JoelHowe.com

Joel is a technical animator and media developer at Framework Media. In addition to talking about himself in the third person, Joel also creates tutorials for 2D and 3D animation.

[joelhowe]

FLIP Fluids in Blender

I recently had the opportunity to participate in the beta testing of the FLIP Fluids simulation plugin, created by Ryan Guy and Dennis Fassbaender, and I have to say I am loving the results.

A Promising Fluid Simulation Tool for Blender

While this is still in beta testing, I can say for certain is that the FLIP Fluids plugin shows great promise. It seems very stable once you hide the fluid surface mesh in the 3D View during the simulation baking process. It has some great features, including support for whitewater bubbles and foam as well as variable viscosity. Here is the video showing different resolutions with and without motion blur:

Straightforward Fluid Simulation

In this very basic setup I have a room-sized (3m³) domain, two collision objects, and an animated inflow fluid source. I ran test cases at various simulation resolutions and got fairly consistent results, though the look of the fluid and the behavior really changed a lot as we moved from grid resolutions of 100 to 200 to 300. In the video there is clearly evidence of the simulation grid as the fluid flows over the torus surface, so going to a higher resolution will likely improve this. Also, I had assigned my collision objects a non-zero friction value, so I will be interested to see how changing that value affects the results.

RSMB to the Rescue

One feature that the FLIP Fluids plugin does not currently support is motion blur. While it would be great to get accurate motion blur vectors in a future update, I got some pretty smooth results from using the ReelSmart Motion Blur plugin for After Effects. I used a red, opaque fluid shader, partly as an homage to The Shining and partly to save render times. This could make the motion of the fluid easier to track, which may improve the motion blur results. In any case, a ray-traced transparent water shader would “clearly” affect the visual results. 

Going With the Flow

At this point, I am ready to integrate the FLIP Fluids simulation tool into production work, as I think it really enhances Blender’s built-in tools. While we wait for the official release, it is sure fun to play with this beta. Maybe next I will try pouring a few drinks, trying some virtual beers or cranking up the viscosity for a glass of “liquid hot magma”. Cheers!

[joelhowe]

Create a Bouncing Ball in After Effects

An Introduction to Keyframe Animation in Adobe After Effects

This is a basic but complete bouncing ball tutorial that I am using in my motion graphics classes. It is fairly lengthy, but again given that this is a novice tutorial, I think it is paced appropriately. Note that we cover a range of topics from basic keyframing to more advanced techniques, such as stretching keyframe animations in time, and even get into some animation details regarding easing and the graph editor.

If you are new to the topic of easing, also known as slow ins and/or slow outs, there is a great video on this and the other principles of animation by Alan Becker on YouTube.  

[joelhowe]

Saving OpenEXR files with Pixel Velocity from Blender

This is the first of what I hope is many posts on Blender and 3D production workflows. Moving from 3ds max, I typically like to save out OpenEXR files with different render passes in one file, stored as separate channels. The trickiest of these is taking pixel velocity information (used for post-processing motion blur) and putting that in a format that works with ReelSmart Motion Blur plug-in. Thanks to Bill Mountney’s post at Creative Cow, I had a great starting point, and with a few tweaks I think I have found my settings:

A few notes (numbers in red circles in above image) to observe here:

I pulled out a value called “MaxDisplace” to allow quick setting of a value that estimates the distance of pixel motion blur in a given image or animation. Setting this number to a lower value lets you see the motion blur settings on the Viewer node contrasting with the 50% red, 50% green zero-velocity background that RSMB uses.

Blender documentation has the speed R and B channels as the x-velocity entering and exiting the frame, respectively, and the G and A channels are the y-velocity entering and existing the frame. I combined these before dividing them by the MaxDisplace value, but there is likely a better way to combine them.

I added the alpha channel for my ambient occlusion, as the AO pass had a black background and no alpha.

This is saving out as an OpenEXR MultiLayer file, and my image pass was saving out as “Combined”, which I changed to “Beauty”. After Effects was not picking up on this beauty, or RGBA pass, as the default layer or channel, so there was no preview in the project bin, and the image was black when I added it to a composition. I would have to add the EXtractoR effect to see the beauty pass. To fix this, I set the name of my File Output node for the beauty pass to an empty string, deleting the name of that channel. Now the OpenEXR file exports with the channels as the default R, G, B, and A, and After Effects picks them up as the default channels.

