Susan Ee

Learning...

3D Water

Here's my 3D water, take 2...

Turned out I was doing more than I had to.  Cinema 4D defaults to gravity and some kind of "natural" motion anyway.  I realized this through trial and error after trying out some various motions.  So in the end, I just took out the vibration and tried it out.  Voila!

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

My first C4D animation!

3D Water

G w wrong perspective

G on Cliff

So here's my first Cinema 4D model and animation:  water!

I could have bought 3D water but instead, I chose to learn C4D by trying to make it.  The reason why I needed water was that I had a scene in my novel trailer (WAR GAMES) where one of my characters, "G," is climbing a cliff above water.  I started my animation of G on the cliff in DAZ and just stuck a background of 2D photo of water (see "G w wrong perspective").  First of all, the perspective is wrong - it looks like he's crawling out of the water onto the ground.  Secondly, when I animated it, it looked very wrong to have the water so still.  So my challenge was to make water so I could choose the perspective and also animate it.

To make water, I followed this tutorial.    I used the "metal" texture that comes with C4D for the material reflection, and "water" texture for the bump and environment.  I tried a few of the other tutorials where the water looked better (by using caustics) but when I tried it, it took a l-o-n-g time to render and my results sucked.  So this was the best way I've found.

Once the water model was made, I needed to animate it so it looked alive.  I ended up applying "vibrate."  Right click on the water in your objects tab, cinema 4d tags> vibrate.  In the Attributes menu (click on the vibrate icon in your Objects menu), I used the following vibrate parameters:  Relative, Enable Position, Amplitude 10, 0, 0.   I'll refine the parameters as needed.  I may want a gentler motion.

The next challenge will be to combine the animation of G climbing the cliff with the water animation.  I have two choices:  "green screen" G and composite it with the water animation in After Effects; or import G's scene into the water animation (or vice versa) and combine them.  I'm totally new to 3D so everything I do will be an experiment.  I've also never used green screens before so that will be a learning experience too.  Right now, G and his climbing animation is in DAZ and the water is in C4D.  I'll need to figure out how to import one into the other if I choose that route.

Anyway, I'm pretty excited about my first modeling results!

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

How to lose money in Hollywood

An oldie but goodie:  How to Lose Money in Hollywood.

Netflix Film Contest

Netflix is having an amazing film contest with a prize worth $350,000 -- $150,000 cash production grant + a bunch of production assistance, PLUS Netflix will distribute the film you make from the prize money.  Deadline is Feb. 9.

Go for it!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

The Death Star

Lenovo Thinkpad W700ds

It ain't pretty and it ain't cheap, but WOW.  Talk about a battle cruiser.  It's basically a mobile desktop, weighing in at about 12lbs when you take into consideration the enormous power brick that comes with it. This tank of a machine has 2 displays.  The second one slides into the first.  It has a built-in Wacom tablet.  400 nit display.  You can configure it to have 2 hard drives, RAID, Intel Quad Core, NVIDIA Quadro 1G graphics card, 4G RAM....  With this puppy, I could record an HD movie from my camera direct to disk, edit, do fx, 3D graphics, 3D modeling and title animation all while moving from one place to another.

It's now for sale at the Lenovo site but they won't ship it for a month.  This isn't quite the mobile battle station I ordered but it's close - mine's the previous version without the dual display.  And UPS left it out in 0 degree weather in snow country for 6 days... I'm still in the middle of fighting it out with Lenovo and UPS to return it.  It's KILL'N ME!

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

Once again, it's the Copyright Song

I keep seeing a misconception about the WGA's registration service and
I have to correct it  -- register your work with the COPYRIGHT OFFICE. WGA cannot come
anywhere close to the protection you'll get through the Copyright
Office. It is a US federal division and it can give
you legal rights to your work for your entire life + 70 years. It's
cheap and easy. It's a one page form. If
you register your copyright (with the Copyright Office - they are the
ONLY legal entity where you can register a copyright), you'll have the
legal presumption that you are the owner of that copyright. The
courts will pay attention to it because it's a right granted to you
from the federal government. The WGA, regardless of their power in
Hollywood, has no pull in the court system.

