@Granny, we all had to start somewhere, and the Pinhead competition is as good a way as any. And, it's fun to see the various participants improve and grow with each installment!

This round especially seems to find several of us trying new things and getting in a terrible time crunch!...

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Granny,

Echoing what Job (Animagic) said, please don't feel intimidated.  I know that can be easier said than done.  My Pinhead participation dates back to Project #1, but I too am stunned by the quality of work people manage to produce.

Most of, find joy in your own work, at whatever level that may be.  As you already discovered, you learn a lot from doing the work.  You also make new friends.  And you get inspired from others.

One person will have highly details sets and props.  Another will have rich sound effects and music.  Another has funny and clever writing.  Someone else will exhibit great editing and timing and camera angles.  Yet another will excel at the detailed work of facial expressions and hand/prop interaction.

A few special people seem to pull it all together.

And then there's people like me.  I just limp along.  But I have fun.  And I have managed to amuse and entertain other Pinhead fans when I'm lucky.

REMEMBER THIS... sometimes the most simple little projects can be the most endearing and charming.  But as I said earlier, simply enjoy yourself.

Lastly, and I've done this before, I'm going to share one of my more horrible Pinhead projects.  It goes back to the 2D days, and because I was doing a lot of business travel (and my laptop wasn't up to the task) the whole project was completed in a great rush in the last three days before the project closed.  I still like the heart of the story, (though it does suffer from a couple of inside jokes - spurtles and stolen canoes), but the animation... ugh!

So watch this, and I'm sure you'll never feel badly about anything you do in iClone...

Pinhead in... An Epic Adventure from justaviking on Vimeo.

(Okay, the boat wasn't too bad, but "half of a girlfriend" and the villagers, etc.  Sheesh.)

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Doug - very nice WIP. Look's very interesting.

Granny J - don't worry, I've been "trying" to learn iClone for 3 years and I've just graduated to 1st grade and as animagic said "we all have to start somewhere...." and follow justaviking's advice "simply enjoy yourself"



sjonesdc

STILL LEARNING!!!

@Doug: We WILL pester you for more; don't worry!

Looks already very good: Pinhead meets The Lord of the Rings...

I like the music too.

@Viking: I remember that video and I actually liked it. The important thing is that you did the best you could do given the circumstances. That's all anyone can ask for.

@All: At times there is talk by some on this forum (not this group...) that iClone can't do this or that or should be like Maya or Max. But we collectively prove and have proven again and again that iClone is an amazing story-telling tool.

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@ Granny J

I've been an iClone User since Version 1.5. My first iClone Pinhead Clip was a cobbled-up clip using iC1.5, proDAD Heroglyph & Animation Factory.

.................and - FWIW - I rated Dennis' Viking Clip above, very highly in the On-Line Vote, because I liked the story & the way he put it together, using just Pinnacle Studio Consumer NLE Program.

@ Doug

Great stuff as usual from the Explosives Expert  & Benny has taken-on a human (although sinister) face at last

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      REALLUSION FORUM ANNUAL PINHEAD COMMUNITY PROJECTS.

       New Pinhead Website & Project to be announced in September 2015

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@Animagic and Colour... Thank you for the kind words.  I guess there's no accounting for taste, huh? 

I didn't mean to be fishing for compliments, but you did help prove my point; there is more to a Pinhead project (any project, really) than just stunning technical work.  I've always fancied myself as a storyteller, and I am thrilled to have been able to entertain you.  (The sound track, thanks to SonicFire Pro from SmartSound sure did help.)

I'm going to get back to my project now.  I've been working on some voice-overs this evening, and just put them into the project, but now I have to space them apart (get the pacing right), do some rough animation so the two characters don't just stand there like mannequins, and start working on some camera work.  That will complete a rough draft of that scene.

TECHNICAL NOTE:

I modified my process a bit tonight.  I hope it pays off in the long run.  Here is it for people to consider...

Rather than recording the voices directly in iClone, did this:

• Record the lines in Audacity (a great, FREE, audio recording and editing tool)
• I did multiple takes of almost every line, all in one long recording
• Then I copied each "line of dialogue" out of the master track and put it on it's own track
• For each line of dialogue, I selected my favorite take, and copied it to the end of that track so it was by itself, easily found because I left a bit of a space between the original takes and my selected take
• For each line, I applied some minor noise reduction (to get rid of background hum from my computer and the air vents) and exported each line of dialogue to its own file

Then I quickly and easily placed my dialogue into iClone.  They can be easily moved on the timeline.

WHY GO THROUGH THIS EFFORT?

• I did this to facilitate later editing (if necessary) in my NLE (Pinnacle Studio).
• This will give my greater control.

SUCH AS?

• It allows me to do things like noise reduction without affecting other sound tracks.
• You cannot change the volume of individual lines of dialogue in iClone, only the master volume for an entire character.  That makes it hard to level volume, or increase/decrease volume when you have background music and stuff like that.
• It was slightly tedious, but it was a much nicer way to perform multiple takes and then select the best one.  In a few cases, I even took the first half of a sentence from one take, and the second half from another take.
• I can work with "overlapping" dialogue in my NLE, adjusting.
• If I decide to redo a line, it is easier to work with
• And last of all, hopefully I'll recruit someone to replace my voice for one of the characters, and as long as their deliver speed is approximately like mine, I can do all the voice work in Audacity and Studio.

