. I want to provide answers you can't get anywhere else or that you can't get without spending tons of money. I was inspired b

Making facial morphs with Zbrush for use in Cinema 4d

Here's a vid showing how I'm making the morphs for my facial rigs that I'm using for my new film

Cinema 4d motion clip tips by M dot Strange

This video hopes to answer a question Imaginario had from my last post

Some of my new facial animation workflow tools

Showing some stuff I'll be using to do lip sync and facial animation for the new film I'm going to make the film with ol Cinema 4d R11.5 cause that's how I roll ^ ^

Sharing some workflow stuff for my new film

So my process is this- to make my new film a reality... this starts AFTER all concept art is done... Character Phase Assemble/Model character bodies with Cinema 4d and Zbrush Texture Bodies in Bodypaint Model heads with Cinema 4d and Zbrush Texture heads with Bodypaint Rig/Skin character bodies Create all facial morphs and Rig/Skin character heads Create hand poses and copy to all characters Create body poses and copy to all characters Create special hand/body poses for non standard characters Right now I'm at step 6  Prop/Set/Environment Phase Create rough set layout with primitives Create major structures to populate sets (buildings, trees, landmarks, terrain) Texture Structures Create any special requirements from structures (scripting, dynamic sims etc) Populate/layout sets Create props to fill sets Texture props Populate sets with props Light sets Set render tests I'm scheduled to start that process on November 1st Once the sets are

Super fast character head creation with Zbrush and Cinema 4d

So I just finished modeling all 39 characters for my new film... now I'm using a pretty basic and simple style so that helps speed things up but I found a little workflow that allowed me to model the heads really fast... So I box model the base head in Cinema 4d 11.5 which looked like this It was made from a sphere and a hypernurbs object using Cactus Dan's Symmetry plugin but you can use the standard Symmetry object as well... So I imported my low poly head into Zbrush as an obj and did a tiny bit of sculpting to refine and smooth it out until I got this... So my plan was to use this head as a base for every other head in the film... in this film I'm doing lip sync so that would be 39 heads I'd have to rig/skin which would take a lot of time but I don't want to take that time ^_^ Exported the head from Zbrush to Cinema 4d as an obj (I know GoZ exists but I like doing it manually so I have a file history of all the obj's I've exported in my own

Addicted to filmmaking

I've realized through time that Filmmaking is my addiction... just like a person is addicted to smoking cigarrettes or using painkillers because it gives them "comfort"... that's how making films is to me... when I feel lost, hopeless, useless... I return to filmmaking as that is my addiction and it gives me comfort... Creating short animations is a quick fix but just doesn't do it..... As I experienced when I finished We Are The Strange and Heart String Marionette I sort fell into a hole once they were done... I had no comfort because my addiction was not being indulged... So I've realized to stay healthy I need to constantly make films... I'm going to complete the new film by Xmas 2013 and then I plan to release a new one every other year... So just like a dope fiend ignores all other responsibilities and runs off and hides in a hole so they can puff that rock... when I get a new idea for a film that hits me hard... Its like I found the dope... so

So I'm making a new film- hoping to do this one FAST

So I finished the first five characters for my new film today... Since I'm modeling and sculpting and texturing and rigging and skinning and doing morphs and all that at full speed ahead I figured I should screen cap some of it or document it or something as it could be useful to someone at some point.. On this one I'M DOING LIP SYNC! So they will like talks and their mouths will move OMG haha- if you follow the podcast you know that I've feared doing lip sync for awhile and oh speaking of the podcast the reason that there are no new episodes is because Screamerclauz had some problems with his ISP and has no internet access for 30 days- he manages the podcast files and all that so yeh... The issue I always had with lip sync is that I was just using morphs to do facial animation but once I switched over to using joints to animate the jaw now it looks good enough for me to use- so I use a rigged jaw for the open and close stuff and morphs for facial expressions... I'm

Dot Strange T-Shirts for strange people

Yesterday I was SUPPOSED to be working on six other things but since I'm a procrastinating jerkoff I decided to make some T-Shirt designs and slang them through a print on demand service and hey here they are ^_^ I drew them all by hand cept my logo as that was done with MarioPaint- Click the images if you want to buy that shirt... FEALER T-Shirt THE MASTER T-Shirt BUGGER T-Shirt SECRET T-Shirt HAPPY SURF T-Shirt CROSS T-Shirt THE BODY T-Shirt CHARGINMA T-Shirt ANN HERO T-Shirt PSYCHO EYES T-Shirt STAREFISH T-Shirt CACTUS MAN T-Shirt CAPTAIN CHIEF BOSS T-Shirt MORE MONSTERS T-Shirt SHY BEAST T-Shirt TOTEM GAWD T-Shirt HAI GUYS T-Shirt CAPTAIN COW T-Shirt DRACO T-Shirt MANIAC T-Shirt DA QUEEN T-Shirt DAT LADY T-Shirt  NOT SO BAD T-Shirt The shirts are available for MEN and WOMEN in all colors but I think BLACK or WHITE looks best.   I priced them so I make $5 from each s

Leveraging procrastination to get more work done

Procrastinating and getting work done? Don't those two things conflict with each other? So this is something I've used for years to get tons of things finished... to use this technique you need more than one task in mind... and these are PRODUCTIVE things...you cannot include things like playing games, facebook or other time wasters... So lets look at my tasks/goals right now... I'm working on three novels, concept+modeling for a new film, learning Unity3d, working on a game, working on making my business better, and working on music for future soundtracks... Now doing all that stuff all at once would probably make you crazy as you can only really do one at a time... Now like everyone else I have a tendency to procrastinate, to rebel and say "I don't feel like doing this any more I'm going to do X" Now usually for many people I'm going to guess X isn't something productive... its like playing games or texting or floating around on social me

The Monsanto's of multimedia

Perhaps entertainment should provide "food for thought"? If it is what are you feeding your mind? What food are you creating for others to consume? Isn't it created with care? With a consideration for the well being of who will be consuming it? If it's full of cliche's which I believe are mental shortcuts then you're making junk food, your making Taco Bell bean paste that doesn't contain any real beans, if your work is void of real life, real emotion, or real passion...  you are Monsanto. Just as stores like Whole Food's caught on where consumers want natural, organic stuff...Because people came to desire real food made by real people that put real care into the production of the food and have made sure there's no toxins or artificial ingredients... I believe entertainment consumption habits will shift in this direction as well in the future... The audience will get sick of the junk food as its not healthy for their mind... its empty calories

Getting rid of the preciousness

One of the things that really slows me down when working on "serious" personal projects like "Heart String Marionette" is that I'm too precious with them... I don't treat them like films... I treat them like some holy artifact made of hollow glass that I've gotta be a careful with like a newborn baby or something... I'm sure you all have your "babies"- the personal projects you've wanted to do for years that have become this behemoth that looms over everything you do and the longer it takes to get made the more perfect it must be... the better... the shinier... but you're better off just pushing them around and making them do or say what you want without fear of breaking them... if they break they were too weak in the first place and they should be rebuilt... so slap em around! For example- in the writing phase... you should try to tear apart your precious story because if you don't smooth out as many flaws as you can they w