I’m about to push Blender3d and my computer to the absolute limits. Lucian Chronicles is a story-universe that I’ve been working on for the past 6 months. While I was thinking about making an animation in Blender I came up with the idea to port my unfinished story and make it a movie. It will all be done by me, I don’t want any help.
As for the progress, I have written the start of a basic plot and standardized a few things=
The animation will be rendered at 800x400 to simulate widescreen.
It’s framerate will remain 25 frames per second.
The nondistributable version will be in JPEG frames at 90% quality.
The distributable version will use the Indeo 5.10 codec at 80% quality.
The secondary distibutable version will be in Bink exe format.
I will not use DivX (not everyone has it)
I will use Audacity for sound editing (a free program).
I will use VirtualDub for adding the sound to the video(another free program).
I will use Blender3d’s sequence editor to smoothly put together the scenes and sounds.
I may use my relatives voices for the caracters.
I will not use plugins for things like fur (static particles will do).
Radiosity and AO are to be avoided if at all possible (speed).
Chances are, this will take a few years. But I’m ready for the challenge. I am currently working on the plot and a teaser-trailer. I already have the “A Christian Storay Production” animation complete with a reversed THX sound effect. It sits on my harddrive in JPEG-AVI 90% format and is way too big for me to post it on the internet. So I’m going to make a Bink exe version for you all to see that I’m serious about this.
Non Spoiling info (I hope):
A Lucian is a split-off mutation of the human race. They are often called “One-way werewolves” for they change unexpectedly during puberty into wolf-like creatures and never change back. The first Lucian insident occurred in 1999 in Russia and is commonly blamed genetic mutations caused by the Chernobyl nuclear explosion of 1986. After that is seemed to “spread like wild fire” as more and more children from that age began to change…
…A short weak little boy becomes a Lucian and for this is forced into slavery by his parents who nolonger want anything to do with him. This boy starts out without a known name. His dad and stepmother simply call him “boy”. Boy is neglected and mistreated until one day he snaps…
…nation after nation fell under the Red Star Republic’s awesome power…
…had a little sister named Genesis. She was a special little girl who should never have found herself in the the Republic’s war machine. But somehow, she did…
And that was only part of it! I won’t post all of it to avoid any spoiling.
ya although doing something as a team is fun and it can go faster and there is more input - doing something by yourself can turn out much better results (atleast in the artists opinion) cause it is exactly like he or she wants it to be!
Very ambitious. I hope I’ll get to see it someday.
And about the codecs. More people have divx, than anything else, especially bink exe, whatever it may be. Think about non-windows users, like me. And Indeo? Isn’t that an archaic codec? Divx will give much better results.
Good idea! I too hope to see it some day.
Here are some suggestions, though…
Render it in 720x480, that is true widescreen. Also, If you ever decide to put it on a DVD, that is the resolution it will have to be in.
25 FPS is a good idea, but 24 FPS is MUCH more compatible…
As everyone else said, MANY more people have DivX than indeo, indeo is old, archaic, and while the quality is less than DivX, the size is greater. DivX also renders MUCH, MUCH faster, and is just a better all-around codec.
Good idea not to use AO or radiosity.
Might I suggest Zwei-stein for video editing? It’s much faster, and has compositing and color FX. But blender sequence editor is fine too.
Please take some of these into consideration. they may improve your movie greatly.
I appreciate you’re comments, especially Lemmy’s. I’ll be sure to use that resolution (but 800x400 as a guess, was pretty close). And I will be all too happy to make it at 24fps than 25, as it will be even smaller.
Ok. So the following changes are:
720x480 in DivX, Indeo, and Bink
24 frames-per-second
Possible DVD format.
My own idea:
I plan to host my own server in the next month or so, the movie downloads will be placed on that.
I will continue to use Virtual Dub and Blender sequence editor 'cause I already know how to use them and will be able to achieve desired results without learning yet another new program.
ETA till first screenshot: 7 days.
ETA till first wipshot: 1.5 days.
ETA till first teaser: 1 month.
ETA till completed video: 2 years.
Music will be taken from http://magnatune.com/ with permission from the music groups chosen. (check it out! Free legal music!- the group Cargo Cult is the best.)
you say you know how to use virtual dub - could you share how to combine two video sequences together in there? and perhaps how to add sound to that final clip?
Rendering a movie for DVD is a bit more complicated, because TV’s don’t have square pixels. Blender has a 16:9 preset. On a computer monitor, the result will look squashed, but it will look fine on a TV, if the image is sent to the TV properly. An added advantage is that when using blenders 16:9, you’re rendering “anamorphicly” in 720x576. This is higher than 720x480, but has the same aspect ratio, because the image is stretched. Anamorphic recording is a trick to store 16:9 on a 4:3 medium with full vertical resolution.
And about the framerate, 25 is the PAL standard. 24.97 is NTSC right? (at least, on of the NTSC standards, I don’t really know about NTSC). The only place 24 fps is used is in cinema’s. I suggest you keep away from 24 because of the same problems movies distributed on DVD’s have. They have to be converted to either PAL or NTSC, which entails speeding the movie up or stretching it. You don’t want that.
One can conclude this is all too much to keep into account and just render it in any format you want and assume it will only be displayed on computers… But if I may make a suggestion: use a 2.35:1 mode. Very-wide screen looks cool.
Suggestion: I don’t know if professional mics are electret mics or not, but my experience with electret mic as supposed to normal ones are much better. I constructed one myself, driven of the 5 V output of the mic-connector of the SB-live. But my experience with normal mics are only with cheap ones, so perhaps there are very good non-electret mics.
But the most important advice would be to get a microphone pre-amp. The mic pre-amp of soundcards stink and produce a lot of noise. When using a pre-amp, you can connect it to the line-in of your soundcard, producing much better results.
I was wondering if any of you had come across WAX before, I have just started to play with this and find it a good program, its only for windows at the moment but I think there is mention of a possible Linux release.
Oh, and Prince, you open an AVI file and then “Append” the one you want to combine. This is difficult because in order for this to work, Virtual Dub requires that the two videos must be the same sampling rate, resolution, etc. I will not use Virtual Dub for this purpose, but instead I’ll use Blender’s sequence editor. Virtual Dub will be used for adding the sound (which will be edited before-hand by Blender and Audacity), and exporting the AVI-JPEG format to DivX and Indeo.
Yes, I know about WAX but havn’t a clue of how to use it. I do use the Winmorph program occasionally.
“Frame
One complete video image, containing two fields. There are 30 frames in one second of NTSC video and 25 frames in one second of PAL video.” http://www.palsite.com/glosspalsite_ei.html
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