Office Hours: custom bone facial rig

A small GIF animation of custom bone facial rig setup in Blender 3D for the film OFFICE HOURS.

Contact DWARFED FILMS here

Fixed email link

The email links to DWARFED FILMS have been fixed!
This problem affected around half a dozen previous posts. We hadn't noticed this error until today when it was quickly rectified.

So you can contact DWARFED FILMS here

Office Hours: textures

Here are some textures to be used on signs in the 3D film Office Hours.
These signs are old, dirty and worn and each is composed from approximately 8 separate layers.
Almost all of the textures in Office Hours are created using the The Gimp

Contact DWARFED FILMS here

Essential Free Software: has been updated

The heading says it all. The Essential Free Software list (posted a few days ago on the site) has been updated with direct web links to make it even easier for you to get your hands on some of the best filmmaking software out there!

Here are some useful sites to find free software:
www.sourceforge.net

www.majorgeeks.com

Each lists an extensive range of products. Source Forge has lots, but the site isn't the easiest to navigate as it has so may programs in development as well as completed.
Major Geeks is best place to start for beginners and those in a rush! Its listing is pretty much clean of spyware/adware compared to some other sites.

Contact DWARFED FILMS here

Office Hours: exterior locations

Here are more images from Office Hours showing location design. They show a deserted city street and an animated gif showing the location as a 3D wire frame.

Contact DWARFED FILMS here

Office Hours: interior location design

Some more location stills from OFFICE HOURS.
Minimal textures and lighting at this stage but you can see how it is progressing.
more images very soon.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: modelling a simple building facade

Here is a brief gif animation showing the process of modelling a very basic building facade.
The array modifier in Blender allows very complex models to be composed. You simply model a particular section of the building and then use the array tool to make duplicates in any direction. Ideal for making complex multi-storey office blocks.


Contact Dwarfed Films here

Announcement

We noticed that the site was beginning to take a bit too long to load properly so to speed things up for viewers we now only display around 15 posts per page.
Make sure to check our older posts on the blog archive because you never know what you might have missed!

Also we're considering the idea of doing some short tutorials, so if anyone out there is interested be sure to let us know. The tutorials would cover everthing from 3D animation/modelling to live action filming and everything in between.

The idea came about when we were thinking of releasing a DVD of To Shoot A Rurf which would include a few different commentaries covering all aspects of production and post production, test footage and a copy of the open source software Blender 3D amongst other goodies. The idea is still in it's infancy but could be a really cool project.

As always you can contact Dwarfed Films here or simply leave a comment on the site.

Essential Free Software

NOTICE: Click here for the Updated 2011 List of Dwarfed Films' Essential Free Software.

There are some incredible programs out there for creating/editing/viewing/manipulation of images and audio. Even better is the fact that a lot of these programs are freeware or open source. At Dwarfed Films we use certain open source products like Blender 3d and The Gimp every day so we've decided to include a list of software that other filmmakers might find useful.
The following programs are the equivalent (and in some cases superior) to many commercial products so don't let the "freeware" tag scare you off!
Some of these programs are a lot less cumbersome and processor intensive than their commercial rivals and are suited to specific tasks. Many of them have very small file sizes because they don't come bundled with tonnes of tutorials and manuals.
Also this is a rough list and certain products may have been forgotten or excluded for other reasons and website names may be incorrect or have changed too.

Look up these programmes on www.google.com

List compiled by Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils of Dwarfed Films.
www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com/
Contact us

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Essential Freeware or Open Source Software:
Note: items marked “*” are frequently used by Dwarfed Films.

Animation/Modelling Tools

*Blender 3D: Open source (freeware) 3D modelling, animation, sequencer for windows/mac/linux/etc www.blender3d.org

UV Mapper: Freeware UV texture unwrapper for 3D models.

Plant Studio: Freeware creator plants and leaves. Expots to .OBJ format.

Image Editor Tools

*The Gimp: Open Source image editor that is just like photoshop www.gimp.org.

*Irfan View: Freeware image viewer supporting practically every format from .png to .mov. Find it at www.irfanview.com/

*Paint.Net: Similar to The Gimp but easier interface and it also loads much quicker. Supports layers and a whole range of effects. www.getpaint.net/index2.html

Visual FX Tools

*Voodoo Camera Tracker: Freeware camera tracking software. www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/download.html

*Terregen: Freeware landscape creator for making stunningly realistic landscapes. www.planetside.co.uk/terragen/

*Terranim: Freeware plugin for terregen that makes animations of created landscapes.

