Kevin P. McAuliffe – ProVideo Coalition https://www.provideocoalition.com A Filmtools Company Mon, 30 Dec 2024 13:25:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.3.5 https://www.provideocoalition.com/wp-content/uploads/cropped-PVC_Logo_2020-32x32.jpg Kevin P. McAuliffe – ProVideo Coalition https://www.provideocoalition.com 32 32 Time to stop hating Avid Titler+! https://www.provideocoalition.com/time-to-stop-hating-avid-titler-plus/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/time-to-stop-hating-avid-titler-plus/#comments Sat, 28 Dec 2024 05:51:18 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=287379 Read More... from Time to stop hating Avid Titler+!

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So, are we?  You know, done hating on Avid’s Titler+?  A quick history lesson on how we got here is that Apple updated their system architecture, making the standard Title Tool (and Marquee for that matter) useless for all Mac users.  Windows users, however, could still hold onto their beloved Title Tools for longer, but, I’ll ask the question.  If you were serious about making titles for your content, were you really using the legacy Title Tools?  Probably not.  You were probably using Continuum’s Title Studio (if you want to stay inside of Media Composer), or you’re just simply using After Effects, or having a third party create all of your titles.  Let’s be honest right out of the gate.  Avid really messed this one up.  They released a tool that was, well, terrible.  But, we had a problem.   Not only was the Title Tool and Marquee Title Tool end of life, but now Mac users had, really, no Title Tool to use and Avid needed to fix as quickly as possible.  Well, they’ve been talking about it, and they have been teasing it, and now finally, with the 2024.10 update to Media Composer, the long awaited, and much talked about “new” Titler+ was released, so in this article I thought I’d jump in and show you why you need to learn to stop worrying (and hating) and enjoy Titler+.

The first thing that’s important to keep in mind when getting yourself rolling with Titler+ (Titler+) is that it’s now more like titles in other applications.  Titles in Premiere and Resolve are just what you would call “Generators”, meaning that no actual physical media is being created, when adding titles to your timelines.  This is a different concept for Media Composer editors, who have been used to their titles always being actual media.  What this means for you is that if you remove a title from your timeline, it’s gone forever.  Can’t match frame it back, or go back to your bin to find it, so that’s something exceptionally important to keep in mind.  Second thing to keep in mind is that, since the titles are no longer clips to drop in your timeline, I highly recommend NOT adding titles to media/clips that currently live in your timeline.  If you want to add a title, you’re going to select the region you want to have the title appear in, add a couple of edits, and drop it in that way.  Now, with all of that said, there’s something else important that you’ll need to keep in mind when it comes to Titler+, and that is that since your title is not an actual piece of media anymore, you won’t be able to add effects to it like Continuum or Sapphire.  You get the title, and that’s it.  This, for me, is the real downside of Titler+ but, again, if you’re serious about your titling, you’re doing it all using Title Studio or After Effects anyways, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s more of an annoyance than anything.

Your “enjoyment” of Titler+ will vary based on which version of Media Composer you’re using.  With 2024.10 of the application, there has been a major enhancement and re-writing of the effect as it was very cumbersome to use in previous versions.  Now, I’m not going to list through all the updates in one shot.  Let’s start using the effect, and we’ll talk about updates as we go.

The easiest way to search for the effect is to simply head to the Effect Palette and in the search window, just hit “+”.  You’ll notice two effects appear.  The pre-2024.10 update version of the effect, as well as the updated version of the effect. 

Old and New Titler+

So, apparently you can’t update any older instances of Titler+ (but apparently no one was using it anyways), so it’s only there for legacy projects that happen to use it.  Anyways, don’t choose the “Legacy” version, only use the current one.  Once you take the effect and drag it and drop it into the space you’ve made in your timeline, the Titler+ dashboard, as well as the Effect Editor will open up and you’ll be ready to use Titler+.

Titler+ Dashboard

DASHBOARD VS EFFECT EDITOR

If you haven’t used Titler+ before, the dashboard that pops up when you apply the effect will be something a little different for most Media Composer editors.  We’re accustomed to only having these types of windows appearing when we tell Media Composer that we want them there.  Audio Tool, Audio Mixer, etc.  When it comes to your workflow inside of Titler+, most of us will probably want to stick with the Dashboard only (which we’ll talk more about a little later), but I want to point out that you can easily toggle the Dashboard on and off through the Effect Editor, by hitting the grid icon in the upper right corner.  I’ll say that you can do 90% of your work in either the Dashboard, or the Effect Editor, but at some point you will need to use both, if you plan on animating your titles.

Alright, let’s get back into it!  Once the windows open, nothing is really happening here.  You’re going to need a title to get yourself rolling.  So let’s create one.  With the Text Tool selected, simply click anywhere in the Sequence window to add your title.  Keep in mind that you’ll probably want to make sure that you’re viewing the top most layer in your timeline, so you see the text appear right away.

Simple Titler+ Title

What is important to keep in mind in Titler+, as opposed to how you titled before is that you can add as many titles to the frame that you need, and the Effect Editor will only show you the parameters of the title you have selected, not all of the titles at the same time.  You titles, even though there may be many of them, can always be selected, and animated (if you want), as individual elements, an not as one all encompassing title, as it has been in the past.  Now, there is a way to manipulate all the titles at the same time to animate them on and off, but we’ll discuss that later in the article when we talk about the “Foreground” parameter of our Title.

NEW ANCHOR POINT TOOL

If you know me, or my tutorials, you know we’re going with Impact, as it’s a good, thick font to start out with.  I want to mention, before we move any farther forward, that there really are two thought processes when working with Titler+.  You can work in the interface entirely, until you’re ready to animate (if you’re going to animate at all), or you can do a combination of working in the interface, and in the Effect Editor, which we’ll be doing in this article.  Once you have your first set of text input into the interface, you can now switch over to the Selection Tool (M) to reposition it.  With that said, here’s where we can start to find some simple, yet effective differences between the old Title Tool (TT) and Titler+.  You’ll notice, first of all, that there is a little crosshair sitting at the lower right corner of your text.  This is the Anchor Point, and it’s quickly adjustable in one of two ways.  If you want precision, you can move to the Effect Editor, to SELECTED OBJECTS>TRANSFORM>ANCHOR POINT, and adjust it’s position with a selection in the dropdown menu.

Titler+ Dynamic Anchor Point

Or, if you click on the actual Anchor Point located in the lower left corner of the text, you’ll notice the Selection Tool turn red, and now you’re adjusting the Anchor Point dynamically, and you can now position it anywhere you want it to go.

Titler+ More Dynamic Anchor Point

Now, with that said, there are a couple of issues with the way Anchor Point behaves.  For example,  First, when the text is first input in the interface, the Anchor Point is locked to the lower left corner of the text, not the bounding box, which makes perfect sense.

Titler+ Anchor Point Issue 1

However, if you head to the Effect Editor, and adjust the Anchor point to the “Bottom Left”, it puts at the corner of the bounding box, and not at the corner of the text that was input, which is inconsistent to the point where I find myself never using this way of setting it up.  The Anchor Point should always be relative to the text it’s affecting, not the bounding box the text sits in.  

Titler+ Anchor Point Issue 2

Speaking of the bounding box, I found it odd that there was so much space at the top and bottom of it, as opposed to on the left and right sides.  I’m of the feeling that the it really should have been set up like After Effects’ bounding box, which is tight to the text, for more precise functionality.

Titler+ Anchor Point Issue 3

The last thing that I think is important to talk about, when it comes to Anchor Point, is that when it’s adjusted via the Effects Editor, your text position will adjust with it.   By default, the Anchor Point is in the lower left corner, so the last thing you want to do is get everything setup and ready to go, only to realize that you now want to adjust your Anchor Point, as it will throw everything off.  It would be super helpful to have a User Setting that would let you pick the default Anchor Point behavior, but hey, this little engine has come pretty far from its humble beginnings, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed for an update that will add this feature in there, and as I said before, you can always adjust it dynamically, which won’t impact the text’s position.

MUCH BETTER TEXT SIZING AND SCALING

With the new, dynamic Anchor Point comes another mind bending feature for Media Composer editors, and that’s scaling.  Now, I know that sounds very odd, but what I mean by that is that what Media Composer editors are accustomed to, when it comes to issues like text size, is that once you have set the size of your text inside of the legacy TT, if you increase the scale of the text through the titles 3D Warp capabilities the larger you make it, the crappier it looks, due to the fact that the text is not vector based.  Well, those days are now gone.  Titler+ has the capability to not only set your text size pretty large (100 Avid point size – whatever that means), but you can then go in and adjust the scaling of the text up to a factor of 1000, keeping the text nice and crisp, along the way.

Titler+ Scaling
Look how crisp that text is at 100pt size and 1000% scale!
CONSISTENT COORDINATE SYSTEM

One thing that you’ll notice across applications like Media Composer, and even DaVinci Resolve is the way the Coordinate system is set up.  Unlike in After Effects, where the coordinates start in the upper left corner at 0,0 and the dead center of an HD 1080p frame is 960×540, Media Composer, across all its effects, has always treated the dead center of the frame as 0,0, and with the update to Titler+, this has now become the same for this effect, to match all the other standard effects, inside of the application.

WORKING WITH THE FOREGROUND

I talked about this concept earlier in the article, and I want to swing back and talk about the Foreground now.  I had mentioned that each title is its own element that can be selected and animated as an individual element in Titler+.  But, what do I do in a situation where I’d like to have all the titles fade on, or wipe on at the same time.  That would be a bit of a logistical nightmare trying to match up all the animations across the different titles.  Well, that’s where the Foreground parameter comes into play.  This is an interesting concept in Titler+ that I really like, and am hoping that will get a slight update to it in the future.  Here’s how the “Foreground” parameter works inside of Titler+.  All of the objects that sit in your frame populate the “Foreground” of the title, no matter what the stacking order is.  Let’s say that we want to have all of the elements fade on at the same time.  With either a title selected, or even no title selected at all, you can navigate to the “Foreground” section of the Effect Editor, twirl it down, and you’ll notice three parameters in there.  Fill Overlay, which controls the opacity of the “fill” portion of your title, the Opacity of your title(s) and a Crop parameter to have titles wipe on from the top, bottom, left or right.  I LOVE this feature except for one major omission, and that is that they didn’t include feather for the Crop parameter.  Foreground is a great, simple feature that is available when a title is selected and also available when nothing is selected, as it’s impacting the frame the titles sit in, more so than the titles themselves.  Fingers crossed for an update with crop feather in a future update.

