Reply To: Backhoe Contribution – Blanchsb – Exterior Loader Arms and Interior Chair
60 fps with a face cam AND your audio sounds better than my “fancy” podcaster mic.
@theluthier Thank you for the overly kind words Kent!
Here’s the reality behind the “magic” haha.
I do not have a professional recording studio by any means. I am in a big open room in our family/dinning area. No sound pads. But here is what I do have if anyone is interested: prices are in American dinero. I have acquired this stuff over a period of years but much of it has come in the last 12 months.
HARDWARE:
Monitor: Samsung U32R59x curved monitor from Costco (I saved up for it and bought it during the Covid required work from home mandate). ~$350 if I remember
PC: Lenovo Legion Y545 Gaming Laptop with NVIDIA GTX graphics card from Costco (I saved up for this last year $1400)
Face Camera: Xbox One Kinect Sensor with windows power and A/V adapter kit from ebay on top of a cheap Amazon tripod. $120 for Kinect Bundle and $15 for tripod. I actually want to post how I got this set up because it is a complete motion capture studio where I can use it to capture my body and rig it to a live armature. There were many hiccups setting this up but it was totally worth it. I’ll perhaps do a video on this. Credit to Remington Creative for teaching me 90% of the setup. The other 10% took a while to figure out though.
Microphone: Xbox One Turtle Beach Wireless Stealth 420X+ Gaming Headset (bought it used and had to refurbish the earmuffs, I also added and extra pop-pad onto the mix so it technically has 2 of them. Total price ~$60-$100 including new ear pads from Wicked Cushions
SOFTWARE:
Modeling Software: Blender: Given (free)
Screen Capture and Studio Recording Software: OBS Studio (free)
Settings on OBS: I made a few different scenes but my custom Kinect Scene is growing to be my favorite.
Mic: Turtle Beach and I have some OBS audio filters added. I watched best practices for audio filters and how you need to tune yours to your own studio setup and not copy anyone else but rather understanding some important reasons for them.
Video: Kinect with some video cropping to focus on that handsome bald head of mine! That Kinect camera has a pretty wide view angle and can get a good portion of my room so using it as a face came was actually just a delightful bonus!
Display Capture: Desktop (Upper 1/3 of the desktop only) I have to scale blender down actually and I turn up the display to 1.5 so words are easier to read for the recording. I also use the Shortcut VUr add-on to capture my keys and mouse (Screencast Keys add-on stopped working for some weird reason). My screen resolution is awesome but it comes up really crappy if I try to capture the 32″ screen and post it to youtube. So I found that using only a portion of it and zooming the display in blender made things easier for someone to read. I use my laptop screen to judge whether the size was correct for a standard viewer.
Extra Stuff that I love having around while I work: Every professional studio should come equipped with these!
Wife and kids: obviously! but I record when kids are in bed because no amount of audio filter keeps these little Blanch’s from being heard, and my wife likes watching me geek out on my passion project when they are in bed.
Tablet: iPad Pro 12.7″ (I got this after working horrific schedule at work and made a lot in overtime back in 2017). I use EasyCanvas as the tablet program but am anxiously waiting for AstroPad and Luna to come to Windows. This works quite well for texture painting and sculpting lessons. $1300
Keyboard: Logitech MX Keys Wireless multi-device bluetooth and unifying receiver keyboard $100 (got it as my main Christmas gift). This keyboard let me turn off the Caps Lock!!!!!! I hit that darn button all the time when I mean to hit shift during modeling.
Mouse: Logitech M720 multi-device bluetooth and unifying receiver mouse. The multi-device feature works nicely because I can use my iPad with both mouse and keyboard with the click of 1 button on them. $40 at Costco
Custom picture mouse pad (don’t remember the price)
Orange Tiger Striped Tabby American Short Hair Cat – He was a rescue. His name is Timmy. (He made an appearance in the video)
Black Newfoundland-Poodle Mix: She was a breeder’s. Her name is Lottie. She cools off on our tile most days.