How would you make best fly-through?

[Michal Forejt]

I am at the beginning of making quite complex fly-through of my building. And I am looking for any advice of more experienced users. What I have found in forums is, that I should stay away from "First person shooter movie style". So I am looking for some inspiration. Has anybody made/seen any decent movie? I have been googling a lot, but haven't found anything but pictures. No movies Any idea? Links?

Second thing which I need to solve is material and 3D objects question. It's residential building (in fact it's complex of 4 buildings for 4 families) and this fly-through should attract potential customers, which are supposed to be from so called "higher class". Of course it's impossible to predict what fashion will our future client like.

Therefore I'm afraid to use my favorite furniture (furniture won't be part of delivery), because it could also make bad impression. So I am thinking about making all furniture of glass or ice material, that would just show them: In this room is enough space for sofa, table, 4 chairs and TV. What do you think about that? Or do you think people want to see real interior. Do they prefer photorealistic pictures?

Wow, what a long text. I hope you guys and gals will read it to its end

Any thoughts are very well welcome.

Best regards,

Michal

[Djordje]

Michal wrote:
Any idea? Links?

For very good approach of selling real estate vaporware, go to the Web sites of the local developers:

www.emaar.com
www.nakheel.com
www.aldar.com
http://www.damacproperties.com

And for the presentations, try:

www.jumeirah.com

for example ...

[Anonymous]

I don't have any links, but some of the animations I have done are similar to short clips that are then spliced in iMovie with "fade" transitions with a sound track. I then shoot the whole "movie" over to iDVD if I need to issue in that medium or I can translate into a flash animation (for websites) using something like Sorenson Squeeze v4.1.

Bottom line, think more like a short film director and less like an architect .

+pablo

[Rakela Raul]

beautiful links moderator, thx

[Michal Forejt]

Thanks Djordje for links. Very nice presentations. I'll check them out with the rest of my staff.

Pablo wrote:

Bottom line, think more like a short film director and less like an architect .

+pablo

This seems to be most important part. Funny is, that I am not even an architect (I study intern. relations/diplomacy and this is the way how do I earn money for my school and "saturday night pubs"

My task now is to put forward pros and cons of all possible solutions of this task to my colleagues. Who consist mainly of architect and salesman. Architect always sees all those renderings as "not realistic enough because it will look different" , on the other hand salesman thinks, that all we need is to impress people with something they have never seen.

Really need help to judge this dilemma

Michal

[Anonymous]

I don't think there is a right answer to this, since this is involves "artistic license". Personally, I have clients that prefer NPR (non-photorealistic) stills to hi-resolution, radiosity infused images. For most of my clients, they prefer a cost effective solution that brings the building "to life" and give me the freedom to do that in what ever medium I choose (so long as it stays in the budget

+pablo

[TomWaltz]

Michal wrote:
I am at the beginning of making quite complex fly-through of my building. And I am looking for any advice of more experienced users. What I have found in forums is, that I should stay away from "First person shooter movie style". So I am looking for some inspiration. Has anybody made/seen any decent movie? I have been googling a lot, but haven't found anything but pictures. No movies Any idea? Links?

Second thing which I need to solve is material and 3D objects question. It's residential building (in fact it's complex of 4 buildings for 4 families) and this fly-through should attract potential customers, which are supposed to be from so called "higher class". Of course it's impossible to predict what fashion will our future client like.

Therefore I'm afraid to use my favorite furniture (furniture won't be part of delivery), because it could also make bad impression. So I am thinking about making all furniture of glass or ice material, that would just show them: In this room is enough space for sofa, table, 4 chairs and TV. What do you think about that? Or do you think people want to see real interior. Do they prefer photorealistic pictures

Michal

Having just done a few for one of my clients, I found:
1) The best animations are compositions of vignettes, with maybe 10 to 20 seconds showing each important space.
2) You NEED video editing software. You can composite a lot of information including titles, transitions (fade in, wipe, etc), and even warp playback time. I really like Final Cut Pro, but its Mac-only.
3) Render to a folder of images, not a single MOV. This gives you a lot more flexibility in re-rendering later and even lets you render on multiple machines (start one machine on frames 001 to 200, one on 201 to 400, etc). You can them composite them later in a software like Quicktime Pro.
4) Fashion is subjective, but it sounds like the goal is more to "upscale." That's really going to mean more profiled trim, granite, tile, and marble and less wall-paper, white board and vinyl.
5) Start and end each vignette on a "key shot." If you were going to pick two renderings for a space try to make those the start and end shots of each room.
6) You do not have to move forward. It should not feel like you are playing Halo and the Flood is going to be around the next corner. You can move sideways and look slightly forward or back to nice effect,
7) You cannot move slow enough. WAY too many animations move like you are driving through a building in a Ferrari. You should be slowly walking through and enjoying the space
8 ) Test-render in low-res from the 3D window. Get your paths working smoothly by using 1/2 or 1/3 size frames so you can see where your problem areas are and get some idea of just how much modeling you need to do (YES, you should be looking at paths BEFORE the model is complete.

I hope that helps!

[Anonymous]

Hi Tom, I was reading some of your advises with animations. And maybe you can help me. How can I upload my animations to my web site? I have it compress on quicktime file

The fly through is (the info: dimensions: 240x180, codecs: H.263, Hint, duration 00´35, 508 KB),

QuicktimeVR movie: VR Panorama Cinepak, dimensions: 320x240, 348KB

DVD Multimedia animation quicktime file .mov: 4.2 MB, dimensions: 240x180, codecs: QDesign Music 2, H.263, Channel count: 2, duration: 02´04,

and a slideshow movie .mov: 6.5MB, dimension:240x180, Codecs: MPEG-4 Video, MPEG Layer 3, Tween, Channel count: 2, Duration: 00´43 in total are 13.6 MB. My problem is that my web designers doesn´t know how to upload my movie files.

[TomWaltz]

I can't say I've done any embedded video in a website, but if you're web designer cannot help, it may be time to hire a new one. That seems like something a web designer should know.

[stefan]

Point your webmaster to: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/tools_tips/tutorials/activex.html

Edit: this link is dead...
Try this:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/Conceptual/QTScripting_HTML/index.html

An example

<OBJECT CLASSID="clsid:02BF25D5-8C17-4B23-BC80-D3488ABDDC6B" WIDTH="160"HEIGHT="144"
CODEBASE="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<PARAM name="SRC" VALUE="sample.mov">
<PARAM name="AUTOPLAY" VALUE="true">
<PARAM name="CONTROLLER" VALUE="false">
<EMBED SRC="sample.mov" WIDTH="160" HEIGHT="144" AUTOPLAY="true" 
CONTROLLER="false" PLUGINSPAGE="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
</EMBED>
</OBJECT>

But they should be able to find these things, don't you think?

But I believe that Microsoft is changing their security and embedding configurations again, so this might soon not work anymore