I think that last one is a big win, as that would be inconvenient to not have default RGBA channels.

As a freshly minted member of the Blender community, I wanted to share some of what I have learned and celebrate a small success with this. I hope that this helps someone discover the convenience that is multi-channel OpenEXR images!

[joelhowe]

3ds max 2017 to Blender?

3ds max 2018: The Let-Down

2017 has not been my year, and today seems to be no exception. Autodesk has released 3ds max 2018. By my initial observation of the Autodesk website, 2018 feels like a patched 3ds max 2017 with Mental Ray removed and Arnold included, with the catch that instead of unlimited installations of Mental Ray, Arnold will run on only one computer. Additional render nodes (Arnold or Mental Ray via nVidia) will cost extra, in the case of Arnold, $1220 per computer per year plus annual maintenance. So 3ds max’s price is going up (cheaper maintenance plans are being phased out) and users are getting the same software functionality with little new development or capability, and being introduced to a completely new software licensing cost for their render farm.

Abandon Ship!

At this point, I assume that software development of 3ds max and Mental Ray has all but stopped. What I can’t fathom is that Autodesk would rock the boat with this new licensing scheme for render nodes. The render node cost is several times my 3ds max maintenance, per render node. Why would you raise the price so drastically without significant enhancements? I won’t be sticking around to find out.

Is Blender a Viable Alternative?

I have been using 3ds max since the 1900′s, so I am about as entrenched as a user can be. That said, I was upset with the news of this phoned-in 3ds max 2018 release, so I installed the latest version of Blender and started testing. I imported big scenes and little scenes. I learned how to create materials shaders, and got a few decent looking frames out of Blender’s Cycles renderer. I still have some work to do, but here are my initial findings:

Blender Pros

Blender loaded up my largest files (imported as OBJ) faster than 3ds max.

Viewport performance was better on Blender in every case I tried. The quality wasn’t as good as the Nitrous viewports, but it was better than regular shaded viewports.

Blender saved files in the background, not locking up the GUI. It was autosaving every two minutes and I didn’t even know it!

Blender allowed me to work with some of the non-viewport scene settings during a render. This was really helpful to read about and change shader or render settings while a render progressed.

Cycles renderer can show progressive enhancement of an image, giving you a very good look at the whole frame (albeit with a lot of noise) quickly.

Blender never crashed during a full day of testing and work, even when I had no idea what I was doing.

Blender Cons

Blender (Cycles renderer) results were noisy compared to Mental Ray and took longer to get rid of noise in the shadows. Rendering might be a bit slower here, but this also could be mistakes that I made with scene scale and I would need to learn to optimize lights and render settings.

Blender’s Cycles renderer seems to have some issues with specks of light, called “fireflies” by users, but there appear to be tools to address these or at least minimize them.

The interface definitely takes some getting used to when coming from 3ds max, so there is a learning curve here. That said, I found for every menu pick I didn’t like where it was, there were others that I did like.

Blender Parity

It looks like there is a network rendering feature that you can enable and has master/slave settings similar to Backburner. (Not really parity, as this is now a Blender advantage since all slave machines would be free to license in Blender.)

I found scripts to export out Blender 3D cameras for After Effects. Blender also supports OpenEXR and separate rendering passes (z-depth, velocity) for post-processing depth of field and motion blur. So compositing options look pretty comparable.

Blender’s BSDF shader (Cycles renderer) looks to be similar to 3ds max’s Arch+Design shader, as it even has a node editor. It took a bit of getting used to, as you have to mix diffuse and glossy shaders as separate nodes, but it was fairly straightforward once I figured that out.

So far, the workflows that I have tested show Blender being as capable and in some cases more capable than 3ds max. This morning, I started out wondering how I was going to afford all of those Mental Ray or Arnold licenses. This evening, I am looking forward to a time where I will never have to pay Autodesk another dime. It isn’t a done deal yet, but Blender is looking pretty good. Here’s the testing I have left before I can make a final decision:

Particle system comparisons

Poly modeling, skinning, and character animation

More rendering: 4K, more heavy scenes, and SSS and glass

Explore fluids/smoke

Lots to test, and I don’t know when I would make the switch, but as of right now I am considering a future where I never install 3ds max 2018. With no new features to benefit from, I will keep my free 2017 MR render nodes, thank you. Who knows? Maybe Blender can achieve the results of some of the plugins that I rely on to round out 3ds max’s feature set, saving me even more money. Maybe 2017 is starting to look up after all!

