Woody is our favourite wooden artists’ manikin. He currently lives on a shelf with two woolly ninjas (Blackberry and Blueberry) but we though it was time that he was brought to life. I was delighted when I found him in the additional content for Poser 7.
I animated him using Animate 2 in DAZ Studio 4, then exported the sequence into Poser 7 and rendered it, much like Dancing Alien and Dancing Robot before him. I wanted to make the scene more interesting so I tried orbiting the camera round Woody – that’s different to rotating him, but not a hard job thanks to Poser.
Even though there’s still a lot that could be done to make it more realistic (Woody’s feet don’t cast shadows, and sometimes he sinks into the office floor) I’m quite pleased with the results. My MacBook was rendering for over 24 hours on this one – that was before I told him not to go to sleep – it may have been done quicker, who knows. I can imagine how the Pixar guys are sweating – render a full day just to find out it was all for nothing. That is one thing I don’t like about 3D Animation – the rendering to appreciate the full effect isn’t instantly visible.
The backdrop in this scene is Ratracer’s Film Noir Detective Studio. I added some colour correction in Premiere Pro CS 5.5 to brighten the dark scene up a bit. Julia kindly showed me how to use Garage Band on her iPad so that’s how we made the music (including robot sound samples).
Enjoy!