How to Get Rid of annoying Circular Dynamic Feedback pointer in Windows

There are few things more annoying than that stupid animated swirly circle thingy that Microsoft decided to add to any pointing interface in Windows. (shown below)

It may look lovely to some sad fool out there, but it is impossible to draw or paint using a drawing tablet while this thing pops up all the time.

It was only last year that I discovered a website that showed how to get rid of it called http://viziblr.com/

Amazingly the only way to remove it is to alter the registry.
But don't worry, because the website provides a simple tool to automatically fix it for you....plus it also provides another simple tool to restore it in case you miss that little %$*^&!

It is amazing that Microsoft never thought of how completely useless and irritating their little animated circle pointer would become and not even consider including a button to un-select it!

Anyway, here is that link again http://viziblr.com/news/2011/8/14/the-ultimate-guide-to-making-your-wacom-tablet-work-on-windo.html

You will not regret getting rid of those damn circles!

Adding Camera Movement to Video Footage in Blender 3D

Adding Camera Movement to Video Footage in Blender 3D

For our latest short film I wanted to add very subtle camera movements to simulate a kind of hand-held feel to the action.
There are three ways I could go about this:

The first would be to animate the camera jittering about while doing the animation.
This would lead to longer rendering times of the backgrounds especially in scenes requiring lots of ray tracing and mirrored reflections.

The second way would be to render the scenes with a static camera and then import these sequences into Blender Sequence editor and apply the ‘Jitter’ plugin.
This would render faster but the jitter not very convincing.

The final way would be to render the scenes with a static camera and then import them back into Blender, project the images onto a 3D card which we can then add (limited) camera movement on the X and Y axis, as well as zoom.

SO this is the technique that I’m gonna use.

Ok, what’s the purpose/benefits of doing this?

Well, firstly, this method involves putting an image onto a plane (or any shape – but mostly a flat plane) and then using a 3D camera to perform simple pans, rotations and zooms on this image.
By doing this you can achieve some simple camera effects like handheld jitter.
Its not 100% accurate but it will suit some scenario’s and it is a great little way to do some useful cropping and post-processing on pre-recorded/animated footage.







It’s really easy to set up a 3D viewing plane:

All you need is a Camera and a Mesh Plane.
When inserting the Camera and the Plane, press ALT+R and then ALT+G to clear their rotation and location co-ordinates.

Then drag the Camera back on the Z-axis far enough so that you can see the Plane in the Camera View. Press CTRL+A to clear rotation/location/scale.

Now press the ‘0’ key on your keyboard to enter 3D view from the camera’s perspective.

Now, I’m working in this instance with footage that has dimensions of 720 X 300 pixels.
(For the actual film I will be using dimensions of 900 X 432 pixels but lets just use 720 X 300 for this example)

In the Render Buttons panel enter 720 X 300.

Now scale your mesh plane in Edit Mode so that it fits perfectly inside the camera view.

Fig 1: The image before being scaled to fit the camera view.


Fig 2: The image scaled to fit inside the Camera view accurately.


Enter UV edit mode and select all the vertices and Unwrap using “Project form View Bounds”. (It helps if you select a single still image from your image sequence and import it separately into the UV window so that it allows you to visually line up your plane to the correct scale)

Go to the Material buttons tab and add a new material to the plane.
Go to the Texture buttons and add a new texture to the plane – select an image sequence or movie. Enter the amount of frames you want to use in the box to shows up.


Go back to Material buttons and select Shadeless (and TEX FACE if you want).
In ‘MAP INPUT’ choose ‘UV’.

See the enclosed image for settings (you may note that I was using an image sequence with an Alpha channel).


Go to the render buttons panel and enter the output frame size you wanna use.
In this instance it’s 720 X 576 (PAL).
You will notice that the top and bottom of the 3D viewport fame has increased.
This is because the frame size I choose before (720 X 300) was intended to give a ‘letterboxed’ image.

Make sure Ambient Occlusion is turned off when rendering or else you will end up with the sky showing through in the background and increased render times.

Now that you are all set up, you can move the Camera about in 3D space and animate it using IPO’s.
You can zoom in on selected areas, or do pans and rotations.
Remember that when doing pans and rotations you need to be zoomed in slightly (or a lot!) or else you will end up with a strange looking cropped image.
This is why I rendered my initial sequences of the film as larger than my intended output size – 900 X 432 instead of 720 X 576.
This means that I can zoom in for camera movements without the image getting blocky or pixellated.
Add ‘jitter’ camera movements that zoom in and out and pan from side to side and up/down using IPO curves.
Be careful not to over do it or to add too much movement as it will become disorientating – and look a bit crap! Subtle moves will help add to the general feel of your movie.


Experiment with this technique and see what else you can come up with!


Shane Dwarfed Films

The 10 Minute Blender Particle Hair Tutorial

I've made a simple PDF tutorial for using the new Jahka particle system in Blender.
The previous .EXE tutorial I made and provided before on this site was Ok-ish but this new one is far better!
The file size is about 650kb and deals with making basic hair material, emitting hair particles and then rendering layers so that you can render the mesh model and the particles seperately and then composite them later in Blender's sequencer.


Also, this tutorial is based on the latest version of the particle system as used in the Blender 2.45 SVN AAO build available on www.graphicall.org

You can download the PDF tutorial here
http://www.mediafire.com/?cjdnjllzotz

Any questions or comments leave 'em on the site.

Shane

Edit 23/Jan/2008: This is a newer version of the PDF Tutorial provided in a compressed .Rar format. It includes more detail and tips.

Edit 03/Feb/2008: OK, here's something I just realised whilst testing the latest Blender SVn Build from www.graphicall.org.
In a note at the end of the rendering section of my "10 Minute Blender Particle Hair Tutorial" PDF file, I wrote this:

"You might have a few problems when moving from rendering one layer to another.
For example, during my tests when I'd finished rendering the Mesh only shot and moved on to do the
Hair only, the wrong shot would render. The only way to rectify this was by restarting Blender and
rendering the Hair shot again seperately. A strange bug - probably."

Well, ignore that statement! The solution to this is very simple and I have given myself a slap for not figuring it out sooner.
All you have to do is this:

Instead of selecting the "Single" button in the Render Tab (in order to only render the selected render layer) - don't select it at all.
Just make sure that you click the little correction marker beside your layer name to "disable/enable this Render Layer".
Of course, make sure you only choose the layer(s) you want to render in that particular pass.
That's it. Simple really.

Check it out by doing a quick test by rendering "mesh only" first. Then in render window press J key to view other buffer. Now select a "hair only" render pass and press F12 to render. When this is done, press J key in the render window to compare the two shots by toggling between them.

Now you shouldn't have any problems.

Shane
www.dwarfedfilms.blogspot.com