A FEW OTHER FEATURES

I want to make sure that I mention a few other features that are included in the update to Titler+ which include better Font support meaning that you’ll have a better overall experience with your TrueType, OpenType and FreeType fonts in Titler+ as well as better cross platform compatibility.  To be honest, I’ve always found that the legacy Title Tool was pretty solid on it’s font support, so I would expect the same here in Titler+.  Tracking is included in Titler+ but, I’ll be 100% transparent.  I hate the tracker in Media Composer and would never use it, so if you like using it, you have access to it in Titler+, and last, but certainly not least, there is much more simplified workflow when it comes to Rolls and Crawls in Titler+.  You now have access to not only a linear time graph in the Effect Editor, but you can also scrub through your timeline in Edit mode to make sure that all of your crawl/roll layouts look exactly the way you need them to look.  Again, 100% tranparancy, I don’t do rolls and/or crawls in Media Composer, as there is no support for including logos, which is a deal breaker for me, so I do all my credits in After Effects, which gives me everything I need and much, much more. 

LET’S BUILD ONE!

Alright, so for kicks, let’s build a quick, good looking title inside of Titler+.

  1. Let’s select a seven second range of our timeline for our title to appear in.  One second fade up and out, five seconds for the content to be on screen.
  2. Head to the Effect Editor, punch in “+” in the search window and drag and drop Titler+ to the seven second hole that’s in our timeline
  3. Once the effect has been applied and the Titler+ Dashboard has appeared, if the Type Tool isn’t selected, select it, double click in your timeline and let’s add our first title.  Our Boxer needs a name, so we’ll enter the name “IVAN GRAGO”.  What’s always important to keep in mind is that Titler+ will always default to creating you a title that matches the look of the previous title you created.  If it was simple white with a black drop shadow, that’s what you get.  If it looked like the thumbnail of this article, that’s what it’s going to look like.

    Titler+ Ivan Grago 1
  4. Now, “IVAN GRAGO” is a little bit big.  We can use the Size parameter in the Dashboard to adjust it, or we can do something that I haven’t mentioned yet, and we can adjust it dynamically by holding SHFT and grabbing on of the corner bounding box points, and dragging the bounding box smaller.  This will keep the aspect of the title’s sizing the same, and just adjust it’s over scale.  If you wanted to adjust the X/Y scale independently of each other, you could hold OPT/ALT and drag to achieve that look.  
  5. Once I have the size correct, I’m going to move “IVAN GRAGO” towards the lower left corner of the frame, and much like in the legacy Title Tool, I’m going to use the rectangle tool to draw a rectangle around “IVAN GRAGO”, I’m going to add a blue outline to it, and then turn off the fill, so I only have a blue rectangular border around it. 

    Titler+ Ivan Grago 2
    What’s important to keep in mind is that stacking order is still important, much like in the legacy Title Tool. I now have a transparent rectangle on top of my text, so I can just quickly hit the “send to back” button on the dashboard to move the rectangle behind my text, so if I need to make an adjustment, I’m good to go.
  6. Now, a quick selection of both title elements and a Copy/Paste will give us a duplicate of what we have, and I’m going to update the text to say “Professional Boxer”, and use the technique we talked about in #4 to adjust the size of the text dynamically, give the outline a quick adjustment and we can now move that title below “IVAN GRAGO” to give us a very cool title look.

    Titler+ Ivan Grago 3
  7. Now, with that said, we have a bit of a problem.  The entire title is too big.  Well, again, much like in the legacy Title Tool, we can quickly group elements together and make them smaller, so they fit exactly where we need them to fit.  One thing that’s important to keep in mind is that the engineers at Avid have kept all the icons for things like Stacking, Grouping, Select Next Object, etc the same, so that your transition to Titler+ is as smooth as possible.

    Titler+ Ivan Grago 4
  8. Now that we have the Title placed where we want it to go, we can simply ungroup, head up to the Foreground parameter, and animate the titles fading in and out for 30 frames, and this title will be ready to go!Titler+ Ivan Grago 5

I’d say that was quick and simple, and it took me WAY longer to write that out, then it did for me to actually create it.

Let’s be honest.  Avid completely fumbled the ball on Titler+ when it was first released, and have had to play catchup getting it back up to where it needs to be.  Have they done it?  I’d say they have.  My biggest gripe is the fact that now I can’t use any third party effects on my titles, but that’s a very minor gripe that just means that for those specific titles, I’ll have to create them in After Effects, otherwise, good-bye legacy Title Tool and Marquee Title Tool.  It was fun while it lasted, but I’ll stick with Titler+ moving forward.

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For me, Artificial Intelligence in Post has mostly been a bust…until now. https://www.provideocoalition.com/ai-in-post-has-been-a-bust-until-now/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/ai-in-post-has-been-a-bust-until-now/#respond Tue, 25 Jun 2024 03:03:31 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=281482 Read More... from For me, Artificial Intelligence in Post has mostly been a bust…until now.

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I’ll be honest.  For me, much like the 3D phase for post, Artificial Intelligence has really been a big bust.  I can’t think of any Artificial Intelligence workflows that have enhanced my workflows, or made them better.  I’ve seen the videos from Adobe for what’s coming to Premiere and, to be honest, Adobe’s let me down with all the enhancements that were added that would “revolutionize” my workflows in the past.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that there are certain bits and pieces of Artificial Intelligence workflows that help people out, but there really isn’t anything that I can say I use on a regular basis in my workflows.  Until now.  A couple of months ago, I had a “THAT’S IT” moment, where I can easily see myself not only using an AI tool in a whole bunch of different projects, but also where I can easily see this “machine learning” artificial intelligence workflow going in the future.  Good job Boris FX, good job!

INTELLIGENT….IT CERTAINLY IS

Now, I’ll start this article out by saying that I’m not getting a dime from Boris FX for this article.  I’ve been a Continuum since before it was offered free to all Media Composer editors who upgraded to Symphony (I know Media Composer editors all remember that), and have used it in After Effects for as long as I can remember.  Most of my “WOW” benchmarks for advancing my workflows haven’t come from the NLE or Compositing applications.  It’s been from Continuum.   

I mean, let’s be honest, Boris FX have pulled out some pretty surprising acquisitions over the last few years.  GenArts, Imagineer Systems, WonderTouch, Syntheyes, and even the licensing of Primatte technology has really made Boris FX the one stop shop for just about anything an editor or compositor could need.  For me, the biggest leap forward in, easily, the last 15 years has been the integration of Mocha technology not only across almost all of the effects inside of both Continuum and Sapphire, but its licensing in After Effects, which easily makes it the standard for tracking in AE today.  So, you’re probably thinking, what does this have to do with AE and machine learning.  Well, Boris FX just released the 2024.5 update for Continuum, and in it, is a tucked away look at the future of the effects package.  Believe it or not, it’s the Witness Protection effect that will lead the way to the next generation of effects in Continuum, and in the process, save editors and graphic designers countless hours of tedious work, even with the best tools available now.

Now, since everything these days is called “SOMETHING AI”, Boris FX decided to go down a bit of a different path by calling theirs ML or “MACHINE LEARNING”, and you can find the four “ML” effects in Continuum, simply by searching for them.

ML Effects

So, looking at the Media Composer version pictured above (the ML effects are available across the other host applications of Continuum as well), you’ll notice that there are actually four different ML effects including DeNoise, ReTimer, UpRez and Witness Protection which, for Media Composer, is a real-time effect.  So, what is the Witness Protection effect exactly?  Well, you’ve seen it a million times before.  Need to blur someone’s face out who’s walking down the street, as you don’t have permission to use their likeness in your production?  That’s where you would use an effect like this.  However, it’s worked very differently in the past and, to be honest, the effect went from wonky to very cool to awesome.  It started out wonky as it used the Continuum tracker to do all the motion tracking.  We all know how terrible point tracking can be, and having Mocha integrated with almost all the effects in Continuum really stepped this effect up a notch, as it made the tracking process much easier and much more precise.  It was, however, not without its issues.  If the talent walked behind a tree, or lamppost, or other object, it would require more work to be done inside of Mocha and, really, any time this type of effect was required, it always came with a bit of cringe from the editor, as we know how much time it really took to do this type of work, and it could be painfully slow.  Well, not anymore.  How does it work?  Drag and drop.  Yep.  That’s it.  Drag the effect (or apply it, depending on the application you’re using), and that’s it.  Talent walks behind something?  No problem.  The ML (Machine Learning) effect will be dropped back on as they come back out from behind it.  Does your character walk on or off screen?  Again, no problem, as ML will add the effect back on when they reappear.  Take a look at what I mean below:

Continuum Witness Protection

The effect still contains everything else that you had available to you before, like the ability to switch to a mosaic pattern instead of a blur if you want to, and you can even turn ML off all together if you wanted to apply the effect to something different like a logo on someone’s shirt.

WP_3

For me, Artificial Intelligence in Post has mostly been a bust...until now. 2

WP_Example_1

With that said, this is where I really see the potential in this effect.  Right now, the ML component is designed to detect faces, and basically add an ellipse to it as a mask, to then have Continuum either blur or add a mosaic to someone’s face.

Witness Protection Matte

Witness Protection Overlay

I was floored by how quick and accurate it was.  The only adjustment I actually had to make was to add a bit of a feather to the mask, and make it slightly bigger, but otherwise, it did all the work for me.  It’s the first time that I’ve done anything with AI and thought “HOLY ****, I CAN ACTUALLY SEE MYSELF USING THIS ON A REGULAR BASIS”.  Now, let’s take a look at this effect moving forward.  What about logos on shirts or on products?  What about the ability to blur out nudity?  What about the ability to look at a transcript and blur over someone’s mouth who swears.  Now these applications are something that editors, especially ones who work on reality TV can really use in their day to day workflow that will save them an absolute ton of time in the compositing chair.  We can even look across other effects in Continuum to see where applications like this can speed up our workflows.  For example, in any lens flare effect.  Simply type in what you want your lens flare “attached” to, and you’ve already saved me a ton of time.  Sun, headlight, flashlight.  Something so simple, can save use minutes and even hours of time tracking.    For me, this one effect has gotten me excited about Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning in my NLE/Compositing application, as it’s something that I can easily see a wide range of editors using, in all different types of productions.  For more information about Continuum 2024.5, you can check it out at borisfx.com .