As a side note, you automatically own your copyright to your work BUT
you have to prove it's yours if you end up in court. That will be
costly and you may or may not be able to prove it. If you register
your copyright, the court will presume it's yours.

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

MacWorld Expo and TV

These events are happening today:

TV, Mobile TV and the iPhone session is on Wednesday, January 7, at
11am to 12:15pm

Panelists include Kanishka Agarwal, VP of Mobile Media, Nielsen
Mobile; Kelly Liang, Senior Director of Business Development,
YouTube; Ted Malone, VP Product Marketing, Sling Media; Sam Methany,
General Manager, News Over Wireless, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, NC; and Cyriac
Roeding, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield &
Byers (backers of the iFund)

The So You Want to Sell Your Idea to Television? panel is scheduled
for Wednesday, January 7, from 6:30pm to 7:30pm

Speakers include Gannon Hall, Chief Marketing Officer, Kyte; Sam
Methany, General Manager, News Over Wireless, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, NC;
Tom Smuts, Co-Founder of United Hollywood's Founder Media Group and
Television writer, producer, director; and Daisy Whitney, Contributing
Writer/TVWeek and Host of New Media Minute (TV Week, ABCNews.com)

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

Hollywood's Marketing Machine

The Wall Street Journal reports that independent labels at the major studios spent an average of $25.7 million marketing a film last year, up 44% from 2006 and more than double what was spent in 2002. That has far outpaced the 44% growth in production costs from 2002 through last year. In response to the recession, studios have cut the number of films they release but haven't cut back significantly on marketing costs per film.

Why do they call these "independent" films?  What kind of an oxymoron is an "independent label at a major studio"?  To me, if you can afford to spend $25.7 million for marketing, you're a major studio unto yourself.

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com

Plagued with computer problems

My day week is being sacrificed to the vengeful computer gods who have smacked me with bad computer mojo.

- new mobile battle station - left out in the snow for 6 days by UPS despite the fact that I called them ahead of time and told them I would be out of town; their records claim I signed for it.  Very, very pissed off about this.
- desktop media computer - broken power supply (I think)
- laptop for everyday use - dying battery that gives me 15 minutes before it shuts down
- web access - paying for 5M/s, getting 800kb/s with dropped packets.
- old laptop - dead battery, dead sound card
- Kindle - keeps freezing up when I try to access the news over the net.

Lesson #3592 - go back to pen and paper.  Your life will be far simpler.

Hello World! Happy New Year!

Wow, an unintended break.  It's been almost 2 months since I last posted.  I didn't intend to stop blogging, I just got distracted and before I knew it, 2 months had gone by.... During that time, a Russian economist has declared that the US is disintegrating, 2008 turned into 2009, YouTube changed from 4:3 to 16:9 and then went HD.  SAG is still threatening to strike - they  might as well threaten to go on a hunger strike because that's about how self-destructive it would be. 

So what have I been doing?  At first, I went into a creative mode where all else was consumed by my obsession over making an animated book trailer for my novel, WAR GAMES.  Then, I remembered I had never done animation before, ran into technical difficulties, and I geeked out.  Right now, I'm somewhere between my creative mode and geek-out mode (I know, some might say I'm always in this state).  I just bought Cinema 4D from someone on Craigslist who may or may not be part of the Russian mob; I also bought one of the last Comic Book Creator programs despite the fact that it looks like the makers are going out of business; ordered a new over-the-top mobile battlestation (aka "notebook computer"); sent out some DVDs of TOOTH FAIRY to film festivals; killed my power supply in my desktop which is now open under my desk with its guts spilling out; got a new terabyte (!!!) second hard drive for my desktop and a 64G (!!!) USB drive for Christmas (I hear other girls want jewelry as gifts -- can you imagine?); got my butt kicked clear across silicon valley by a group of graduates of the Stanford EE masters program in a game I never heard of before; and I ate a pound of Trader Joe's milk chocolate with almonds.  There you have it -- now you're all caught up.

Happy New Year!
Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com