Designing A Multimedia Project With Cinema 4D

[laurent]

Cinema isn't a presentation tool. In a project it would be one of the building blocs.
I would suggest to learn how to present to an audience (big subject), reverse engineer good presentations and learn.

[govinda]

Scott, please don't take offense. If you're going to teach, you really have to proofread and spellcheck your materials. This post is marred by spelling, grammar and capitalization errors. I've taught at college level. You're naked up there: people judge everything very closely, and students are just waiting to lose faith in a teacher generally based on tangential things, such as spelling semester 'simester' and capitalizing 'College' for no reason.

And I agree with laurent.

[bigkahuna]

Just a few words of advice from a guy who's done probably a couple hundred multimedia presentations (I've lost count, started doing it in the 80's, check my website: www.pmudesign.com ):

PowerPoint is intended for slide shows and not much else. I've been asked to do more than that with PP, but it's a real pain. Although you can import video and sound into PP, it's really not designed for that. I know in these classes that you are often pretty limited in what you can use, but if you have the choice, here's what I'd suggest:

If your presentation is going to be completely linear, in other words, no user interaction, then create a video (quicktime, wmv, or whatever). Synching sound, graphics and animation in PP is darn near impossible, while in a video editor (like Premiere or such) it's super easy. If the instructor insists it has to be presented through PowerPoint, just create the entire video in Premiere and display it with PP.

If your presentation is going to be interactive, then try to use something that is intended for that type of work, like Director. In multimedia, timing is everything and Director gives you the control you need.

I'm surprised your instructor even used the word "multimedia" in conjunction with PowerPoint. PowerPoint is a slide presentation tool, nothing more, and learning it really won't get you any where (maybe an office clerical job). But people with skills in the tools real multimedia production studios use (like Director, Premiere, etc.) are always in demand.

Edit: Oh, about using C4D: why not? You can certainly create your animations in C4D, but as someone else noted, you won't be able to use it as a presentation tool. I did a project years back where we did a training CD and used a 3D animation program to create models of circuit boards and mother boards and created animations showing the assembly. Then we assembled this with videos, narration and music track put it into Director. If I were to do it again, that's exactly how I'd do it.

BTW, 18 weeks is plenty of time to do this project while learning some new tools along the way. Just pick the tools best suited to the task and have at it!

Good luck, I hope you do well!

[bigkahuna]

sorry duplicate post, server was busy

[Per-Anders]

far too much bumpf

Just keep it simple. Director is better for multimedia presentations than powerpoint. If it's a presentation as in you're speaking then that's a different thing.

If it's totally linear then there's no real reason why you couldn't just make it using normal video editing stuff, then present as a quicktime or standard video.

[wuensch]

Per,
thats a terrific guideline to presentation you wrote there---
I think i will print it out and learn by hard ;-)

edit:
oh, its gone--- I thought it was brilliant.

Olli

[Per-Anders]

Ah, sorry about that, i'll repost it. Though it's really more to do with live presentation (though the same rules can apply to an extent to interactive multimedia presentations too):

I used to be a GFX Op on shows, that frequently meant creating slides and backdrops for corporate and trade presentations (and even occasionally coaching speakers, which is ironic as i'm the worlds worst presentation giver :D ).

Normally these days all work is done using powerpoint and photoshop, with some illustrator work, and rare 3d work.

My tips for a good presentation -





Keep it simple stupid. This is a good rule for all things, but also you don't want that many slides, you'll forget your cues and end up with stuff out of sync with your script. It add's to how much you have to remember.
Write your script beforehand, don't go changing it unless you find that what's being said is incorrect. If you do keep fiddling then you'll end up um-ing and ah-ing because you wont have had time to memorize enough of it, and you'll suddenly present yourself with a slide or note that you didn't remember adding or worse still weren't expecting for another ten minutes and you'll be flumoxed.
Same goes for your slides.
Your bullets are there to underline what you've said, not to reiterate it verbatim! Keep it short and to the point, because:

They need to be clearly visible to everyone in the room and small text isn't.
No-one in the audience can be arsed to read a novel whilst you're talking.
No-one is going to be able to remember you main points if they're too complex.

Create a look for the presentation and stick to it, learn how to make master pages.
Learn your script.
Try to speak to the people at the back of the room, make sure you're clear.
Don't use lots of clip-art pointless noises and animations in your slides, remember 1,3,4 and 5. The cleaner and simpler your sliders the better, they're not there to distract the audience, just as an aid to your main message, unless you really want to be one-uped by your own slides. You'll also end up waiting for your slides to cease transitioning and animating!
Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em. Introduction, presentation, conclusion.
Make sure you know what you're talking about. It helps because if you get lost you can easily improvise your way back to safer ground, and you'll need to for the inevitable Q&A session afterwards.
Avoid red slides, if you're projecting use lighter text on a darker background, but never full on white. Keep the colors relatively neutral... why? Because red is a biotch for bleeding out and blooming too much and lighter not to bold text is generally clearer from projectors because light spreads out (and can be wearing on the eyes staring at a bright screen for too long).
Don't stand there like a petrified lamb staring down into your notes, it'll muffle you and no-one will hear what you're saying. Also you'll constrict your breath with your arms too close to your sides, express yourself, move around a little (not too much mind, if you have a microphone it'll be hard to pick you up if you're too far away, and not in front of your screen if you can help it, the contrast can be bad, and if it's a projector you can end up blinding yourself or at least looking a bit silly, suddenly brilliantly lit up)
Many good speakers use their slides to break up their presentation into specific areas. One slide per theme:

Holding Slide - Generic slide with generally a company logo on it, there whilst people settle down.

