nice my man, i assume those are being controlled by script

Nice.

Any hints how you did that?

1+

Looks dope.

motion huh a-swift...damnit man I can't keep up I quit... :(

If you really want to show off make the speakers form an umbrella....Then everybody would quit... Looking at it took a lot work especially since you have a reflection or mirrored effect going on, along with the movements....Nice work...

I think I smell another class.

that is not motion, but it is a free program available on all platforms (pc/mac/linux)

do tell D-Twizzle.

i wish it was done in Motion. it would have taken a lot less time. Motion (and After Effects CS3) are not true 3D programs. what they do is allow you to compose 2D objects in a true 3D space, and a give you a true 3D camera to fly around in that space. Pretty cool but it's still 2D objects you're working with.

that animation (a test render really) was made with blender. yes it's a free program, yes it's available on mac, pc and linux like twizzle said. blender has been around for many years, way before after effects and motion. it's just a major pain in the ass to learn, and i'm not saying that to discourage you from trying it but i'm serious. steepest learning curve out there. simple stuff is pretty simple but you outgrow that after animating your first logo of your name spinning around the screen.

i could have done almost everything you see there in blender. i did only that parts that i have to in blender though. i used my traditional workflow once the animation was rendered (fcp, compressor, etc).

here's how i made it.

modeled the speaker from scratch in blender. this started as a 2 dimensional circle , just a line really. a few hundred cuts, extrusions, scalings, etc, it's a speaker now.

i created a "rig" to drive the speaker cone. in blender, all character animation is done with a rig (also called an armature). that's why when they talk about character animation, they call it "rigging". this is a character this, this is a simple rig with 2 movements, in and out (no misquote).

in order to drive the cone in perfect sync, i used a python script (written by someone else) to analyze the audio in the umbrella.wav file and create a constant curve of sound amplitude to drive the rig on its Y axis, in and out. also note, you can do all of the audio parts in both after effects and motion. they actually have better sound analysis capability since they can both isolate frequencies, only respond to peaks, set smoothing of curve, peaking, limiting, etc.

that's pretty much it. once the rig was set to be driven by the amplitude curve from the analysis (on one speaker), I just made a wall of speakers with duplicate. they all drive with the SAME rig, same curve. it's just a duplicated wall. i messed with the lights a bit and flew the camera around the speaker wall a few times for effect.

the camera is flying "on a path", which i find easier to control than doing keyframes. with a path, you can modify the flight path of the camera much easier, which i had to do when going from a single speaker to a wall of speakers. changing keyframes = pain in the ass. changing path = very easy.

once the path looked good, and the lights look good, i did some 50% test renders of parts. they looked good. i submitted the whole animation to my home made render farm, 6400 frames. this is a VERY simple animation. frames took about 30 seconds to render on average.

once the images were done rendering, shake put them all together for me into a mov file. i put the mov and umbrella.wav into fcp and rendered it.

there you have it!

WOW!! Good stuff Swift. Is this something you plan on using for your video sets? or was this just a test Run. For another big Video project you plan on doing next?

haha. those woofers? probably the last time you'll see me do a test render with woofers floating in mid-air. it just doesn't make much sense to have them floating in mid-air. i was so excited that i finally figured out how to do it, i posted it.

animation really doesn't get any more simple than this, but i find this stuff really hard to figure out. i guess my mind is just wired the wrong way or something.

but to answer your question, i DO plan on using plenty of "3D" rendered items in video edits. and I do plan on using lots of "equipment" items. speakers are a big one. i love speakers. i have a lot of videos i want to do and there is no content to do it with. my plan is to make the content, in a number of ways.

Thanks!

very nice... great work

I believe the new after effectsCS4 now has true 3-d effects swift////

I know eye , that's why I say CS3

my bad A-swiftizo...lol, just making a statement but I will chop off my left pinky now for my insolence!!!!!!!! LMFAO

Ok now I'm pissed. Just saw the Flo -rida Sugar video and they totally ganked my woofers idea. It looks like they copied it pretty damn close.

Flo-Rida is secretly on the forums.

i'm serious man. the whole reason I rigged and worked out the auto-animation of these woofer (and some other DJ parts), is to green screen me over them as part of my new demo. it looks like they seriously ripped my idea!

full time jack move son!!!! they robbed u without a gun Aswift.....lol Got to keep your projects to yourself but it was an idea that easily someone could have thought about.

i don't think so. green screened 3D rendered woofers with live action in front my snatched right out of my head.

well maybe someone could have thought of it.

fuckit. i'm still doing it but better.

not to say they didn't get the idea from you but I know over the years I've come up with a lot of different things that I though no one else would thing of and sure enough, some one else did.... For a long time I seriously felt like my house was bugged.
I was even trying to do something kind of like yourwoofers idea but mine SUCKED compaired to yours!! hahaha.
Weather they got you or not... GREAT job on that man... you got some serious skills and provide a lot of much valued help and input in this forum. Thanks!

what Flo-Rida video?

Sugar