Stony Creek Consulting, LLC

08/31/2021

Harry meets Olivia and the story begins...

09/18/2020

Just finished a project to enable the Meteobridge Weather Server we installed at the Santa Paula Airport so it is a stand-alone, Open Source application. This means anyone can now use it on any website running PHP and MySQL. The .NET application is in development and will be announced as soon as it is out of BETA.

09/17/2020

I have a client, Ian Shere, CitrusKiwi Web Solutions LLC CEO who is also a Flight Instructor. I do the heavy moving and lifting for the website he designed plus putting together their Meteobridge Weather Server. Here are some great shots from their Gallery page at https://www.santapaulaairport.com/gallery

09/14/2020

Introduction to 2D and 3D Animation

Let's start with the basics.

Animation is a field of both art and science that has the capability to bring life and zeal to non-living characters. The most amazing aspect of 2d & 3d animation is that it has a phenomenon of an eye that allows the image continue to appear in one’s vision after the exposure to the original … R...

09/14/2020

2D Graphics and Animation

I started with Adobe and Creative Cloud Full. It cost about the same as their original desktop suites did, and the single payment was expensive for my budget. Monthly is affordable, and you can control the cost. If you are not using it for a while, you can Easily cancel and activate using the same account. Adobe Creative Cloud Full is resource-intensive and will slow down a low-end machine. If you only need PhotoShop, an essential, it is about the least expensive when a single product is subscribed to and should not impact your machine'sperformance very much. An old machine or one without at least 16GB of RAM, a Solid State Digital Drive (SSD) with a terabyte of disk space as these files can get quite large is essential. If yours is not, upgrade if it makes sense or get a new one. You'll quickly get frustrated and lose interest if the machine is too slow.

Most importantly, it needs to do vector, not bitmap graphics. I have used a lot of them, and Adobe Illustrator is great. If you prefer a desktop that is less resource-intensive, I have used many but settled and still do on Affinity Designer. It is lightweight, runs on your machine and not the cloud, is simple to use, it' very cost-effective and has a trial. Most important is it does what I want, vector graphics, and keeps it very simple. Adobe Illustrator is fantastic but a bit bloated though I use it whenever I feel I need to. I am not saying to not use it. I just don't like using a sledgehammer to drive in a five penny nail.

Once you feel you understand line (vector) and 2D graphics, you can delve into 2D character creation and animation, including audio. You may want to experiment here as 2D audio can be added and will teach you the basic concepts of doing a voice-over and music without the additional complexities of 3D. Characters and games plus some animation and movements, as you can see in the Graphic Mama 2D characters and graphics that I go over briefly in the next post, are often cartoonish characters. Such is the nature of 2D animation.

DAZ 3D can also do cartoonish characters but using 3D animation as we will see later. Graphic Mama specializes in 2D graphics and animation, which is less complicated. Graphic Mama site will also teach you basic concepts about rigging (the model's skeleton). You'll appreciate later if you explore 3D rigging, which is a bit advanced though essential in some 3D applications but not DAZ 3D. By the way, this is fun and always brings out the kid in me. I am sure you will feel the same once you get past the initial learning curve. This is great for Covid-19 shut-ins and a chance to learn something that is fun and trending by leaps and bounds.2D Graphics and Animation
2D Graphics and Animation

I started with Adobe and Creative Cloud Full. It cost about the same as their original desktop suites did, and the single payment was expensive for my budget. Monthly is affordable, and you can control the cost. If you are not using it for a while, you can easily cancel and activate using the same account. Adobe Creative Cloud Full is resource-intensive and will slow down a low-end machine. If you only need Adobe Photoshop, it is essential. Adobe is least expensive when a single product is subscribed to and should not impact your machine's performance very much. An old machine or one without at least 16GB of RAM, a Solid State Digital Drive (SSD) with a terabyte of disk space as these files can get quite large, is essential. If yours is not, upgrade if it makes sense else, buy a new one. You'll quickly get frustrated and lose interest if the machine is too slow.

Most importantly, it needs to do vector, not bitmap graphics. I have used a lot of them, and Adobe Illustrator is great. If you prefer a desktop that is less resource-intensive, I have used many but settled and still do on Affinity Designer. It is lightweight, runs on your machine and not the cloud, is simple to use, it' very cost-effective and has a trial. Most important is it does what I want, vector graphics, and keeps it very simple. Adobe Illustrator is fantastic but a bit bloated though I use it whenever I feel I need to. I am not saying to not use it. I just don't like using a sledgehammer to drive in a five penny nail.

