Another Bridge

[rduda]

If you have the free copy of Daz Studeo, you can take the item right out of your poser runtime into Daz and then it imports right into Bryce. No OBJ conversion needed.

[tnpir4002]

YouTube - Specter v5 070620082246

For all who have asked to see a trailer for my project, it's not completed yet but this is a good portion of it. See the Daystrom bridge in action! And let me know what you think.

[seanr]

Originally Posted by tnpir4002

If there's one thing I can't stand it's backseat moderating. Folks pull that nonsense over at Golden-Road.net all the time and it's just annoying.

But, I have a great deal of respect for SeanR personally so I'll let this one pass...

If you're using my parts, I have every right to complain. FWIW, I used to be a moderator here myself; it's not like I don't know the rules.

At any rate, the YouTube video looks fantastic, though there are several scenes where the viewscreen is just solid blue.

[tnpir4002]

Originally Posted by seanr

At any rate, the YouTube video looks fantastic, though there are several scenes where the viewscreen is just solid blue.

I know and it's bugging me bigtime--I keep trying to render up appropriate footage but nothing seems to work up there. I know I want too much, I want to see both Mars and the runabout, and with the planet so far away in the background there's no easy way to go about it.

[homerpalooza67]

You may wanna pm scifieric, hes done that kinda stuff before.

Sweet vid!

You must have had a lot of fun voicing everyone! how did you animate the poser figures?

[tnpir4002]

haha it won't stay all my voice for long, i've got some voice actors lined up to chime in and help out down the line. as for the poser figs, those are done separately and then luma-keyed into the set. for the shot of the captain involving the motion zoom, the motion on the captain was done in Poser, while the background plate is just a still image with motion added in post-production.

by far the most intricate shot is that of the three crewmen, helm ops and then reyf in the background (it's deliberate that he's the only crewman whose name is spoken aloud in this sequence). in that shot, there's four layers: helm officer, ops officer, then the consoles and the railing, and then reyf. the payoff is absolutely worth the extra effort though, i'm just looking forward to the day when all the characters' lips are synched up.

[homerpalooza67]

The background noise is superb, but if they are wearing voyager uniforms, shouldnt the LCARS be at least early TNG'ish?

And i would definitely be interested in learning your animation techniques!!

btw, i just finished a set of Voyager-style uniform textures for poser/victoria 4, if you're interested.

[tnpir4002]

Originally Posted by homerpalooza67

The background noise is superb, but if they are wearing voyager uniforms, shouldnt the LCARS be at least early TNG'ish?

I actually gave some thought to that, but in the end I decided I wanted to make it visually clear that this is in Star Trek's yesteryear, and that if I use an old bridge design along with legacy LCARS it'll make that easily obvious, even to casual viewers.

Originally Posted by homerpalooza67

And i would definitely be interested in learning your animation techniques!!

The workflow:
COOL EDIT PRO: record vocals as a single master file
ULEAD MSP7: split vocal master into multiple clips so that by looking at the timeline I can visually see where the dialogue breaks are; each one to be saved as a WAV file
POSER 7: figure out who speaks first in a scene, then load the template for that particular character (captain, Reyf, myself, etc.) and then add the WAV file for the first line of dialogue. Synchronize body motions (hand gestures, neck, eyes, and so forth) to their speech so that, with the exception of their lips, they move as one might ordinarily move.
DAZ MIMIC PRO: the lip-synching utility generates the lip motions and, if applicable, facial motions such as blinking and so forth to match a person's speech. As an added bonus, it will also sense the volume of the speech file (WAV format only of course) and will match the lip motions accordingly (for instance, if the person recording the file spoke softly, the lips don't open wide; if they spoke loudly, the lips open wide). I export that as a PZ2 file into the Runtime/Libraries/Specter v5 Prologue folder.
POSER 7: The PZ2 I just exported from Mimic now shows up under the Poses > Specter v5 Prologue folder, and all I have to do is import it. Voila - instant complete character animation. Now I just perfect the camera angle and lighting to match the background plate and I'm good.

Just a note, rendering up your background plates first is ALWAYS a good idea, that way if you need your characters to interact with their backgrounds you've got them there. This also helps insure that your characters and your backgrounds are aligned, as it's much easier to adjust your characters in Poser to their backgrounds than it is to do the reverse. My strategy--I have the OBJs of all my bridge crew imported into Bryce, and although the figures are set to be hidden in the renders, I can still see where they are in the wireframe and can line up my shots accordingly. That way you don't have to sit there and wait while your 3D program goes through another possibly complicated and lengthy render.

Originally Posted by homerpalooza67

btw, i just finished a set of Voyager-style uniform textures for poser/victoria 4, if you're interested.

Thanks but for the part using VOY uniforms that won't be necessary. Victoria eats up a lot of power and I like to see quick results, so I've decided to only use Victoria in one very brief flashback scene towards the end of the project. Thanks for the offer though!

[homerpalooza67]

Just trying to be clear here: The Uniforms should match the ship layout. If its an old ship thats been refit, its a hell of a lot easier to upgrade the software (i.e. LCARS) than to refit the design and stuff. So the bridge looks slightly old-fashioned, but it should at least have modern LCARS (maybe not top of the line, but colored at least)?

So what am i missing?