Follow focus update

Some more parts for the follow focus came today, and things are starting to fall into place, so here's what I've got right now:

Here are all the parts, just laid out.

Here the lens is on the frame (rod system) in approximately the position it will be when mounted on the camera.

 Here are two phoctos of the gear used. The pitch is 0.08" (MXL)

Detail of the handle mount, press fit. (Also surprisingly strong!)

Close up of the drive belt on the lens focus ring

More of the same

This is how the whole thing will work, I will just slide that white mounting plate in, and mount the stepper motor on it (when it gets here), and mount the gear on the motor. The calipers are just to show size and to hold the gear in place.

Here it is from a different angle.

 That's where things stand right now, and so far it's working nicely. The new stepper motor should come soon. I ordered one from MPJA.com, only to be told that that model was not in stock, and the listing was a mistake. :( Oh well, they offered a different model that I think will work, for the same price, so I'll give that a try, and see how it works. The main thing is that I want it to run on 12 VDC, and have enough torque. The motor runs on 12 V, adequacy of torque awaiting testing.

 I can't really use it with the stepper motor I have right now because (1) I haven't figured out a good way to get enough torque out of it without blowing the driver transistors, and (2) it has a gear permanently affixed to its shaft, (of the wrong size) so I would have to cut it off to get it to work with the gear and drive belt.

 Just for reference, here are the parts used for the follow focus:

Gear: https://sdp-si.com/eStore/PartDetail.asp?Opener=Group&PartID=58730&GroupID=217

(Or similar, exact specs not important unless you are trying to get a ratio right)

Belt: https://sdp-si.com/eStore/PartDetail.asp?Opener=Group&PartID=51264&GroupID=213

(Or similar, length may be changed to suit application)

I didn't calculate the reduction ratio for the focus, because for now I don't need to, and it would add a lot of complications. I'm just going to get the whole thing working before I worry about that. After I have it working I can calibrate a dial, and tweak the ratios in the software. If at some point I try to make a commercial version, I may start thinking about things like that.

Hopefully I'll have the 3rd version of the .blend file ready to be posted soon, but that's all for now, until next time! 

Satellite, asteroid, and earth

I now have the satellite, earth, and asteroid all rendering together! There are still a few glitches though, see the image below.

There are still several issues with this render. The .blend file is getting so complicated I'm going to start .blend file version 3 soon to try to simplify it. Here are the current problems I see with this render.
1. There is a outline around the asteroid.
2. The glow effect that looks good on the satellite up close doesn't scale down well. It looked O.K. when the satellite took up most of the screen, but now it just makes it look blurry.
3. I would like to have some sort of depth of field.

Anyway, I'm going to start working on blend file version 3, and see how that goes. It's really coming together nicely so far.

First scene update!

I've been working on the first scene some. I've learned quite a bit, and made some good progress. I have previously posted renders of the satellite and the earth, but never combined, as one was in Blender Internal render engine, and the other was rendered in Cycles. It turns out that compositing them is actually pretty easy. Here are some early renders, I'm pretty excited about this:

And, just for fun, here it is again with the alpha channel:

(I don't know how the blog will display the alpha channel. I uploaded it as a .png, which supports alpha channel as well as the standard RGB. In the Linux image viewer it has a nice alpha checkered background)

I'll try to post a link to the blend file soon, which brings up a question; are we willing to use Blendswap for this movie, or should we stick to posting or e-mailing links to Google Docs? Please reply in the comments below.

Here's a screenshot of the node setup, as you can see, nothing too complicated, right?

Wrong! (and only one of the node groups is expanded!)

I just figured out how to use node groups, and it can drastically cut down on clutter in the node chain.

Asteroid to be added soon!

Blender 2.64

Blender 2.64 is out! (Actually it's been out for a few days as of this post) Anyway, I thought I would share a couple tips I've found helpful or interesting.

• When rendering in Cycles, turn the viewport start resolution up to 1024 or so. (This is under the Performance panel) With a good graphics card you will see a drastic improvement when moving objects or camera in the live rendered viewport.

• Make sure the tiles (again, under the Performance panel) are set to something like 8 X 8. I got a speed improvement on my satellite model of 5X faster. (vs 1 X 1 ) 

• In user preferences, go to File, and under that, there is a checkbox that says next to it 'show thumbnails'. Make sure this is checked.

• Go through the addons section in user preferences and enable all 'add mesh' and all 'add curve'

•  Try the new 'filter glossy' next to 'no caustics'. It can be pretty handy.

• Make sure you have the GPU compute set to CUDA, not open CL if possible. (this isn't new, just something to note.)

• Check out the VSE, (Video Sequence Editor) It's much improved!

I hope those are useful, enjoy the new Blender version!