SOMETIMES MY LINKS FOR FILES ARE CHANGED BY THE SERVER MY FILES ARE ON SO PM ME IF ANYTHING CHANGES AND I WILL REPOST
please tell me how well i did on this half of the tutorial so if there is something to change on this post i can change it on the next!
well i posted a
matrix bullet thing on the pluggin page and so i'm going to give a tutorial on it.
this is a tutorial for anyone who is willing to learn how to use a 3d program but this effect is only for
matrix bullet trails. (if you want to learn other things just post)
first what you want to do is download blender 2.25 from this web site
http://blender3d.com/cms/Older_versions.283.0.html (you should use 2.25 because i think that it is the most user friendly) now when you open it it will look all confusing and i mainly statrted out playing with it or you can read tutorials on the
www.blender3d.com website
this is going to go really fast so pay close attention.
first: make sure you know where the video is that you want to ad the effect to.
second: (now this is my first time trying to give advice so just post if anything is confusing) in the lower half of the screen, there are lots of little buttons. the ones i want you to pay attention to are the buttons that have pictures (these are just some of them) a lightbulb, a radioactive symbol, a red ball, a leopard pattern, and a globe
click on the globe button and it should make the screen with all the confusing buttons go away. HOORAY! you just got into the world buttons. on the bar (where the world button is) there is a little white bar next to a box that has a one in it.
click and hold on this button and it will prompt you if you want to 'add new'.
release your click with your cursor over the 'add new' and more scary buttons should appear.
if you know about colors and alpha and mist and stars distance ray trace and other crazy things this might be easier for you and i'm going slow. BUT STICK WITH ME HERE!
now we are going to leave the world buttons by pressing F6 (this is a shortcut to the texture buttons (the leopard skin pattern in the middle bar))
you are now adding your movie to the 'world' in blender. click on the white 'add new' bar again to add a texture to your world.
this is where we will load you movie. next to the 'add new' bar there will appear a box that has Tex.001 in it. name your texture 'movie' (so that we don't get confused when adding lots of textures later on) among the buttons that appeared click on the one that says 'IMAGE'.
now click on load image and find the directory of your movie. ( there is a white bar that you click and hold on to view the different directories)
once you have found the location of you movie click on you it ande then press load.
now in the texture window (the one where you previously clicked 'IMAGE') click the 'movie' button.
this will tell blender to recognize that your movie is in fact a movie (ATTENTION: IF THE PROGRAM TELLS YOU THAT THIS IS NOT AN AVI THE POST HERE SO THAT I CAN INSTRUCT YOU THROUGH THE NEWER VERSIONS OF BLENDER) underneatht the directory of your movie there is a button that says 'frames'
SORRY FOR THE SMUDGE
if no number appeared next to it telling you how long your movie is either wait or press f10 and then press f3 (HOW LONG YOUR MOVIE IS AND HOW MUCH RAM YOU HAVE WILL EFFECT THE IMPORT TIME INTO BLENDER). now your frames # should be next to the frames button. click and hold on the frames button and move your mouse to the right so that the # on the frames button matches the # next to it. you may have to click on the left and right side of the button to go by single frames so that your #'s mathc exactly.
now it is time to go back to the world buttons. when you get there press the 'paper' button above the image window.
then on the left side of the window press 'hori' and 'zen do'
now you should see the first frame of your movie in the box that used to be black and blue.
now what you need to do is to move your mouse into the upper half of the blender screen (the 3d window) and press shift F7.
this should bring up the background pic screen.
click on the background pic button and then at the bottom of the little clump of buttons and click and hold on the lower 'add new' button and release on the "movie" texture (your movie).
press shift F5 to get back into the 3d window. press zero on you number pad (NOT ON THE NUMBERS ABOVE THE KEYS THIS WILL CHANGE YOUR LAYER) and now you shold see your movie in the middle of your screen.
by pressing the left and right arrow keys you can move through each frame of your movie. when animating a movie with camera movement (mainly a movie thats not a special effects test) you have to go frame by frame to animate your 3d objects to move with your camera movement.
anyway... go back to the first frame (if you have looked through your movie by using the arrow keys) by pressing the down arrow to sift through the frames in incriments of 11 until you reach the first frame (you can tell what frame your in by looking at the box next to the little white bar 'add new' button. )
now it's time for the ULTRA CONFUSING PART OF DEATH! not really... in the middle of you screen there shold be a pink line. Don't worry about mine not having an image i removed it so that you can see everything clearly
whenever there is an object in your 3d window outlined in a bright pink it means that the object is selected. since this is a default plane we should delete it. press delet and it should ask you if you want to delete selcted. click on the 'delete selected' box and delete the default plane.
SAVE!!!!!SAVE!!!!!SAVE!!!!!
