Poll : Would KVR benefit from a video tools forum?

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[pekbro]

Bay Raitt works for Valve/steam. He is/was the lead on their Source Filmmaker, FYI.
I have an original copy of Nendo, though I could not afford Mirai at the time.
Great stuff, sad thing they went out of business, like so many from those days.

[pekbro]

If you don't want to pay for anything, use Blender for 3D. It's far beyond anything else that you
can get free, period. It has subdivion modeling, just like wings. Maybe the learning curve is steeper,
it's not difficult, if one has the necessary interest imo. Mostly, its just the UI that needs
getting used to, if you have any familiarity with 3D software at all.

[whyterabbyt]

Yeah, Blender is where it's at. But you may want to start with a more easy to learn and understand 3D program if you are just starting out. I'm talking complete noobs here.
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You can do that in Blender, no problem, but it's overkill for just pushing a few polygons about.

Yeah, but you can say the same about Reaper; TBH, if someone asked for an entry-level package I would have probably suggested something else.

OTOH... there's more tutorial material out there on Blender than anything else.

Ive still to put in the effort to get my head around Blender; Ive spent too long supporting Maya users, and, although Im not really a Maya user myself, that basically means anything else is rather counterintuitive to me. I do intend to try and get my head around Blender eventually, although Im primarily interested in Houdini.

3D Modeling and Video are two very discrete fields, but they do overlap for the purposes of 'audio visualisation'. Each is an asset in whatever form they take, to be composited in to a greater whole. And you can use either or both

We mostly use After Effects for compositing, or Nuke. If you're looking, though, although development has stalled on Natron, its supposedly a decent Nuke-alike. And, funnily enough, there's compositing in Blender.

It's probably easier to knock up some dodgy video on your go pro than it is to even begin creating 3D assets and animating them in wtf software.

I wouldnt even think about attempting characters, real stuff etc, unless it was canned animations and characters etc in which case I suspect it'd probably be easier in a game engine. Ive seen more than one person knock up something in Autodesk Character Generator or Makehuman, or similar, and dump it into Unity with Mixamo's dance animations. But I think for simpler, more abstract stuff, you can go a long way with basic skills.

However. I really wasnt expecting this forum to cover 3D, though I know there are a few other KVR people who have an involvement in that IRL. I only really mentioned Blender because it was bound to come up anyway, and it has a lot of parallels with Reaper.

[pekbro]

Houdini is awesome, but way harder to use than Blender, both in complexity and conceptually.
The thing to remember is that all 3D software works fundamentally the same. It's mostly just
learning the in and outs of using one in particular over another.

Though most would probably cringe at the thought of it, a really great way to acquaint
yourself with the fundamental concepts of 3D software is to use Pov-Ray and try to describe
some simple scenes with text only. Anything else will be a whole lot easier to understand
after that.

heh, sorry, talk about computer graphics and I am gonna say something about it, every time.

[whyterabbyt]

Houdini is awesome, but way harder to use than Blender, both in complexity and conceptually.

Although Houdini is indeed vastly complex, I started off as a programmer, so personally I find its proceduralism way easier than I do the hand-eye skills etc needed for 'classic' modelling, as Ive never had a particularly great ability to look at a thing and then do the step where I can represent that well in some visual medium. However I dont find Houdini particularly hard to understand, for its just the scale of what there is to learn. Anything node-based is in the right ballpark for me.

[pekbro]

Houdini is awesome, but way harder to use than Blender, both in complexity and conceptually.

Although Houdini is indeed vastly complex, I started off as a programmer, so personally I find its proceduralism way easier than I do the hand-eye skills etc needed for 'classic' modelling, as Ive never had a particularly great ability to look at a thing and then do the step where I can represent that well in some visual medium. However I dont find Houdini particularly hard to understand, for its just the scale of what there is to learn. Anything node-based is in the right ballpark for me.

Well that's the thing, they are all procedural. That's how it works, houdini just exposes that
aspect to the user (kind of). That's why the Pov-Ray thing is so useful, I learned to model and animate
by programming it in C against a 3D Api, RenderMan in my case. That is really what a procedural
interface is, an API.