[joelhowe]

Tutorial: Cloud Fly-Through in After Effects

I had posted this to YouTube last year, but it appears I didn’t make a post here in my blog. Take a look at this After Effects tutorial where we use some great Photoshop brushes from Mila Vasileva. Her brushes can be found here:

http://www.milanda.eu/studio/downloads/brushes/photoshop-brushes-24-clouds.html

This tutorial shows how we take clouds painted in Photoshop and use them to create 3D layers in After Effects.

The end result is a pretty impressive fly-through! This tutorial should give you some basic understanding of the 3D camera in After Effects, and pick up some other useful tricks and techniques as well.

[joelhowe]

New listing for illustration services

In working on getting improved visibility for our technical illustration services, I submitted a listing to IllustratorsInk.com. The profile looks great and I soon hope that Framework Media becomes one of the top technical illustrator on IllustratorsInk.com! There looks to be some great artwork here and a lot of different styles of illustration, so definitely check out some of the artists listed there!

[joelhowe]

Thumbtack

I am wrapping up my first project that was sourced through Thumbtack, and I have to say it was a positive experience. I like the fact that I don't need to involve Thumbtack in any part of the process once the project began. They provided a good introduction and based on my experience I would consider using them again. Here is the badge for the Thumbtack account:

Animation Production Services

by Framework Media

We provide animation production specializing in technical animations including forensic animation for courtroom demonstrative evidence and product animation for marketing, sales presentations, and...

Questions? Comments? Requests? Get in touch.

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[joelhowe]

Joel, Cool site. I just read your most recent net neutrality post. Good stuff; the downward trending feedrate is astounding. I didn't know that Coinstar's redbox and verizon have partnered to compete against Netflix for a few years now. Without know much of the FCC policy/telecom provider background, in this case Verizon has a stranglehold on internet service. Whats worse is in most of our communities, they are the sole provider! Kill your TV? Maybe you can design a logo for our farm..-James

Thanks James! I definitely don't want to kill my TV, but I definitely feel bad for areas where Verizon is the sole internet provider! Let's hope that we can get net neutrality back to being the law of the land, as it will hurt a lot of smaller companies and start-ups in the future if we don't.

[joelhowe]

Net Neutrality: Why I love Netflix - and hate Verizon

This post should be more. It should point out how crucial net neutrality is. It should explain the dire situation we are currently in regarding net neutrality, and detail how the telco companies are winning in their fight to eliminate net neutrality rules. The current FCC chairman, whose organization is the only current viable net neutrality authority, is an ex-lobbyist for the cable companies. That's not a good sign if you believe that you should have equal access to all information on the interwebs.

I won't try to explain all of these things, as they are available elsewhere. I do feel compelled to share my experience with Verizon and Netflix, based on this letter posted yesterday:

Netflix Response to Verizon: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1184714-netflix-response-to-verizon.html

I love one of these companies, and I despise the other. Here's what losing net neutrality looks like from the perspective of a Netflix and Verizon FIOS customer.

At the end of 2013, I purchased an Xbox One and set it up to access Netflix. It developed some problems, as the Netflix app had major issues streaming, stopping to buffer 10 or more times in a 40 minute show. If the show did restart, it did so with pixelated, very low-resolution video. I wish I hadn't wasted all of that time troubleshooting my Wi-Fi, the new Xbox One, and my Netflix app, because if I was able to see this chart, I would know what the trouble was:

At the exact time (January 2014) Verizon had won their suit and were no longer being held to net neutrality rules, my connection speed appeared to drop, to the point where I was blaming the new Xbox as being defective. From the point of a consumer who watches Netflix, Verizon seems to have LOST capacity on their network at that time!

I know, woe is me, right? So my shows have to buffer and pause a bit. That's not the experience. The horrible video quality and the constant buffering (and stopping of shows) made it so frustrating to watch a movie or show that we were watching scheduled TV with commercials instead of Netflix. The whole point of Netflix is to not watch the commercials, isn't it? The streaming experience was so bad, Netflix was losing me as a customer!

It was so incredibly frustrating: You work all day, get dinner made and cleaned up, sit down for what feels like your only hour of entertainment and relaxation, and then your show doesn't play. Next thing you know your wife is mad at you because you are in charge of the internet and TV services, and you are apparently failing at that. Instead of relaxing and laughing watching a funny show with the family, you spend 20 minutes on hold with Verizon tech support while you watch the Netflix buffer cycle circle spin. Over and over and over again.

