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Pushing the limits of cheap software
Hey gang…
As business people, seems we are often having to pour money on problems to find solutions, or to do something bigger or better or greater.
I wanted to take a sec though to brag on some some ultra-low-end software… the very ancient and so-easy-a-child-could-do-it Crytal Flying Fonts (which later became Crystal Impact).
Crystal Flying Fonts was briefly mentioned in this forum a few months ago.
This program came free with my first NLE about 12+ years ago, and I still use it today for simple 3D animation (type, simple logos, etc).
Last week we had a shoot rained out, so I was tinkering around and decided to push the limits of what CFF can do. I decided to create a new piece of logo animation for ourselves, as we didn’t have a high-def countdown (have been using an upscaled SD version that was created years ago).
I thought I’d try to create an old weathered flickering neon and sheetmetal sign rotating and turning on. I’m no 3D artist by any stretch (or even a regular artist of any type), but have to say I’m pretty pleased with the results… It’s not photo-realistic by any means, but not bad… especially when you consider it didn’t take long to do and used (at least primarily) sub-$100 software. This sample is farily low-res, of course, and doesn’t really show off well all the bits and pieces and the textures of the peeling paint, etc., but the original was created at 4K resolution at 24fps.
Just thought I’d share, and remind everyone (including myself) that not everything requires buckets of money.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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14 Replies
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Nice work, Todd.
Simple, well-lit, and effective.
Has a nice feel to it.
Ron Lindeboom
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Nice.
I remember using Crystal 3D fonts on our Quadra 650 or some such ting. Also had something like that on the in:Sync Speed Razor system. That Pentium1 133mhz machine could do a lot if you were real nice to it and bought it flowers.
On occasion I use a freeware called Anim8or – you can import 3Ds models or create your own. Simple to use especially for 3D extruded text. Will render an alpha channel. I mostly use this for animating free Star Wars models, but have used it in a few projects. Sometimes simple is just what you need.
Blender takes a bit more time to learn, but we have used that for 3D text also.
Mike
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[Mike Cohen] “Also had something like that on the in:Sync Speed Razor system.”
Sweet, another Speed Razor user! I thought it was some great software. I still miss some of its features. Running it on Windows NT… that’s a whole different story.
Jason Jenkins
Flowmotion Media
Video production… with style! -
As much as talk about the latest and greatest hardware and software it’s nice to be reminded every now and again that it’s not the tool but the person wielding it.
-Andrew
3.2GHz 8-core, FCP 6.0.4, 10.5.5
Blackmagic Multibridge Eclipse (6.8.1) -
[Todd Terry] “I wanted to take a sec though to brag on some some ultra-low-end software… the very ancient and so-easy-a-child-could-do-it Crytal Flying Fonts (which later became Crystal Impact). “
I mentioned a while back that I used 3D Impact Pro, reviewed it for Post Magazine, and I included a 3D award I created ten or twelve years ago.
Unfortunately, when I tried to load 3D Impact Pro on the top of the line Windows machine I had here for testing, it would not load under Vista-64. That was a bummer…
Now, for the first time in my life, I have no Windows machines at all. It’s a bit scary. In any case, I miss my Crystal Graphics apps.
And, your new signage looks great Todd. It took forever to be able to see it however. Servers seems to be slow all over today…
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™
A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.
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Yeah, David… I don’t think it will work with 64-bit machines. I was in an older 32-bit suite. I haven’t had the heart to try to load it in our newest suite, because I’m pretty sure it will not work on a 64-bit machine.
For the sake of clarity, I should probably confess that wasn’t all 100% in Crystal Flying Fonts, obviously. The pieces where imported into CFF as outlines created in Adobe Illustrator. The surface textures of the pole were from a digital camera, I walked outside and took a snapshot of a metal power pole. For the weathered painted surfaces of the sign I drybrushed paint onto pieces of foamcore and scanned them and mapped those images onto the model. The typography and rivets were added to the maps in Photoshop, just to cut down on the number of physical elements within the 3D model. And then the whole thing was composited in Premiere CS3, since there were actually about a dozen different renders that were layered together (some with no lights, some with lights, some with the neon tubes dark, some with the neon tubes just as masks, etc). But all of the model-building and animation was done in CFF.
We farm out all of our “real” 3D animation since that’s not at all what we do… but that was fun to do just for yuks.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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[Jason Jenkins] “Sweet, another Speed Razor user! I thought it was some great software. I still miss some of its features. Running it on Windows NT… that’s a whole different story.
Jason Jenkins”
Yep, we evaluated the Radius Telecaster and the SpeedRazor system. While the Telecaster was hardware supported Premiere v. 2.0 perhaps, the SpeedRazor used a Targa 2000. Built-in Dolby surround encoding and a pretty robust feature set for 1996 made this too good to be true. Alas, even with RAID storage the data rates were still too high for 1996 Windows technology. But it was great for CD-ROM level video export (Cinepak or Indeo). And it doubled as a still store for the online bay until we got a proper Media 100 a few years later.
Ok kids, that’s your ancient technology discussion for today. Please join us next week as we describe D2 pre-read technology and we see live video of the self-threading 1″ machine!
Oh the good old days.
Mike Cohen
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That looks great… really, great work can be done with just about anything if you’ve got the time and skill.
When I need simple 3D elements and text like that, I use Blender. It doesn’t get much cheaper than free.
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It’s the talent not the technology!!! One of the best editing jobs I have ever seen was done by a kid using 2 vhs machines and an rm-440. He was entering some MTV contest created one of the most fasinating pieces of work I have ever see. Anyone can run software few can truly edit.
RoyRoy Schneider
Long Live Da Cow!
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