*Landformer: Freeware landscape map generator for use in Terregen

Win DV: Freeware tool for importing/exporting footage from DV camera to computer. windv.mourek.cz/

Super: Freeware video converter for conversion to avi/mpeg/wav/mp3/swf/ogg/mobile phone/etc and vice versa. www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

Audio Editor/Sequencer Tools

*Audacity: Open Source audio editor and recording audacity.sourceforge.net/

*Quartz Audio Master Freeware: Free version of audio/midi editor www.digitalsoundplanet.com/SoftwareHouse/Products/Audio_Master/Freeware/freeware.phtml

*VM midi keyboard: Freeware virtual desktop midi keyboard www.granucon.com/vmk.html

*Psychle: Freeware audio sampler/sequencer psycle.pastnotecut.org/download/files/docs/psyclemidi.html

*Audio Grabber: Freeware audio recorder/convertor/ripper. www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

Hammer Head Rhythm Studio: Freeware drum sequencer. Download available from DOWNLOAD.COM

Groove Drum Station DT-010: Freeware drum sequencer. www.d-lusion.com

Shittalker: Basic text to speech program. A bit dated now but still funny. www.unaesthetic.net

DVD Tools

EXPRESS BURN: Excellent, Freeware DVD/CD/BlueRay/HD DVD burn sotware that is 100% compatible with Windows Vista. Nice clean design and the best DVD burning program we've yet seen. Choose this instead of Final Burner! Download it here http://www.nch.com.au/burn

DVD Shrink:Excellent and versatile Freeware tool for copying DVD's and compressing them so that they can fit on a standard DVD-/+ disc. (NOTE: Copying a commercial copyright-protected DVD may be done for personal use only). www.dvdshrink.org/

Final Burner: A great Freeware CD/DVD burning program like Nero (the program - not the Roman emperor). Small download size (about 2mb) and with a user friendly interface. Recommended (Note for personal use only). http://www.protectedsoft.com/

Presentation Tools

*Open Office: Open Source equivalent to MS Office, but far superior. Can write direct to .pdf format. www.openoffice.org

*Wink: Freeware tool to create presentations in .swf (shockwave flash) or .exe (executable file) format. Records mouse movements and allows you to edit this into a tutorial demo. www.debugmode.com/wink/

*Cam Studio: Open Source screen-grab utility that records video/audio to .avi or.swf format. Pretty much similar to Wink except for the .avi capabilities. Very useful.
www.camstudio.org/

*Foxit PDF Reader: Freeware PDF reader and editor. Better that Adobe Reader. www.foxitsoftware.com

*PDF Xchange Viewer: Freeware PDF reader and editor. Again better than Adobe Reader. www.docu-track.com

Compression Tools

*7Zip: Open source compression software. Much better compression than winzip/win rar etc. Supports all compression formats. www.7-zip.org/

Web Browser Tools

*Mozilla Firefox: Open Source web browser. Far more secure and user friendly than Internet Explorer. www.mozilla.com/

Operating Systems

Linux Ubuntu: Open Source (ie: FREE) operating system that is updated every 6 months. Has received a lot of very good feedback and reviews and is considered to be more secure that Windows. Comes with software such as Open Office, etc. Can be downloaded from the site or you can apply to receive a copy by post for free! www.ubuntu.com/

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Good Commercial Software Products:

At Dwarfed Films we don't just use freeware. The following are some of the best commercial products out there. You might wonder why we haven't included Final Cut pro, Adobe After Effects, Avid or indeed the free learing edition Avid Free DV? Well the reason is that these programs get the job done without too much fuss and without wasting too much processing time and they are very stable (crashes are generally rare).

*Magix Movie Edit Pro: Video editor. Renders on the fly so gives fast playback when editing which is very important! Newer versions handle .png / .tga formats which is suitable for compositing. Trial Versions available but you would need broadband connection. www.magix.com

*Sony Vegas: Video editor. Fast, lots of FX and extras. Supports .png / .tga formats. Trial Versions available but you will need broadband connection to download.

