Re: OT: animation [was Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express]

[Alex Rice]

On Jan 13, 2004, at 10:22 PM, erik hansen wrote:

games and teaching concerns seem to converge.
if no joy stick
then many kids will not check it out.
Yep I guess so.
Also Trevor's Quicktime external has a lot of functions for 
interactively working with Quicktime including sprites.


Nice work Trevor- that's a rich set of functions for QT!
Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | 


what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: OT: animation [was Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express]

[erik hansen]

--- Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> That depends on what graphic/animation formats
> you are ultimately 
> working with. Personally I am thinking about
> using Quicktime and or AVI 
> for cut scenes and intros, and a combination of
> PNG frames and animated 
> GIFs for interactive animation. I think there
> will be a high degree of 
> interactivity and control. I hope so- because I
> intend to use it for 
> games.

games and teaching concerns seem to converge.
if no joy stick
then many kids will not check it out.

Erik

=
[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.erikhansen.org

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: OT: animation [was Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express]

[Alex Rice]

On Jan 13, 2004, at 9:11 PM, erik hansen wrote:

thanks for the information.
Can you tell I like LivingCels? :-)

when all is said and done,
can you script where & when these things
will happen from inside Revolution?
That depends on what graphic/animation formats you are ultimately 
working with. Personally I am thinking about using Quicktime and or AVI 
for cut scenes and intros, and a combination of PNG frames and animated 
GIFs for interactive animation. I think there will be a high degree of 
interactivity and control. I hope so- because I intend to use it for 
games.

Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | 


what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: OT: animation [was Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express]

[erik hansen]

--- Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> BTW Richard Harris, director of _Who Framed
> Roger Rabbit_ published in 
> 2001 _The Animator's Survival Kit_. I have it
> in front of me and it is  truly a great book.
> 
> To do what you describe- combining video and
> animation, with full 
> control, I think you would have to use a
> combination of Quicktime, Gif 
> animation, and PNG frame sequences. Or some or
> all of those...

thanks for the information.
when all is said and done,
can you script where & when these things 
will happen from inside Revolution?

Erik



=
[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.erikhansen.org

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

OT: animation [was Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express]

[Alex Rice]

On Jan 12, 2004, at 5:50 PM, erik hansen wrote:
can we combine video and animation
a la Roger Rabbit, scripted in Revolution
and interactive at all times?
BTW Richard Harris, director of _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_ published in 
2001 _The Animator's Survival Kit_. I have it in front of me and it is 
truly a great book.

To do what you describe- combining video and animation, with full 
control, I think you would have to use a combination of Quicktime, Gif 
animation, and PNG frame sequences. Or some or all of those. If full 
control and interactivity was not needed I guess AfterEffects or 
something else could be used.

BTW Anyone interested in character animation, or 2D or 3D rendering, 
Flash, Director, or animation in general, keep an eye on announcements 
from Microsoft about Expression3 and LivingCels. Real soon hopefully.

Microsoft bought Creaturehouse last year, and their website is kind of 
shut-down, but you can get some old info about their apps here: 


The drawing programs Expression and LivingCels feature a technology 
named "skeletal strokes". . 
There are some illustrations and scientific papers at that URL that are 
very fascinating.

Skeletal strokes is a very innovative drawing technology. From the 
artist's point of view it really lends itself to expressively making 
animations, characters, scenery, etc. It's hard to describe how 
amazingly cool this software is.

Skeletal strokes can be higher order, i.e. defined in terms of other 
skeletal strokes. This can be used to easily build up paint strokes 
consisting of multitudes of body parts, organisms, plants, landscapes, 
whatever.

Or a skeletal stroke can be higher order but defined in terms of it's 
self. Then you have a recursively defined stroke, and you are painting 
with a fractal paint brush!

Or a skeletal stroke can be as refined a watercolor stroke or pen and 
ink.

Skeletal strokes also have features for anchoring, repeating segments, 
variable width, variable transparency, and multi-view strokes. The 
expressive possibilities are endless.

LivingCels can export movies to Quicktime, but it can also generate 
individual frames in TIFF, or in Expression3 format. So a movie could 
be converted to animated-gif 89a, or a sequence of PNG frames with full 
alpha-channel transparency. So a lot of possibilities for getting the 
animations into Revolution.

It is a 2D animation system, however I mention 3D because there is a 
lot of support for 2.5D animation in Expression. For instance, a 
multiple-view skeletal stroke with relative anchoring can give the 
appearance of a character rotating or moving in 3D. Also with texture 
mapping, perspective transformations and a mesh-warp grid, there is a 
lot of room for drawing in 3D without having to go actual 3D and create 
wireframe, objects, and physical models ala OpenGL- where you get (in 
theory) more realism in the rendering, but actually lose most of the 
expressive capability for character animation. Unless you are truly a 
master of Maya or these other extremely complex apps and you can bring 
life into 3D wireframe or rotoscoped models.

