This tutorial is about using your mouse to quickly create IPO curve data that, otherwise, would be tedious to do by hand. Using this technique, we'll look at how to easily add a more "organic" feel to certain types of motions, create a handheld camera effect, and more!
This topic will be covered in three parts:
Part One covers just the basics of the Mouse Recording feature.
(SWF streaming)
Or, Download it to view offline (load the HTML file in your browser).
Part Two shows how you might apply it in a more "real-world" scenario by adding animation to a spherical probe.
(SWF streaming)
Or, Download it to view offline (load the HTML file in your browser).
Part Three shows how to easily create a handheld camera effect.
(SWF streaming)
Or, Download it to view offline (load the HTML file in your browser).
Get the Free Flash Player: Windows version or Linux version
Blend Files:
Short Video Clips:
- Candle Flame (from Nathan Dunlap's non-particle flame example*) with subtle vertical turbulence added.
- Particle "Storm" with mouse-animated colors, halo size, alpha, scaling, rotations, and vortex.
technorati tags: Blender3D, 3D, animation, IPO Curves, record mouse
11 comments:
The video works without sound in xine and VLC and crashes in kaffeine.
Plays in Mplayer but the sound is extremely overloaded, distorted and clipped.
Why the change from avi to mov?
regards nykysle
The sound isn't overloaded, it's the audio compression. It's not as good as previous videos because I was trying to minimize the file size. One day I'll find the optimum codec settings and then go back and re-process previous tutorials. It takes so very long to test those types of things. It really makes me want to just go with the Flash format and leave it at that. But, I'm doing my best to try and suit the tastes of the Blender community...we'll see.
BTW, I've never heard of xine and kaffeine. I try to focus on the most popular media players.
I changed to the MOV format because, supposedly, it's a better format but I'm beginning to think that's a bit of a myth. Even if you can get the best results with H.264 (or whatever it's called), what's the point if it's so undocumented and it takes so long to get those results? It took a few HOURS to process a 15 min. video! Anyway, I'm studying to see if I can't get better results. There really are too many codecs and settings out there. It only causes confusion and inconsistent results.
Anyway, that's my rant. Part 2 is taking so long because, using the exact same settings, I'm getting a file that is over 60MB! The video is about the same length as the 15MB file plus, it's cropped. Oh well, it will work out. I'll probably go back to zipped AVIs.
kernon dillon said...
The sound isn't overloaded, it's the audio compression.
Compressed yes. It sounds like an overdriven microphone input.
But the new 'Flash' sample works fine, so if you are going in that direction that will be great.
One caveat... Don't jump to the latest and greatest flash upgrade the moment it's released.
The linux version release tends to lag considerably.
Another suggestion; Could you could provide the flash file for download. It's nice to keep a library of tutorials for reference.
regards nykysle
congratulations
The flash files work really well
regards nykysle
Keep it up! Really good stuff. -Chris
Kernon,
Thanks a bunch for this resource.
I can see your list of next tutorials is going down... Can I suggest one item that I would love to know how to implement...
-> Playing video as a resource.
An implementation I am thinking about is have several video files running on say modelled TV screens and have it all recorded when I animate the scene.
video source will be AVI for my example, not sure if other formats are supported.
Thanks
Also a great thanks from mee too. Even as a longtime blender-user it is always nice to to get some usefull new tips.
Have a great day..Robert.
Hi, Kernon.
Sorry, no relate to this report.
I sent e-mail about for "Beginner's Knowledge Test" to comments(atmark)blendernewbies.com.
Please reply e-mail.
I'll wait...
Nice tutorial! The flash video worked fine on Firefox for me.
I never knew that feature of Blender - and I liked how you applied to an actual project as well.
Good work Mr. Dillon
first thanks a lot for your hard work on this.
talking to screencapturing and compressing,
personally, i don't recommend you use h.264,it's not made for screencapturing, unless you are capturing a real movie which is playing, but that belongs to converting not capturing.
if you want to stick to free and gpl softwae, maybe you can try camstudio (not the one from techsmith,it's the father of Macromedia's Captive).
another one is vnc2swf, suit for person who has two computer, you can vnc and capturing.or vnc to the localhost?
not a fan of GPL? you can try Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder, by adjusting setting , good file quality and size can be balanced.
another choice is Real Media Producer, do not using it for capturing directly,but for convertion only. i use this techs to archieve my own screencapturing stuff.
50 seconds in he says to "press the R key"
Unless I have my blender set up differently, in ver 2.49b it seems to be Ctrl-R over the IPO window to get that Record Mouse menu.
Thanks for a great video.
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