[excuse me please]

Well, I made some screenshots with WMP random visualizations of my music which are quite striking. Would be nice if I could morph them to 3D and make them float around in an animation.

[whyterabbyt]

Well that's the thing, they are all procedural. That's how it works, houdini just exposes that
aspect to the user.

Im not sure what you're trying to say here to be honest. Ive supported 3D animators in education for over 20 years, I know how traditional 3D packages work, I know what my strengths are, I know the difference between how Houdini 'just' does stuff (and its a very big 'just') and how Maya or ZBrush or Rhino 'just' does stuff.

I kind of disagree about things like POV-ray though. One of the other aspects of my job is teaching coding to artists, and its definitely the case that the majority dont find code-type methods a particularly easy way to abstract their intentions. Most find direct 'minds' eye to hands on' creation much easier, be that painting, or 3d sculpting.

[whyterabbyt]

Well, I made some screenshots with WMP random visualizations of my music which are quite striking. Would be nice if I could morph them to 3D and make them float around in an animation.

If the software doesnt allow you to export them as video files, you could always try using OBS Studio to grab them direct from the screen.
Once youve got them as a video, a lot of video editing software would let you move use that video as an element you could move around in 3d as a 2d-projection onto something like a plane.

[pekbro]

Well that's the thing, they are all procedural. That's how it works, houdini just exposes that
aspect to the user.

Im not sure what you're trying to say here to be honest. Ive supported 3D animators in education for over 20 years, I know how traditional 3D packages work, I know what my strengths are, I know the difference between how Houdini 'just' does stuff (and its a very big 'just') and how Maya or ZBrush or Rhino 'just' does stuff.

I kind of disagree about things like POV-ray though. One of the other aspects of my job is teaching coding to artists, and its definitely the case that the majority dont find code-type methods a particularly easy way to abstract their intentions. Most find direct 'minds' eye to hands on' creation much easier, be that painting, or 3d sculpting.

No worries, I am just trying to explain, poorly I guess that all 3D packages basically work the same
way, they all use the same high school algebra to calculate an image. Once you understand how
that works, it doesn't really matter if you use Blender, Maya or Houdini or whatever. At least
that's how I see it, maybe it's unusual. I've used them all since version 1, and really the only
reason for using any of them over another was because of project constraints.

[whyterabbyt]

No worries, I am just trying to explain, poorly I guess that all 3D packages basically work the same
way, they all use the same high school algebra to calculate an image. Once you understand how
that works, it doesn't really matter if you use Blender, Maya or Houdini or whatever. At least
that's how I see it, maybe it's unusual. I've used them all since version 1, and really the only
reason for using any of them over another was because of project constraints.

I guarantee you our 3d animators would switch to 2D rather than touch algebra.

[excuse me please]

Well, I made some screenshots with WMP random visualizations of my music which are quite striking. Would be nice if I could morph them to 3D and make them float around in an animation.

If the software doesnt allow you to export them as video files, you could always try using OBS Studio to grab them direct from the screen.
Once youve got them as a video, a lot of video editing software would let you move use that video as an element you could move around in 3d as a 2d-projection onto something like a plane.

Thank you for all the info in this thread. I want to make some abstract landscape footage which goes along with my music. So basically it would come down to a basic flight simulation of a few minutes.

[Shabdahbriah]

Well, I made some screenshots with WMP random visualizations of my music which are quite striking. Would be nice if I could morph them to 3D and make them float around in an animation.

If the software doesnt allow you to export them as video files, you could always try using OBS Studio to grab them direct from the screen.
Once youve got them as a video, a lot of video editing software would let you move use that video as an element you could move around in 3d as a 2d-projection onto something like a plane.

DaVinci Resolve can do this rather easily, as can Blender. I think Loop-pop (youtube tutorials/reviews) uses Resolve to 'project' the spectrogram (and other software images) onto or adjacent to his hardware and work surface, in post. I suspect that specifically because of how he has it placed and tilted/angled to compliment the other gear, and resolve does this beautifully. Though he may be using OBS to do a screen in screen (image in image?) live recording/render, but I'm not sure if it allows the tilted/angled thing, to be inserted in real time. I need to investigate that.

[vurt]

i have some obs questions???
should i go here, or thread in hosts?
well, mainly one question at the minute.