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What I worked on today

Bonnie2001

Bonnie2001

Extraordinary
Animating in Keyshot isn't easy. I think I will be using the month to learn more about it. It renders really fast, 80 frames at 1080 resolution in only 63 minutes! I added dust particles and audio in Sony Vegas.

Here is the three seconds test video. My final video won't be like this and for the moment I'm only trying to get the hang of Keyshot.

 
Janet

Janet

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
Looks good. I would suggest going to youtube and see some videos of drones flying to get an idea of the movement they make. Just in case you hadn't already thought of that which you probably did.
 
Bonnie2001

Bonnie2001

Extraordinary
Janet said:
Looks good. I would suggest going to youtube and see some videos of drones flying to get an idea of the movement they make. Just in case you hadn't already thought of that which you probably did.
Click to expand...

Yes I did some studying up on that and I know what I want to do for the animation. The problem is learning how to make it happen in Keyshot. The good thing is because I got the modeling done in good time, I have plenty of time left to learn it and to get a reasonable presentation done before the end of this month.
I'm very happy with how the drone turned out and don't expect to be as happy with my animation, but I will still try my best. :)
 
Janet

Janet

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
How does Keyshot work? Does it use keyframes? I watched a couple drone videos today and one thing they do well is speed up and slow down.
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Bonnie2001 said:
Keyshot doesn't do keyframes Janet, instead it does transforms.
Click to expand...
Could you elaborate a bit on KeyShot "transforms"?
I could do the drone's scanning beam effect in Poser, but I don't know if the same method could be applied to KeyShot. I'm sure KeyShot can render the effect, but the method of doing so may be very different from Poser. On the other hand, it may only need conversion to KeyShot's material system.
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
An animation feature which I think would be relatively quick/easy to accomplish would be to constrict/dilate the "eye" iris. If you can swivel it within the housing (to look left/right, etc) that would also be good, but might be a pain if the mesh is contiguous.

The drone always does that iris constriction when something attracts its attention. You could have the drone fly toward the camera, stop in a hover, and do the iris constriction, as if it is inspecting the viewer.
 
Bonnie2001

Bonnie2001

Extraordinary
seachnasaigh said:
An animation feature which I think would be relatively quick/easy to accomplish would be to constrict/dilate the "eye" iris. If you can swivel it within the housing (to look left/right, etc) that would also be good, but might be a pain if the mesh is contiguous.
Click to expand...

The eye (and other parts) are all separate parts, so yes it is possible to move it around easily. :)
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Bonnie2001 said:
Basically, one makes the translation (Move, Scale or whatever) and drop it into the timeline.
Click to expand...

OK; I think it would be a nice touch to get a camera closeup when the drone stops, showing the eye swiveling a bit, then doing that iris constriction/dilation. Visually interesting (and characteristic of the drone) without a lot of time/effort.

*If* getting the materials formulated and morphing a mesh shape is feasible, then maybe shoot for doing a scan beam? That would give your animation a "Wow!" factor. :eek:
I began with these primitive box shapes, and UV unwrapped them:
166a scan beam source meshes.jpg

Next, scrunch them into a narrow beam because that's how the scan beam appears when first activated:
166b scan beam - initial.png
That is the OBJ which I imported into Poser.

Back in Silo, manipulate the same box shapes to produce that spread fan shape:
166c scan beam - scan morph target.png
This is saved as another OBJ, and in Poser, with the narrow beam model selected, load morph target and select the spread fan OBJ. Now the beam prop has a morph dial named scan; at 0, the beam is the narrow stream, and at 1 the it has the spread fan shape.
I set the beam's origin at the drone, and tilt the beam up/down with X-rotate.

This shows the keyframed scanner in Poser's crude preview (it would take me 6-8 hours to render):
scan beam demo

Here's a Superfly rendered frame:
f0061 drone w scan beam Sfly.jpg

The swirly mist/fog effect is animated; I can send you the sequentially numbered texture JPEGs, but you'd need to figure out how to set up such a material in KeyShot. It needs to be luminous.
Do you have Poser 11, @Bonnie2001 ? If so, I could send the prop with the material applied and maybe you could reverse engineer it into KeyShot.
 