Once you feel you understand line (vector) and 2D graphics, you can delve into 2D character creation and animation, including audio. You may want to experiment here as 2D audio can be added and will teach you the basic concepts of doing a voice-over and music without the additional complexities of 3D. Characters and games plus some animation and movements, as you can see in the Graphic Mama 2D characters and graphics that I go over briefly in the next post, are often cartoonish characters. Such is the nature of 2D animation.

DAZ 3D can also do cartoonish characters but using 3D animation, as we will see later. Graphic Mama specializes in 2D graphics and animation, which is less complicated. Graphic Mama site will also teach you basic concepts about rigging (the model's skeleton). You'll appreciate later if you explore 3D rigging, which is a bit advanced though essential in some 3D applications but not DAZ 3D. By the way, this is fun and always brings out the kid in me. I am sure you will feel the same once you get past the initial learning curve. This is great for Covid-19 shut-ins and a chance to learn something that is fun and trending by leaps and bounds.

Vector Cartoon Characters, Themed Graphic Packs, Creation Kits & Adobe Character Animator Puppets that fit all your design project needs - png, pdf, ai, eps files. Free download available.

09/14/2020

Quick Overview of 3D Animation Workflow

Before I deluge you with a lot of 3D Animation terms and concepts, let's be sure you feel comfortable with them. Here is an excellent and brief read. Use the links or Google Search to learn more.

The Concept and Storyboards
3D Modeling
Texturing
The Process of Rigging and Skinning
The Actual Process of Animation
Imbuing of Lighting
Camera Angles and Techniques
The Process of Rendering
The Process of Compositing and Special FX
Giving Music and Foley
The Process of Editing and Final Output

Though we have been enjoying animation for over several decades, the idea of vivid animations talking and moving still makes us go wide-eyed. The advent of 3D animation has added another layer to the mystery and all the more intriguing to even fathom about. However, many, even in the business sector...

09/14/2020

3D Animation Pipeline

Another great read and website. More visually-oriented style but plenty of links for further study. My purpose here is to show you what you can do with the tools that are out there now. B2B sites like these use the same applications and tools you can try using free trials. Some are for thirty days.

many animation newbies fail to follow the correct process of 3d animation. EVERYTHING you need to know about animation pipeline + commercial

09/13/2020

DAZ 3D is free!

Yes, Daz 3D will not cost you anything, and you can do all of this in the posts I have below on 3D animation using your face and body to create your personal avatar that looks like you and can ultimately speak using your own voice in a 3D animation you can post to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and more. It can render these and other assets as a video with sound that is not just music but also can be mixed with the voice-overs for some awesome audio mixes.

DAZ 3D has enough to get you started and, more importantly, you'll learn 3D animation and its terms very quickly. DAZ 3D also has basic game creation capabilities in the free version. Just think, you can be the main character in your next game eventually that looks and talks in your own voice. There will be more on creating games in other posts.

3D is not for beginners but I wanted to show you how exciting it is. I found it to be a bit formidable and I have been doing graphics, 2D animation, videos, and soundtracks for years. Plus I used Flash, and its basic concepts are used by all these applications so familiarity with timelines and frames eventually became second nature.

I highly recommend starting with Adobe and Creative Cloud Full. It cost about the same as their original desktop suites did and the single payment was expensive for my budget. Monthly it is affordable and you can control the cost. Not using it for a while? You can easily cancel and reactivate using the same account.

Full Adobe is resource-intensive and will slow down a low-end machine. Most importantly it needs to do vector, not bitmap graphics. I have used a lot of them and Illustrator is great. If you prefer a desktop that is less resource-intensive I have used many but settled and still do on Affinity Designer. It is simple to use, cost-effective and has a trial. Most important is what I want, easy to use vector graphics tools. Illustrator is fantastic but a bit bloated though I use it whenever I feel I need to so I am not saying do not use it. I just don't like using a sledgehammer to drive in a five penny nail.

Once you feel you understand line (vector) and 2D graphics you can delve into 2D character creation and animation including audio. You may want to experiment here as 2D audio can be added and will teach you the basic concepts of doing a voice-over and music without the additional complexities of 3D. Characters and games plus some animation and movements as you can see in the Graphic Mama 2D characters and graphics that I go over briefly in the post after this one are often cartoonish characters. Such is the nature of 2D animation. DAZ 3D can also do cartoonish characters but using 3D animation.

