Cool! It’s great that you’re making these available.

Joe

Thankyou for posting these even though they are so large in resolution. I’ve been very pleased with these first three so far. i can’t wait to see what’s in store for the last of the four. I hope it’s something verse-related! :3

Loving every single moment of everyone of them – really makes me want to be there next time. Keep up the good work.

Great work there guys!

I always have a hard time making the area around the eye ball. This
demo was a particular eye opener on that part. (Bad pun, I know :-P)

Video quality is really good and so far the the audio was very clear, too.

Just one suggestion, why use a camera to make a video of the demos?
Wouldn’t it have been easier to use a screen capturing software to record
directly off the framebuffer?

Anyway, keep it up!!

Thanks Bart for the vids, Although I don’t know if the ‘silent treatment’ was the most informative for leaning purposes :)

And I guess no screencapture software because it slows down the PC it captures ;)

Hi ! Thank you a lot for these very interesting Videos !

For my own, as I have very few experience of spoken english, and as each speaker has is own accent, I often have difficulties to understand what is said.

With a mute video, I haven’t this problem !o)

I have been impressed by the modelling speed, and I guess that there are some keyboard shortcuts that I have not yet discovered after two years using Blender every day !

Great job!

Philippe.

@bart, @joeri

Thanks for the answers. I didn’t realize screen capturing was that much more work than cam recording. The “analoge detour” just seemed a bit odd to me.

ooooo, I’ve been looking forward to this one. Thanks Bart.

I have in the past used Archos devices for doing hardware screen capture, but that is probably quite an expensive solution.

Very good Blender demo but I kinda missed the sound.
I hope @ndy introduced himself to the audience at least and thanked them afterward – might have seemed a bit rude otherwise.
Yup ok so on a roll and waiting for no.4 bart…
Thanks again for your efforts.
Will you be posting Ton’s full speech sometime?

@Roubal

It’s in XviD actually (open source ISO-compliant MPEG-4). And I can easily convert those files to (pretty much) any file type I like using utilities like transcode. I have to say though, I’m not really into using open source software for its own sake. I like supporting OSS and I work on and donate to a lot of open source projects myself, but I don’t think people should feel obliged to use it if it doesn’t suit their needs (isn’t that why Blender can output to any codec you have on your computer?). That’s my two cents anyway.

Out of interest, does anyone know of a hardware based screen capture that codes to something more open than XviD? I wouldn’t mind trying one out myself to see how it compares.

Cowdude is right.

Making the videos available for download is great.

I’ve tried to look at some stream video on several websites, and it is often clipped and difficult to play, and often more difficult to save on disk if you want to review them later.

So Thanks again !o)

I use a Canopus ADVC-100 for capturing video from analog devices. It converts any analog signal (s-video, or composite video) into DV on the fly (it acts as a pass-through) which can then be captured the same way you’d capture footage from a DV camera (through a computer firewire port).

I’ve used it to convert some videos to DVD where I was just having too many problems trying to do a direct conversion due to framerate mismatches and codec issues. I just played them back on the laptop, connected the S-video out to the ADVC, and then the ADVC to the firewire port on my desktop. The quality turned out quite nice. I’ve also used it to capture footage from VHS and Hi-8 cameras. It also works in reverse, so you can do ‘print to tape’ of your DV footage if you want to make VHS copies (not as important anymore as DVD is a pretty universal distribution format).

For something like these, you would end up with downsampling (NTSC DV is 720×480) so you probably wouldn’t be able to read buttons (unless your presenter system was running a relatively low res like 800×600) but you *would* get a clean transfer. If you ran your microphone to it, you would also not have to worry about sync issues that you sometimes have to worry about with audio captured through a soundcard and video captured through other means – as the audio and video are synchronized together into the DV stream that goes to the computer.

None of this is a complaint about the existing videos … just an option for the future since that discussion came up. :)

As for recording the siggraph demos… siggraph ended last thursday, so its a bit late to capture them differently. Maybe make a note for next years siggraph to mention it while plans for siggraph are being put together.
Thanks again bart for providing these files! They are great!

Wow, awesome. I wish I’d been around the booth for that demo!

Some miniDV cameras have analogue inputs wich you can use to record analogue video to MiniDV tape.
This way you could use the video-out of a graphic card and connect it to the analogue input of the camera.
Once in DV tape, you can easily transfer the digital video to the computer for encoding without quality loss.
Of course, you’d need an extra camera (one for the live conference and another for the screen capturing).