THE BULLET
--------------
Download this file.
http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/4171ee76_17025/bc/My+Documents/matrix+bullet.2blend.blend?bf9lIdBBDu88g2N4
It is a bullet that I modeled for you so that I don’t have to type a million pages of tutorial. This is just a mesh bullet with a gold color, the particle emitter (which will emit the bullet trails) and the trail bullet) . If you want a different color bullet or need modifications just p.m.me. now don’t open the new file. What wee are going to do is load the bullet mesh into your current program. In the current blender project, go to file and press append find the ‘
matrix bullet.2blend.blend’ file and click on it.
Now click on ‘object’
Then click on bullet and hit load
Now you have the bullet loaded into the scene. Do the same thing for SurfDonut and particles. Now the particle thing won’t appear because the program automatically separates the different types of objects you append into the program. So press the ~ and you should be able to see the particle thingy now.The particles will appear in a different part of the screen so right click on it
And press G. G grabs an object in the 3d window so that you can move it. now move it to the back of the bullet mesh.
Now with the particle thing still selected, hold shift and right click on the bullet. Now press Ctrl P and press parent when it asks.
What you just did was connect the particle emitter to the bullet. Now right click on the donut and right click on the particle. Parent these together. Now since the donut is connected to the particle thingy then that means that whenever you move the bullet both the particle emitter and the donut move with it.
(make sure that you are in mesh mode, not solid mode) Press 7 (number pad) press A (this either deselects everything selected or selects everything) and then left click above the bullet. The sniper like cursor should appear above the mesh.
Now press 1 (number pad) to go to front view and click a couple of lines above the bullet.
Press the space bar. If if the menu is on a different category other that 'ADD' then just move your mouse to the left of the small menu to get back to the add menu.
Click where it says lamp and a pink circle should appear where the crosshair cursor is.
Go to the lamp buttons (F4 for a shortcut)
IF NO BUTTONS APPEAR JUST RIGHT CLICK ON THE LAMP. Now Press Hemi.
This will make it so that we can see our bullet when we render it. hold shift and right click on the bullet. Parent the lamp to the bullet.
This is so that you can see your bullet wherever it goes!
Now comes your part in the tutorial. I’m just going to give you the basics of animating objects in blender and you come back when your done and finish the tutorial.
ANIMATION
-----------------
Right click on the bullet and press G. this is the grab tool. You can move your object in certain directions depending your view in the 3d window. Now press R. this is rotate. You can change the direction you are rotating the object (while still in rotate mode) by pressing X, Y or Z. this changes the axis that you rotate the object on. Click to stop rotating. Now press S. this changes the size of the object. Play around and change the size of the object.
Whenever you want an object to move in your movie you have to go to the frame right before it comes on so that the animation starts right when you want it to. I will walk you through making the bullet move at an angle away from the camera. (it is easy to get remove the movement of an object when we are done so don’t worry about having to start this all over again ) Now press 0 (number pad) to activate the camera view. If you can’t see your bullet press – to zoom out (you can also press + to zoom in, what a concept!) Move your bullet to the left side of the camera (the bullet should be facing to the right. If not press R and then Z and move your mouse until it looks like it is facing perfectly to the right.)
since this isn’t supposed to go with your movie go back to the first frame if you aren’t there already. Make sure that that your bullet is selected (pink) press 7 (number pad) and rotate it so that it is facing half away from the camera. Make sure that you only have the bullet selected (i know i have all of them selected but this is a picture for another part later on but it went with this part(i forgot to take a screenshot for this so bear with me))
Now press I. This brings up a menu of what you want to lock to this frame (Loc = Location Rot = Rotate Size = Size the others we won’t worry about now) so since we are not changing the size of the bullet Click on LocRot (this locks the Location and Rotation of your object to frame 1)
Now press the up arrow 5 times. You should now be in frame 51.
Hold control and press your middle mouse button and zoom out a little and also hold shift and the middle mouse button so your bullet is near the bottom of your screen. This will make it easier for us to animate the bullet later on.
now move your bullet to about here.
Press I again and Loc Rot
Now press the down arrow and go back to frame 1. The way you watch your animation without having to render it or pressing left and right a million times is by pressing Alt A. this begins an unrendered animation in your 3d screen. Watch as the bullet moves smoothly from the left to the right of your screen.
YOU HAVE JUST LEARNED BASIC ANIMATION HOORAY! *throws confetti*
Now to delete this animation from your bullet is this. Move your mouse into the buttons window (where all of the world, edit, material etc. buttons are) and press Shift F6. This is what it should look like.
Now click on the X next to the word ‘oblpo’
IF YOU WANT YOUR BULLET TO GO BEHING ANYTHING P.M. ME SO I CANT TEACH YOU HOW TO DO THIS!
If you want multiple bullets in your film, decide this before you start animation!
IF YOU DON”T WANT MULTIPLE BULLETS THEN DON”T DO WHAT IT SAYS JUST READ IT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE AND START DOING THE TUTORIAL AGAIN WHEN YOU SEE START HERE
Press B. this makes your cursor turn into crosshairs. Left click and drag around the bullet, lamp, donut and particle emitter. Make sure you have all of them.