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Humble Bundle for Software https://www.provideocoalition.com/humble-bundle-for-software/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/humble-bundle-for-software/#respond Mon, 06 Nov 2023 17:57:29 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=273557 Read More... from Humble Bundle for Software

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When it comes to Unreal Engine’s marketplace, I have to admit….I’m addicted. Each month when the five free items are released, I’m there on the first Tuesday of the month like a kid at Christmas. If you know about the market place, you know the prices range from fairly cost effective (cheap) to exceptionally expensive for some of the really, really nice environments or blueprints. Now, with all that said, I’m a gamer as well, so I’ve known about the Humble Bundle for years. It’s a way to get a whole bunch of games, for a ridiculously low price, and all the money goes to charity. A few months ago, I noticed there was a software section and, low and behold, they had an Unreal Bundle. Well, the Unreal Engine Bundle has become quite popular, with this month’s (November 2023) being exceptionally good, and so I thought I would just give an example of the awesome things you can get in the Unreal Humble Bundles and why, if it’s something you’re interested in, you should be checking out on a regular basis.

HOW DOES THE HUMBLE BUNDLE WORK?

The Humble Bundle works fairly simple. Pay what you want and, depending on how much you want to pay, you’ll get a little, a little more, or all of the items included in the bundle.

The Humble Bundle - Pay what you want!

You’ll also know where your donation is going to, as it’s always listed at the bottom of the project page. Now, since the bundles change every three weeks or so, it’s hard to show exactly what you’ll get, but in this article, the idea is to give you a general idea of the types of items included in a typical bundle. I’ve seen bundles that contain a ton of items for Unreal. I’ve seen bundles contain three items, but the three items contained are top of the line environments. Below is a little sample of the types of items you’ll get in the Unreal Engine Humble Bundles.

THE TYPES OF ASSETS INCLUDED

One thing that I exceptionally like about this bundle, and most of the bundles for Unreal, is that they cover all the different aspects you might need in your scenes. This bundle includes:

  • Environments – Apocalyptic Hospital, High School Basketball Gym, Post Apocalyptic Mansion
  • Character Animations (Ninja, Rifle Starter, Pistol Starter, Mobility, Zombie)
  • Characters (Zombies, Decayed Soldiers, Drowned Knights)
  • Procedural Elements (Trees, Foliage,
  • System Blueprints (Basic Survival Attributes, Inventory Systems, Dynamic Footsteps, Swimming)
  • Vehicles – Civilian Vehicles, Advanced Tans, Police and Ambulance
  • Props – Roadside Blockades, Medical, Restaurant and Dive Bar, Cardboard boxes
  • Music – 60 tracks (Royalty Free)
  • So much more

In October 2023’s bundle, there are six environments included in the full bundle (costing a whopping $41.09 Canadian, which is about $30 US), but one of them stands out to me more than all the others.

If you know Unreal Engine, you know Meshingun Studio. They make some of the absolute top of the line environments, and one of them, The Bazaar, another environment from them, was actually included in July’s “Free for the Month” content drop (Normally over $120). Apocalyptic Hospital is included in this bundle for November 2023, and the cost of this one item alone is worth dropping your $40 Canadian for. The Apocalyptic Hospital environment on the Unreal Marketplace is over $400 for this one asset, but as you can see from the video above, it could conceivably be the environment for one level of your game.

This alongside the other six environments makes this a no brainer. Something that’s important for me to point out is that some of the assets, including the environments were not updated for Unreal 5.3 (current as of this writing), but you can always download a previous version of Unreal Engine so you can download and open the asset, and then simply save it out and open in Unreal Engine 5.3. It might not be optimized the greatest, but it works, and you can then use either the entire environment, or just parts of it in your current work.

I was also pretty excited to see that Mo-Cap Online has included over 140+ animations in this bundle, including some of the Zombie animations that I wrote about in a previous article.

THE WRAP UP

If you use Unreal Engine, You need to bookmark the Humble Bundle site, specifically for software, as they are always having awesome deals on Unreal elements, that you can get for an absolute steal. You can check out Humble’s software bundle at this link – https://www.humblebundle.com/software

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In Depth – Nobe Omniscope https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-nobe-omniscope/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-nobe-omniscope/#respond Sat, 14 Oct 2023 20:24:10 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=272610 Read More... from In Depth – Nobe Omniscope

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One issue that colorists, editors and motion graphic designers have had for a long time, is finding reliable software scopes for their workflows.  As great as what has been provided to us in our applications, they were implemented, and never updated, as hardware scopes have always been the “go to” for all our waveform and vectorscope (plus a lot more scopes) needs.  That’s where Nobe Omniscope has stepped in to fill that gap.  Not only is Nobe Omniscope supported in applications like DaVinci Resolve and Scratch, but it’s available to Premiere editors, After Effects users, and even Media Composer editors as well.  Let’s take a look at Nobe Omniscope, and how it will work in your NLE, Grading app or Motion Graphics applications.

HOW DOES NOBE OMNISCOPE WORK

If you’re a user of Nobe Omniscope, a new version has just been released as of October 2023 that includes.

  • Enhanced OCIO Color Management
  • Advanced HDR Quality Control and New QC Timeline
  • New Multi-Input Support
  • New Virtual Production Workflows for Unreal Engine & Unity
  • Performance Boosts, macOS Optimization and much more.

You can get more in-depth details at this link!

Now, the first thing you’ll need to figure out with Nobe Omniscope, is how you’ll access it in your application of choice.  When you install Nobe Omniscope, you’ll have a choice of which applications to install, based on your workflow(s).

Nobe Omniscope - Plug-Ins

Once installed, you’ll now have the Nobe Omniscope application, but you’ll need a bridge to get from Premiere, After Effects, Resolve, etc to Nobe Omniscope.  Plug-Ins have been installed for all applications, except for Media Composer (but we’ll talk about that in a second), and using Resolve as an example, you can simply switch your Node window over to Timeline as opposed to Clip, add the Omniscope Connect effect, and that’s all it takes in Resolve!

Nobe Omniscope - In Resolve

Now, all you have to do is connect inside of Nobe Omniscope, and you’re all set to go!

Nobe Omniscope - Connect

To be honest, the process takes about 2 minutes, and once you’re set to go, all you need to do is put Nobe Omniscope on a secondary monitor, and you now have your software scopes set to go!  

Nobe Omniscope - Adding in Resolve

The process works almost exactly the same for Premiere/After Effects, except instead of it being added as an effect, you can simply use the Mercury Transmit feature to output to Nobe Omniscope.  The setup in Nobe Omniscope is the same as Resolve, just check the Premiere/AE option, as opposed to Resolve.

Nobe Omniscope - AE/PP Transmit

Now, Media Composer works a little differently, and you’ll need to make sure you add an important “option”, when installing Media Composer.  When installing, make sure you have the Newtek NDI Plug-In option selected, as we can use that to send our signal from Media Composer to Omniscope.

Nobe Omniscope - Media Composer NDI

Once installed, make sure that in Media Composer the HW/SW output is set for NewTek NDI (much like how you would export to external physical hardware).  

Nobe Omniscope - Media Composer NDI 2

Once you do that, you’ll now see a new option to connect called NDI, and the name of your computer.

Nobe Omniscope - Connect to MC in OS

That’s it!  Real-time playback out of Media Composer to Nobe Omniscope, with a ton of scope options, that we’ll discuss in the next section!

WHAT YOU GET

Well, first, let’s get this out of the way right now.  Nobe Omniscope is supported on both Mac and Windows, including the M1/M2 processors, so both platforms are good to go!  

The first thing you’ll notice when working with Ominscope is that it’s well, fast.  The same as your NLE.  Hit play there, and they playback on Nobe Omniscope is instantaneous.  To be honest, it doesn’t look like much when you launch it, but with 18 scopes, you’re never going to say “I wish I had this scope”….. 

Nobe Omniscope - Scope Choice

What I normally do is set up a “Default” layout that has my Source Signal (from my NLE), a Waveform, Vectorscope and Audio meters.  The basics of my color/finishing workflows.

Nobe Omniscope - Default Layout

From here, this is where things get really interesting.  Nobe Omniscope has it’s settings, but so do all the scopes contained within it.  

Nobe Omniscope - Scope Settings

Using the Waveform as an example, you can first, choose between the different modes.  Luminosity, RGB, RGB Parade, YRGB Parade and YCbCr Parade.  Then add Colorize, Enhanced Render, Smooth Trace a Scale Override and even a Low Pass Filter, and all of that is just in the Display tab.  You can adjust the further Appearance of the scope, and even add 3D LUT’s to your footage, right there within the scope itself, and this isn’t unique to just the Waveform.  All the scopes have this type of in-depth options for you to choose, depending on what you want things to look like.

One thing that is important to mention is that Nobe Omniscope supports both SDR and HDR (Pro Version) as well as Dolby Vision and, depending on the version you’re using, it will function as a QC playback application as well.  With the Pro Version of Nobe Omniscope, you have access to QC features including Gamma Check, Blanking Detection, HDR Stats, Single Line (view the signal on a specific line) and HDR Gammut Check and even a timeline that you can see QC details in real-time.

Nobe Omniscope - QC Features

 

Nobe Omniscope - QC Timeline

Once I have my basic setup good to go, I then start creating alternate layouts (with Histogram, CIE Plot, etc) to use, as I need them.

ISSUES

If I had to pick one issue that I don’t like Nobe Omniscope, and it’s something that I haven’t been able to easily figure out, and that is how to hear audio out of the application itself.  This is not an issue when I’m playing back Media Composer, Premiere or Resolve, as I can hear the audio coming out those applications themselves, but when I playback a video that I want to QC in Omniscope, I see the VU meters moving, but can’t hear any sound coming from the application.  I’m sure it’s something I’ve overlooked, and will update the article, if and when I figure it out.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Hardware scopes are expensive, especially if you’re working in a hybrid location (home/office), or even if you’re working in a smaller studio.  Nobe Omniscope has taken the need for expensive I/O hardware that would be required for hardware scopes, and made them unnecessary, by giving you the ability to go from your NLE to Nobe Omniscope in realtime.  If you’re delivering for broadcast on television or for the theatre, Nobe Omniscope is an absolute no-brainer of a purchase that every editor, colorist and motion graphic designer should have in their post production toolkit.  For more information, or to download a free demo of Nobe Omniscope, you can check it out at this link!

