Categories
3D Animation 3D Modeling Motion Graphics Multi-Rotors Project Notes Xpresso Tasks

Micro Drone City Flow

This project was inspired by a lot of the fpv flying I have done recently. I wanted to create something that tried to convey fun playful energetic feel of flying in the air.

I used Cinema 4D as my main tool for creating this project starting with the drone model which was based from my personal favorite one(that currently isn’t working of course).

In addition to modeling the drone I also went the extra step to make the propellers actually spin the way the would in real life. This was just a side personal exercise I wanted to try to see if I could do it via expresso inside of C4D. It took me a while and doesn’t show up in the animation since everything is moving too fast but I posted how it works on my instagram.

 

A post shared by Greg (@greg2bpro) on


The city was a free download from 3docean that was the initial jump off for this project. After building my model I then figured out how to procedurally create the city using mograph in c4d. Allowing me to randomly place and distribute the city buildings. I didn’t use all of them in the pack but the most of the taller ones and few shorts ones. I added in some small parks to break it up a bit and to have some low flying action.

I wanted the whole project to be a bit more stylized and not super realistic so I went with the sort of low poly style which I think worked well and adds a fun feel to it. Also low poly is slightly easier to work with though the end it took decent amount of time to get it feel right.

After getting the look down I proceed to make the path that I wanted to fly the quad. My process for this to start in park and just places instances of the quad though out the city of the path I wanted it to take, pretty much blocking the path out as I came across the next building. Most of the moves are I’ve seen various popular fpv/drone youtubers do.

After laying out the path, I actually typed up an outline of the path so I could remember what moves I actually wanted to do, while labeling them in c4d as well. Then I made a spline path in c4d for the quad to follow.

My first path of animating it was attaching the quad to the spline but it felt too much on rails(which is was, the spline). So I ended up animating the whole thing by hand. I think the end result turned out pretty good though I still notice a few unintended extra moves I could have smoothed out. Some I left in since it seemed a bit more realistic or how I would try to recover from a move.

Before rendering it out I had the idea to add in some 2D effects to spice it up a bit. I have some 2D flash effects and thought I would composite them into the project in post in After Effects. But I didn’t want to have to export extra 3D data or do a lot of masking in AE.

So I rendered out png sequences of the effects and placed them in c4d on planes and other simple shapes and timed them with the quads moves. It came out pretty though I had to remember to turn the effects off after the animating other wise it would show up as black over other parts even if it had alpha at the end.

The final render time was probably around 15 hours between my two machines not included some re-renders of a few shots I messed up on. Also had to fix one shot that I messed up an an effect that a friend noticed.

After doing a bit of compositing in After effects I rendered out the 6 camera shots and the main First person view from the drones perspective and edited it all together in Adobe Primer Pro and added the final look. I did the final sound design in Audition. Overall it took me about 40 – 60 hours to complete over a 2 weeks though most of it was completed in the final week.

Music: Yuriy_Shishlov Future Bass

Some sound effects from freesound.org

Categories
Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 10 Notes

It’s been a while since there has been a Xpresso task so when Robert posted that there was a new one I was really interested in trying my hand at some more Xpresso. The task he put forth was to create a Christmas tree that you could customize through used data such as height amount of branches or cones, width, etc…  I was able to complete that fairly quickly.

 

The next level was to at some decorations which found a bit tough and in the end only had a star on the top because i couldn’t figure out how to have enough control with my bulbs. I would be interested if any one else figure it out.

 

The last level was to setup a control for presets. Robert suggested using Python or C.O.F.F.E.E though you could do it with all with Xpresso. After some research on both languages I choose to do mine with Python even though c.o.f.f.e.e looked easier since I have programed in java and action script. I choose Python since that’s what Robert, seems to have more uses outside of cinema, and I could get help from friend who is a real programmer and knows python.


It took  me a little bit to understand the format since it is different then other languages I know but with a good site recommended by my friend and some example found on line I was able to hack something together. In the end my setup was more complicated then it needed to be but I learned a lot. Check out Robert Leger’s Result for the way he did it, http://vimeo.com/34013560. I will put my file below to download and the links I used.


G2B Xpresso X-mas Tree << I left some hidden controls in the file that didn’t quite work.


http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html
http://www.peranders.com/w/index.php?title=Python/C4DSDK#For_R12
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/python/index.htm << Friend Recomended
http://www.maxon.net/index.php?id=157&L=0 << C4D Site
http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/thinkCSpy/html/chap03.html
http://chicagoc4d.com/C4DPythonSDK/
Categories
Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Lesson 10

My submission for Robert Legers Xpresso lesson
better quality on youtube due to using my one hd video a month on vimeo already
Categories
Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 9 + Pogs

Well it seems I haven’t posted in quite a while. This has been partly due to my working full time at a post-studio in NYC and some freelance work that took up most of my free time. All excuses a side I think I have simply not been focused with my own personal work which I’m getting back into now.

Last week I finally made time to do Robert Legers XPresso Lesson #9 – Task – Custom Effector. This one was was a little bit tough at first to figure it out but I was able to complete it. My example isn’t that spectacular but I put together a little example that reveals some text. Still waiting to see the official results from Balázs and Robert.

