Asset: Crappy Cowboy Video Textures (Patreon)

Blarghe- internet's been out like 90% of the time this past week! But! Been getting a lot done! Wrapping up a few gigs, and got some really great work on Dynamo Dream (animated some of the robot stuff based on Alan's great voicework, and a few other shots (below)). BUT my big goal for next week is definitely tutorials! I've gotta finish up the greenscreen one first, but there are a pile of other little ones I should probably get out of my system for my own sanity. 

I broke my rule a bit with animating the robot. I didn't want to anthropomorphize him too much- I specifically made him look like a printer or some weird office appliance- so the only thing I was going to animate was his head swiveling back and forth. But he just looked... inanimate. So I elevated his head a tiny bit and that gave me just enough to let him look up and down, too. It was subtle, and maybe not as "realistic", but he reads a lot more like a character now (the voice and body just didn't seem connected before).  To animate him I just ran the lines myself, and paid attention to what my shoulders/head were doing; made me appreciate Anthony Daniel's C3PO :D

ANYWAYS! The Crappy Cowboys!

So- a tad bit embarrassed sharing these, but on the chance anyone might want to experiment with them (or use them for anything), I'm posting a link :D

There's a scene where a guy's having a conversation with a missile, and there's supposed to be a distant crowd gathered around him. I'd done the shot, minus the crowd, and kept trying to convince myself I didn't actually need a crowd.

But one day Nate Taylor was over, so we just played dress-up for a while, and recorded all of these different cowboy elements in different orientations.

Super easy to import: use the "Import Images as Planes" addon, select the cowboys you want, change the material settings to "Emit" (or Principled if you want to play around with silhouettes or something?), and hit import!

THINGS I LEARNED:

1.) I did the keying in After Effects, and when I exported I should have set the color to "Straight" instead of "Premultiplied"- that would have eliminated the dark fringe you see when you get too close (notably, I still didn't have this figured out for the Dynamo Dream teaser, which is why she's not QUITE as well integrated as I'd like (and also why I was never able to have her go in front of a bright background)).

2.) If I do a thing like this again (and I will! With more casual movement and regular/ambiguous outfits and variety of people), I'd arrange the final export on a grid, so one HD file could have a grid of like 12 different people on it, and I'd stick each person on a separate plane, so blender only has to deal with one video instead of 12 separate ones simultaneously. I suspect this would go a long way in optimizing performance. That said, gotta wait for the social distancing to be over before I coordinate a shoot like that!

(right click, save as)
Zip file with all of them

Folder where you can browse

ALRIGHT! Gonna post this quick before internet disappears again! (the repair guy should be here bright and early Monday :)