Now press Shift D to duplicate the selected objects and move your mouse away from the current bullet. Now if you don’t want to deal with multiple bullets on one layer then press M and click on the box to the right of the current selected box.
These are layers. The first box is the first layer. Going from left to right the layers go 1,2,3,4,5, etc. click ok when you have the second layer selected. You have just moved your bullet to the second layer and can animate it without having anything else in the way. To get to any other layer just press the corresponding number above your letter keys or click on the little boxes on the left of the bar with the material, global, texture pictures.
When you want to render all of the bullets that you’ve animated on different layers (if your bullets are on the same layer, then don’t worry about this) press the little ~ above the TAB key. This will show all of the layers in blender.
START HERE
Do your thing with animation, locking the bullet where ever you want it to go. One thing with movies is when you have camera movement and you have your bullet coming across the screen the bullet stays the same but the camera moves. The way to fix this is by moving your 3d camera the way the camera in the film moves so that your bullet doesn’t mess up the film.
I’ll give you some time to animate……………………….Ok!
Now it is time to render. In the display buttons (F10) there is a button called OSA
This button (if pressed) eliminates the pixely lines of your objects depending on how many samples you tell it to take (like when you use a graphing calculator and make a graph, it eliminates the pixelyness *not a word…heh*) The 5, 8, 11, and 16 beneath the OSA button re how many samples you want it to take (how smooth you want your object is to appear.) HOWEVER! The rendering will take really long if you use OSA so decide if you want your movie today or not.
If you look at the bottom right hand corner of the display buttons there is a button that has the word TARGA on it.
Click on the targa button and move your mouse over AVI Raw and click.
This will render your movie as an avi instead of just single frames. You can also change the frame rate by clicking the button underneath it.
But you don’t have to. DON”T RENDER YET! MOVE ALL OF YOUR DONUTS AND PARTICLE EMITTERS TO LAYER TWO! EVEN ONES ON DIFFERENT LAYERS!
NOW MOVE ALL OF YOUR BULLETS AND LAMPS TO LAYER ONE!!!!!! Make sure you got all of them the particle emitters are pretty small.
Now press the ANIM button and render ONLY LAYER 1 as an animation.
I’ll give you a little bit of time………OK!
Now press ~ . click on one bullet (since all the others are copies then they have the same material) then go into the material buttons (F5) and turn the bullet black by moving the Ref slider to zero.
You also have to move the Spec slider to zero.
Now go to your world buttons and press the clear button to the left of the hori and zendo buttons.
Next move the slider HoB at the bottom to 0
Now render your movie and all you should see is a black background and when your bullets come on all you should see is the gray bullet trails.
Now Press ANIM button to render your new movie.
ADDING THE WARP EFFECT
---------------------------------------
Now that you have both of your movies rendered at the very top of the screen there are two things that say SCR: screen.001 and SCE: 1.
Click and hold the ‘add new’ button to the left of the SCR one and change it to screen.002
This is where we will add the warp effect to your movie. MAKE SURE THAT YOU ARE ON FRAME 1 Press Shift A and click on movie.
Find your movie rendered with the bullet only and load it.
When you load it a long bar will appear. Make sure that the triangle on the left of this bar says 1 (this shows you what frame your movie is in. the triangle at the end of the long rectangle in the end of your movie frame)
Now do the same thing with the movie where everything is black except the bullet trails.(don't worry about the fact that there are two bars. just act like theres only one there
The next two links are the plugin that will do the warp effect for us one for Windows and the other for Linux
IF YOU HAVE WINDOWS DOWNLOAD THIS
http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/4171ee76_17025/bc/My+Documents/warp.dll?bfNTIdBBczsNUQ1i
IF YOU HAVE LINUX DOWNLOAD THIS
http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/4171ee76_17025/bc/My+Documents/warp.so?bfNTIdBBterqT53w
Now in blender hold shift and right click on the top movie first and then the bottom movie. now press Shift A one more time but this time click plugin and load the plugin you downloaded. For Windows it is WARP.DLL for Linux it is WARP.SO
Move the plugin to above both of the movies with the left triangle on the first fame.
Find a frame when the bullet comes on and you should now see the warp effect!
If you don’t like how much it warps the background or if it doesn’t warp the background enough then right click on the warp plugin and press N. this will bring up a window like this.
DO NOT CHANGE THE OPACITY BECAUSE THIS WILL MESS UP THE PICTURE! Only use the warp slider and click ok to see the new warp setting. You can do as many times as you want. Now that you have the warp effect the way you want it go to the Display Buttons (F10) and below the ANIM button click Do Sequence.
Now render your animation and you have your final video!
Any Questions? Fell free to pm me!
Tell me what you think and if there are any problems or things you want to learn more about just contact me!
dojo
