#NEED ARTIST
12 messages in this thread
We've got a client who wants me to put together a video of the different parts
of the body. Heart, lungs, etc.
Hopefully, this will turn into a full scale project, but right now, he just
wants to see some samples. Has anybody out there done anything like this and
have one or two samples you could send to me.
Let me know what you have and I'll get back to you. Thanks.
I'll check this forum on Friday morning, or if you want to give me a call, I'll
be in the office in the morning after 9 AM EST. (301) 662-0371.
Fred
Fred, The best shot on your body project is let the client come up with the
buck to buy the nice LW models of haeart..body etc. from Viewpoint. They are
not cheap (200 to $600 per model)..but if seriuos..the quality is far beyond
anyones time to remake them.
Clients should not expect test samples of this sort done on spec.
if you need their number I can get it for you…though there were in every
Amiga world and Toaster for the past two years.
Ed
Ed,
If you mean that Viewpoint has been advertising in the last few years of Video
Toaster User magazine, I'll try and find their number. Didn't realize that
there were medical models.
Most of the ads I have seen are space orriented.
Fred
My reason for posting was that I though maybe someone had already done this
kind of project and would be able to recycle the work. But you are correct that
it should not be done on spec.
I will be charging the client for anything we actually produce and would be
able to pay anyone that had something we could use.
I don't think they wanted to spend a lot of money right now, just see what one
to two graphics would look like. Then when they get a grant, they would go for
the bigger bucks.
This is a medical association, non-profit, so the potential for a large budget
is possible.
Fred
Fred , Dont you just hate " I dont want to spend a lot of money right now.
Viewpoint – 1-800 DATASET
they have a good colection of anatomy stuff.
They also have a nice catalog.
Spendy though.
Ed
Fred,
Viewpoint has a whole library of medical/anotomical objects and you may want to
LIghtwave it. Your other option is to shoot plates from a medical book and use
Tpaint/Dpaint and image proc to do what you want.
A word of advice. Don't show him samples of his specifically requested job
until you have a contract. What often happens in this situation is that, with
some vague "specificaiton" you do all the creative work. They like it then do
it themselves or take the detail you created and find someone else (most
frequently a high school kid who fools with computer gfx and doesn't depend on
it for a living) to do the job for a song. The other ploy is to say, "well you
already have it, I just want to pay to use it, not the cost to develop it.."
Show him other work you've done. If that is not enough to convince him you can
do the job, then you probably would be better off avoiding this 'client'
anyway.
Basically, once you start down the "spec work" path it is nearly impossible to
turn it off, and very easy to do lots of work for nothing and go broke. Get
some mony for "prototype" development, at least, and tell them it will be
deducted from the cost of the final propject if they decide to use you.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne,
Very good advice on spec work.
Someone else also mentioned the name of Viewpoint and I called them yesterday
and ordered a catalog. Did you know that they have a home page on the Internet?
http://www.viewpoint.com
The client was in yesterday and we showed him some of the clip art we had. He
was very impressed. Then I showed him a couple of animations that I had
rendered. Nothing to do with medical, just to give him an idea of what the
computer could do. He was even more impressed.
This is a client that we have been working with for over 7 years. I explained
to him a while back, that animation takes time and is not something that I
could just throw together, but I would try and show him something that was
already created, just so he could see the kind of quality that is possible.
I'm with you on the idea of not doing work on spec. This was never the idea. I
just was hoping that someone might have had some work that could be recycled.
As it turns out, I did get a call from someone on this form and they may have
what I'm looking for.
Tell me more about using Tpaint and image proc (that's not a program, right,
just a generic term for a kind of program). I once asked a long time ago if it
was possible to take a 2D image and somehow convert it into a 3D image that
could be brought into Lightwave.
I met someone at a conference last year, that showed how to trace over an image
and then end up with a 3D image, but it required a paint program that I didn't
have. Might have been Dpaint.
Just to change the subject, my hard drive on the AVID crashed on Monday. It
took a few days to find the right person at the company to authorize a
replacement, but on Thursday I got a call to say the drive was being shipped
and it arrived the next day.
