Demonstrated by developer James Leaning, this latest release is good news for storyboarders - Version 2.0 is now available for free for beta testing, pending the official product launch.
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| Panel Forge |
Panel Forge Pro is a storyboard package, tested extensively at Blue Zoo on shows like Miffy's Adventures Big and Small and Digby Dragon. PanelForge makes use of 3D Layouts to save time in Storyboarding (and also avoid mistakes in 3D Layout), allowing board artists to use low resolution 3D assets to help set up camera angles and layouts.
Panel Forge is all about solving problems in storyboard production. And the biggest problem with storyboarding is you have to do too much all at once; board artists have to deal with drawing sets and layouts (drawing in perspective), designing camera angles accurately and - all at the same time - describing the action of the shot and also expressing the character's emotions and feelings.
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| Miffy - boarded with PanelForge |
Like its rival Redboard, Panel Forge helps board artists to set up the shot and solve a number of these problems long before they start drawing. It makes the business of creating storyboard panels faster, and saves time in 3D Layout.
Storyboard artists use the 3D layout tools to set up their shots right from the start - thus saving time in storyboarding - because the 3D layout problems have been solved in the beginning.
Studios can save time and money because they don’t need a separate layout department, since the storyboard artists have already done this job with Panel Forge Pro. In effect, storyboarding and 3D layout are now one department.
According to Blue Zoo's Tom Box, the software is designed to use “big data sets” and be super fast and also easy to learn. The software uses .obj files and .pfe files – the last a proprietary Panel Forge file type.
3D Software
James Leaning, who developed PanelForge with Blue Zoo, did a demonstration of Panel Forge. Artists start off by making asset libraries of characters, sets and props. You can import low resolutions models, obj files and alembics, and you can dolly, move and zoom around the objects – just like in Maya (it is designed to be familiar to Maya users). You can also move pivot points and move objects around – just like in Maya. The camera also has a full range of tools so you can position it easily, dollying, moving and zooming. Camera focal length is also fully adjustable. For storyboarding, you can draw over the 3D models, and strengthen the pose – or make the pose completely different.
Integration with Maya
Panel Forge can also be integrated with the Maya pipeline. You can import models from Maya to Panel Forge, and also export a xml file which can be imported into Adobe Premiere. Once you like the animatic you’ve done, the animators can import the xml file into Maya, and then start work on their shots.
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| Dennis the Menace, animated by Jellyfish |
Time and Money
The logic of using Panel Forge is that it "saves a heck of a lot of time and money" on production - allowing the studio to concentrate resources elsewhere, such as in character animation, lighting and rendering.
Free Demo Version
Panel Forge 2.0 is now available - for free! - for students to practice their skills (on a non-commercial license, of course). To download your free copy, go to the official site at www.panel-forge.com. You can also email them at Enquiries: contact@panel-forge.com. Panel Forge is free for educational institutions.
Panel Forge at Escape Studios
We use Panel Forge at Escape Studios for our evening class in storyboarding, and we're now rolling it out for our undergraduate students too, so that we can train them in 3D layout and the storyboard process.
Demonstration
To see how Panel Forge works, watch the video below:
Introducing Panel Forge from PanelForge on Vimeo.
Panelforge Tutorials
To see how to use Panelforge, visit their official site and watch their free tutorials.
The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, follow this link. To apply, visit the official page here.
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