I understand your frustration. You must remember it wasn't too long ago the things you do with iClone were only available to professionals. The entire process for creating animation art was extremely difficult and had a huge learning curve.

iClone is worth the trouble to learn. That is, if you really want to create some top notch animated video.

There is a link in my sig below. Go there and read the first posting I made about learning iclone. Serious talk here.. You will learn it, if you work with the iclone as I describe. Otherwise, you will probably spend a great deal of time trying to learn it the easy way.

Working the examples is important, because you will learn soon enough there are things that would be practically impossible to explain. Maybe I should say. They can be explained, but do you have the patience to carefully read, listen and work through it. LOL

Best Regards...

Hi Michael,

I fully understand that you want to concentrate on working with Virtual Studios, but you will  need to learn the basics of iClone5 first. Once you know how to move around in iClone you will soon get a better understanding of how you use the elements of the Virtual Studio pack, which are just props after all.

So the first thing to do is head over to the Training Resources page below. There you will see a number of "Quick Fix" tutorials. I would advise spending a little time watching these at least before moving on.

http://www.reallusion.com/iclone/iclone_training.aspx

It would also be wise to visit the YouTube iClone tutorials page, where you can also watch more tutorials covering all the major features of iClone5. Just look out for the tutorials that cover the areas you want to work with.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Reallusion/videos?view=1

With regards to the Virtual Studio Volume 1 pack. If you have the complete package you will also have a number of sample studios available from the Projects tab.

Try loading one the sample projects and play around with that. Try moving things around or removing unwanted items. Add some avatars into the scene to see how they look. With only very minor adjustments you may be able to achieve the look you want very quickly.

Again I do understand the desire to jump straight in and be productive. The reality is though that you must learn to walk before you can run. There is no way to avoid the learning curve required to understand your way around the iClone5.

Please hang in there. It really will start to come together the more you practise. :) 

                                                                

Peter
Forum Administrator

www.reallusion.com

I do understand really. Follow all of the above suggestions by rampart and Peter(RL). Also there is the iClone Wiki

sjonesdc :hehe:

STILL LEARNING!!!

Thanks Martok that will help quite a bit once I get the studio set up and working. I think that will work bettter than the way I had figured out which was putting the video on a billboard.

Iclone is a complex program my friend but it does many complex and wonderful things once you know how to use it. Watching the tuts will help immensely but, as Peter said, get in and get your hands dirty, it will be rewarding not only for your company but for you as well.

If you have any questions, the people on this forum are always (and I mean always) ready to help. Believe me when I say that you can't ask any iclone technique question that these fine folks won't try and get you an answer to.

Remember also, there are no questions that can be asked that are more noob than the ones I have asked. I set the bar on noobness pretty low so don't be afraid to ask them anything. They love to help.

Good luck and have fun with it. 


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

You're welcome, Michael. :)
Now, as I said, I've not worked with VS before, but, whenever I've wanted to insert video onto anything like a bill board, it really depends on if such a surface is "video ready".

If you look in the Content Manager, under Set>Template>3D Surface, you will see a series of surfaces, all of which are video/image ready. I usually use "plane A", size it to fit the object in question, and then, when I insert video on it, I go to the Modify>Materials and Texture Settings on the right of the UI, and double click on "diffuse". Then, you should be able to load your video. I find .wmv the best (and I use that word very loosely) file format for that purpose. (And that's really the ONLY time I use .wmv for anything in my productions).

Now, there are other things you'll need to know. If the inserted video is of shorter duration than your production, then you'll need to know how to make the video play when you want it to. This is actually quite simple. :) Go to the timeline (at the bottom of the UI, activated by the "Timeline" button, or you can right click on "plane A", and select "Timeline" from the pop up list.). When you have activated the timeline for Plane A, click on the "Video" button. Your inserted video should appear as an animation bar in the Video timeline. But, say you don't want that video to appear until later on in your production? Ok, slide the video animation bar containing your inserted video over to the right along the timeline, until the left edge of the animation bar coincides with the first frame of the point where you want the video to start playing, and voilla. If you need to fine tune just exactly where the video begins, zoom in on the timeline at the start point, and adjust to the left or right as needed. Also, to make sure that the video does not "appear" until you wish, go back to the beginning of the timeline, and click on the On/Off button for Plane A in the Modify>Materials>Display section of the right of the UI. Click Off. That will make the plane disappear. Go back to the time line, to the start of your video, and then Click On in Modify>Materials>Display. Now, your video should appear, and since you moved the animation to that point, it should start playing once it appears. If the video image should start appearing at any point before you're ready for it to display, check back along the timeline between the start of the production, and the point where you are ready for the video to actually begin. (This should be in the "Visible" track of your billboard/Plane A on the timeline....click on "Visible" to bring up this track.) If you see any areas where a tick mark or hash might appear, simply delete those hashes and ticks, and that should eliminate any unexpected/unwanted premature appearances. :)

If I understand correctly, the billboards you are referring to may already be "video ready"...so adding a Plane A might not even be a consideration. In that event, use the steps I provided above for the billboard. :)

I hope this helps.

As always,
Friendly neighborhood, Martok2112.



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

I have the set and the billboards are video ready, just drag and drop the video onto a selected billboard.

michaeltveal,

One more suggestion: Just to get off the ground use one of the project files that comes with Virtual Studio.

sjonesdc :hehe:

STILL LEARNING!!!

martok2112, you wrote this so well that it was pleasure to read it, even I knew all that.
One thing to add maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't know is there a such thing as "video ready" objects.
I think that everything that can be textured, can be textured with video texture. I was toying even with character's faces (for tears, for example), cloth, grounds, etc.
Am I right?

.

Indeed you are right, animatom. :) I should've specified that, by "video ready", I meant that the video would show up normally on a flat surface that was UV mapped for that. Indeed, all surfaces, as long as UV maps have been applied, will display video. I use water droplet video when on a character's skin when I wish to simulate a "wetlook" effect on characters. But, a flat surface appropriately mapped, will display the video without distortion of curvature like on a character.

And thank you for the kind words. :) They mean a lot. :)



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

I appreciate all the help and comments but I am still very much struggling. I watched this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2U2S9_61bk&list=UUgigyhFYBO-trin-NBtJWeQ&index=3&feature=plcp&noredirect=1

and I tried to replicate it step by step but was unable to because I did not get many steps in when the things the narrator was doing did not occur for me. I tried dropping the video on an empty setting like was done there but mine did not look anything like what his did. My video was very transparent and ghostlike and no matter where I put props, the video always ended up behind them.

I tried the recomended use of a pre built studio and messing around with that and  my best result was this video http://youtu.be/6q7-8gY73nU I cant get rid of the black bars on the top, bottom, and sides, even when  I went back to popvideo and used the masking brush around the borders.