The problem is, I have been paying for "FiOS Internet Speeds Up to 50 Mbps/25 Mbps" and there wasn't any asterisk next to that saying "Not including Netflix" when I signed up. I was highly suspicious, based on a scientific process of elimination, that Verizon was throttling Netflix, as 1080P YouTube videos played on the XBox One without a problem. Now recently, Netflix is making what I suspected known to everyone:

Verizon tech support was a 20 minute wait, and that was back when people weren't sure who was responsible for the issue. Can you imagine how long the phone queues are going to be if Netflix keeps displaying this? Do Verizon executives know how much this is damaging their company? And how much bad will this is generating with their customers? I remember how, many years ago, I had wished that Verizon FIOS would come to our town, because I feel that way about Google Fiber now.

How can Verizon make adjustments to their service that appear to degrade performance like this? How can they give me 1 or 2 Mbps when I am paying for 50 Mbps? Where are the lawyers? Where is my class-action lawsuit for breach of contract? If we can't have net neutrality right now, we need to find other means to inflict pain on Verizon, but in the long run: NET NEUTRALITY IS REALLY IMPORTANT.

[joelhowe]

Adobe Creative Cloud: Photoshop Goes Subscription Only

I have to say that I initially had lukewarm feelings about Adobe's decision to go subscription-only for the newest versions of their design software. Most of those negative feelings are due to the general queasiness that comes with change in general, but I did have a few concerns, specifically:

I don't like being forced to rely on the up-time and long-term stability of Adobe to keep my software running in perpetuity.

I like being able to time my upgrade purchases for a month when I was particularly cash-flow positive.

I like owning my software versus renting

That list is pretty limited, to be honest. I am over the fact that I won't get a shiny nice box of DVDs as a physical and tangible reminder of my investment in Adobe's products, and I admit that the chances of Adobe going out of business or having an extended licensing server outage are slim. The monthly fee even smooths out the cost of licensing the software over the year. So all-in-all, there is very little to complain about, once you accept that Photoshop or After Effects or Flash is now going to be subscription-only.

The positives are many, and Adobe has been pushing those in the keynote speeches at MAX this week. I really like the idea of getting new features in incremental updates versus waiting for the hype of Adobe MAX to hear about new features. The one concern I have is that overall software development will slow down. I worry that steady subscription income will prevent Adobe from staying "hungry". What will drive them to dramatically improve their products if users don't have to be wooed into making voluntary or discretionary upgrades?

Where the Creative Cloud move really appeals to me is as an Adobe shareholder. I don't think Adobe will lose many existing customers over the new licensing scheme. Those paying to use Adobe products will continue to pay to use them going forward, because to be quite honest, they are pretty awesome. But here is where I think Adobe is going to do well in the next year or so:

The barrier to entry in using the software is being lowered. Using Creative Cloud, there is no big investment that one has to make up front. This is really going to help students learn using Adobe's products and allow freelancers to realize profits from their design projects sooner.

Piracy is going to be reduced dramatically. There are a lot of people using Adobe's software illegally, including many of the  aforementioned freelancers. This new licensing scheme is going to all but eliminate this practice, and Adobe's revenue will increase as those working professionally with cracked versions of the software will be forced to move from stealing it to renting it like everyone else.

Operating costs will be reduced. Adobe will save the costs of pressing DVDs and physically shipping product, of course, but I also think that they will benefit from reduced support costs as they can update installers at any time. There won't be a need to support a two-year old install file from a DVD being deployed on a relatively new operating system like Windows 8.

Adobe will gain perceived value and brand loyalty. While everyone would like to get more for less, I think that if Adobe can keep the price at or below $50, then most customers are going to be happy with the value they receive, and that value will increase as Adobe includes more services with the software. I see the current cloud storage and portfolio sites as ho-hum offerings, but I think there is a lot of opportunity in this space.

Adobe CS6 will now sell like hotcakes. There are going to be those who want to know that they can keep Photoshop or InDesign running on their computer in perpetuity for no monthly fees. Those people are likely going to upgrade to CS6 in the next few months as a move to counter Creative Cloud. I would count that as more revenue in the near term for Adobe.

I will be posting more as start to use the software next month, but I must admit that for now I am all aboard the Creative Cloud bandwagon. Given my constant need to use Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, After Effects, Flash, and Audition in my projects, I really can't afford not to be!