Title Slide - The title of your presentation and the speakers name, this is generally up whilst they are being introduced.

Introduction Slide - The basic premise of what you're going to speak about, i.e. Tell 'em what you're going to be telling 'em. Frequently the bullets on this slide are in fact the titles of the subsequent slides, and this may take a couple of slides.

From where you have to decide your own layout for your presentation. A typical one might be the old problems and solutions approach, this is more commonly used for presenting new technologies, but it can be equally effective here, so lets take that

Slide 1 - The scenario (what we were doing)
Slide 2 - The catch (problem)
Slide 3 - The solution (hurrah)
Slide 4 - The justification (why this is the right solution, e.g. facts and figures showing better/more)
Slide 5 - Conclusion - Tell 'em what you told 'em, and why they should do what you just told them to
Slide 6 - Q&A

All in all very simple stuff going on behind you, with a maximum of 6 or 7 single line bullets (most likely just snippets taken from your script brought up at the same time as you're speaking them).

Now you can obviouslly break this down so that each of those sections covers several slides, especially if you have some very clear simple images. But just have what you need to show on screen (unless you're unveiling some new product).

[ooo]

Great tips Per! Glad I'm not on stage anymore these days myself. :)

About multimedia presentation authoring: Director is still the best choice although it's future is not very clear. Rumours are it's declared dead. Don't know if that's true. An other great tool for presentations (often in conjunction with Director) is Flash. Very capable of making cool standalone presentations with sound video (flash 8 is great) and userinteraction if necessary. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe/Macromedia will transfer some of Directors tools into a new Flash version.

odo

[wuensch]

Thanks, Per.
Printed out now ;-)


Olli

[wuensch]

I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe/Macromedia will transfer some of Directors tools into a new Flash version.

odo

it would not surprise me if Adobe simply stopped the developement without any further plans and for no reason at all--
Anyone remember that really terrific Director-competition (MUCH simpler to use drag & drop object oriented) product that Adobe bought only to cancel its development immediately (hey, Adobe, next time you want to burn money, ask me what I can sell you)-- what was its name again--grubmle--
I remember i was very impressed by it, couple of years ago, mac only, but windows runtime if I remember right--

[ooo]

it would not surprise me if Adobe simply stopped the developement without any further plans and for no reason at all--
Anyone remember that really terrific Director-competition (MUCH simpler to use drag & drop object oriented) product that Adobe bought only to cancel its development immediately (hey, Adobe, next time you want to burn money, ask me what I can sell you)-- what was its name again--grubmle--
I remember i was very impressed by it, couple of years ago, mac only, but windows runtime if I remember right--

I think you mean a tool that was bought by Quark. They did indeed let it die without any reason. It was called M-tropolis or something like that. Certainly not Adobe's work to kill it!

Edit: I found a link to that news: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0MWK/is_n12_v12/ai_20412391

PS: sorry for going OT in this thread.

[wuensch]

ah-- you are right, thats exactly what i meant-- sorry Adobe.
I was doing you wrong.So there is hope for Director then-- (not for Freehand,my estimate, butMacromedia did all it could to wreck that program anyway, so its no big loss).

Quark oh yess--- fits perfectly into my impression of the Quark company--

Olli

[projectk]

Personally, i used to just make dvds. It's easy, if they've got a dvd rom drive you're set.
My biggest suggestion is to quit any apps BEFORE you start your dvd just in case it crashes. It's very embarassing and everyone gets impatient and that'll just make you nervous. I was using a guy's laptop and i didn't know he had over 10 apps (!) running. Boom!

Try to make it interesting. Nothing makes me more bored or irritated than some guy reading off a sheet speaking in monotone. Even if you absolutely hate public speaking, at least make it fun for yourself. I don't know if it's appropriate in your case, but i used to stick something funny in mine every couple of slides.

[Jack Hammer]

Have you thought of flash? A couple of the guys here use flash to show front end mock-ups, it works well

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Well Govinda, my post might have a few errors but when it's 5.17am in the morning and you were up at 7.40am the previous day and studied for most of it then there will be a few errors. All my work is proof read before handing it in.
Btw am a student not a teacher ;)

Thankyou 'laurent', 'ooo', 'projectk', and especially 'bigkahuna' and 'mdme_sadie' for your very informative posts.
There is alot of information to think about and am sure there are thousands of students who will find them very usefull when they are presented with a problem similar to this.