There are several 2D animation apps that kind of try to do what 
LivingCels does, like ToonBoom Studio, Moho, and others. But they just 
don't compare.

Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | 


what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express

[Alejandro Tejada]

on Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:50:43 -0800 (PST)
erik hansen wrote:

>can we combine video and animation
>a la Roger Rabbit, scripted in Revolution
>and interactive at all times?

Look at the site:

www.livingactors.com

These animated interactive characters use
openGL to render the figures. Surely,
you could find a way to communicate your
application with their program.

>the Mac world seminar showed the human
>side of Revolution: there are only so many
>people and a multitude of directions to
>profitably follow.

We need more programmers able to translate
their computer experience to the terms used by
MC/RR: handlers, commands, functions and externals.

Ah, of course, it helps a lot if they are
excellent writers of tutorials and help files.
And keep a website with their software.

al

=
Visit my site:
http://www.geocities.com/capellan2000/
Search the mail list:
http://mindlube.com/cgi-bin/search-use-rev.cgi

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express

[cteno4]

Erik,

well, the short answer is yes, the long answer is a lot of work, 
programming, quicktime fiddling, and it might not be as clean as you 
would like. your order is a tall one to have a simple solution right now. 
if you are just looking at producing the background video then imovie 
might do you fine. final cut doesnt do much at all that i am aware of in 
the interactive elements of quicktime. 

and yes i forgot to mention that finalcut express is really a great 
option to cut the costs down, but you still have the learning curve since 
its the same program, just a few advanced proceedures are cut out in it.

cheers,

jeff

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 1/12/04 8:54 PM

>thanks Sandy, Jeffrey, Malte, Andy.
>
>can we combine video and animation
>a la Roger Rabbit, scripted in Revolution
>and interactive at all times?
>
>the Mac world seminar showed the human
>side of Revolution: there are only so many
>people and a multitude of directions to
>profitably follow.
>
>we need to get things rolling ourselves
>as Kurt Kaufman did with his MIDI app.
>a few months ago he was asking for
>arcane information from the list and now
>that MIDI app is part of Revolution.
>
>Erik



Jeffrey H. Reynolds
6620 Michaels Dr.
Bethesda, MD  20817

301.469.8562

email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[Marian Petrides]

I'd second Jeff's comments.  I bought FCP and used it for a while until 
iMovie 2 (or was it 3?) came out.  Can't remember which feature(s) was 
missing in the original iMovie that made me feel I needed FCP but that 
was fixed in a later version of iMovie.   With recent revisions of 
iMovie, there's very little I need for my very simple video editing 
that can't be done in iMovie.

The main problem with FCP is that it is SO full-featured and complex 
that if you don't use it for a while you're almost starting back at 
square one relearning it.

Marian

On Jan 12, 2004, at 11:36 AM, cteno4 wrote:

Erik,

Both will make movies you can play, only difference is the scope of 
what
you can do with the
programs. kind of like mac paint (imovie) vs photoshop (final cut). 
final
cut gives you total editing control with all the bells and whistles of 
a
professional editing bay. imovie, while a great little program, only 
does
the basics of cuts, transitions, titles and limited audio control. both
will suck video off your dv camcorder with no problems (and back onto 
it
if you want to make tapes). if you not working with a dv camera/player
you will have to spend a couple of hundred for a ntsc to firewire (dv)
converter box (the dazzle box at about $200 is a fantastic box). if you
are just doing some simple video presentations that need some edits and
narration, you'll find imovie will make your pocket book very happy
(free) vs the final cut prices.

the other gotcha is learning curve. imovie is set up for most anyone to
be editing with it w/in 10 minutes. final cut, although easier than 
many
other professional editing packages, takes awhile to get use to and 
learn
all the tricks and techniques even when you only want to do some simple
tasks.

one other problem is that final cut lets you do so much you can easily
get carried away in the editing/effects and spend way more time on
something that may have just needed a couple of well placed, simple
cuts... with all the new tools in video editing today at the click of a
mouse, content is being replaced by effects very quickly (as evidenced 
by
all the pbs specials now, unfortunatly--but thats another soap box...)
and really making the final products look flashy, but loose all their
meat.

only other thing that might be useful to you is that the newest version
of final cut has a huge amount of new compression stuff that will let 
you
do much more tweaking of your final output mov file compression than
imovie will. imovie does the basic compressions and a decent job of it,
so if you're just doing a simple job it may fit the bill. I have done a
few cdrom and exhibit projects that had movies made from imovie and
finalcut and they looked fine as quicktimes with it being hard to tell
which was which.

