AMediaProf.com / VideoEducator. net

With summer quickly approaching, my mind was turning to the job of preparing for the coming school year. Next year, another 150 students will be waiting for instructions. Nothing gives clear instructions to students or a production crew like a good set of storyboards. If I wanted my students to learn to use the power of storyboards, I needed to start from the beginning by communicating to them with storyboards.

I was facing the challenge of producing a lot of storyboards quickly and I am no artist. While my stick figures had worked well enough in a pinch, these boards needed to be understood without me pointing to things and telling the viewer what that squiggle meant. I needed the help of a software package. It needed to produce quality pictures, quickly, with as little effort as possible.

I narrowed it down to two packages. One was a well known 2D package. The other package in the same price range was a 3D and previsualization package called FrameForge 3D Studio. While I liked the output of FrameForge 3d Studio, I was afraid of the learning curve of a 3D application.

I could not find a trial version of the 2D application and a call to the maker did not yield any place that had it installed in my area for me see. I decided to go ahead and download FrameForge 3D and see what it would do. It didn't take long before I knew that FrameForge 3D Studio was going to do what I needed and a lot more.

Plan View

Rather than building each pane of a storyboard as separate pieces of art, with FrameForge, you create the environment,or set, and then move your actors and cameras around and take snapshots. Creating the set is what I was most concerned about. I didn't have time to learn to create a lot of 3D. FrameForge has simplified the process so much, that I found it easy to create my first set, a mock-up of our news studio. After playing with the tools for about an hour to get to know them, the set took only a few minutes to build and texture. You draw the walls in plan view. You drag a window, an arch or a door onto the wall. You then set its dimensions and location. You pick a sky color and a floor texture and then move out of the room builder into the main window. In the main window, you double click elements and apply textures (any picture) and colors. To complete your set, you drag furniture, props and actors from the library into position on the set. FrameForge 3D Studio comes with a large library of set elements and actors, but the real gold mine is the community forums on the FrameForge website. Users have posted a wealth of objects and even complete generic sets for use.

Interface

 If you want a photo realistic set, you can add textures and backdrops and create a very impressive piece of art. Users have posted some amazing sets. You can also work at the other end of the spectrum. FrameForge has a sketch render mode that makes even a down and dirty set without texture or details look like a professional storyboard.

Normal Render

Sketch Render

Once I was over the fear of creating a set in 3D, I started to see the true power and advantage of FrameForge. Having placed my actors and props in a 3D space, I could now add my cameras and just begin snapping pictures. I could drag my actors around the floor to track their motions. I adjusted their poses, positioned the camera, and snapped the next picture. The few minutes that I used to build the set was now saved many times over by the speed at which I could move through all of the shots in the scene. That was enough to sell me, but then I noticed that something else was happening. They call it previsualization.

I downloaded a classroom set and started setting up a sequence. I was shifting elements to make the shots look better. I was adjusting camera angles and quickly experimenting with new angles and movements. I was then seeing the relationships between characters because I was finding the right relationship in the camera angles and the blocking. In short, I was doing what the great directors can do in their heads after years of experience, I was fully seeing how the elements lay out and how to best shoot them. To make this even better, FrameForge was taking notes. When the storyboards were printed, FrameForge 3D Studio printed small drawings of all of the elements' positions including accurate camera heights.

I went looking to make better storyboards and what I found was a way to make better video by seeing the results while still in planning. FrameForge 3D Studio is not a 3D art program. There is no shadow or real lighting to speak of. Object creation is rudimentary. You can not create animations with it. It is however, an application correctly focused at creating 3D mock-ups suitable for storyboarding. It has great features for storyboarding including script importing, .pdf and Flash output, multiple cameras and optically correct depth of field.