*Deep Exploration : The best 3D model viewer. Made by Right Hemisphere. Also renders and exports to variety of formats. Very useful to find stuff on your hard drive when in a rush. Trial Versions available. File size approx 15mb. www.righthemisphere.com

Reaper: Audio editor (also includes video playback) with layout that would be familiar to users of Sony Vegas. Trial Versions available. File size approx 8mb

Freeware Websites

Major Geeks: Safe and secure freeware software arranged into various categories. Click here to visit site

Sourceforge: Directory of open Source projects with downloads. Not the best laid out site in the world but you can find programs of all types for all formats. Click here to visit the site

VST4FREE: Site offering free VST plugins for creating and editing music. Use the plugins alongside other free audio creation software such as Psycle or Reaper. Click here to visit the site

PC-Utilities: Website of the PC-Utilities magazine. You can directly download software in various categories. Click here to visit the site

Wikipedia: The Wiki list of Free/Open Source software. Click here to vist the site

FSF/UNESCO Free List: A list of freeware compiled by the UN. Click here to visit the site

Light Links: This is a bit strange but it's religious site offering freeware! You can ignore the christian preachy stuff and check out the free software links on the left hand side of the main page. Click here to visit the site



As always you can contact us here
Or you can leave a comment or any other links to free software that you think others might find useful.

NOTICE: Click here for the Updated 2011 List of Dwarfed Films' Essential Free Software.

Office Hours: even more particle hair

You can never have enough pictures of hair, so heres some more! Styling 3D hair particles in Blender can be a headache sometimes but it's worth the effort.
Office Hours is the latest 3D animated short from directors Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils of Dwarfed Films.

Contact Dwarfed Films here.

Directors Notes interview

Dwarfed Films recorded an interview with Marvin Belle of Directors Notes earlier today.

Directors Notes is a great website dedicated to the work of independent filmmakers.
Each week a director discusses the making of their particular film which is then put on the site as a podcast.
All round nice guy Marvin Belle, who runs the site, is a writer who ran the Directors Notes section of Showreel Magazine and edited the UK Filmmakers Bulletin for Shooting People.
Directors Notes is a great idea and Dwarfed Films were only too happy to discuss the making of To Shoot A Rurf.

The interview should hopefully be going out in the next few weeks. We'll keep you posted.

To Shoot A Rurf: Final Cut screening

To Shoot A Rurf is screening next month, Sunday April 01st, at Final Cut Brighton.
Final Cut is a great event organised by Richard Harris and they have always supported Dwarfed Films, so we like them :)
For more information check out it's website finalcut.gb.com/month.html

Office hours: more hair

More hair style tests for Office Hours.
Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: adding hair

Check out these hair tests from Office Hours.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office hours: new test still

New pre-production still from Office Hours. Lots of missing incomplete textures and the lighting is basic but , hey, thats what pre-production is for!

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: custom bones

Custom bone shapes are a great feature in Blender. Click on the image to view it full size.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: more pre-production images

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: location design

A pre-production still from one of the locations to be used in Office Hours. It is a side street somewhere in the city. Lots of work still needs to be done but you should be able to get a sense of the mood which we are aiming for throughout the film.

Dwarfed Films may be contacted here

Office Hours: skin texture

Heres a still of Office Hours lead characters' face. The aim is to give him a realistic skin texture as opposed to the extra rough (intentional) unrealistic texture of the lead character from our previous short film To Shoot A Rurf.
Click on image to view it full size.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office hours: Facial animation rigging

Click on image to view full size.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: clothed model

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: character in underpants

Here is a test render of the lead character in his underpants and vest. Why? Well, it is to be used during an important scene in the movie, thats why!

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: female character

Another image from Office Hours, this time the female character (who is actually a mannequin).
A number of costume designs are being worked on for her in various styles. Also skin tone textures are constantly being updated and revised.
Office Hours is the latest film from directors Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: animated gif

This is a 3 frame animated GIF of the lead character from Office Hours. This was used as a test for how the characters facial rig would be set up and also to fine tune movements in the eyes, mouth and eyebrows areas.

Dwarfed Films can be contacted here

TO SHOOT A RURF: view a low resolution version of the film here

This is a low resolution version of TO SHOOT A RURF designed for 56k modems.

Office Hours: male character hairstyle test

This is a test render of the male character with a different hairstyle. It's not right yet and requires more experimentation to find the correct hair and length.

Contact Dwarfed Films here

Office Hours: pre-production screen grabs

Here are some screen grabs of pre-production work on the 3D animated short OFFICE HOURS, directed by Shane Sheils and Paula Sheils.

As always you can click on the images to view them full size.

To contact Dwarfed Films click here