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Let’s Edit with Media Composer – Lesson 1 – Before You Edit https://www.provideocoalition.com/lets-edit-media-composer-beforetheedit/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/lets-edit-media-composer-beforetheedit/#comments Thu, 12 Oct 2023 13:39:47 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=272525 Read More... from Let’s Edit with Media Composer – Lesson 1 – Before You Edit

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Well, we’re back!  That’s right, the Let’s Edit with Media Composer tutorial series is back after a hiatus, and we’re jumping right back in at the beginning, as much has changed in Media Composer in the last few years.  If you’re new to Media Composer, this tutorial series will help get you started in the right direction to learn Avid’s Media Composer software from the ground up.  We’ll cover all the basics, right up to the advanced features in Media Composer.

Let’s Edit with Media Composer – Lesson 1 – Before You Edit

In our first lesson, we’re going to discuss things that you need to consider, and understand, before you start editing.  Media Composer is not like other NLE’s.   For example, we start out talking about Plug-Ins, but not in the way you might think.   Media Composer can edit all kinds of different footage from RED to BRAW to ProRes.  The only issue is that you’ll need to install a plug-in to get rolling.  I know that sounds a bit odd, but it’s similar to how you have to download and install BlackMagic RAW before you start working with BRAW footage.  The same concept applies with other types of footage as well.

The next thing that’s important to consider, when creating your new project in Media Composer is, where will it live in your system’s hierarchy?  Do you want it to only be accessible by you?  By all the users on your system?  Or, do you want it in a location that you can just “Grab and Go”, and take it with you on the road?

Finally, we discuss Media Composer’s best, and sometimes confusing feature for new editors, and that is the media hierarchy that Media Composer uses when transcoding or consolidating media.  Even though you can just link to footage and edit with it, it’s not recommended, and has never been an ideal workflow.  Converting your media to “Avid Friendly” media is always the best way to go, and we’ll discuss how Media Composer manages media, and where you should store it!

Don’t forget to like, subscribe and share the tutorial, if you found it helpful!  As always, if you have questions or comment about the tutorial, you can send them to me at kevinpmcauliffe@gmail.com !  Enjoy!

 

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In-Depth – Zombie Pro Motion Capture Pack from MoCap Online https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-zombie-pro-mocap-online/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-zombie-pro-mocap-online/#respond Wed, 04 Oct 2023 03:04:24 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=272291 Read More... from In-Depth – Zombie Pro Motion Capture Pack from MoCap Online

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When working in your 3D application of choice, whether it’s Blender, Unity, Unreal or any other application, animation and animations are the center of your workflow and, more specifically, realistic animations are the focal point.  To be honest, you’re not going to want to waste your time creating or animating the movements yourself (well, you might, but chances are you won’t).  So that means that you’re going to be looking for motion capture elements that will let you take previously captured movement, and apply it to your character(s).  That’s where MoCap Online comes into play.  Now, we’re talking about zombies specifically in this article, but MoCap Online has much more than just zombies.  Whether you’re looking for Bar/Restaurant, Dance Party, Office Meetings, Military, or one of many of the other motion capture elements they sell, MoCap Online is a great place to start, when looking for your motion capture elements.  As you’ve already seen, in this article we’re looking at their Zombie Pro pack for FBX that can be used in both Unreal, Blender and many other 3D Applications out there today.

WHAT YOU GET WITH ZOMBIE PRO

With the Pro pack you get access to over 230 different zombie motion capture elements that range from Zombie attacks to Zombie Deaths, to Zombie’s on fire as well as the tried and true Zombie walks and runs.  The download itself, for the FBX package, is around 550 mb, and when unzipped, will contain one PDF and two folders.  The PDF is the action list, that you can find on MoCap Online’s website, a folder called MotusMan_V55 that contains a sample character and the actual animations themselve.  What’s important to note about the animations is that they come in two “flavors”.  There’s an “In_Place” folder that contains all the animations where the character will be animated, but they won’t change position in your scene.  You have to animate them yourself.  The other folder, “Root_Motion”, contains the same animations, but in this case, your character will actually move, as the motions were intended for them to do.  For this article, I’m going to talk about the “Root_Motion” versions, but the “In_Place” versions work exactly the same.  

Now, there is something that’s very important that I mention, before moving forward with this article.  MoCap Online doesn’t provide any tutorials on their YouTube channel on how to work with these animations in Blender.  They do provide a tutorial on how to retarget their UE4 skeleton for UE5, but that is it.  To be honest, they don’t really need to provide any training, but it would be helpful, as I am new to Blender and that would have been super helpful but, with my own insane perseverance, I figured it out with the help of Auto-Rig Pro, the Blender add-on.  If you haven’t heard of it, check out my previous article on my five favorite add-ons for Blender, and you’ll get a little insight.  In this article, I’ll show you what I learned, how to set up your character, and how to add these cool zombie animations to it.

HERE WE GO!

So, the first thing that I needed was a character to add our animations to.  I’ll normally make my way over to Sketchfab and download an “appropriate character” and in this case we’re going for a zombie.  I was quite happy with the one you see below created by LokitoBlu, so a big thank you to them, for providing this free for the community to download!

MoCap Online - Our Sample Zombie

Now, we’re going to skip over bringing in our Zombie model into Blender (we’ll be using Blender for the rest of this article, but the concept works the same for Unreal and other applications as well., and texturing and prepping it, we’re just going to make sure it’s in a standard T or A Pose (our’s will be the T Pose), so that we’re ready to rig it up!

MoCap Online - T-Pose in Blender

Now, we’re going to pick an FBX Animation to import.  I’m going to pick one of the walking/running animations.  We’ll go with one of the walking animations.  It’s a simple FBX import in Blender, making sure you set Automatic Bone Orientation in the import settings.

MoCap Online - FBX Bone Orientation

Now you’ll have something that looks like this:

What we want to do is to map the MoCap animation to our Zombie, and here’s how we do it.   What you’ll notice with the imported Zombie animation is that it has a pink “skin” over it, but underneath that, it’s just a moving skeleton.

So, let’s create our skeleton to match.  First, I’ll select our Zombie Girl and “Smart Collect” the mesh to create our skeleton structure.  Once I’ve done that, Auto-Rig Pro will want me to map out the neck, chin, shoulders, wrists, spine base and ankles, like you see below.

MoCap Online - Planning Out our Skeleton

What’s important to keep in mind is that you have to view the skeleton setup from all angles, to make sure that your points are lined up exactly where they would be on a real person.  What’s pretty amazing is that once you say “Go”, you get a pretty damn good skeleton, that requires very little updating, AND, Auto-Rig Pro has even put the fingers in, almost exactly where they would have gone, if I had done it myself.

MoCap Online - Skeleton Fine Tuning

MoCap Online - Precision Hands

Now, there’s a little bit of adjustment required with the skeleton, as things are “close”, but keep in mind that the more precise you are, the more realistic your animation will look, when attached to the zombie.  Now that I’m happy with things, I’m going to bind the skeleton to the mesh/body.  Once things are bonded together, we can play around with the body parts to make sure that they are connected properly, and will behave as normal.  You can also get some pretty weird poses happening as well.

 

Alright, we now have our skeleton like the MoCap skeleton, but we want to map the animation from MoCap to our Auto-Rig Pro skeleton.  This requires a couple of steps.  First, you’ll notice that the MoCap Online skeleton is a little bit smaller than our skeleton. 

MoCap Online - Autoscale to Match

No problem.  Simply match the scale, as seen in the image above, to get the MoCap Online skeleton the same size as ours.  Now, all we have to do is tell Auto-Rig Pro which bone in our skeleton is the root bone (FYI – It’s always the C_Root_Master bone which is considered the Hip or the Root Bone), and once that’s done, simply hit “Retarget”.  In a matter of seconds your skeleton will take on the properties of the Zombie reference skeleton, giving it a very “un-dead” look to it.

ISSUES

Now, with all of that said the Zombie Pro pack, and really all the packs for that matter, are not without one big issue, and that is the previews.  What would have been super helpful is a PDF (or HTML – see below) file that contains all the animation names, with simple links to a GIF animation, to give you an idea of what each one does, instead of having to go through each animation in the pack one by one to figure out what you want.  MoCap Online does have an “interactive” preview feature on their website, but it’s super annoying to use.  So, get the best functionality out of it, as soon as you click the first animation, click the “Loop” button to give you some time to watch the animation to see if you like it. 

MoCap Online - Animation Viewer

From there, you can navigate your way down the list to preview each (and every) animation, or just the ones you’re thinking about using, to get a better look at it.  To be honest, there must be a better way of doing this, as the player is slow to load, annoying to use, and cumbersome to scroll through all the animations to find the one you are looking for.  What would be super helpful would be to have a simple HTML with a GIF player.  Have links down the left side, and the GIF player on the right.  I would happily download however large of a file that would be, to give me local previews, as opposed to fumbling around with this viewer.

CONCLUSION

I will say one thing about a pack like this.  When I first sat down to review it, I knew little to nothing about rigging and animations in general, and this pack has taught me so much about blender, rigging and animation that I would never have learned (or learned at a much slower pace) otherwise, so I encourage you that if you’re interested in learning about rigging and animation to either drop $5 USD for one of MoCap Online’s starter packs, or download the free sample files they offer from their website.

If I had to tell you to purchase one version of these motion capture elements, it would be the FBX version as, if you’re working in Unreal, Blender or any other 3D application, you can easily use the FBX files across any of them and, to be honest, $99 USD for 245 animations works out to $0.40 per animation, which is a really great price.  You have a bunch of different purchasing options from the Starter pack ($5 for 26+ animations) to the Basic ($44.99 for 73+ animations) to the Pro version, but if you’re making anything that has to do with zombies, and you need animations for them, the Pro is the version you want to go with.  With that said, the pack is not without the issue I mentioned above (animation carousel library previews), but the $99 US for the FBX pack is an exceptionally cost effective package, which is extremely easy to use (now that I’ve become a rigging expert lol) and implement, once your character is rigged.  For more information about MoCap Online and the Zombie Pro Pack, you can check it out for all applications here!

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My 5 Favorite Blender Add-ons to get started with https://www.provideocoalition.com/my-five-fav-blender-add-ons/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/my-five-fav-blender-add-ons/#respond Fri, 29 Sep 2023 03:31:45 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=271952 Read More... from My 5 Favorite Blender Add-ons to get started with

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When learning Blender, I’m not really interested in modelling or anything like that.  To be honest, I suck at it.  Much like in Unreal Engine, I’m more interested in the cinematography aspect of it.  I want to build all my scenes (whether they are city, country, desert, ocean, etc) with pre-built elements, and then use what I know about cinematography and editing to build the scenes I want to build.  That’s where, for Blender at least, the Blender Market and add-ons come into play, and in this article, I want to take a look at my five favorite Blender add-ons that I used to get me up and rolling, creating realistic looking animations in Blender, as quickly as possible. 