Hopefully this will prove to be worth the extra effort.  It's not a huge effort in the long run.  Once I had the individual sound files, it only took a couple minutes to put all the lines into iClone.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Hi everyone! Thanks for the comments. I want to add to what everyone is saying. We are all at different levels of experience when it comes to the quality of the animation so we are really only in competition with ourselves to do better than we have in the past. As for me, I am working long and hard trying to make better textures and better lighting. I am really pleased with how they are turning out so far. But that is just me trying to improve myself.

The real competition with Pinhead is like colour said, the story and how it is put together. There have already been some pretty high bars set in this category and we are all going to have to step up our game this year.

@justaviking - I was doing voice overs myself tonight. Well, I was recording my 8 and 11 year old daughters in audacity. My 11 yr old is Alura and my 8 yr old is one of the police women. We had a ton of fun. I recorded the villain in my own voice the other day in audacity and tweaked the pitch a little. Audacity is awesome.



Doug

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____________________

Because I render to image sequences, I do/can not use iClone's audio output.

Therefore, I do the layout and timing of voices in Audacity, with a separate track for each voice. They are TTS voices in my case, as I would have to solicit for actual voices and there is not enough time. It also allows me to easily change the dialog.

Any pauses at the beginning of the dialog I also add in Audacity, so that dialog tracks are timed right for the scene. I then simply load each voice with the timeline at 0, so no confusion there.

I create a mix of all dialog tracks in Audacity, with any effects added (mostly reverb to simulate the room). I do a mix and render, then copy, and then undo, so that I have a mixed copy to put into a new track, but still have the original tracks as well. The mix is then used in Vegas as sound track for the image sequence.

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@justaviking -
Thanks for sharing your earlier vid - what a cute storyline & a nice happy ending (I am totally into happy endings BTW)....

I use AVS Audio Editor for my audio tracks. I tend to record each character's lines in individual clips, but it never dawned on me to make a single master clip to adjust overall volume & then break them apart - that's a great idea! Will definitely try it on my next project! Thanks for sharing that!

@everyone -
Thanks for all you share here, I have learned a lot during this project from the folks in this forum! I am sure my learning curve has been shortened tremendously by participating in this project, plus I discovered and honed some new skills in iClone that I'd always wanted to try. This project provided the opportunity to stretch my imagination and attempt new things...

@animagic - why do you create image sequences versus an HD video? I use Adobe After Effects for post work, but I bring in HD vid clips. Do you get better picture quality using an image sequence? Your still WIP shots are awesome BTW....

@all - can anyone share the best format to select in iClone for video output? I've been using MP4 HD720 & changing dimension to 768x432, but my final result never seems "crisp & clear", so I am wondering if it would be better rendered in a different format....

Also, if I rework my vid to clean it up a bit, am I allowed to resubmit prior to the deadline?

@sjonesdc - thanks for your kind words, I truly enjoyed working this project. Building characters, scenes, props, etc is the easy part for me, as I have been building components in AutoCad forever, so that was an easy transition - but creating a movie, facial animation and coordinating animation between each character plus learning lighting tricks & stuff has been like climbing Everest - a slow and sometimes painful process at times, but the reward & exuberance of learning new skills has been stupendous...

In short, when I lost my mobility (& my career) a few years back due to a crippling disease, I often wondered if I would ever find something to do from home that would not only exercise my brain and my hands, but also provide a creative avenue. I have to share that iClone and projects like this, have been a godsend! I sorely missed collaborative interaction - and you all have filled that gap... Mere words can never express how grateful I am for what all of you share on a daily basis. And to the folks at RL, certainly, iClone has limits (every SW program always does), but it is one of the easiest programs I have ever used and would recommend it for anyone entering the world of 3D modeling/animation.

Everyone, please, take a brief moment today to applaud yourself for the knowledge you share & the joy you bring to others.... you may not realize it, but what you do COUNTS a lot!

With my deepest appreciation to you all,
Granny J

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iClone Certified Content Developer and Author of the Pinky Frink® Adventure Series & the Pinky Frink® Learning Books
site: Granny J's 3D Attic SKYPE = grannyjsplace email: grannyj@grannyjs3dattic.com
MY RIG: GPU: Dual GeForce GTX 970M | CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)i7-5930K @3.50GHz| 32.00 GB RAM | OS: Win 7 Pro SP1 | DX11

An awesome clip Doug! The breaking glass showcase looked really good. Can't wait for more. It reminded me of the scene in "Enter the Dragon" where Bruce lowers himself down a similar opening with a rope. Very impressive.

You're doing great Granny! Way better than me in the same amount of time in iclone.

Viking... yeah, it was pretty crude as video goes but it was a very fun video to watch. I enjoyed it very much and I kept wondering if you were playing the insane leader part.  

pete


http://www.youtube.com/user/peterblood50?feature=mhee