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Bonnie2001

Bonnie2001

Extraordinary
seachnasaigh said:
Do you have Poser 11, @Bonnie2001 ? If so, I could send the prop with the material applied and maybe you could reverse engineer it into KeyShot.
Click to expand...

Yes I have Poser Pro 11. Thanks very much for this, I should be able to make it work in Keyshot probably by applying a coloured glass material and playing with translucent settings.
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
Bonnie2001 said:
Yes I have Poser Pro 11. Thanks very much for this, I should be able to make it work in Keyshot probably by applying a coloured glass material and playing with translucent settings.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there isn't much geometry to speak of (just three long boxes in one wider box); it's mostly a matter of re-scaling (to spread the far end of the beam), pivot the beam, and getting the luminous light-in-dusty-air texturing effect.

Among the texturing JPEGs, there two folders (pool and fBm entering) of sequentially numbered JPEGs. By loading pool001 in a movie node -not image map node- Poser will apply pool001 in frame 001, then apply pool002 in frame 002, etc. Instead of a static transparency map, you get a sort of swirling mist effect.:)

I added the fBm_entering + the Edge_Blend + transmap + scanlines to get a total transparency map.
Edge_Blend emphasises edges and corners of shapes; in KeyShot, look for some control labeled Fresnel.
The transmap increases the opacity at both the drone (proximal) end and the far (distal) end of the beam.
The scanlines map gives those four thin bright scan lines.

While translating this into KeyShot may be a challenge, I think this effect will add some "pop!" to your animation.

The zip is in runtime arrangement. There will the prop file (actually a cluster of props), and the scene file so that you can peruse the keyframing. The geometries folder has the source geometries and the morph target OBJs which have MT appended to the name.
Zip is 41.3MB; most of that file size is due to the animated texture folders.

scan beam
 
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seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
The material for the wider box -what I called the "beam envelope"- is more complex than that for the three beams.
I've annotated the material screenshot to help you make sense of it, since you'll need to translate it into KeyShot's material system.
beam envelope material - annotated.png
  • Stuff boxed in orange is peculiar to Superfly - you won't need that for KeyShot. :) In KeyShot, look for an emission or translucence value you can use.
  • Note: The values in the math nodes summing the transparency effects (boxed in green) are not all 1.0! Balance these to get the desired degree of opacity/transparency.
  • Nodes boxed in blue aren't necessary, but add a nice subtle bit of color in flux.
  • Nodes boxed in pink are the four transparency elements; you may be able to "bake" these down to the movie (providing animation) and a single map for the other three, if you're good with PhotoShop (I'm not). :laugh:
  • Note that fBm_0001.jpg and pool001.jpg are loaded into movie nodes, not image map nodes. Any time you use sequentially numbered JPEGs in a movie node, load the ______001.jpg. Poser will automatically advance through the other JPEGs as the scene frames advance. KeyShot may offer a similar function, or perhaps you might need to composite the JPEGs into a .mov or .avi.
  • Translating the sequential JPEGs into KeyShot will be the crucial puzzle to solve. If that eludes you, then see if there is some equivalent animated KeyShot procedural; that may well be better, and would certainly render faster.
 
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Rokket

Rokket

Dances with Bees
This is going to be cool, I can feel it! And you have a good amount of time to perfect it, so the animation should be a prize winner too!
 
seachnasaigh

seachnasaigh

Energetic
It occurs to me that with the drone flying in your animation you need the main thruster running. I have sequential JPEGs suitable for that. As with the scan beam, the obstacle is whether you can get Keyshot to apply sequential JPEGs and make the effect emissive. The scan beam and the thrust plume both need to be emissive.

Here is a Poser 11 Superfly demo prop of the thrust cone, with the folder of flame JPEGs:
thruster

Superfly rough render:

The "JetPlume" prop I used is only an octagonal cone, so you'll want to subdivide it four or five times.
 
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