HOW DO BLENDER ADD-ONS WORK?

Once you’ve purchased an add-on (or found a free one, as there are a ton of great, free add-ons to use with Blender), and are ready to work with it, installation is actually quite easy.  All you have to do in Blender is navigate to EDIT>PREFERENCES>ADD-ONS.  Once you’re there, you’ll notice that there are two options at the top of the window.  “Offiicial”, which are Blender add-ons that were created by the Blender development team, and then there are the “Community” Blender add-ons, which is what we’ll be talking about in this article.  To install an add-on, all you have to do is click “Install”, and navigate to the zip file that you’ve downloaded that you want to install into Blender.  I have my add-ons in a folder called “Blender Add-Ons”, as the last thing you want to do is scatter them all over your computer, so you can’t find them when/if you need to.  Once you’ve installed the add-on, you have to activate it by clicking the check box, but that’s about it.  To access Blender add-ons, simply hit “N” on the keyboard, and they’ll appear in a tabbed layout, on the right of the interface.  What I love about Blender is that there are add-ons for just about anything you can think of from motion graphics, to weather, to city building to character animation, but in this article, we’ll look at the five that I really liked, to get me rolling quickly and easily.

Physical Starlight and Atmosphere – $58 USD

I started out my Blender journey by working with HDRI’s, and they served their purpose, up to a certain point.  Depending on the HDRI’s, you can have some that are fairly massive….up to 4G in size, which can start to bog a project down.  The other issue with HDRI’s is that they are one setup.  Day, Night, Dawn, Dusk.  Pick one, and that’s the lighting setup you get.  There is no (well, very little) ways of adjusting them.  So, you’ll see very quickly that a better solution is required.  That’s where Physical Starlight and Atmosphere (PSA) comes into play.  The name is slightly misleading, as it seems that it would be an add-on that would deal with space scenes, as its name suggests “Starlight and Atmosphere”, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.  What PSA basically is, is an add-on to adjust the atmosphere of your scene.  Want a day scene, no problem.  You just have to decide what time of day you want it to be.   Do you want the warm feeling of sunrise or sunset?  A few simple drags gets you there.

Physical Starlight and Atmosphere
Physical Starlight and Atmosphere effect at dusk or dawn

What about the hot, blazing sun of the desert?  Again, a few simple drags, and the adjustment of the brightness gets you there as well.

Physical Starlight and Atmosphere 2
Physical Starlight and Atmosphere when it’s really, really hot outside!

What I really love is that you can quickly and easily make it night time as well, with the stars in the sky as prominent or as subtle as you want them to be.

Physical Starlight and Atmosphere 3
Physical Starlight and Atmosphere under the stars!

PSA is super quick and simple to use, and produces excellent results.  You also have some presets you can use to get you rolling in the right direction as well.  What’s great about it as well, is that it’s designed to be the atmosphere on Earth, or the atmosphere on really any planet with the ability to add an additional Sun (like Tatooine), or make the sky different colors, based on the planet you want it to look like (Mars).  One last thing that I want to mention is that, unlike HDRI’s, PSA is completely animatable, meaning that you can create your own sunrises/sunsets, and really any atmospheric phenomenon you like.

Baga Rain Generator – $12 USD

There are a few things that I take into consideration when making my scene(s), and the first is the weather, and the first two Blender add-ons you’ll notice are directly weather related.   So, let’s talk about Baga Rain Generator.  Why do I like it?  Well, it’s simple to use, and gets great results.  It’s also only $12 US, and saves you from having to set up a rain simulation any and every time you need one.  How does it work?  Well, it’s actually quite simple.  First, you’ll need something to rain on.  I know it sounds weird, but that’s how you get started with it.  In my case, for the sake of this article, I’m going to add a mud plane to my empty scene, and with it selected, I’m going to hit “N” on my keyboard to call up my Blender add-ons.  You’ll notice that Baga Rain only has a couple of options.  “Add Rain!” and “Add Rain Shader”.  What you’ll want to do is to select all the items you want to have the rain affect, and press “Add Rain!”.  Once you do, you’ll notice that not only is the rain immediately added to your scene, but there are splashes from the ground as well.

Baga Rain Generator 1
Baga Rain Generator impacting only the ground plane.

Now, I don’t really care whether the rain is impacting my two knights in my scene, as it’s more important for me that the rain is splashing off the ground, but what I’m going to do is add another element in the scene.  

Baga Rain Generator 2
Baga Rain Generator won’t impact anything not added into the BRG_Targets folder.

It’s a little hard to tell, but my rain isn’t interacting with my wheel, but I want it to.  No problem.  All I need to do, with it selected, is hit “Add” in the “Targets” section, and it will now be impacted by the rain, and have the drops splash off it.

Baga Rain Generator 3
Baga Rain Generator can now impact everything in the scene, if you want it to.

Now you can see that the rain is splashing off the top of my wheel.  There are so many great little features in here like the adjusting of the droplets, splashes and even wind.  I could do an entire article on it, but, let’s move onto our next add-on.

ALPHA TREES – $45 USD

This is one of my absolute favorite Blender add-ons, for two reasons that might not be so obvious.  So, here’s the scenario.  You have a forest scene that your character is walking through that you need to populate with hundreds or even thousands of trees, as the camera starts out high in the shot, then moves down behind your character.  The big problem with a scene like this is that you can drop a 3D tree into the scene, which is no big deal, but what happens when you want to take that tree, and scatter thousands of them in your scene, to create your forest.  Well, either Blender freaks out and crashes, or your renders come to a screeching halt and take days to render.  Well, that’s where Alpha Trees comes into play, and it’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  Have you ever noticed when you take a look, if you walk around a tree in a circle, that the tree (for the most part), pretty much looks the same on all sides?  This is the trick that is being used in Alpha Trees.  The trees themselves are completely flat.  Now, let’s backtrack just a little bit, as I’m getting ahead of myself.  The first thing that I want to point out about Alpha Trees is that you have access to 150 different types of tree to add into your scenes.  

Alpha Trees 1
Some of the 150 “flat” trees in Alpha Trees

Working with Alpha Trees is quite simple.  Select the layer you want to add Alpha Trees to, which is normally some kind of landscape.  Once you have it selected, simply naviate to the Alpha Trees add-on tab (by pressing N on your keyboard).  Create a new Biome by hitting the “+” button, and you’ll have something that looks like the below.

Alpha Trees 2
Alpha Trees is not looking like too much yet.

Now we can add some trees.  All we have to do is click “New Setting”, and a bunch of sample trees will be added.  Everything will look like a mess, but don’t worry, all will be good in just a second.

Alpha Trees 3
Not looking much better……yet

What you’re seeing right now is a sample white cutout being put into your scene, and we can make adjustments to get everything looking the way we want, before we add trees/shrubs to our Biome.  But, before we do that, we want to make sure we do something important, and that is to select our scene camera, inside of Alpha Trees, for a very important behavioral feature that is very cool.

Alpha Trees 4

The little lines will eventually become trees!If you take the padding parameter below, and put it at 0, what Alpha Trees will now do, is not create/render any trees outside of the camera’s field of view.  This is fantastic to keep the renders as low as possible.

My 5 Favorite Blender Add-ons to get started with 3
It will look much more impressive when there’s much more trees! LOL!

Now, what I can also do is draw a weight map on my mountain, so I can determine only where I want the trees to appear, on my landscape. 

Alpha Trees 6
Choosing which weight map will work the best!

As you can see from the below image, we have lots of trees through blue, green and into yellow, but they quickly drop off through orange and completely disappear in red.  

Alpha Trees 7
Now we’re on the right track!

Once we’ve applied the weight map, you can see, right away, where the trees will go up to, on the mountain, and then stop.  Again, keep in mind that we can adjust the falloff as hard or as softly as we want.

Alpha Trees 8
That looks like the proper tree line across the mountain.

Now, I did throw up a bit of a challenge at the start of this article stating that you can combine 3D trees and the Alpha Trees, and you probably wouldn’t be able to tell them apart.  Well, to prove that, I put together a quick scene that combines both tree meshes with my Alpha Trees, and, to be honest, I can’t tell the difference until I actually see which are my flat assets.

Here’s the composite:

Alpha Trees 9
Which is “real” and which is flat?

Here’s which trees are fake, and which are “real”.

Alpha Trees 10
Pretty easy to spot out the Alpha Trees in this shot.

The amount of trees you can have in one scene is quite staggering, and it didn’t destroy my system, when it came to performance or rendering.

Alpha Trees 12

 

K-Cycles · K-Cycles Rtx 2023 – $54 USD

There was absolutely no doubt that K-Cycles was going to make it into this article, as it was one of the first add-ons I purchased when I started working in Blender.   So, the first question is, what is Cycles?  Well, Cycles is Blender’s physically-based path tracer for production rendering.  It’s the render engine you’re going to use when rendering your projects.  With that said, however and as we all know, render engines in 3D applications can be tricky to get exactly the results you want, right out of the box.  That’s where K-Cycles comes into play.  What K-Cycles is, basically, is an optimized custom build of the Cycles Render Engine.  This is one (of many) of the huge advantages of working with Open Source software, the community can fix what doesn’t quite work the way they want.  It includes Ultra Lighting, Post FX, an Ultra Denoiser, realtime viewport lighting and lighting effects (Lens Flares, Blooms, Mist, etc), and it’s designed for Nvidia GPU’s (I’m using a 3080Ti).

What makes K-Cycles a little different from the other add-ons in this article, is that once you have it installed, you will actually launch Blender via a K-Cycles shortcut, so that all the features of K-Cycles will be included, when the application launches.

K-Cycles1

There are two features of K-Cycles that stand out to me, above all others (other than faster renders, lol), and that is the Camera Mode/Overrides and the Render Cameras feature.  Let’s talk about both of those now.

Camera Mode/Overrides

This is a very clever feature, and one that I’ve just recently started to use.  As we all know, one of the issues that plagues us these days is choice.  Do we want bloom in this shot, or maybe we want to stick with just lens flares, or even get in and make some exposure/HMS or even white balance adjustments.   You can duplicate cameras, and have different settings on each, and simply switch between them to choose the final look you want, quickly and easily.