Graphic Mama specializes in 2D graphics and animation which is a bit less complex. Her site will also teach you basic concepts about rigging (the model's skeleton) you'll appreciate later if you explore 3D rigging which is a bit advanced though essential in some 3D applications but not DAZ 3D. By the way, this is really fun and always brings out the kid in me. I am sure you will feel the same once you get past the initial learning curve.

Eventually, you will need to understand timelines, frames, and animes as these are just a few of the terms you will encounter. I am not referring to Anime you may have seen which is a Japanese style. Animes are a term for what you can use to have pre-defined moves for your model such as walking, sitting, standing, and many others. They allow one to not have to go through what is required to do it manually using the model itself as they tween (create automatically) the frames for you from one motion to another so they transition smoothly. For example, you can use a predefined standing and sitting position in two frames and it will create and fill in between using frames designed to automatically achieve a smooth transition from standing to sitting.

Soundtracks are covered in some later posts as that is a topic in itself but Daz 3D does allow them in the free version and lets you add a voice overdub recording though not in your own voice without using some applications I'll cover later.

Keep your first animated 3D scene produced by Daz 3D very short at first. You will need to split them the longer they get and assemble them in groups of frames I'll discuss later. Start with a really short 150 frame video. You'll find out soon what rendering a video means.

At first, you'll be less than excited at how terribly slow the DAZ 3D rendering (not the DAZ 3D Studio application) is. There are many ways to overcome this which will be covered later. If you use other applications that do rendering I did not find any that are really very fast without having a higher-end machine. Rendering is the process of taking all the individual frames which are really just images and assembling them in a sequence. If you ever made a flip-book using let's say a package of Post-It Notes you drew something on to make it look like it has motion you get the idea.

3D is not for beginners but I wanted to show you how exciting it is. I found it to be a bit formidable and I have been doing graphics, 2D animation, videos, and soundtracks for years. Plus I used Flash, and its basic concepts are used by all these applications so familiarity with timelines and frames eventually became second nature.2D animation but a slow old computer or mobile device won't cut it here either. More on this and newer platforms exist I'll present later plus coverage of mobile device capabilities. For now, I am talking desktop or laptop needed to do it. 3D rendering can also be done economically without purchasing a super-computer and it can be done quickly. I now rent space on a system that is super fast and use my recently upgraded laptop which is almost eight years old handles smaller ones as I do it now overnight. You can do a short video that way. Short and to the point videos are better than long ones IMHO.

Mobile applications are available to do many of this for very short videos unless you use a renderer that is meant for larger videos. A mobile device cannot come even close to the processing power a machine meant for rendering animated 3D graphics and sound has. which I'll discuss later. This does not apply as much with graphics and 2D animation but a slow old computer or mobile device won't cut it here either. More on this and newer platforms exist I'll present later plus coverage of mobile device capabilities. For now, I am talking desktop or laptop

Another great tool I am now using for 3D Animated Video creation is besides having my human-like avatar look like me and have my physique using the Daz Tool for that (yes, they have a pudgy morph for my physique) it will speak using my voice. I can now generate it from the text I transcribe from my voice recording and the application will then speak in my voice for any text I submit. Too cool! These applications can be used freely on a trial. More on that in some later posts when we delve more into audio tracks and voice-overs.

Mobile applications are available to do many of this for very short videos unless you use a renderer that is meant for larger videos. A mobile device cannot come even close to the processing power a machine meant for rendering animated 3D graphics and sound has. which I'll discuss later. This does not apply as much with graphics and 2D animation but a slow old computer or mobile device won't cut it here either. More on this and newer platforms I'll present later plus coverage of mobile device capabilities. For now, I am talking desktop or laptop.

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07/28/2020

Stony Creek Consulting, LLC Proudly Announces The Launch Of Its New Online Affiliate Store - Busy Affiliate!

Featuring Human Voice WordPress Media Creator so lifelike you would swear it's human.

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Don't go elsewhere. The Busy Affiliate web site will be launching soon. You'll also be given an extra bonus if you invest in Synthesizer. I'll be featuring it also in this with the official launch announcement promotion I'll be sending out after we complete stocking inventory.