Blog
3D Animation Technical Styles
April 23, 2023There are a wide range of approaches to achieving 3D computer animation, each with its own pros and cons. In this blog I summarize many ...
AGRoL, Avatars GRow Legs at Meta
April 21, 2023I love the progress Meta are making (https://dulucas.github.io/agrol/) on animating the lower body from just a VR headset and hand controllers. Personally I would love ...
NVIDIA Omniverse Unity Connector
April 18, 2023From the NVIDIA website, "NVIDIA Omniverse™ is a computing platform that enables individuals and teams to develop Universal Scene Description based 3D workflows and applications." ...
AI 3D Model Creation
April 13, 2023Just as generative AI has been stirring things up with 2D images, people are also looking hard at 3D models too. One great little video ...
NVIDIA Canvas
April 13, 2023NVIDIA Canvas is an interesting app in the NVIDIA Omniverse suite of tools. It can create a 360 view image of plants, rocks, mountains etc. ...
Generative AI Video vs CG Animation
April 12, 2023Is video created via generative AI going to kill off CG animation (like Pixar movies)? I don't think so. I do think generative AI is ...
Universal Scene Description (USD) format from Pixar
April 11, 2023USD (Universal Scene Description) is an file format originally developed by Pixar for describing 3D scenes. A scene can include a collection of sets, characters, ...
2D to 3D Background Artwork
March 29, 2023There is a lot of buzz going on around AI generative artwork. Rather than art generation, I am personally interested in AI tools to speed ...
Entity Extraction for Screenplays with ChatGPT
March 24, 20236:15 PM I am exploring assembling scenes for computer animation from text based on AI. This is partly because I would like to speed up ...
Unity Tree Editor and Shader Graphs
March 15, 2023I have a number of assets from the Unity Asset Store some paid, some free. I hunt around in them for various models that I ...
Sympathetic vs Engaging Characters
March 14, 2023Are sympathetic characters the same or different to engaging characters? This was a topic on an old Writing Excuses podcast (episode 9.10). The answer is ...
Applying Machine Learning Classifiers to Screenplays for Animation Automation
March 10, 2023In my last blog I introduced this new series on applying machine learning to screenplays with the goal of automating some of the tedious steps ...
Machine Learning for Assembling Animation Scenes
March 6, 2023This is a first post in a new thread looking at using machine learning to speed up my process of assembling camera shots in an ...
Emotional speech synthesis for animation is here!
March 2, 2023For my hobbyist animation efforts I started with friends as voice actors. However, not having many friends… I mean, it is hard for my numerous ...
Unity Recorder Output Format Wars
February 28, 2023Back in 2021 there was a forum thread on video quality for the MP4 recorder. A few people reported getting poor quality MP4 files recorded, ...
Selecting Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) HDRP volume settings in Unity
February 23, 2023Ambient occlusion is a lighting effect that increases shadows where two surfaces meet. In real life, there is less light bouncing around surfaces in corners ...
Precise positioning with walk animations in Unity
February 16, 2023When you use a walk animation in a Unity Timeline using an Animation Track with Scene Offsets applied, you may come across a problem where ...
Conflict vs Tension in Storytelling
February 8, 2023To make stories more interesting, do you need conflict or do you need tension? Can you create tension without conflict? I was just listening to ...
Implementing Captions in Unity using UI Document
January 29, 2023Here is my current implementation of captions in Unity, the writing you see at the bottom of the screen that shows what the character is ...
Video Motion Capture EOY 2022
December 18, 2022Motion capture from video files has improved with time with some recent new entrants on the field, so I thought I would give a quick ...
Why I am excited for Mocopi
December 4, 2022Mocopi (I assume a play on "Motion Copy") is a relatively low cost motion capture device announced by Sony for release in 2023 Q1. There ...
How to Write an Anime Script (2022 Q4 update)
November 15, 2022I have been working on creating my own animated cartoon using 3D computer animation. This is a personal hobby project, so I have been taking ...
Spy x Family CG Fan Work
October 30, 2022Spy x Family (pronounced "Spy Family") is a popular manga series now available as an anime. It has some great characters and a fun plots. ...
Rain, raindrops, puddles, and water in Unity HDRP
October 24, 2022One effect I used in my first episode is rain to amplify the mood. This involved raindrops on glass windows, rain falling from the sky, ...