Showcase: just a basic 180 turntable

[andy_engelkemier]

Why is this so hard to do?
I can't seem to figure out how to save a movie of that. And I have to create at least 3 shots for them to animate even close to turntable style.

Is there really no easy way just to get a basic turnaround rendering (I only even need a 180) of a product? I would Really like to be able to repeat the exact same turnaround for each file I have.

[tekbot]

dude..... I feel your pain.
the process is tricky but totally possibly. essentially you need to play a turntable while recording a movie of a still shot. sounds weird but works great!

1. select all objects that you want on a turntable
2. hit "B" for behaviors.
3. create new turntable.
4. probably move pivot to object center.
5. set the RPM note the speed. this will affect the time of the movie shot.
6. create a still "Shot", easiest is "ctrl+T"
7. make sure it is a still shot and set the duration to be equal to 1 revolution of the turntable. for example if the turntable is set to rpm(rotation per minute) it means it will take 20 secs to do 1rpm. there for set the still shot duration to 20secs.
8. play turntable! this has to be turning for this to work.
9. right click on the shot icon and "save to movie"
10. since the shot is sitting there for 20 seconds recording what ever is on the screen, it will capture 1 rotation of the turntable.

viola!

[andy_engelkemier]

Thanks Tekbot. That seems to work pretty good. Although, the second time I tried it the software kind of crashed. I have the "Saving shots..." dialogue up and it's not progressing at all. I also can't hit cancel or anything like that.
I'd definitely suggest saving before attempting to render. ha. I didn't because I was just playing around to test this.

Now if only I could get the shadows on the floor to stop flickering....

[tekbot]

excellent. if you crashed, i would assume that you ran out of memory. I have 4g of memory and use the 3gb microsoft switch. (google "3gb xp switch". that might be why its hanging. beefy graphics card sure helps as well.

shadows....
do you have the shadow resolution turned up? that should help.

to get a sweet soft shadow look thats perfect. cheat it!

-turn off scene light shadows.
-take a normal plane, place it under your object
-calculate ambient shadows.
-save the file.
-delete AO off the plane.
-in the material properties, load AO texture that is stored in the "filename_data" folder as a transparency map.
-realign it to the objects.
-use color to match it to the surrounding shadow colors.

decal works as well.

since the shadow is baked in, no flicker with the turntable.

[andy_engelkemier]

I'm using XP x64, so no 3gig switch needed anymore. If it ran out of memory I assume it was a showcase bug because I repeated the same actions afterward with no problems at all and no hiccuping even.
Sometime programs just crash. It happens.

shadows...
I don't have the resolution turned up. It was creating a shadow that was too harsh. I like it with a really quick falloff, and the shadow turned all the way up, but with really soft shadows. That way it's really dark where the product meets the ground, but quickly falls off.
Also, I was getting jagged edges on maps larger than 256. If I could go high enough I'd probably be happy, but it doesn't allow you to go past 1024. I think I'd need at least twice that in some cases.
Regardless, I think "baking" the shadows is the best option. I'll have to try that out. That way we could just photoshop it to fall off how we want.

Too bad there isn't a way to bake the regular shadow. That's quicker to edit and would give us a faster starting point. This software is all about speed right? Thanks for the tip. It was Really helpful.