Another project I’m working on is a personal project that I’m going to finish in some capacity by next monday. The idea is to a simple id spot using pogs to show a company logo. The idea for pogs just sort of came to me after looking at the recent vector designs from http://blog.signalnoise.com/, especially the circular ones. I plan to make a few designs using them as inspiration and some other cool pogs designs.

Not sure if scene wise this is what I will go with but it’s in the area right now.

Categories
Daily 365 Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 8 – Xstage & XShatter

 

This  would have been my submission to robertleger.net Xpresso Task 8.  Apparently I filled in the form on his site but when I woke up my information was still in the form. So this is an incomplete assignment from me since I didn’t submit it on time.

I created the XStage because, although I love keyframing, setting key frames just to switch a camera always seemed tedious using the stage object. Also whenever you need to adjust it you had to hunt down the key frames and then play it out and see how it looked. A back and forth process that seemed a bit much to me. So after getting the assignment this is one of the first things I thought of doing.

This Xpresso setup lets you set 6 cameras plus your start camera to switch based on whatever key frame you input.  Just enable the camera, drag a camera in, set the frame, and repeat for the next one. You can also offset the begging key frame and all the rest after based on the start value. This can come in handy if you need to have more than 6 cameras to switch between in a scene.

I created the XShatter simply because I wanted to see If I could do more effects without keyframes. This effect simply lets you choose when you want the effect to begin and how long based on seconds or frames.  I made this option because it annoyed me sometimes in the CS Tools, which are great, that you couldn’t base the length of a tool’s animation or property based on frame just duration in seconds. It worked most of time but sometimes I just wanted it to end on x frame instead of having to adjust the beginning to get it where want.

I also created XMelt which has the same setup as XShatter and was mainly a test to see if I could transfer the Xpresso setup to another effect.  I did a test with it on my 365 project if you want the see witch hat melt and shatter. http://365project.org/g2b/365/2011-06-13

The tentacle setup was a project setup by DAGraphix- http://dagpx.deviantart.com/

Once I finish my final render I will upload the files here and on my DA page.

Categories
Daily 365 Downloadable Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 7 + Lego Swirl Cinema 4D File

 

I though I should share my result for roberleger.net Xpress0 Task 7. The first file below has my setup for the product table. My setup is pretty straight forward with only one extra flair for a custom shape. I would suggest looking at the results page to this lesson and checking out the other solutions.

The second file is part of my lego swirls file that I used to make the animation for this lesson. It’s not the whole file since I did buy the model but it has the rising tunnel and the lego parts as they swirl around. I though it might be cool to post up how I solved this task. There are a couple of ways to go about it and I choose my method because it gave me the look I was going for but an alternative could have work just as well.

Base Product Table File Zip | Lego Swirls File Zip

 

Categories
Daily 365 Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 7

 

This is my submission for Robert Leger’s Xpresso Task 7. The task was to create you standard product table. After the last hair puller the straight forwardness of this one was welcomed. This one was hosted by Ryan Hamilton, a xpresso task regular who is always producing some great work. To add even more awesomeness to it this one is a contest of for an Iphone App…although I don’t have an Iphone.

As far as the xpresso setup I didn’t hit any major snags while building it. I did however run into an issue where instead of using the radius of the shape to control the size I used the scale so I wouldn’t have to link up each different shape. My main reason for this, besides not wanting to make a bunch of connections over and over, was so I could use any custom shape. So I used scale with a small increment to make it seem like the radius is getting bigger.

I didn’t add any other features to this one like I normally do. Instead I focused more time into creating this animation.

 

Lego Mario Build Up

I wanted to do something then just have a random product on a table with it rising. My original idea was to have mickey mouse’s head and shoulders one the table and have it rise up as the ears rotate around and land on his head. I couldn’t find a good model of his head and I didn’t want to take the time to build it, so I did some brainstorming and thought a lego would be cool to build up.

I found this model of lego mario on 3d ocean and figure it would be cool to use. After that I just built the scene up and made a little Xpresso setup for the body parts. Then I created the swirling blocks to wrap around Mario while the product table(tunnel) goes up.

It’s a standard effect of sorts but it does look cool I think. I think I was inspired by the stop-motion like work of a recent lego spot that was on tv (web since I don’t have cable),

 

 

Categories
Daily 365 Downloadable Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Lesson 6 Homework



This is my submission to roberleger.net Xpresso Lesson number 6. The image above will goto the vimeo screen cast that I have of it working. Unfortunately I was not able to render the full quality screen cast due to to time but I will render the full quality one and switch it out.

The only issue is reading the Xpresso nodes, so for that I have created a mini gallery here so you can check it out. (WordPress is having some issues so this will be up in a bit.) You can also check out the My Xpresso setup in the C4D file as well. My set up it pretty much the same for each item just different ranges on the range mapper.

I made a little teaser at the beginning using the android droid mascot. I did all of the movement  with the(2) animators except for the hands and head. Oddly enough though the item I used to show the espresso is a an apple iPad…