Now What?

Ok, first off, I want to thank all of you who replied and helped me on my beginning and long journey that is the Fan Film industry. Thank all of you who actually bothered to reply a newbie who needed your advice and help especially since the interest in 3d animation in blender is starting to rise more frequently.

First thing's first. I finally finished a 10 sec. 250 frame animation and was able to render it into an AVI. File... However, now I have a 10 Sec. 60 MB!!! AVI File!!! that's a lot of MB for a dinky 10 sec animation... what should I do to correct this?!? how do I compress it? do I need a compressor? if so, where do I get one (for free preferably) and how do I compress it with that prog.?

I'd appreciate all your help
Jedi Padawan Dara-Ken.

 

Your best bet for free would be TMPGEnc, which you can find on VCDhelp.com

~Neszis~

 

If 60 meg bugs you... you'd better go out and buy a new hard drive right now... because fanfilms take gigabytes upon GIGABYTES of space.

Just be prepared

Cya
Mike

 

Check out divx at divx.com. Great compressor.

 

Ok, I got Divx 2.0 alpha and I'm donloading TMPGEnc 2.57... how do I compress the size of the file?
BTW 60 MB don't bug me, it's just that it would be a shame to do all that work and have all those GB on my hard drive and not be able to show them to the world because the files are just too big. I'm looking for convenience here, both for me, and the people who might want to download and watch the films.

 

DivX 2.0 alpha is merely the player. If you have the latest divx, you'd have version 5.02. Hmm, are you sure that when you save an animation as an avi in blender there isnt a sorta setup menu? Then again, its not the cream-of-the-crop so I woulnd't be suprised...

Carl

 

I'd like to take the time to thank all of you for your info and help, I downloaded TMPGEnc and it worked like a charm! It turned my 60MB short intro into a measily 1.7!!!!! I know it's probably nothing to get too excited about, but lets face it, to cram 60Megs into 2 megs is something remarkable. it saves me space and after I'm done with all the cramming, I just simply delete the huge AVI files... Before I go, I need a quick question to ask, I downloaded TMPGEnc. ver. 2.57, it's a new release, so I was wondering if anybody has had any problems withit, whether it be with the program itself, or the program affecting your computer.

 

You're welcom, and I doubt you'll have ne problems with it.

~Neszis~

 

Another concern I have is, how can I go from 250 frames (or 10 sec. clips) in blender, to something longer than that?

 

Click the animation button (the squiggly arrow) on the toolbar and set the endframe to whatever u want. Just remember that its normally 25 fps, so divide by 25 to get how many seconds long you want.

~Neszis~

 

once again, thank you all for all your helpful advice, I really coudn't have figured this stuff out by myself. Sure, it's easy for me to download a program and make animations work within the program, but without your help, I wouldn't even know how to turn it into the small 2MB MPEG file that it is now. Once again, thank you all, and good night.

 

Ok, now, I've seen some 10 sec films that don't take up too much MB, somewhere around 800 Kb to 1 MB tops, any idea how I can compress my files into that size?I'd really appreciate the help since, I made calculations of how much a 20 mins Mpeg would be and it's around the 100's mb.. also, I saw Dark redemption, and as long as the movie is, it's only in the 20's or 30's in MB tops... I'd really appreciate all this info.

 

Usually when we make a preview in any program we either use the draft or wireframe setting for rendering. If you're just showing off a little movement and you don't have any snazzy details, set the quality of the render a step down.
Now, you are working with MPG files, which are good. Try On2 compression for .mov files. It might and might not make it smaller. I doubt it. Quicktime files are natorious for being rather large some times.

 

I like this thread.

Is there any free software that can convert from .avi to .mov? And where exactly do I get the Sorenson codec, and how do I use it? There were links with more information on the codecs page in TheForce.Net Fanfilms, but they don't point to the right pages anymore...looks like Discreet rearranged everything.

 

Ok, I've been having some trouble grabbing a model from one file, and putting it in another, sort of a cut and paste thing, I downloaded a death star model and I wanted to paste in an A wing flying by, how do I do this in blender? any help please? I'd be greatly appreciative.

 

SHIFT + F1, then pick the file, then include whatever elements you want to include.

 

That may have been a little vague. When the cursor is over the place in space where you want to place your model, hold shift and press F1. Then navigate to the model you want to put in, and click it. Then clcik object, then press A and clcik on "camera" to deselect it. This is so it doesnt add another camera onto the scene. Also, if you have your scene already lit, deselct the light button too. the press open. It will appear where your cursor is.

~Neszis~

 

Once again, thank you all. This info is really helping me out on a good jump start since I'm still not that good at blender.
thank you all, and have a good night
Jedi Padawan Dara-Ken

 

has anyone had any problems with blender after installing python? or even using the 3ds extractor? I'm asking since I'd like to install it and convert some 3ds models into blend files