my suggestion would be to spend an hour or two and try making one of 
your
more complicated movies on imovie and see if it works. if it does then
you have just saved a lot of money and time and wait to buy finalcut 
when
you really need it for a project!

best of luck,

jeff



Jeffrey H. Reynolds
6620 Michaels Dr.
Bethesda, MD  20817
301.469.8562

email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express

[erik hansen]

--- aj445 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Also, there is Final Cut Express--
> much less expensive than FCP, yet has
> most features of the high-end model.

thanks Sandy, Jeffrey, Malte, Andy.

can we combine video and animation
a la Roger Rabbit, scripted in Revolution
and interactive at all times?

the Mac world seminar showed the human
side of Revolution: there are only so many
people and a multitude of directions to
profitably follow.

we need to get things rolling ourselves
as Kurt Kaufman did with his MIDI app.
a few months ago he was asking for
arcane information from the list and now
that MIDI app is part of Revolution.

Erik



=
[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.erikhansen.org

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[erik hansen]

thanks Andy,


i was looking for an overview. contrast
and compare, personal take y so forth.

Erik

=
[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.erikhansen.org

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro-- and Final Cut Express

[aj445]

Also, there is Final Cut Express-- much less expensive than FCP, yet has
most of the features of the high-end model.

Sandy 

___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[cteno4]

Erik,

Both will make movies you can play, only difference is the scope of what 
you can do with the
programs. kind of like mac paint (imovie) vs photoshop (final cut). final 
cut gives you total editing control with all the bells and whistles of a 
professional editing bay. imovie, while a great little program, only does 
the basics of cuts, transitions, titles and limited audio control. both 
will suck video off your dv camcorder with no problems (and back onto it 
if you want to make tapes). if you not working with a dv camera/player 
you will have to spend a couple of hundred for a ntsc to firewire (dv) 
converter box (the dazzle box at about $200 is a fantastic box). if you 
are just doing some simple video presentations that need some edits and 
narration, you'll find imovie will make your pocket book very happy 
(free) vs the final cut prices.

the other gotcha is learning curve. imovie is set up for most anyone to 
be editing with it w/in 10 minutes. final cut, although easier than many 
other professional editing packages, takes awhile to get use to and learn 
all the tricks and techniques even when you only want to do some simple 
tasks. 

one other problem is that final cut lets you do so much you can easily 
get carried away in the editing/effects and spend way more time on 
something that may have just needed a couple of well placed, simple 
cuts... with all the new tools in video editing today at the click of a 
mouse, content is being replaced by effects very quickly (as evidenced by 
all the pbs specials now, unfortunatly--but thats another soap box...) 
and really making the final products look flashy, but loose all their 
meat.

only other thing that might be useful to you is that the newest version 
of final cut has a huge amount of new compression stuff that will let you 
do much more tweaking of your final output mov file compression than 
imovie will. imovie does the basic compressions and a decent job of it, 
so if you're just doing a simple job it may fit the bill. I have done a 
few cdrom and exhibit projects that had movies made from imovie and 
finalcut and they looked fine as quicktimes with it being hard to tell 
which was which.

my suggestion would be to spend an hour or two and try making one of your 
more complicated movies on imovie and see if it works. if it does then 
you have just saved a lot of money and time and wait to buy finalcut when 
you really need it for a project!

best of luck,

jeff



Jeffrey H. Reynolds
6620 Michaels Dr.
Bethesda, MD  20817

301.469.8562

email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[Andre Garzia]

On Jan 12, 2004, at 4:57 AM, erik hansen wrote:

doe anyone have direct experience editing
videos with iMovie vs Final Cut Pro and
running the videos from Revolution?
thanks, Erik


	Erik,

Yes, I did it. I can help :D

Andre Alves Garzia  2003  BRAZIL
http://www.soapdog.org
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Re: iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[Malte Brill]

Hi Erik,

I have. I see not many differences between the exported movies, if the
settings are the same, but Final Cut (Pro 1.25) saves me a lot of headaches
when I render my movies, especially when it comes to animations. It´s great
to import a Photoshop Document with Layers into Final Cut and then Animate
each layer independently on the Timeline. If you only want to edit few
movies iMovie is IMHO a very good choice, but if you want to add animation
within your movies or do cutting a lot I defenetly recommend Final Cut Pro.

Regards,

Malte

___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

iMovie vs Final Cut Pro

[erik hansen]

doe anyone have direct experience editing
videos with iMovie vs Final Cut Pro and
running the videos from Revolution?

thanks, Erik

=
[EMAIL PROTECTED]http://www.erikhansen.org

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes
http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus
___
use-revolution mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution