Source Film Maker

So if you're a gamer like me, chances are you're very familiar with Valve's celebrated "Meet the Team" series. For those not in the know, "Meet the Team" is a series of 3D animated short films and biographies built around the characters of the 2006 game TF2.

What's truly incredible about this series is that all of the films are made in the games actual engine, meaning that what we're seeing are the actual characters as they appear in game. Now while this isn't necessarily rare for game developers to do, what IS rare is that Valve actually released that animation software to the general public and then allowing them to do essentially whatever they please with the games in game elements.

While I haven't played around with it too much myself, it seems to be a great tool for learning the very basics of 3D animation. And of course if you're already pretty handy with 3D animation, you can always use it to create content that you wouldn't have made otherwise for fear of wasting to much time on a project that comes across as completely ludicrous.

Silly I know, but in just trying your hand at making something akin to the video above I feel that you can truly learn a lot about the basics, physics, and properties that are needed to seriously pursue a career in animation.

Anyway if you've ever wanted to dip your toes into 3D animation I think that the Source Filmmaker would be a tool well worth your time and effort, and of course because the program is open source there are a wealth of tutorials available on YouTube. If you enjoyed the above film's I'd suggest going on YouTube and searching "SFM FILMS" some people have used these models to create truly gripping films, but then again for every piece of serious content there about a million videos of just unfiltered insanity.

First Blog

Before I talk about a video I found, I would like to talk about how amazing the video we watched in class was. It is so fascinating to see such great artwork be done and how realistic it appears. The work looked almost too perfect and to say that it was all done by hand is amazing. That is true talent.

Video made with after effects

This is a cool video I found that was made in adobe after effects. Literally everything except the characters and the birds were made in AE. Luis Aguirre who is the creator of the video used lots of great textures, transitions and animations. Luis also had a nice color scheme that played well with the story. I'm excited to learn so much in adobe AE but I know that to get to this level of greatness it will take lots of practice and lots of time spent in the program. In his description of his video he mentions that this piece took months and months to perfect. You can definitely see the time that has been put into this video with the level of details includes and the story of the video. The music also adds a very nice touch to this story and brings it all together.

Gorillaz

            
 This is a video created for the song "Do ya' Thing" by the Gorillaz. I think this is a really neat video, and the way they made it is very interesting. From what I saw in the "Making of video", They used an actor as a sort of reference, I'm assuming for the lighting and such, and then placed the 3D character into the scene. This gives the video a very unique look. When I first watched this video I actually thought they were using puppets. I still since watching this video for the first time a year ago haven't seen another video that feels quite like this one. Also important to note is the limited use of some 2D characters within this 3D environment. I like that part of this video as well, I think it adds a few really sort of jarring moments to the video. I'm also a real sucker for the art styles the Gorillaz have used over the years so that's definitely a big part of that too.

            
This video is the "Making of" video which shows, kind of poorly, how the video was made. It's some pretty interesting stuff but its not all explained as well as it could be. It does show you the process they went through to prepare the space and to set up the shots. All in all this a really unique video that a lot of work went into and I think it really payed off.