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AutoIt is helping make a 3D movie!


simplecarnival
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Howdy --

I'm a long time AutoIt user, and I've put it to use when rendering shots for a 3D animated music video movie I'm working on.

I gave a talk last week about the process of creating the movie, and started showing the AutoIt related stuff around the 23 minute mark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY4ZDgQ3O1c

Anyway, thought you might find this to be an interesting sort of use for AutoIt.

Jeff Boller

http://www.simplecarnival.com

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Haven't go my 3D specs to hand, but will take another look at this when I have.

Decent tune too, I've a lot of time for muso's.

perhaps you could explain exactly what it was you used AutoIt for in your project.

Oh and was that a silhouette of homer simpson in the baby bed, midway through?

Edited by JohnOne

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Thanks, John!

Basically, I'm using AutoIt as a major part of my graphics rendering pipeline.

The main animation program I use, Anime Studio, has some limitations in the way it exports 3D. I'm using AutoIt to work around them.

My AutoIt app takes an Anime Studio project file, then calls a separate C# app which makes two copies of the project file (one for the left eye, one for the right), then parses through the files and adjusts the camera positions appropriately (based on the "Interaxial distance" parameter shown in my talk). Then AutoIt calls out to Anime Studio and renders each project file separately.

After that...well, there's a lot of things the AutoIt app can do. Sometimes I pull in what I call a "convergence file" (again, I go into this in the talk) and AutoIt loops through the rendered images and adjusts the convergence (horizontal position of one of the camera's images) on a frame-by-frame basis.

If a shot requires what's called a floating stereo window (a vertical black bar on the edge of either the right or left eye's image -- it helps conceal distracting objects on the edges of the screen), the AutoIt app will handle that as well on a frame-by-frame basis. I went into some detail on the convergence and floating stereo window features on another talk I did earlier this year:

I'll also usually have the AutoIt app render the final left and right images as a side by side video file.

Oh, and then there's the ability to run batches of scenes through the AutoIt app, so I can render one Anime Studio project file after another for days on end.

AutoIt uses ImageMagick for all of its graphics manipulation and VDub for its movie file manipulation.

From a coding and user interface standpoint, my AutoIt app is a mess. But it works really well for my purposes, and it's a critical tool in my 3D pipeline.

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Kinda off topic. But assuming VDup is VirtualDub. I like to toss in AviSynth (free open-source) as possible additional video tool (if not already used of course).

AviSynth is a powerful tool for video post-production. It provides ways of editing and processing videos. AviSynth works as a frameserver, providing instant editing without the need for temporary files

.

AviSynth itself does not provide a graphical user interface (GUI), but instead relies on a script system that allows advanced non-linear editing. While this may at first seem tedious and unintuitive, it is remarkably powerful and is a very good way to manage projects in a precise, consistent, and reproducible manner. Because text-based scripts are human readable, projects are inherently self-documenting. The scripting language is simple yet powerful, and complex filters can be created from basic operations to develop a sophisticated palette of useful and unique effects. ... more

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Kinda off topic. But assuming VDup is VirtualDub.

Whoops, I misspoke (mistyped?). I meant to say it's VirtualDub. Thanks for the correction.

I like to toss in AviSynth (free open-source) as possible additional video tool (if not already used of course).

I've not used AviSynth, but if I were making an application intended to be released to the public, I would probably pick AviSynth for the job. I only used VirtualDub because I was already very familiar with what it did, what its 'gotchas' were, and because I was in a hurry. :)

Edited by simplecarnival
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