No sound from both mirrors, what a shame!

Hmm, a modelling question:

The way @ndy modelled was pretty impressing but is that really a good way to start? If you first model the face means that you have to add the head at the end (or extrude a sphere…)

I made a quick modeltest the way @ndy did which was working well for modelling only the face – i can´t imagine how I could “add the head to the face” if I don´t start with a sphere or a “to sphered” cube…

Maybe someone could give me a short tip? “Ich sitz quasi voll auf der Leitung” – just to say it in my native language ;-)

@leif: He used the subsurf-modifier along with the mirror-modifier and some extrudes and a couple of cuts… that wouldn´t be the problem. But I can´t image how to add the head to the “standalone face” – I think it´s the wrong method to extrude the head, isn´t it? The head would never be that round IMO!

Any ideas?

Okay well I know TV shows like the old Screen Savers used the same method you did for their tv shows so don’t feel bad.

BUT maybe get a graphics card with a TV out and run that TV out cable to a mythtv box or something? Some sort of Tivo type deal may work. Thats mostly hardware based though and you might want to even run the mic imput into the box also.

Umm another route may also be used a fixed camera shooting staight to a fixed monitor. Like lets say a lcd screen then the person could slowly manuver the camera around the screen zooming in and out appropiatly.(the exact technique the screen savers used) But like peopler before me stated the thing that makes these so cool is the fact that you see both the man doing it and talking but you see and hear the conference.

In my opinon just put 1 camera up in a fixed position point more straight. And make sure the talker is off to the side in front of a black background. Also you could for more a tutorials sake you could transcribe the entire thing in tutorial form so while people watched they could follow along? And since you already use what seems to be flex for the picture you could make streaming video with pause and the step he is at next to it or on the side using the tutorial as he goes.

But I know bart you do this yourself and its already alot of work that you yourself do so these are all mere suggestions. But if you’d like maybe we can discuss some options as to I’d might be able to do some of the flex stuff that is if you use flex.

Well goodluck :)

Pereginre

“If anyone has suggestions about the best solution (preferably a hardware based solution – I don’t trust screen capturing enough), I’d love to hear about them.”

My videocard has a video output (S-video, which most modern videocards have), with a simple adapter connects to my VCR.

@ndy I don’t buy that. I think you are a great modeler. If you are mostly in a dark mood then I think that I know where to get help :)

@Tom
Select the edges in the forehead and the side of the face down to about the ear. Switch to side view. Extrude, move the new edges back and rotate them so they radiate from about where the earhole will be. Do this 4 or 5 times, until your new edges are horizontal (Take the time to round out the first new edges before you do the next ones, saves time). Thats the back of the head. Then extrude straight down once or twice for the back of the neck.

Take the edges along the jaw line, extrude and scale in a bit. Do this once or twice for the underplane of the jaw.

Take a single edge near the ear hole and jaw line, and extrude a seried of faces toward the notch between the clavicles. Extrude the back edge of the jaw underplane down for the throat.

Make connecting faces as needed. Shape the back of the neck and the jaw/throat. Takes about ten minutes. Gets faster with practice.

@ndy, that was great.

are You planning to make, a step by step written tutorial, from this video tutorial?

Andy is very talented and I know Blender can be made to do some fantastic things so apart from the way I saw @ndy work uv, that demo to me was completely useless.

@lief:

Original Question:

How did he start this. Hard to make out. How does he get the eye socket mesh in the begining to have curved lines instead of angular ones? Is it parented to the first object he made. Is he using an array? I wish he would have spoken and walked us through this because it is so awesome….

Response:

Until about 5 minutes ago, I had the same question, so I played around with subsurf modeling a little bit, and the modifier (I assume you know how to start the subsurf modifier in blender). Well, after you add it, notice the three buttons to the right of the Modifier name (in this case, subsurf). Click on the rightmost one. Next to that rightmost button, a new checkbox appears. Click it and all of your edges and faces curve to match the subsurfing, and then all of your vertices are attached to the subsurf rather than the original model shape.

For the mirroring, just add the mirror mod and select the axis to mirror around. Very cool.

@ralf: “Andy did his work in complete silence”

JFYI, second link is dead. cheers