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Digital Storyboarding with Adobe CC 2014
  • shianshian

    Many of you would love to not have to rely on a storyboard artist to pre-visualize your film, but like me your drawing skills are just not good enough to really make the effort seem worthwhile. But, not to fear, cuz Adobe has finally made it possible for you to create outstanding storyboards for your ideas digitally using Cinema 4D and Imma gonna showya how.

    What you probably didn't know is that Cinema 4D Lite comes standard with After Effects now. And those who did know probably thought to yourself, "I have absolutely no use for that..." Well, now you do.

    Warning: I kinda have a little rant in the middle of this tutorial - but there's a point to it. I'm not just being an asshole for the fun of it.

  • 10 Replies sorted by
  • maxrmaxr

    @shian Despite I don’t work at a level where a script is needed {visualize a bunch of monkeys trying to do an omelette with sticks, mud and stones}, I do find fascinating the huge amount of analysis, study, tests and planning involved in a “real” production.

    In my opinion knowledge is also married to personal subjective experience - worst problem solving scenarios are always related to the unpredictable human relationships - and in this particular case you provided us both with an insight to pre-prod tools and techniques as with some useful advices grounded in your personal (and vast) work experience.

    Summarizing: thanks for the tuto… loved the rant =)

  • GeoffreyKennerGeoffreyKenner

    I've been using a similar previs technique since two years now. The difference is I'm doing it all inside Autodesk Maya.

    It's a very useful workflow if you works with Visual Effects and are not particularly skilled at drawing (which is also my case). We developed further technique for the environment using photogrametry (during scouting we took 360° photos) and projection mapping to re-create a 3D sets matching precisely the real one so we could know how to place the lights and which lens we want to use.

  • last_SHIFTlast_SHIFT

    This also great for people who can draw but are lazy like me - I can trace over the wireframes and mass models to make the boards look prettier.

  • shianshian

    @GeoffreyKenner I've been using Maya for this as well since 2005, but since most can't afford Maya, I decided to do the demo in a program many here already have access to. And I'm finding that for storyboarding, I'm really liking C4D Lite a lot. And since it has pre-rigged figures in it, and my version of Maya does not, I may start doing all my Digital Storyboards and animatics in C4D Lite. It does everything I need it to do and it's interlinking with AFX is just outstanding.

    A friend told me if I gave C4D a chance I'd love it. He switched from Maya a few years ago, and I think he's right. I'm really liking it. Like all 3D programs if you know one, it's not hard to learn the others.

  • xenogearsxenogears

    I do animatics for living but with illustrations, my pipeline is this: -Poser Pro to create figure references thanks to the posable system, later to Photoshop. -Create 3D Props in Sketchup because is very fast and have a huge library of free objects. -Sometimes we need to texture the models, i use Cinema 4D for that. -Living 3D backgrounds an scenes with Lumion (very expensive software) allow me to load the Sketchup models. -Final composition in After Effects.

  • GeoffreyKennerGeoffreyKenner

    @shian C4D is an incredible tool, I can guarantee you gonna fall in love with it too. It's incompatible with the current pipeline we use but I'd love to get back to it! Great tutorial Shian btw, as always.

  • nobbystylusnobbystylus

    I did all the storyboards for my short film 'Mr Torquay's Holiday' using C4D as I can't draw in any way legibly. I also used POSER to give me a range of poses (sitting, jumping, standing etc) and exported them into C4D. It was a long process, but saved me a lot of time on set when I was shooting with our modest budget.

    Storyboards here -

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/z61fbdxkl0o8shb/Storyboard_Mr%20Ts.pdf?dl=0

    Film here -

  • rNeilrNeil

    @shian

    Good tutorial ... and yes, had no clue this was "there" all along.

    Neil

  • matt_gh2matt_gh2

    @shian Great stuff here - thanks for contributing your time and expertise.

  • shianshian

    I can't stress this enough. If you are going to be doing digital storyboards, take advantage of this Poser Pro deal while it lasts. It is absolutely worth it.

    http://my.smithmicro.com/poser-pro-2014.html?utm_source=smithmicro&utm_medium=email&utm_term=cta&utm_campaign=PoserSaleC&hq_e=el&hq_m=2121818&hq_l=10&hq_v=5c48da308d

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