Monster test

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:13 pm

I wanted to test if I could create a kind-of realistic scene with a spider-like monster (sounds realistic right?) so I grabbed a moody background, cut-out some photos to create a weird looking monster, added bones, smoke and a camera move in Moho and I want to share this little test animation:

http://www.nobudgetvideo.com/moho/monster.wmv

4 seconds of your life you'll never get back... Basically I wanted to figure out how to create special effects without practical effects and/or intricate 3D animation. Too bad particles render quite slow, it's a simple yet effective feature in Moho.

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Post by **Lost Marble** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 10:36 pm

Cool! I like to see images used in Moho animations. Vectors can sometimes be too "clean". Is this animation going to turn into something longer?

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Mon Jun 13, 2005 11:29 pm

Nice!!!

I have always wondered why more people don´t see how Moho would be great for photo or image-type animations. (There is a definite lack of photo animation examples here at the Share Your Work forum).
My own opinion, but I think Moho is almost better suited for photo animations than vector-type cartoon animations.
(If Moho only had better drawing tools I would probably change my mind.)

gochris · Post by **gochris** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:14 am

That was really good. Tracking in on the monster helps the drama.
I'm always amazed and encouraged by the cool things people do with Moho.
Thanks!

Gochris

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 10:41 am

Thanks, and it does seem I'm one of the few using bitmap graphics in this way in Moho and I can't understand why others don't use it more. The bones are great for this, this clip was low quality but the entire face was distorted with bones, mouth, eyebrows, even the nose for some fake head turning, Moho is an excellent image warping tool.

"Is this animation going to turn into something longer?"
It was just a proof-of-concept, I had something like the Carpenter movie "The Thing" in mind (you know when you've seen it, "you gotta be f***ing kidding me!", priceless!) and simulating intricate effects using simple methods. Practical effects are expensive and take much time, 3D often looks too clean. This way some real-life photos with all realistic texture and lighting features can be used to create a digital scene that doesn't look digital.

I don't think this monster will see some prolonged action but I am inspired to do more with this. I've had a fun idea for a long time and maybe I'll test drive that soon.

Thanks for the responses!

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Regul8R · Post by **Regul8R** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 11:37 am

for such a short clip, yo've managed to create an athmosphere of dread.

freaky monster, looks great

btw - john carpenters the Thing rocks. the originals cool too.

thies · Post by **thies** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 4:46 pm

i love it,
i made a 2 minute film in moho where i animated my sketches, all images and bones. the rendering of the partikels took to long for me and it was to hard to control so i used simpel blurred shapes, witch worked well i think.
i love to show you but i dont know how to , its 150 mb....
does anyone got a good solution?

nobudget · Post by **nobudget** » Tue Jun 14, 2005 7:00 pm

Thies, compress it with an encoder like Divx, Xvid or Windows Media Encoder, all free (divx?) encoders that can reduce file size drastically. Or the Riva encoder, also free and simple to use http://www.rivavx.com/index.php?encoder&L=3

Reindert.
www.nobudgetvideo.com

Kingman65 · Post by **Kingman65** » Wed Jun 15, 2005 10:09 pm

Way Cool! I really hope you make this into something longer. 4 seconds was not enough. Great job!

If you are not going to do more with this, you should give to the group to play with. A great chance for others to learn what image manipulating can do. Plus it is just to cool to let it fade away.

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 11:30 am

Lost Marble wrote:Vectors can sometimes be too "clean".

Hmmm.....Vector drawings don´t have to be too "clean", it´s just that with the drawing tools in Moho that is just about all one can produce. And since importing from other vector drawing programs can cause many problems (or don´t work at all) one can´t really bring much into Moho other than simple, too "clean" vector drawings.

Here are some some samples of very nice "unclean" vector drawings from the vector drawing program Acrylic:

Could one create this type of vector artwork with Moho?

thies · Post by **thies** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 9:41 pm

I'm impressed, I don't know how you did this, its beautiful. wouldnt it be great if you could animate this stuff?
i dont know if its possible to this kind of art directly in moho.
is anybody experimenting in this direction in moho? maybe by drawing with self designed line types or somethign like that? (thats possible, isnt it?)
if so, please show me what you are doing! i love to see more stuff mike this, especialy made in moho!
thies.

Toontoonz · Post by **Toontoonz** » Thu Jun 16, 2005 10:13 pm

I hope I did not create the wrong impression, but I did not create the art from the Acrylic program (above), those are samples that come with the program - great art! (Lots of other nice samples come with the program to play around with.)
Acrylic is the "new" Expression vector drawing program in beta version from Microsoft/Creature House.
I, too, wish that one could draw or import in and then animate vector art like that in Moho. It would take animation to a new level.

(I have a hard enough time trying to figure out how to set up a newly created brush in Moho and get it to work like I thought it would work.)

Here is sample of the type of art I draw (this done by me using the vector illustration program Adobe Illustrator):

Unfortunately, I can´t import it into Moho to animate it.

MarkBorok · Post by **MarkBorok** » Tue Jun 28, 2005 3:34 pm

All very nice work.

I haven't really tried using bitmaps in Moho, one of my reservations being that they lose quality when you zoom in (unless they're at a very high resolution, which seems like it should slow things down a lot). I don't know how good Moho is at rotating/distorting bitmaps. I do like all the ways in which vector artwork can be made to look less vector-like in Moho and I think it would be nice to see more of this in future versions. It's very obvious that this is a major concern for the folks at Lost Marble. Maybe one problem is that we don't use these features enough?

I think Expression/Acrylic uses bitmap images as its base "brushstrokes" and assigns them to vector paths. Am I wrong about this?

rpc9943 · Post by **rpc9943** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 10:15 pm

images imho is the way to go, at least for me since I use XARA and theres no comparison

at low res it looked fine to me, I think since im using xara i'll just render them out at high res and done.

Easy, no need to play with moho's stuff, im completely uninterested with moho's no offense.

RonC

red hamster · Post by **red hamster** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:50 am

Kick ass! Looks like a real 3D animation.

Monster test

Monster test

nice

wow