Render Cameras

Do you have multiple cameras in your scene, and you want to render each of them out when you do your final render?    You can render all your cameras or selected cameras (with animations) out in one render pass, to save you the hassle of having to set these up as individual renders.  Very, very helpful.

There are so many other great features in K-Cycles that it will be getting its own dedicated article but, needless to say, it’s an add-on that should be purchased first, right after you install Blender.

Auto-Rig Pro – $40 USD

It was hard picking only five, so since I am looking at more “real world” options, meaning that I focused on the environment for most of the add-ons, but for this one, we’re focusing on characters.  I was going to say people, but Auto-rig Pro can rig just about anything.  So, what is the purpose of rigging, and this tool in particular.  If you know anything about animation, or have watched any behind-the-scenes extras on DVD’s/Blu-Rays, you’ll know that rigging is the process of giving your character a bone structure, so that it will move in a realistic way, when you apply it to your character. That’s it in a nutshell, but there’s actually so much more going on here then I ever thought there was, and Auto-Rig Pro is now my only tool for doing this work.

Auto-Rig Pro's Base T-Pose

One thing that’s great about Auto-Rig Pro is that it takes a lot of the leg work out of what needs to be done, when rigging a character.  Now, let’s not confuse rigging and animating.  We need to rig the character with the correct bones, which Auto-Rig Pro does, before we get to animating.  To start out, it’s pretty simple.  We need to have Auto-Rig Pro analyze our robot, and figure out where we need to put the main bones.  There’s a bit of work in here for us, as once we “Get Selected Objects” in our robot, we’ll need to map out a rough skeleton that will need adjusting.

Mapping the Skeleton out in Auto-Rig Pro
Mapping the Skeleton out in Auto-Rig Pro

What we basically have is a neck, chin, shoulder(s), wrist(s), pelvis/spine and ankle(s).  Auto-Rig Pro will provide us with things like elbows and knees that we can adjust as needed.  Basically we’re doing a skeletal overlay.

Auto-Rig Pro's Skeleton needs adjusting
Auto-Rig Pro’s Skeleton needs adjusting

After some fine tuning of the joints of the skeleton (I’ve purposely left the fingers out of this rig, as they can be annoying to create, depending on the model), and a quick matchback, it’s time to fuse or bind the skeleton to the skin/mesh of the robot.  What’s great is that, assuming your model is symmetrical, what you do to one side of the skeleton is mirrored to the other.  By doing that, not only do we have the ability to now check out what each of our appendages are doing, but we’re now also ready to match the movement of an external animation.  

I’ve downloaded a running animation from Mixamo by Adobe.  Nothing fancy, just a skeleton rig running.

Now, you’ll notice that the rig I imported, and the setup I have, aren’t even remotely close to the same size, but not a big deal.  We can adjust that when we add the Mixamo animation to our Skeleton.  

Little bit of a size difference!

All we’re going to do is navigate to the Auto-Rig Pro: Remap section of the add-on, identify the source and target armature’s (skeleton’s), match the scale, and merge them together.  You’ll notice that as soon as you do that, the robot is now in a running pose.

Running in Place

To date, this has been the most challenging, yet most rewarding, add-on that I’ve been working with.  I’ve become a bit addicted to rigging characters.

CONCLUSION

I’m loving every second of learning Blender.  The community is makes it so great.  Any time I’m working on something and I come up with an idea, I now immediately think “There’s probably an add-on that will do that job!”.  One thing that I’ve really liked about the add-on “community” is that, for the most part, the add-ons are very cost effective (I don’t say cheap).  You’ll notice that the most expensive one on this list is $58, and right there, the first time using it, it’s already paid back the cost that it was to get it.  What’s also important to keep in mind is that, with most of the add-ons in the Blender Market, the add-ons are good for life, meaning that they will be updated on a fairly regular basis, and all updates will come to you for free, which is completely insane, but super worth it for the community purchasing these add-ons.  If you’re looking to get your toe wet with Blender add-ons, but not sure about prices right now, Black Friday and Boxing Day are coming, which probably means steep discounts, much like what was in their recent Summer Sale (25% off).  For more information on the Blender Project, you can check it out here, and to check out the Blender Market, you can head over to it, via this link.

 

 

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IN DEPTH LOOK – CrumplePop from Boris FX https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-look-crumplepop-from-boris-fx/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-look-crumplepop-from-boris-fx/#respond Mon, 18 Sep 2023 19:14:17 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=271630 Read More... from IN DEPTH LOOK – CrumplePop from Boris FX

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As video editors, in many cases we don’t have a lot of time to mess around when it comes to cleaning up audio.  Most of the work we need to do is to get the audio good enough for client approval, then we let the audio engineer worry about doing further clean up.  But, what if you’re the independent editor working with your clients who is looking for a good and cost effective (I never say cheap), way to clean up your audio, so that you can deliver your final edit to your client.  That’s where CrumplePop from Boris FX comes into play.  Recently becoming part of the Boris FX family, CrumplePop has been around for a while, and always struck me as a product designed to be simple to use, which is something I like, when it comes to audio clean up.  Many audio products are too in depth and confusing, and I spend too much time trying to clean up what should be quick and easy.  I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel here.  Just looking for quick and simple.  CrumplePop might be just that!

PURCHASING CRUMPLEPOP

With its inclusion in the Boris FX family, CrumplePop is now available as both a subscription and a permanent license.  This is where things get a little interesting for CrumplePop.  My first thought was that it would have really made Continuum “Complete”, and I’m not sure where you would update this product, as its been on the market for a while, and I’m not sure what would be “new and innovative” for the product, so I’m thinking that the perpetual license for this product would probably be the best way to go.  Something else that you should consider is that audio clean up of this nature is normally on a project by project basis, so subscribing on a month to month basis may be more idea for many people as you can then add it to your toolkit when your project needs it, and then remove it when you don’t.  So, as for whether you purchase or subscribe, I’m going with a subscribe on a month to month as necessary or just outright purchase as CrumplePop has been on the market a while, and has proven itself as a good little audio tool to clean up those “less than ideal” location records.

WHAT YOU GET IN CRUMPLEPOP

In this “In-Depth”, I’m looking at CrumplePop from a Media Composer editor standpoint, so all the images that you’ll see from the application side will be from the current version of Media Composer.  Obviously, things will work pretty much the same, depending on the NLE you’re using (Premiere, Resolve, etc).  CrumplePop’s download is actually an Application and license manager for the CrumplePop effects.

CrumplePop LIcense

If you’re more comfortable using audio clean up tools in their own little application, don’t worry.  CrumplePop comes with SoundApp, a free desktop app that contains all the CrumplePop tools in one simple to use application.  Speaking of the tools, here’s what comes with your CrumplePop license:

  • PopRemover – Remove plosive noises, pops and mic bumps
  • ClipRemover – Restore clipped audio that was recorded too loud
  • RustleRemover – Remove noise caused by objects rubbing against a lav microphone
  • AudioDenoise – Remove AC noise, hard drive noise and other common room noise
  • EchoRemover – Remove reverb caused by recording in a room with echo
  • WindRemover – Remove wind noise from audio captured outdoors
  • TrafficRemover – Remove simple and complex automobile traffic noise
  • Levelmatic – Automatically adjust levels on the fly so nothing is too loud or soft

CrumplePop Effects

If you’re working on an NLE or DAW other than Media Composer, here is which applications support CrumplePop:

  • Media Composer
  • ProTools
  • Premiere Pro
  • Audition
  • DaVinci Resolve
  • Audacity and other VST3 Compatible Hosts like Nuendo

CrumplePop Applications

I’ve gotta admit that I was surprised that applications like Audacity is supported, but I’m not going to complain about the flexibility of CrumplePop, as any additionally supported apps are a bonus!  What’s great is that once you choose which plug-in you want to get rolling with, there’s a simple walkthrough of how you’ll access the plug-in from within your NLE of choice.

CrumplePop Application Walkthrough 1

Once you’ve installed what you need, you’re ready to jump right in and get started.

HOW CRUMPLEPOP WORKS

To be honest, audio plug-ins like these are normally a little on the tricky side to figure out, as there are sliders, and knobs that you have to adjust, most of which you’re not really going to understand how they work or what they do, and you just end up trying to find a preset that works pretty good to get the end effect you desire.  Sound about right, when it comes to most audio effects packages?  Well, it’s not quite the same here in CrumplePop.  Once applied, and you go into your audio effects interface, the CrumplePop team has gone out of their way to help you figure out exactly which sliders and knobs you need to adjust, to get the result you want.  How did they do that, you ask?  Really large tool tips.  

CrumplePop Application Interface

Using Levelmatic as the example here (seen above), there is absolutely no confusion on what any of the sliders or knobs do.  You’re even told which level/slider to adjust first, to get your desired result.  Have you already started dragging sliders, and the tool tips have gone away?  No problem.  Simply hit “I” at the bottom of the interface, and the tool tips will reappear, so you’re ready to start clicking and dragging again, knowing exactly what you’re adjusting.  With that said, if you’re a Media Composer editor, your view of CrumplePop in the Audio Effects window might be a little different to mine, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind about CrumplePop is that what it does, and how well it does it is not what I was interested in, when working with it.  I’ve tested it out years ago, and it worked exactly like I hoped it would.  Great results and simple to use.  That’s all you can really ask for, when it comes to audio plug-ins like these.  There is also a free trial of Crumplepop for you to download and try, so if you’ve been looking for some audio restoration tools, make sure that you give CrumplePop a look.

ISSUES

With all that’s great, there are some issues with CrumplePop, but luckily they are all minor.  My first thought when I heard that Boris FX had purchased CrumplePop was that it would be a fantastic addition to Continuum Complete.  Video and Audio in one package.  They did it with Mocha, as well as making Mocha a standalone application if people decided that they needed to go that route.

Second, for me, is the price.  Now, I say this with a bit of a grain of salt from the standpoint of, if you are an editor only using Media Composer then $600 per year for the permanent license is a lot.  I find the subscription price of $276 a little steep, considering that most editors are using audio clean up on a project by project basis.  It’s rare that you’ll be using these every day, versus a product package like Continuum that is $495 for Media Composer (and a mind boggling $295 for Premiere/Audition and $195 for Resolve) that you’ll use aspects of on every single project you work on.  It also gets tricky when you look at things from a perpetual versus subscription model.  I’m not sure how much these audio effects will be updated or added to, and $599 US is pretty steep for the permanent license.  $449 or even $499 is more what I think this product should be priced at for a full license, at least in the beginning to see where the Boris FX roadmap is going to take it.  I will say one thing though, when it comes to the price being a bit higher is that with the Perpetual or Subscription license you get access to CrumplePop in Media Composer, Premiere, Resolve, ProTools and more which, if you use all those applications or even an offline/online workflow with MC/PP and Resolve, the price is a little more justifiable.

