I am using Unity with VRoid Studio characters to create a series of cartoon episodes. Unity supports “real time” and “baked” lighting. So which to use when creating animated videos? Baked lighting is where you tell Unity “the sun is not going to move, so you can pre-compute the sun and shadows on objects that … More Lighting for Cartoon Animation in Unity
I subscribed to @MuRo_CG‘s “PlayAnimaker” on Pixiv. He is doing some cool work with using VR headsets for Anime style output. You can use your Oculus VR headset and controllers to pose and animate characters. One of the features supported recently is the ability to export BVH files. These are animation clips in a format … More BVH to Humanoid Animation Clips for Unity
I have been exploring creating an animated comic using Google web stories, a HTML format designed for vertically oriented video and images. One of the issues with video however is the storage requirements and network bandwidth. Video clips require more storage than static images. For example, a video clip of a few seconds long is … More Hosting your video rich web stories
I just came across Pixar’s Universal Scene Description language. It’s a file format they use for all of their movies. It was interesting to see a number of tools support USD. Quick searches found: A set of Pixar USD tools they have open sourced A Unity importer for USD files Blender import/export support Maya support … More Pixar’s Universal Scene Description
I am have been working on a lightly animated comic (pages, with speech bubbles, but where there is a short video clip on each page instead of a static drawing). This is a low budget hobby project with a development team of 1. There has been a lot to learn, but fun. One of the … More Using Deepmotion.com to create custom walk cycles
I have been exploring the new Sequences package beta for Unity for animation and one of the things it makes heavy use of was Prefab Variants. I had heard of Prefab Variants, but never really quite “got” how they were different from Prefabs. So I did some hunting around and thought I would summarize my … More Prefabs vs Prefab Variants in Unity
(UPDATED Jun 28, 2021 to reflect my greater understanding.) Just a quick blog of my initial experiences and understanding of the new sequences support. I signed up for the open beta and downloaded the “Cinematic Studio Sample” from the asset store. I just read the 2021.2 beta blog and it looks like it is being … More The New Unity Sequences Support for Cinemachine
I subscribe to MasterClass.com and a new lesson series from James Cameron was just released (yes *the* James Cameron) where one of the lessons talked about focal lens. (I also came across a great YouTube channel with some great videos on tricks of the trade for movie making from StudioBinder including some of these points … More Designing Scene Shots with Lens Settings in Unity
I still dream of creating a lightly animated anime-styled comic, using VRoid Studio characters in Unity (an engine for creating games). Even if I don’t ever publish an episode, it has been an interesting journey learning about the skills that go into a great anime. My general plan to reduce effort is to use locations … More Anime Scene Analysis (Fruits Basket)
I am trying to create a comic series using 3D VRoid characters. So far it has been more learning than creating content. I have slowly been fleshing out my cast of characters in VRoid Studio and creating locations in Unity leveraging purchased assets. I have explored blend shapes using AR Kit for facial expressions. I … More What is the fastest way to create an animation clip or pose on a budget?
Extra Ordinary, the Series 