I was right, I think.

This project had me animating and rendering like crazy. That's the part I'm fairly used to, but since I added Subsurface Scattering (SSS) to her and the Big Dynamic Hair, renders take much longer than I was used to. For example, when Dartanbeck walks in in the beginning it took eleven seconds per frame to render while it took over four minutes for most of Rosie's. Dartanbeck 5 still isn't finished, so isn't using SSS yet.

While I waited for renders I wrote a simple, rough script to help keep myself on track and to help me visualize what more I needed for renders.

As my list was nearing completion, it was time to pull out DaVinci Resolve.

This video is made up of an awful lot of pieces. I had to play around a bit to get used to how I would tackle the main timeline of the movie, since every single tiny part is an "Effects Shot" (requires visual effects compositing - VFX). Again, a lot of fun!

By the time my rough timeline was completed in Resolve my rendering was complete. I knew I could (and would) have redone some things at higher quality render settings - especially with the dynamic hair, but this video isn't the end result, it's a springboard!

Being my first completed video in Resolve, as expected I had to scrap my first try and start over. I learned a lot! I have been studying DaVinci Resolve(movie editor), Fusion(VFX) and Fairlight (audio) and felt really comfortable using it, but 'knowing' what to use as the backplate for each piece of the motion picture takes practice - experience. By the end I was already seeing ways that I could (should) have done things much better, and done much more with it. Again, that's not what this was all about except that it really was meant to teach... and it did!

To keep the video brief, I've decided to use articles on this site to help keep the main purpose of the film intact, while also offering further information, advice and inspiration about some of the subjects that just got glanced over.

If you've come for more information as promised, here you go!

Delving Deeper

• A Quick Look - at making the Introducing Rosie 5 video in DaVinci Resolve!

• Creating Costumes

• Animating

• Hybrid AniMation

• aniMate 2

• Animation Conversion from earlier generations to Genesis

What isn't mentioned at all in the video (intentionally - brief, remember?) is what it took to actually make the video. Yes, Rosie 5 is made up of some pretty cool things that have already been evolving even since making this video (I just finished it prior to writing this), but I don't mention Dartanbeck 5 at all, and he's the host.

Lots of scene creation, lighting, setting cameras, action, etc., leading to hours upon hours of rendering - not to mention setting up a lot of hair simulations.

Adding Dartanbeck 5 was a last-minute afterthought. You see, Dartanbeck 5 is still a work in progress. It occurred to me to add him (but only that short intro scene) as I was recording the dialog. So that adds some new topics to write/record video about, like Mimic Pro for Carrara, Hybrid Conforming/Dynamic hair and using VWD (Virtual World Dynamics) Cloth and Hair along with Philemo's VWD Bridge for Carrara.

None of the amazing products used to assist with Animation have been mentioned - only slightly hinted at in the end credits. Motion Capture aniBlocks(aniMate 2), PZ2 (Poser) and BVH as well as sme amazing scripts that help convert from one source figure to another.

Planning out how the actors and scenes cooperate to establish a final motion picture is a whole subject all its own, along with ways to organize it all in a way that doesn't become a complete mess when the time comes to blend it all together. Again, it can be an easy thing to understand but it takes practice - experience to start getting foreseen results.

And then there's the act of actually performing those filmmaker editing steps, but in a case like this each and every little piece is a VFX shot, often requiring many strands of visual effects for just a few seconds.

Sound? There is no sound in space! Well, there aren't any raw tracks of sound in any CG shot. This video was just dialog with opening and exit stingers of music, but most of our work will require foley sounds to make actions actually mean something and feel more expressive.

This video was just the thing I needed to springboard off of and initiate the videos and articles that this site is meant to be all about - so, yeah... I really feel as if I've accomplished something here!