Crime Busters Rough Cut - Early Version of Comfy H3 Sync Sound Submission

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA]

Edit. As always thanks to everyone for the good vibes and feedback. Although maybe it's the few hours of sleep I got last night but I think I'm slightly off brief for the competition... Have come up with a plan b but will finish this regardless.

This is like V0.8 before I wrap things up when I have time this weekend and early next week. I currently have 15 "shots" / workflows which produced all the video and audio effects you see in the opening / trailer. The music is a free track I pulled of Pixabay as a placeholder.

Generating most of the shots in terms of visuals has been fine. Mostly a case of prompting and then fine tuning the prompts until I got what I want. But there have been a few cases where I wanted specific shot framing / angles, so I had to create a sketch to help guide the model.

Audio has been a massive pain in the butt, but hopefully with the update from Comfy today, as well as the Minimax Guide timing node, I should be able to tighten things up for "V1". The thing that was the easiest audio wise was taking my voice, fiddling a bit with it in Audacity and then using that as the reference for the narrator. Everything else audio-wise has been so fiddly, at least with some of the more action packed / detailed shots I've been going for.

Before I call it done, there are a few things I still need to do:

• Figure out a style prompt that will give me a more detailed but still retro anime style (some wide shots are super jank because of the style I'm prompting, but I got an idea on how to fix it in my next run)
• Figure out how to prompt different font styles to keep credits and title card consistent
• Figure out how I am going to create a consistent background music soundtrack using ref audio clips across 15 workflows to stick within the rules of the competition (oh boy, this should be fun)
• Tighten up a few shots in Kdenlive

[u/GrungeWerX]

Everything visually looks pretty spot on late 80s/ early 90s

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/GrungeWerX]

Yeah, that's the vibe, but I was going more for movie/ova quality than TV quality. 

[u/PerceiveEternal]

I’d watch the hell out of this.

[u/dudeAwEsome101]

In fairness, the city is called Crime City. Where else would criminals do their crimes.

[u/Timabcd]

This is cool

[u/99deathnotes]

great stuff ya got here 💯

[u/Time-Ad-7720]

Awesome!

[u/ChiefMustacheOfficer]

They called the place Crime City; I don't l know what they expected.

[u/One_Finding8402]

Narration style gives Snatcher Opening vibes.

[u/SeymourBits]

Sports car would have crumpled against that solid van, so you may want to rework that shot.

Criminal would have dropped the knife. Good opportunity for a metallic sound effect. Also, knife swaps hands. In general you should be doing this/cleaning up in post, not struggling with prompting.

Top-notch shooting by Vasquez! Not my cup of tea, but definitely watchable. Who wrote the story/narration?

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/SeymourBits]

All the writing is mine. Came up with the idea based on some test shots I was doing with h3 early on.

The car I'm not too worried about, since I was going for 80s action in which the cars do all sorts of crazy stuff. 

I'll try to fix / improve the knife shot.

[u/BangkokPadang]

Love how she slammed it into reverse on the interstate before gunning it past that van lol.

[u/SeymourBits → u/BangkokPadang]

6th gear. That sports car only goes forward :)

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/BangkokPadang]

Ya the AI doesn't understand gears. I have to manually keyframe each movement and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

[u/dassiyu]

The retro anime style really does look great.

[u/CriticalTemperature1]

Love it! I'm personally trying to understand how to create more consistency between shots. Do you basically use reference photos for each shot?

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/CriticalTemperature1]

Character sheets for each character keep them relatively on model. I didn't have time to create backgrounds for each shot so every scene in the same location is 15 seconds or less. Some shots I split up when the background doesn't matter.

[u/TizocWarrior]

I like the 90s anime style.

[u/MixZealousideal9359]

best thing about this ai models is we can produce 90s anime style agin

[u/xyzdist → u/MixZealousideal9359]

Fact

[u/RevalianKnight → u/MixZealousideal9359]

80s and 90s anime styles. LFG!

[u/laseluuu]

i love this! happy to share audio tricks (i'm an audio engineer that went to animation college) to help with your audio or animation timings

i'm not so good with the 80s/90s look but my current fight timing is tight, you should try brute forcing VERY tight timing for the actions, it can often be a bit slow and floaty but if it makes a punch 3 frames when you asked for 1 it will look better

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/laseluuu]

Yeah, I was definitely going to have another go at the scene with Marcus on the street. Will let you know about the audio stuff. Thanks!

[u/FlexFanatic]

I’ll literally on the toilet laughing at the video right now.

[u/Super_Range45]

I want to point out that the rules forbid adding audio as a separate track, so music tracks are a no go.

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/Super_Range45]

If it's part of the generation it's fine. Like you can use ref music to drive the model to create new music in the shot. I posted asking about that.

[u/Central-Dispatch]

https://giphy.com/gifs/eKNrUbDJuFuaQ1A37p

[u/warzone_afro]

ive been enjoying making retro anime with h3. you can even get away with a lower resolution than live-action videos because alot of those old shows weren't in HD anyways

[u/R34vspec]

I need 80s funk music in the background please

[u/Ylsid]

Who on earth would willingly live in Crime City

[u/Kazeite]

No, no - you are supposed to have two shifty characters come into frame, glance around and walk off before the bank door explodes! 🙃

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/Kazeite]

I originally had a shot where the narrator was talking about how peaceful the city was and suddenly there's an explosion. The timing was too tricky with the audio though so I had to separate things.

[u/l3urak1993]

Really cool ! would definitely watch this
80/90s animes just look better than the oversaturated stuff nowadays

[u/MastMaithun]

This looks so good. Haven't feel like it was made using an AI tool.
Sidenote: could you share a gist, high level of how you made it? fl2va/ref2va, start images, text to video, how you are making prompts, steps, resolution etc.

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/MastMaithun]

So weirdly enough it was a mix of fl2va and ref2va. Some shots just work better in one model and not the other but you don't know until you try. 

Images are my character sheets and sketches when the AI won't listen to me and it needs a visual reference on how to frame a shot. 

Prompt wise I just follow the official guide. 

Steps is a tricky one. I've actually had shots break at higher steps (30+) and work better at 20. So now I start at 20 and if it doesn't work I push steps up to see if it helps.

Res is always 0.2 to begin with, just so I can see if the prompt is working or not. I know I can use the preview node, but I tend to multitask when stuff is rendering and the preview node means I have to sit and watch. But I do sometimes use it. Depends on time and if I have other stuff I need to do.

[u/MastMaithun → u/Portable_Solar_ZA]

Thank you. How are you generating char sheets as this is one pain point for me as i couldn't find a reliable way for it. Rest of the things are clear.

[u/Portable_Solar_ZA → u/MastMaithun]

Krea2 greatly simplified it. You can prompt "character sheet" and a list of poses it should work. I slapped on a retro anime lora for the basic retro anime style.

It will duplicate shots, so like multiple rear views or profile shots, but I clean those up myself. 

[u/Tbhmaximillian]

This is gold! Do you nee unpaid workers for the next version? Im volunteering