I am very impressed with the tech support of the company. They only have 5 tech
to handle the phone, but they have an 800 number and only once did I get a
message that all of the techs were busy. I left a message in less than an hour,
more like 20 minutes, I got a call from a tech.
That either says that they know how to handle phone calls effectiently, or they
don't get that many calls. Maybe it is the latter and the reason is that their
equipment works properly. (good grief Wayne, I'm starting to sound like you)
I'm getting very frustrated. I really thought by now that NewTek would have 4.1
out the door.
I just spent the entire day cutting a video on the AVID. This was a short
dramatic video. Running time about 4 minutes, but it had about 35 scenes and
twice that many cuts. The entire job was finished in about 7 hours. All that is
left is to cut in some graphics and music, but the editing is for the most part
done.
As fast as it is to work on the Flyer, the AVID goes very fast. You can make
match cuts, because you can see both scenes on the screen at the same time. It
has undo and redo commands. The only real drawback is that you need to render
all effects and it runs on a Mac. Each area is in a separate window, so you are
always working with different windows instead of just one main screen. But, I
think I could get use to it.
Fred
Regarding the "cheap" route for the medical animation: You could get some clip
art on CDRom or shoot pages from a medical text. Then using
Tpaint/Dpaint/Brilliance/Adpro/Imagemaster/ImagFX cut out the organs you
wanted.
Then, use PixelPro to turn the shapes you cut out into 3-D "flats". That is,
flat disks with the shape of the "frontal projection" of the organs. Then store
the organ cut out in the paint/processing program as a brush. Now you can
texture map the brush to the shape in LW and use LW to move the organs around
as you need for the anim as long as you don't partially or fully "orbit" the
organ. You can use a combination of backgroun image and forground alpha to
place them behind ribs, other facia etc.
You can use this "cheat" to make it look really 3-D by moving things forware
and back on teh Z as long as the camera doesn't try to go around them or the
organs need to be rotated. Rendering times are real short for image mapped to
flats. If a little bit of side view is needed you can always curve the flats a
little without getting too much distortion in the picture to give it away.
It all depends on what kind of movement and how long the graphics are to be
displayed as to whether or not you can use this approach, but it is a good
compromise when money is the main constraint.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Wayne:
This doesn't have much to do with the project this guy needs solving, but
it was so, …uh…., fascinating I thought I'd bring it to this thread.
There's something going on called 'the visible human' project. Sponsored
by the Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research (of all places), they took a
cadaver and performed a full body MRI of the corpse. Next, they froze it
in big blocks, and using a giant macrotome (they use microtomes to cut
cellular samples for Electron Microscopy) they shaved off 1mm thick
samples, starting at the head and moving down to the feet. After each
shaving, they took a color picture. Pretty macabre, eh?
The resulting database is a complete human figure, resolved IN COLOR, and
as a 3D dataset. Resolution is as accurate as .3x.3.1mm!
They were showing how it could be used as a virtual patient for
operations. I guess they're working on 'the visible woman' for release in
'96. (At .3x.3x.3mm resolution!)
The weirdest part is that the whole dataset is supposed to be freely
available in the internet?!? (If I ever come across the site, I'll post
it.)
Now that y'all are totally grossed out, I return you to the previous
thread……
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom – ELF Works 3D Construction Co.
Erik
Yeah I saw that too – on Beyond2000 or CNet or some Discovery Channel program.
I think they used a convict for the dissection. Really cool stuff.
BTW – It's available on the internet for schools and research and such (think
about who, other than government grants, could afford the download time) but I
believe that there are some restrictions on commercial use. Best to check into
those things ahead of time.
BarryVedros
ISI
I got to see a little show about the project at SIGGRAPH (missed out on
Richard Hart trying to look fascinated about a big fat digitized dead guy!
}:^)
I have a friend who has access to a free T1 line….Never found out how
big the database was, though……
It's not something I'd use commercially, but it seemed somehow appropriate
for the thread.
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom – ELF Works 3D Construction Co.
Sure gives new meaning to the term "loafing" your models, eh?
wmc – via Autopilot!