Lastly, and I’m not sure if this is a Boris FX issue, or a Media Composer issue, but the CrumplePop interface is not optimized for UHD displays or at least UHD displays set to run at 3840×2160.  As you can see from the image below, the CrumplePop interface, inside of the Audio Suite Effect Dialog window, is half the size it should be on a UHD (3840×2160) setting on my RTX 3080Ti graphics card.  All the snapshots you have seen up until this point is with my monitor set to HD (1920×1080), so having it super tiny is, well, super annoying.  I’m not switching my displays to HD, so something has to give somewhere.  I’m hoping it’s on the Boris FX end, this way I know it will get looked at.

CrumplePop Application Interface Issues

FINAL THOUGHTS ON CRUMPLEPOP

CrumplePop is simple and it produces great results and to be honest, as an editor that’s what I’m looking for.  I don’t want a thousand knobs and dials, most of which I have no idea what they do.  Having the tool tips in the interface was a fantastic idea, making Crumplepop something easy for anyone to get it and get rolling with it.  It’s hard to get a gauge on what Boris FX is going to do with CrumplePop, if anything, as right now it really only has the Boris FX logo on it, as it was only brought into the Boris FX family recently, and even though I find the price a bit high, I’m thinking that CrumplePop might just move its way into being my audio clean up tool when working in Media Composer.  You can get more information, and download a free trail at the CrumplePop download page.

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Unreal Engine + Blender – A 1-2 Knockout punch https://www.provideocoalition.com/ue5-blender-knockoutpunch/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/ue5-blender-knockoutpunch/#respond Sat, 26 Aug 2023 00:55:44 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=270295 Read More... from Unreal Engine + Blender – A 1-2 Knockout punch

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A few months ago I started to get into Unreal Engine as, to be honest, it has been my easiest road to 3D animation that I’ve ever come across.  The Unreal Marketplace has been a Godsend, as it’s taken the pressure off me to learn actual modeling (which I suck at).   I just want to be able to create scenes as quickly and easily as possible with as short of a learning curve as necessary.  I was working on an animation, where I had purchased a cheap FBX model that needed altering done to it (normals were inverted in half the model, but we’ll get to that later).  I’m not about to start paying for a 3D application to do a minor adjustment.  That’s where I came across Blender.  No secret that Blender has been around for a long time now.  I immediately thought to myself “OH GOD….A BEAST OF AN APPLICATION THAT I NOW NEED TO LEARN!”.  Well, start to learn it, I did.  And I discovered another little secret about Blender.  It’s a lot more like Unreal Engine than I thought.  Let me tell you what I discovered.

BLENDER IS FREE AND OPEN SOURCE

Blender is Open Source.  It’s really the community’s baby which, in my opinion, really makes it stand out from all the other 3D applications out there today.  You’re probably thinking, well, what difference does that really make.  For me, it’s a big one.  It encourages the community to come up with better ways of doing things.  

THERE’S ALWAYS A BETTER WAY OF DOING SOMETHING

For me, time is always my biggest issue.  I want to learn something quick and easy (like baking a cake, lol).  For me, there are always a few hurdles in 3D applications.  Modeling.  Yep, I can’t do that.  So, what would be helpful is if there was an add-on, or plug in that would let me just purchase or download what I need, to make the scene I want.  Now, with that said, don’t get me wrong.  There are a ton of sites out there that let you purchase 3D items like models.  Need a building for a scene, go to Turbosquid, or any one of the other sites out there, and just buy it.  But, that’s not what I’m talking about here.  I’m talking about add-ons/plug-ins like in After Effects.  For example, I want to create a mini city.  I need buildings where I have four to choose from, but I can take any one of those four, and create four hundred buildings out of them, to quickly and easily create my city.  No problem.  The Urbaniac add-on does that.  Next up.  Rendering.  Oh God.  Rendering.  It’s not so much the rendering that I always have an issue with, it’s the previewing that drives me nuts.  In render engines, there are always a thousand parameters that you can tweak, to get your renders just the way you want them.  And that’s completely understandable, as many of these 3D programs create Hollywood feature films, and   It’s no different in Blender.  I tried doing a few test renders in Blender and, honestly, it took forever. I really had no idea what the application was doing, and my render looked average at best.  Can’t I just have low, medium and high quality to make my life easier, and if I want to go deeper, I can???  Well, there’s an add-on for that as well.  K-Cycles is that.  Cycles, if you’re unfamiliar with it is Blender’s ray-trace based production render engine which offers
Unidirectional path tracing with multiple importance sampling

  • Multi-core CPU rendering with SIMD acceleration
  • GPU rendering with:
    • NVIDIA: CUDA, OptiX
    • AMD: HIP
    • Intel: OneAPI
    • Apple: Metal
  • Multi-GPU support
  • Unified rendering kernel for CPU and GPU

I’ll be honest.  I’m sure that all of that means a lot to a lot of people.  For me, I just need my renders to look as good as possible, and not take a week to finish.  K-Cycles makes my rendering and previewing (most importantly) life so much easier, and we’ll talk about it in its own dedicated article.  So, let’s talk a little bit about what is powering me to get up to, what I would call, intermediate level in Blender so quickly, and that is the Blender Market.

THE BLENDER MARKET

For me, this was really what sold me on Blender, and even attempting to add another 3D application to the mix.  What sold me on Unreal is that the marketplace can get you about 80-90% of the way there, to wherever you need your projects to go, and then basic Unreal knowledge would get you the rest of the way there.  The Blender Market is pretty much the same, just for Blender.  You can start out with basic elements, and work your way up from there.  Need buildings to populate your scene, the Market has it.  Need to add rain?  Snow?  Fog?  Need to rig your characters properly?  The Market has it all.  

Unreal Engine + Blender - A 1-2 Knockout punch 5

It’s divided up into six main categories:

  • Modifier Setups
  • Models
  • Material Shaders & Textures
  • Scripts & Add-Ons
  • Render Setups
  • Training

Each of the Categories has simple to navigate sub-categories to find what you need as quickly as possible.  For me, I always like to jump into what’s “popular”, as a way to see if the product is something that I would use and, believe it or not, there is the ability to search by “sales”, which I thought was handy.  One thing that I noticed, that I thought was pretty interesting, is that none of the products on the market, even what I would consider to be the “more popular” ones, were not very expensive.  Probably one of the best water generation plug-ins that I’ve seen, Flip Fluids, is only $76 US which, for what it can do, is a steal.  What also makes these add-ons great is that most of them are a “buy one, have it and all the updates for life”.  I’ve seen a few products that have a yearly “maintenance” fee to update, but for the most part, most of the add-ons I’ve used have been “one and done”.  Flip Fluids is one of those add-ons.  Once you purchase, you get updates for life!

When looking at these add-ons, you might notice that there could be a huge cost difference with some of them, at first glance.  Meaning that any of the given add-ons would be $10-$500.  Where the differences come into play would be there might be a Lite vs Pro version (10 tree types vs 50 tree types, for example), and then there might be a Hobbyist, Freelance and Studio cost, based on how many people would be using the add-on.  Bontaniq by polygoniq is a perfect example of this.  Botaniq is a Tree and Grass library that offers a bunch of different purchasing options from “cost effective” (AKA – cheap) to the top top tier – 100% of botaniq + future updates, for studios with 6-10 seats that is $389 USD.  Below, you’ll see the difference in the different versions.

Polygoniq Blender Market

Now, there is something that’s important about the add-ons that I do want to mention here, and that is depending on how many you are working with in any given scene you’re creating, your sidebar can get quite full, so keep that in mind.  I try to only open the ones I’m going to be using, so that my bar isn’t full, all the way down the side of my viewer.

Blender Add-Ons

I thought I’d throw out a few samples of what I’ve purchased in this article, to give you an idea of cost vs value, when it comes to adding realism to your work with as little of a learning curve as possible..

EasyFog – $8 USD

Probably one of the best cost to value ratio’s right here! $8 USD to quickly and easily make fog in your scene.  How simple is it you ask?  Simply select all the objects you want to have the fog surround, choose your preset, and once you click it, a transparent box will appear around your elements that will contain the fog. 

EasyFog Presets

That’s really it.  Quick, simple and effective.  

BEFORE

Before EasyFog

AFTER

After EasyFog

And now with a little bit of animation…..

Not too shabby for $8 USD.  Best part is that I didn’t have to create anything!

K-Cycles – $54 USD

As I had mentioned earlier in this article, Cycles is Blender’s physically-based path tracer for production rendering.  My issue is that I find render engines to be complicated, confusing, and if not tweaked just right, it can take forever for my renders to finish.  In most cases, unless it’s for a client (or a demo reel), I’m only rendering at low resolutions, for my own viewing/posting on social media.  K-Cycles has given me an excellent starting point to get great renders, and quick speeds, without having to know how to rewire the warp core on the Enterprise.  A few of the features of K-Cycles are:

  • Ultimate rendering performance for viewport and final renders.
  • Amazing Ultra Lighting the most powerful and complete lighting features for Cycles.
  • New Ultra Denoiser with the latest Intel denoiser technology and multi pass for clean and super sharp images.
  • Ultra Denoiser works inside Blender without needing the compositor and has great performance avoiding complicated compositor nodes.
  • Animation Denoiser uses the latest OptiX temporal denoising to improve animation render times.
  • Even faster renders using intelligent scene and settings optimizations preset modes with higher K-Cycles performance while still maintaining good image quality.
  • Amazing viewport Ultra Lighting, Post FX including BLOOM effects, FLARES with glare, anamorphic and ghosts, Tone Mapping and Lens effects that elevates your art to the next level.

What makes K-Cycles different from other add-ons, is that it’s not launched from within Blender.  It’s actually it’s own launcher that integrates K-Cycles into Blender as the default Cycles render engine, as you can see in the image below.  

K-Cycles Blender

K-Cycles is like a rabbit hole that, at some point, I’ll dive down to get to know all the bits and pieces, but as a starting point, it’s getting my renders exactly where I need them to be.