[joelhowe]

My Next Galaxy: 30 days with Samsung's Galaxy S3

Summary: About a month into the relationship, and things are swell!

I wrote previously about my first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy S3 here, and with the iPhone 5 launch now behind us, I thought it made sense to follow up now that the initial excitement has worn off. Everything that I initially liked about the S3 still applies. The screen is still brilliant, Jelly Bean is still smooth and responsive, and I still haven't found a situation where the phone is too big. If anything, the iPhones I have seen look really small now! I haven't used voice recognition as much, but that is more out of habit than anything else. So with our relationship hitting the one-month mark soon, how are things holding up?

Coming from the original Galaxy S (Fascinate on Verizon) I was used to some quirks of the phone, including notoriously bad GPS performance. Well that is a pleasant change on the S3, as GPS is much more consistent and locks in a lot faster. I can now launch Runkeeper and be ready to run in a few seconds. Also, my running times and position (see image) are a lot more consistent on the S3. I used to know I would lose time running in a certain direction and gain it coming back the other way, but now everything is more accurate.

Email is so much better! One of the things that always disappointed me about Android 2.X was that email was always such a second-class citizen compared to GMail, and that doesn't seem to be the case at all with Android 4.X. My overall email experience has been robust, with easy setup, no issues with syncing, and the black text with white background seems easier on the eyes. The really large screen helps here, as I think having two preview lines for each email (not the default) allows me to read many emails without opening them.

One issue that I did see was the Verizon "No SIM Card" bug. It appeared a handful of times where the phone would warn me, saying "No SIM card. Emergency calls only." To be fair, there was a sheet that came with the phone explaining a 4G activation phone number to call, but had I activated it successfully by just turning the phone on and following the prompts. In any case, Verizon just delivered an update a few days ago that fixes this, so it shouldn't be an issue again.

The camera works well, but this is still a cell phone camera, so I don't get too worked up about image quality here. It is nice when the camera you always have with you takes better pictures, and it does. Here is a shot of a "mackerel sky" on the way into Boston one recent morning:

One complaint: I really liked that my Galaxy S allowed me to do so many things from the photo gallery. I could select a photo from the gallery and post it to Facebook, email it, or send it to any app I had installed. This gallery seems to have fewer choices, and it isn't intuitive how to post photos to Facebook when they are not taken from the Facebook app's camera.

Finally, I wanted to point out that I have really no buyer's remorse given that the iPhone 5 has been launched. I really feel like the iPhone 5 is just reaching feature parity with 4G and a larger (still not as big as mine) screen. I like the look of the Jelly Bean OS more than iOS, too. I have to admit that the iPhone 5 looks to be pretty darn tough in the head-to-head drop tests I have seen, so I am going to have to be extra careful with this phone, because this relationship is going to last!

[joelhowe]

My Next Galaxy: Hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S3

Summary: Less than a day old, but there is a lot to love about this phone so far!

As I was reading the news about how Apple has successfully sued Samsung for copying the design of the iPhone, I looked down at my loyal but tired Samsung Galaxy S and began to let my mind consider various scenarios. What if Apple wins an injunction against Samsung? What if all Android phones suffer a similar fate? How long would the appeals process take? What if the only new smartphone options were iPhones or Windows phones?

Based solely on that last question and regardless of how illogical or improbable this train of thought had become, I promptly upgraded my Galaxy S to the Galaxy S3. It came in the mail yesterday, and now I can confidently sit back and let the legal system figure out who invented the rounded rectangle over the next two years. I can even read about it on my new phone!

So how is the new phone? Skipping a generation I knew that a lot of progress would have been made, but the overall experience is really solid. Here are a few first impressions:

The screen size is close to perfect. I really thought the phone would be much bigger in my pocket, but it isn't bad (I don't use a case at all.) and the screen looks great and feels big when watching videos or visiting web pages. The larger screen is also better for typing, at least for hands that are my size.

Voice recognition is excellent. I am already doing less typing! I had low expectations for this phone given that the voice recognition is done locally. [Correction: Voice recognition does appear to require a network connection, but it doesn't seem to lag based on speed of my network (1X, 3G, or 4G).] I am already using this for texting and will probably use it for emails as well. It also makes any recognition errors easy to fix by showing alternatives. This was not something I was really too excited about, but it really is very solid and definitely improves the overall experience.

