Bricks in Motion
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Hello, I would just like to get some opinions if you think that me making a video tutorial series on getting the most out of Axogon Composer would help you. Please let me know your ideas!
By all means, please do. It just seems so daunting, tutorials would be perfect.
Contact Smeagol. He's done some really sweet stuff with Axogon.
- Leo
Great to here that you are interested! Oh, and I learned a lot of things from Smeagol(He's my favorite:)), but I also learned a substantial amount more throughout my time using it. For example, cloning, subtraction masks, a flickering lightsaber (with a very nice looking glow) and a whole bunch of other goodies:). I will hopefully start the series with a quick video on setting up your project settings and render settings. I hope that sounds good, I'll let you know when I make some progress! Thanks!
Ok, I have an important request to ask. I recorded a 2 minute tutorial on axogon, but it eneded up being 9 gigs! 
Can someone please lead me in the direction of some kind of compression software that will not destroy the quality of the tutorial (I tried WMM 
). Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
Last edited by kevin66655 (February 17, 2009 (01:03pm))
WMM should work, did you change the export settings?
Actually, I did change the export settings, but it doesn't matter because MPEG Streamclip compressed it very nicely with almost zero quality loss. Thanks for the help anyways!
I have another important question to ask, do you guys think that I will get in trouble in any way by making tutorials about a beta realease of a program that is not distributed anymore?
Any type of Axogon tutorial would be awesome, as there isn't much on that program. If you can make tutorials on moving the camera in the program (such as the stuff Smeagol does in some of his films), that would be really helpful to me.
Well, I believe Smeagol does his digital zooms and pans in virtualdub (excuse me if I am wrong Smeagol), but I do know one way of doing that within Axogon, although it is a little more difficult, but anyways I will try to make a tutorial of that for you. 
(Someone please let me know if they think I abide to copyright laws and what not while making these tutorials, because I do not want to get into trouble with a beta release of a really old program.) Thanks!
Last edited by kevin66655 (February 17, 2009 (01:45pm))
Here is the link to the first video in the series, it is about setting up your project settings, please let me know what you think! Thanks! (I will try to make more exciting tutorials in the future, but I had to make this one because I want to teach everyone, everything, I know about Axogon from the very beginning.)
I do apologize for the grotesque quality, it was my first try.
Last edited by kevin66655 (February 17, 2009 (02:45pm))
Well, I believe Smeagol does his digital zooms and pans in virtualdub (excuse me if I am wrong Smeagol), but I do know one way of doing that within Axogon, although it is a little more difficult, but anyways I will try to make a tutorial of that for you.
Actually I do use Axogon for this...however to do it properly you really need VirtualDub as well. I use the "mapper" tool to map the video into a rectangle that I then move around and resize as needed to create the zooms and pans. The only problem with this is that Axogon doesn't resample the video when it's resized or distorted, so you get a lot of jagged edges. The work around for this is to render the entire video at a much larger resolution then use VirtualDub's resize tool to scale it back down to the proper size.
Regarding the video, it's good, and accurate, I would add that "Pixel aspect ratio" does not in fact relate to the aspect ratio of your video - you suggested that if your video is 4:3 it should be 1, when in fact it should probably be 1 for any aspect ratio you're shooting in. The exceptions to this come with some kinds of digital camcorders, anamorphic video, and stuff like that, but most brickfilmers use webcams and digital still cameras so for the most part you'll want a pixel aspect ratio of 1. This is a minor detail though.
It'd be good to get Thomas Foote's old introductory Axogon tutorials back online some time. (They used to be on his website, bricksinmotion.com, which for a long time was his personal brickfilming page until he donated the domain) They're very helpful. Another great resource for Axogon is the MainVision help docs - I don't know where you can still download the free trial of MainVision, but if you can find it it includes full documentation in a .pdf and there really aren't many differences given MainVision is just the completed version of Axogon, which was a beta.
And I get, like, 10 very basic Axogon questions a week on YouTube so if we could have a good, readily available resource for the basics I'd love that.
Thanks for the all the feedback Phillip. The way you explained how to make zooms in Axogon is the same way I do it, except I never thought of rendering it at a larger size and then resizing it in Virtualdub, genius! 
As for the pixel aspect ratio I suppose I should have been more clear on that, because I did infact know about anamorphic video before hand, but like you said it is a very minor detail and few brickfilmers will run into an issue with it.
I completely agree with creating a readily available resource for the basics along with putting up Thomas Foote's tutorial again. Perhaps you and I could collaborate on a basic guide to Axogon? Well, anyways let me know if you are interested, or have any other feedback, thanks again!
Last edited by kevin66655 (February 17, 2009 (04:58pm))
I am just letting you all know that I will be continuing to make tutorials on Axogon, but they will not be video tutorials. Instead they will be hosted on my website most likely, and consist of mostly pictures and text. I'll keep you guys up to date when I make another! Thanks!
This would be good. I downloaded Axogon, and never really figured it out. Can you do a tut on the moving camera?
Yes, if you read a few posts up, that tutorial was already requested(If that is what you meant), and I'll put it on my to- do list. Thanks for showing your interest!
I have finished the first tutorial! Please check it out!
http://inspiratdesign.com/klbricks/axo1.html
Let me know what you think!
Nice tutorial, I bookmarked the hompage of your Axagon tutorials.
I'm glad you liked it! I'll write a post once I finish the next one.
If anybody has any requests for tutorials please let me know! I would also like to inform you that I am waiting for my new camera to ship, so I will have to wait till I receive it to take pictures for my next tutorial. Thanks!
Last edited by kevin66655 (February 18, 2009 (02:39pm))
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