Launch Control – $49 USD

The reason that I wanted to start learning Unreal Engine and now, I guess, Blender is for getting my renders as photo realistic as possible.  The problem with that is that if the elements in your scene don’t move the way they should, it doesn’t matter how real it looks, it just won’t look right.  Car driving animations have really caught my eye, and having cars moving as realistically as possible has always been a challenge …until now.  Launch Control is an add-on specifically for rigging and animating cars.  Doesn’t matter which car you have, classic, vintage, futuristic or even post apocalyptic.  Launch Control will have you animating it not only with ease, but super realistic in a matter of minutes.  This add-on will get it’s own dedicated article, but for now, here’s a sneak peak at an animation I created using it.

Procedural Crowds – $18 USD

You’ll always need people.  People to populate your city streets, people to cheer in your ancient coliseums, people to line up for helicopter fly over shots.  That’s where Procedural Crowds comes into play.  Whether you’re using their library of included pedestrians, or you use your own models, depending on what you need them to look like (You might need villagers, Roman Centurions, or even Cyberpunk thugs), you can easily add your own.  In my Launch Control sample animation you see above, the pedestrians were created using Procedural Crowds. 

With three clicks of the mouse, I created the animation you see below.  Now, keep in mind that in my below animation, if you look very closely, you might see a couple of people in there that look doubled up, but if you tweak the crowd and your animations slightly, you can easily create huge mobs of people, doing exactly what you need them to do!

Urbaniac Pro – $55 USD 

You’ll notice a little trend here.  We have the cars, we have the people, and all we need is the city to go with them.  That’s where Urbaniac Pro comes into play.  With more than 180+ City assets including buildings, roads, sidewalks, highways, signs, gas stations, signs and so much more.  You’ve actually already seen elements of Urbaniac in this article from the gas station in the fog, to the city streets in the Launch Control section.  If you’re looking to build a great looking city, Urbaniac and it’s extensions (roads and buildings), will be your “go to” to create your next Metropolis.

Urbaniac Pro Blender

Now, with all of this said, how does it tie in with Unreal Engine?  Well, there have been countless times where I need to get in and alter an FBX model.  I’m not paying for a 3D application.  No problem.  Blender is there to help.  I can build animations in Blender, and then export them and import them into Unreal Engine.  Maybe I need to set up a car animation that just doesn’t work in Unreal Engine.  No problem.  That’s what Blender is for.  As I’ve started working through Unreal, and now Blender, I see more and more how the two of them go hand in hand together and when I’m creating each and every new Unreal project, I know that I’ll spend a good amount of time in Blender, tweaking my elements or my animations, so they’re perfect for Unreal Engine 5.  To download Blender for free, you can head over to the Blender Project at www.blender.org .  For more information about Unreal Engine, you can install it from the Epic Launcher.

 

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In-Depth Look – Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-look-elite-landscapes-for-ue5/ https://www.provideocoalition.com/in-depth-look-elite-landscapes-for-ue5/#respond Tue, 20 Jun 2023 03:36:19 +0000 https://www.provideocoalition.com/?p=268363 Read More... from In-Depth Look – Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5

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The one thing that always scared me away from learning 3D design is that I was always worried that because I couldn’t model anything to save my life, that anything that I designed would look, well, crappy.  I’ve started to learn with Unreal Engine that most of the work you’re doing to do, when designing your worlds, is to pick the packages that work right for what you’re trying to design.  For the most part, everything that you design when it comes to “open worlds” starts with your landscape.  Basically the ground that holds your world.  Verarion’s Elite Landscape series of products gives you that ground to start building your world(s).  Whether it’s a desert, alien planet, rocky meadows or hills, or even huge valley’s, Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 gets you going in the right direction.  They have combined twenty three of their landscapes that can be purchased separately (included in the alien pack, desert pack, etc) into one bundle pack that I’m going to be looking at in this article.  As much as I’d like to look at all the landscapes, I’m going to focus on two.  The desert landscape and a rocky meadows landscape.   Ok, here we go!

WHAT YOU GET

As I had mentioned earlier, twenty four landscapes come with the Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5.  There are both Lumen and Non-Lumen versions of the levels included, based on the version of UE5 that you’re using.   I’m going to start out with the rocky meadows landscape, and how you can quickly take one of the Elite Landscapes elements, and build on it to create something quickly and easily.  As a note, I’m going to be using a couple of add on in the In-Depth look.  Starting with the rocky meadows landscape, I’m using the MW Conifer Trees Forest Biome pack from the marketplace, which was free for the month when I picked it up (feel free to swap out with any free or paid tree pack that you like if you’re following along), I’m using a grass pack, again, feel free to use any grass pack, and for all of my skies I use Ultra Dynamic Sky for their creation.  Keep in mind that if you’re building an open world, or even part of an open world, you will need more than just a landscape to create it.  Finally, you should always be using the Unreal Mannequin, as it will always give you a perspective on the landscape, and your place in it.  Alright, let’s open up the “Rocky_Meadows_01” landscape and see what we get.

Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5

Now, this landscape looks pretty good.  A little on the gloomy side, but really, really nice!  I took a quick look at the other landscapes for the “Rocky_Meadows” and they all look great, but gloomy.  Unfortunately, that’s due to the Exponential Height Fog that’s been added to every level.  Annoying, but once it remove it (which should be done immediately on every level for the Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5), things look much better.

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Already a huge difference.  But, for me, I need to add something in to really highlight the landscape, so with a quick drop in of Ultra Dynamic Sky, this really shows off the environment.

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However, with that said, there’s something that I want to point out that’s very important.  Once we’ve added in a much better lighting source, you can now see that the texture that has been applied to the landscape is very basic.  There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just something that I need to point out (and is mentioned on the Marketplace Landing page for Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5, so I wasn’t surprised by this).  It is, however, our creativity that is supposed to be used with the Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5, and not just the very nice looking landscape.  Let me show you what I mean.  What I’ll normally do with a pack like this is take a birds eye view of what’s going on.

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That’s a lot of coverage!  I want to get things set up around our “Hero Mountain”, which is located here:

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So, let’s get in nice and close and drop in our mannequin and see what our landscape looks like.

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You can see, the lighting looks good, the ground shape is great, and the hero mountain is definitely the hero of this scene.  Now, you might be thinking “fine, but a little barren”.  Remember, Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 is the meat, and everything else is the garnish.  Here’s where you can take other elements like grass and trees, and drop them in, and in 10 minutes, you’ve gone from a barren landscape to a much more realistic scene.

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And it only gets better when you change the time of day

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To be honest, this was pretty easy.  Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 got me easily 70-75% of the way, and a little icing on top finished things off.  Now, I could get into even more detail like adding lakes and rivers, but that’s for another lesson.  So, what do we do in situations where we’re going for a little more…..offworldly look?  Well, the alien planets are really, well alien, so what I like to do is to take the desert landscapes, and turn them into a new planet all together.  Maybe a more realistic planet a little closer to us, like Mars!  Let me show you.

Once you call up the first desert map, the map is more like an alien planet than it is anything else.  The skybox makes it look dark and ominous.  Very cool for another alien planet, not so much for a desert.  Number two is really what I’m looking for.  Much more desert like.  Large dunes, and an environment that seems to go on forever (even though it doesn’t).

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When I started playing around with this level, I thought that I might go the route of removing the Atmospheric Fog and Exponential height fog, but once I did, it really took away from the overall look of the environment, and made it more of an “Earth” location, which wasn’t what I was going for.

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Again, very cool and very realistic, but not what I’m going for.  This is what I’m going for

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Now, this does beg the question, what can we do with an environment like this quickly and easily?  Well, this is where Quixel Megascans comes into play.  Completely free, I jumped into the Quixel bridge to access some rocks for our planet, dropped them in via the Foliage Editor, and in about two minutes I had an environment that looked like this:

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To be honest, this is where the fun comes in.  There really isn’t anything else I need to do with the actual environment, as it looks very “Marsish” already.  What’s also important to keep in mind is that I could use and reuse this map over and over by simply moving the camera over another sand dune, and then set up a new scene there.  You could make an entire CGI Mars movie with this one landscape.  Here, though, I’m going to use another Verarion product, Crashed Starship, to create some debris where a ship crashed on Mars, and then I’m going to use a character that’s completely free from the Unreal Marketplace to add into our scene.  Again, in most cases it’s about simplicity and only worry about what you see, and not on the bigger picture.  

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That’s why you’ll notice that there’s not a ton of elements in my crash scene.  It’s going to be simply about a looter who has seen the crash, and is going to run in first, and see what he can get.

What I love about the video is that the landscape in the video tells me it’s Mars.  Tells me it’s some far off planet, and I really didn’t have to do much, but with a few clicks of the mouse, it’s something that’s easy to switch over to make it a desert on Earth, for a completely different scene in a completely different movie.

IS IT ALL GOOD?

With all of the above said, there are a few minor gripes I have the Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5.  I find that the use of the Exponential Height and/or Atmospheric Fog just to be way too much on most of the landscapes/maps.  Also, since I didn’t’ look at the individual products packs first, I was under the assumption that with a product called “Valleys”, that they would look (mostly) Earth-like, and that’s not the case.  Valleys_03 looks like it’s from another planet.

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Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, as it’s pretty easy to switch over from an alien planet (see above) to a more Earthly planet, as you see below:

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You’ll also notice from the image above that the landscape texture used really doesn’t blend together very well, and look mirrored across the “grass” part of the texture.  It’s pretty noticeable, and some blending of it would go a long way to making it look more natural.  With that said, it is specifically mentioned on the Marketplace landing page that the texture is basic, and Verarion also provides the heat maps used to create the landscape, so if you have your own high quality textures, you can easily rebuild things at a much higher level.  But, I really don’t care too much, as I’m covering over most of the landscape with environmental meshes like grass and trees, and as you saw above, you really couldn’t even notice the texture loop, unless I zoomed all the way out, and pointed it out to you.

IS IT WORTH IT?

With Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5, you’re getting six Elite Landscapes products bundled together for one price.  Individually, they are $14 each, so that would be $84 for the six of them.  The price on the Unreal marketplace is $72, which is a savings of $12, and I’ll say this.  I can easily see myself using the Desert, Rocky Meadows, Rocky Hills and Valley maps all the time, as my starting point, and as I mentioned with the Desert Map, you can easily create hundreds of “locations” on any given map, by simply swinging the camera around and seeing what’s over the next hill!  The Mars animation I created in about 30 minutes, and having Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 as the starting point, really made the entire scene super simple to create.  You can get more information about Elite Landscapes (Bundle Pack) for UE5 and all of Verarion‘s other products, in the Unreal Marketplace.

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