Jelly Bean is a very responsive OS. I have to say that the latest screen is zippy fast and very responsive. I haven't loaded the phone up with apps yet, but scrolling and selections are all very quick. At no point was I way ahead of the phone, even though there are animations and fancy eye candy being displayed. Everything just feels more refined. For example, the automatic screen brightness no longer "pops" up or down but instead fades up or down based on the ambient light.

So things are looking good so far for the Samsung Galaxy S3, and these are just my initial observations. Look for an update based on the phone's performance with GPS and RunKeeper and we'll take a look at one of my big concerns, battery life!

[joelhowe]

Video Tutorial: Introduction to MassFX in 3ds max

Summary: Setting up a basic scene for physics simulation using 3ds max and the new MassFX physics solver.

Let's shoot some pool! In this tutorial, we look at using the new MassFX simulation tools to accomplish a very basic pool shot. This is a short tutorial, so we don't do a lot of fine-tuning here, but it does show how to set up a scene for simulation. We discuss creating optimized geometry for simulation, the three types of rigid bodies, and some details of the solver. Give it a look to see if we make the shot!

As always, if you like what you see, please subscribe or give us a thumbs up YouTube or share this via Twitter or Facebook!

[joelhowe]

3D Animation Tutorial: Simple Camera Rig for 3ds max

Summary: Basic rig for animating a camera, especially for orbiting objects.

So you have an object that you want to orbit around in 3D, be it your latest character model or a groovy 3D text logo. The camera animation is simple, right? You can just plop a camera in the scene and animate its position and rotation to a few points around the object in just a few minutes. Add keyframes at north, east, south, and west with rotations set to look at the object, and you have an effective animation, right? Well, not exactly. The issue is that as you move from one point to the next, the linear nature of the path between keyframes will change the distance the camera is away from the object, giving us an inherent and unwanted zoom or dolly effect. Adding intermediate keyframes will minimize the problem, but that gets tedious very quickly. Never fear! This tutorial shows how to avoid this with my simple camera rig:

This rig should work with just about any 3D program and is again a very basic rig, but it should really help with your orbiting or panning animations. Please feel free to use for any model turnarounds and remember that with camera movement, slow and steady wins the race!

[joelhowe]

3D Text Video Tutorial: Finishing in After Effects

Summary: The final step in our three-part video tutorial takes a basic 3d rendered sequence and adds some pizazz in the compositing phase.

Here we take our 3D text sequence from 3ds max and bring it in to After Effects CS6 to add some much needed style treatment and visual flair. It was really hard to keep this tutorial from running long because there is so many things that we can do to keep tweaking and improving the look of the footage as we go, but I think we made some solid improvements for the amount of time invested.

I should note that this tutorial use the excellent Trapcode Particular effect, but that you could (with a LOT of additional work) use some of the standard particle effects to do this. I would recommend that if you are doing a lot of effects work that you look into Particular (or the whole Trapcode Suite for that matter) as they have a wide range of capabilities, some of which I will have to show in a future tutorial!

[joelhowe]

Video Tutorial: 3D Text Animation in 3ds max

Summary: Part 2 of a three-part video tutorial gives an overview of 3D text in 3ds max, using the slice modifier to reveal the text.

This has a few good nuggets of information in it, including the use of the Bevel modifier instead of the Extrude modifier to create the text. I show how to cut the text using the Slice modifier and then make the mesh solid again with the Cap Holes modifier. I am using 3ds max 2013, but this process is applicable to many older versions as well.

Later in the tutorial, I use the Wire Parameters dialog and an ExposeTransform helper object to drive the slice plane's position based on the overall position of the 3D text object. There is a trick to this and the use of different (local versus world-space) coordinate systems, but it should be a good introduction to some new functionality, especially for beginning animators.

[joelhowe]

Video Tutorial: 3D Text Using 2-Point Perspective

Summary: Part 1 of a three-part video tutorial shows how to draw 3D text using a two point perspective in Photoshop CS6.

This video ran long, way beyond my target of 10 minutes, but I tried to balance going fast enough to keep people interested with not losing everyone along the way!

This video was created using a different production process. The audio was pretty poor last time, so I decided to record the audio separately. I used my Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder to record it (I love that thing!) and then sweetened the audio a bit with Adobe Audition. The results are much improved, but I still think I sound too nasal and I need to work on not saying "Umm...", but that will come with practice.