Another
great addition to this program is scene percolation. No,
this does not mean that this program can make you coffee!
What it means is that, if you change something about a
character after you've already created half your storyboard,
it'll allow you to percolate this change through the scene
or the entire storyboard for you. This is a great help
if you happen to find a costume, decal, or skin that you
prefer down the road for a character. The only thing to
be aware of is that, if you find a new skin to percolate
through your storyboard on an actor, it won't remove any
of your decals. This is great if your decals are gunshot
wounds, but not so great if you eventually find a goateed
facial 'skin', but had already applied a 'temporary' goatee
decal in the interim. (In other words, wait until you're
done with your storyboard before you try to customize
your characters with 'decorative' decals like tattoos,
scars, and facial hair. You may find a skin that will
take care of all of that for you!)
As
if all these new additions weren't enough, Innoventive
actually added joypad support to make it even easier to
control all the elements of this powerful program. While
the program can take any USB controller that has two analog
sticks and a digital pad, I actually had the best results
with Innoventive's own Director's Pad, which is based
on an Xbox controller and is screen-printed with all the
buttons that you can use. When I first started playing
with the program with the controller, I found that the
joysticks were a bit too sensitive, so you could easily
whip your main character or camera to an area of the set
that you didn't intend. However, as I got used to using
it in conjunction with the on-pad 'control' button, which
gives you more fine control, it got quite a bit easier.
To further aid this simplicity, Innoventive added a patch
in their most recent download that allows you to customize
your joystick sensitivity, which works quite nicely. (When
you set up your joystick, just make sure you read all
the in-program instructions, as the setup is a little
atypical for game controllers. I know this because I actually
made a complete idiot of myself by calling up Ken and
telling him that his company's controller setup didn't
exist! Luckily, Ken has a kind heart and didn't make me
feel as stupid as I know I looked!)
Despite
all the great things, there were some things Chris and
I wished they would have touched up in this version.
As
an artist, I wish there was a total 3D view that did not
represent an actual camera entity. They touch on this
feature in the blueprint view and will also allow you
to rotate and fly around all the objects people if you
select them all and put them in the free-positioning mode,
but coming from a 3D design background, it would be nice
to have a separate view, sort of like the plan view, that
just let you fly through the set at a pre-chosen angle
(like 45 degrees), repositioning cameras as well as people
and objects. I think this would help save time on rough
blocking and general camera placement.
Additionally,
while FF3DS2 makes set design pretty easy
from scratch, I wish they would include set design 'poses',
much as they include body movement poses. In other words,
include prefabricated indoor and outdoor sets of different
configurations that you could choose from a pull-down
menu based on what type of area you've selected. Sure
pure customizations are nice, but think about it: most
bedrooms will have a bed, dresser, and closet; most offices
will have a desk, chairs, computer, and a filing cabinet.
If there were a way to select a bedroom set initially,
it would be much quicker to have the option of rearranging
the existing props for that predefined room instead of
bringing them in piece by piece.
Another thing I would love to see implemented in this
release would be to have some sort of online store where
users could spend a couple of bucks and add groupings
of continually developing actors and props to their purchase.
I realize that Innoventive has two full blown expansion
sets and it would be similar to these, but with more of
customizable feel (i.e. mahogany office furniture, muscle
cars, hospital equipment etc.). My reasoning is thus:
Many microfilmmakers won't have access to full blown Maya
or 3D Studio suites to be able to create their own 3D
props since those pro-3D programs cost an arm and a leg.
This puts a pretty significant limitation on indie filmmakers
on a low budget. Adding a series of $30 prop packs with
new batches of genre-specific props would be a great alternative
to selling the family jewels to buy 3D Studio and a computer
capable of running it or relying on the folks in the bulletin
board to make every prop you would normally find in one
of these packs.
One
thing that I really found lacking was a face mapper to
allow you to put the faces' of your cast on your 3D characters.
To go to all the trouble of making photorealistic characters
and not give you the option to auto-map real actors faces
from photographs seemed to be a huge pain. I am proficient
with Photoshop and figured out what the facial skins needed
to look like, but it took me nearly five hours of monkeying
around with a photo of myself and overlaying it on one
of the program's 'face' skins to get a 3D representation
of myself that looked somewhat like me.
