Commodore 64 DemoScene videos in Carrara!?

oandr88

Hello. I write music with VSTi-emulators of eight-bit SID chips from a Commodore 64 computer. People seem to like it, sometimes they like my opuses on SoundCloud.

https://soundcloud.com/cj-ovandr/sets/andrew_ovdiel-sidyook_mostaak-ep

About 5 years ago I learned about the DemoScene. Watched some Demos, Intros and Cractros from different commands made on Atari, Amiga and C64.

Something like this:

Inspired, I want to do something similar in a bunch of Carrara + Vegas. But... I don't understand much about how to make such eight-bit videos, moreover, authentically, so that the original creators of the old-school demoscene cannot be distinguished from the real demo. What do you advise? Which format to choose in Vegas? I just want to make a series of short videos with music and upload them to the gallery of one site (not for playback on the C64 itself, and it probably won't even handle MP4). And how to simulate all these flying texts? Some of them are very bizarre looking, and trying to figure out how to make them in C&V makes my brain boil. But all these gradient backgrounds and flying stripes, I think I can do it myself. Textures in Shader Room can be animated, and stripes are ordinary (or not so) cylinders or cubes.

I'm still trying something myself, but I'm waiting for your advice. In particular, I'm interested in the possibility of emulating native pixels from Commodore (they are very grainy and distorted, and I don't understand how they can be simulated in software like that)

WendyLuvsCatz

TBH I can see this being easier to do in an image editor than 3D

it's animated pixel art

an isometric camera, no lights and 100% ambient in scene with cube primitives animated could work

Steve K

I also use Carrara and Vegas for short animations, but this is way outside my experience.  The C64 demos are very impressive.  I go way back in trying computer music apps, on a PC with a Roland MPU-401 card (MIDI interface to connect external keyboards, sound modules, etc.).  Cakewalk, Sound Globs, Power Tracks Pro, virtual synths, etc.  But the "cool" guys were using Commodores which I recall had the music built in.  

3drendero

There are several demo makers too, here is an example: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=20544 You can do some effects or graphics in Carrara too... /Edit, the list of demo makers for Windows: https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=50

Bunyip02

Cool !!!

oandr88

WendyLuvsCatz said:

TBH I can see this being easier to do in an image editor than 3D

it's animated pixel art

an isometric camera, no lights and 100% ambient in scene with cube primitives animated could work

Yes, that's the right idea! Indeed, pixel art. But the whole trick is that it is "pixelated" because of the technical limitations of the Commodeore video system, and there are 320 × 200, 16 colors. So at first I thought it could just be rendered at a VERY low resolution and then scaled up to HD or FHD.

I also agree with the rest. Yes, the isometric camera is my favorite, by the way: sometimes I like to play around with it, because it flattens everything nicely.

100% Ambient - you mean the settings in the scene itself, right, that slider in the dropdown?

 

oandr88

Steve K said:

I also use Carrara and Vegas for short animations, but this is way outside my experience.  The C64 demos are very impressive.  I go way back in trying computer music apps, on a PC with a Roland MPU-401 card (MIDI interface to connect external keyboards, sound modules, etc.).  Cakewalk, Sound Globs, Power Tracks Pro, virtual synths, etc.  But the "cool" guys were using Commodores which I recall had the music built in.  

I don't want to flood, but I also used the MPU-401 at first (they have cool FM sounds), until I switched to Roland GM. Cakewalk didn't suit me very well, uncomfortable, but with good synths and effects. In fact, the guys at ZXSpectrum were even cooler:

And here some dudes started real-time ray tracing on ZXSpectrum... It slows down, of course, but it looks great! Rewind, there's still a bunch of amazing animation...

Therefore, I rather had in mind the demoscene of ALL old computers, and not just C64, when I created this topic.

oandr88

3drendero said:

There are several demo makers too, here is an example: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=20544 You can do some effects or graphics in Carrara too... /Edit, the list of demo makers for Windows: https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=50

Wow, eeee!.. This is a surer way than trying to emulate something... Then you can capture the entire video and audio series with Camtasia or other video game capture programs!

oandr88

3drendero said:

There are several demo makers too, here is an example: https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=20544 You can do some effects or graphics in Carrara too... /Edit, the list of demo makers for Windows: https://www.pouet.net/lists.php?which=50

Oh, yes: I completely forgot to add that modern browsers DO NOT like the "Pouet" site DIRECTLY, so you can download programs from it only through the TOR Browser, it's more reliable. The same Chrome, for example, disrupts the download due to a network error (although, it is clear that this is his reaction to piracy-related content)