CGI with Live Action - Where to start?

W

wingsofdesire

I am directing a very short film. (under 5 minutes) The story requires the character to be chased through the woods by a bear. Since hiring a bear wrangler is out of the question I figured animation would be the route to take.
But I do not know where to start. What would be the best approach? Stop motion bear? Computer generated bear? Traditional animated bear? Or maybe taking filmed footage of a bear and interweaving it with my footage. I am going for a realistic style but in the low budget indie world that may not be doable. Any suggestions on approach, applications, software or whatever would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
I'd go to the zoo and get some footage of a real bear. It doesn't seem like you have the resources to use CGI. A person in a bear suit could work but I don't think you have one.

If your movie is just for fun then you could probably just copy some bear footage from another movie that has bears in it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I think that low budget here means no budget... Sounds like the $395 would bankrupt the short...

Also!!!!!
Welcome Velusion... I haven't seen you for a while!! you must have gotten a good gig!


Well do you actually HAVE to SEE the bear?

You can see the guy running and have the CAMERA be the BEAR... shoot it from the bears perspective instead of showing the bear...

Add bear sounds and you HAVE a bear...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks for the feedback. I got input from some other boards and discovered CGI was not viable. Camera as bear is a good idea but we need to see the bear becasue the bear has lines. LOL!
We are going with the bear suit.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Bear suit! YES!
smiley_zip.gif
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
wingsofdesire said:
Thanks for the feedback. I got input from some other boards and discovered CGI was not viable.
Click to expand...


If I had time I would do something for you, but this damn movie is infecting all things that have to do with time. a 3D movie is so time consuming...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Yeah, I know what you mean. My current project will have about 7 minutes of CGI animations and I am not looking forward to all that render time. Not to mention all the time it takes to animate things, especially when there is lip syncing involved....
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
We're not using LW for the full production piece. MAX7 is the main application and which is where we will render from. Everything is feeding into MAX... some Poser, some LW, some DAZ, some Vue... Although I LOVE Vue's fast render-er... MAX has more powerful options.
I actually just bought another Sun D1000 to add to the one I already have... This will add another entire disk server with hot swappable drives into the mix... Man! I need a bigger rack!

Previz is almost done and we've started production of some shots already. The Previz is helping all the artists SEE what's on the script... although we just changed a big portion of it... lol!

What Apps do you use?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Apps

Alias Maya v6.0
Maxon Cinema 4D Studio
3d Max 7
SOFTIMAGE|3D
DoGA CGA System
Alias Motionbuilder 6
Poser 5
DAZ Studio
Blender
Lightwave
Bryce 5
Renderman
Animation:Master

Plug-ins

HairFx
Particle Flow
ClothFx
Mimic
AfterBurn
FinalRender
Dream Scape

Too many to name
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I use them all.

I don't have any samples on this computer or the internet. You can see what me and my team can do when the demo for Revelation comes out in a few weeks.

how many apps do you use
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Me, personally, I'm more of a Post guy but I use MAX, Vue, and am integrating Poser and LW into this production. I use Vegas, After FX, Combustion, and a bunch of other apps for VFX and POST, Adobe Premier, Photoshop, and more... Production is mainly done in MAX.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top