Array Modifier Demo Video and .blend
Campbell Barton and Matt Ebb have put together a nice video demonstrating the new array modifier in Blender 2.42. You might have seen this after reading about Matt’s post, but we thought some closer attention was needed!
Campbell ‘Ideasman’ Barton showed me a very cool .blend file he made to demonstrate Blender’s Array Modifier, new in the upcoming Blender version 2.42. I thought I’d light, comp and render it to make a nice demo movie to use in the 2.42 release documentation. The white 3D axes are the controller objects.
What’s even cooler than the video (if possible) is the .blend file that Matt posted with it. It’s definitely worth a look since you can see how not only the animation was done but you can take a look at the compositing nodes to see how a Blender master does it.
If you don’t feel like opening the .blend file and exploring the scene, I took the liberty, using the opensource and free CamStudio screen recorder for Windows, to breifly go over of how the basic animation was controlled: ArrayDemoExplained-XviD.avi (10.7 MB Xvid – remember to right click and Save As).
Thank you Eugene – this is why i love blendernation so much :)
And for those interested in H264, here is the same movie rendered from Blender directly to a H264 AVI:
http://www.ruicampos.com/fl_tmp/movies/arraydemo-h264.avi
Have fun
PS: The file is just a bit larger then the XVID one, but I think it has more quality …
Missed one thing, this H264 is just a blend render, not the explaining …
somehow this xvid movie didnt want to play in MPC (sound only) (went fine in G-spot though). I did a direct stream copy using virtualdub, and now it plays nicely!
(I have xvid 1.1 and latest mpc )
oh, thanks for the movie :)
Well the still looks nice but what is so special about the Array modifier? Aren’t you getting the same results if you use the dublivert function?
Thank You Eugene. Clear and simple!
@mlc and Christo
Thanks! I’m glad someone liked it :)
@Rui (rcas)
Thanks for the enocde!
@mattie
I would like for these things XviD videos to work “out of the box,” sorry you had to work for it. I used the XviD 1.1 codec to encode it. Anyone have any thoughts on how to make it work properly in MPC?
Of the topic, but I think about it enough to post about:
About the codec and the quality, I wrestle constantly with this. I started using XviD only because it was easy to encode directly from CamStudio (i.e. it’s easier for me to just click the stop button on CamStudio and it makes the movie). I actually toned the quality down to reduce the file size because I think the videos need smaller file sizes to download quickly (especially for dial-up users) rather than “perfect” quality.
@well:
You might want to actually check out the video first…
Thanks for the video Eugene, it helped a bit to understand the array modifier.
The great thing about Array modifiers is that they still work with Yafray! And, of course that you can apply them to the shape and then deform them with curves for even more fun! :) Here’s one that I did when this article was first reported to BlenderNation:
http://www.intellidesign.org/blog/?p=54
Eugene: Doesn’t CamStudio have like a raw AVI output? Why not just record the raw output and then open it up with VirtualDub and then export it to DivX or Xvid at a higher quality setting? Either way we all enjoy the video tutorials! :)
hey ! great thing !
Thanks.
MPC – media player classic ? Then try k-lite codec pack.
http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm
I think it will help.
sorry for bothering, I guess it’s probably an MPC player problem..? I just tested on my desktop at home. I had the same problem. I upgraded both mpc and xvid to latest version: same. I can play it with windows media player and winamp though.
About k-lite codec pack: this is the one I was using earlier on my laptop. On my desktop, there was never a k-lite codec pack before…
the only weird thing I notice about your movie, is that is has a framerate of 200.00fps?
I agree with Prince to have camstudio first dump in some raw format (or some fast lossless encoder like huffyuv), and process it to xvid afterwards using virtualdub for better (and more compatible ;)) results.
But I have no trubles – all is plaing and in MPC and Winamp… codec trouble i think.
Try k-lite…
thanks!
I made two tests.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sihd7AwlY_s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ5GA-X6uG8
CamStudio does have a raw AVI option, it was just easier to go directly to XviD since that way I don’t need to do another step with VDub. I’ll try VDub next time and see if that alleviates the compatability issues. As far a quality, I lowered it on purpose to diminish the file size.
Amazing, can’t wait to use this in some upcoming video work, HooWoo
Nice Demo reel mofx! It has a great mix of styles.
Thanks Eugene, appreciate it!!
@deathblood
I just saw the videos…. nice work. Love the shader.
Really cool, but when I tried it, and did render, the cubes material is all funky before the cubes fly out of each other, or when ever they are overlayed
@Paul
I know what you mean. Since the object (in the case here, a cube) is officially arrayed once you apply the array modifier, it is rendered as an arrayed object even when you haven’t moved anything. So the render you will see is crazy because blender trying to render all the arrayed objects at once since it is “officially” many meshes occupying the same space (you can see this effect go away if you make the array count “1” since you remove the other meshes occupying the same space). You can see how Matt/Campbell resolved this issue in their .blend file. They created a non-arrayed version of the cube and put it on a different layer so it seemlessly replaced the arrayed cube when it becomes a single cube.
Does that help?
@Eugene
Thank you. I would never have though of that work-around. I’ve got all sorts of Ideas buzzing around my head for using this.
Awsome:)