The project does not require me to stand and present this to the class however, which means less to think about.
I will need to evaluate how viable this process is going to be and what am going to use to make this happen.

Cheers for your feedback :)

[SeanL]

Just a thought on Director...

I have used Director and it suffers from some complications, namely crossplatform issues (both authoring and playback). In addition, playback on mac has issues with trying to use OS 9 emulation on OS X. Some of this may have been resolved with the last version. While there are some workarounds, it took me too long to figure out IMHO.

At any rate, consider authoring in Flash instead of Director. Flash can now handle a lot of video.

@BigKahuna: I'm interested in your opinion as to what are Director strengths that Flash can't handle at this point.

(edit: just noticed the ooo previously suggested Flash)

Sean

[ooo]

Just a thought on Director...

I have used Director and it suffers from some complications, namely crossplatform issues (both authoring and playback). In addition, playback on mac has issues with trying to use OS 9 emulation on OS X. Some of this may have been resolved with the last version. While there are some workarounds, it took me too long to figure out IMHO.

At any rate, consider authoring in Flash instead of Director. Flash can now handle a lot of video.

@BigKahuna: I'm interested in your opinion as to what are Director strengths that Flash can't handle at this point.

(edit: just noticed the ooo previously suggested Flash)

Sean


The new Video capabilities of Flash 8 make it even more interesting now, although I haven't put them to the test. One of the main advantages for Director now is still the assetmanagement: Movies and other content are linked media so the main projector stays small and the links can be updated while you're working, or even afterwards. Featurewise there are at the moment only small differences, although I don't know exactly how important these are. So maybe the time is right to let Director rest in peace. I still did a few projects in Director last year (just before Flash 8 came out) and will very probably do a few more this year (kiosks for museum). Most content was made in Flash (and C4D) so let's see if I can author it entirely in Flash this time.

odo

[govinda]

All my work is proof read before handing it in.
Btw am a student not a teacher ;)
That's more like it! Phew, you had me worried for you.

[interactiveBoy]

The new Video capabilities of Flash 8 make it even more interesting now, although I haven't put them to the test. One of the main advantages for Director now is still the assetmanagement: Movies and other content are linked media so the main projector stays small and the links can be updated while you're working, or even afterwards. Featurewise there are at the moment only small differences, although I don't know exactly how important these are. So maybe the time is right to let Director rest in peace. I still did a few projects in Director last year (just before Flash 8 came out) and will very probably do a few more this year (kiosks for museum). Most content was made in Flash (and C4D) so let's see if I can author it entirely in Flash this time.

odo

Just one note about Flash and video - it has been possible to link video media starting back with version 6 just by making a null net connection. Main difference was quality compared to QT, but that has been resolved with the addition of VP6 into the Flash player environment.

Sorry for OT Scott, but this is useful info.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Hi guys,
Just to show you what i have so far for this project i have created this.
It's still in it's early days yet and needs more details but am having to re-learn some tools like using bridging and genral modeling skills. Trying to keep the polycount as low as possible with this :)

Btw i have come to the conclusion that trying to animate the whole construction of a pc would be too big a project and will concentrate on upgrading one such as installing one of these :)
Needs more work but it should be lots of fun.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=46408

ps i dont mind you going off topic as long as it has relevance to the subject multimedia :).
Thats what am studying as part of my course so i will learn more than the rest of my class.
Btw knowone else in my class knows anything about creating stuff in 3D so this will be unique.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Small update on scean http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=46417

Still stuff to do and correct.

[Fre]

I made a multimedia cd as my first class assignment for SAE.

First project with Director, Very first steps in 3D (I wanted to practise my 3D while working on the project).
I made huge mistakes in estimating the rendertimes of the 3d parts, that's why the look is kinda crappy & there still some bugs in director file. (one that got into it from changing from the previous director version to the new one)

here is the file. (www.senegal-fishing.com/Director.zip)

What I remember of this project:
Always try to keep the files as small as possible.
If some parts aren't animated then leave them, only change the animated part. (with the box, if the case opens, only the top of the case is changing, not the bottom).
Use png's only when you really need them, they eat lots of space.
Lingo is kinda crap language.
Director really feels old if you ever used flash before.
I got some really strange workflows in director.

good luck with the project.

[-/\-Scott-M-C4D-/\-]

Hiya these are early test animations. Backgound elements in the graphics card one will not be there. Animation will show it entering a pc slot.

First slide of presentation will be something like this maybe.

I need to find out how to lengthen the animation frames, it's so annoying when you forget things when you come back to cinema.



Animation: Graphics Card early test render. This is an AVI
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=46680

Intro screen:early test render anim. This is a quicktime animation
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/attachment.php?attachmentid=46681

These are set to small animations when rendered.

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