Obnomauk
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Posts posted by Obnomauk
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The single best advice you can get for a night time shot is this: don't make it dark.
ok now while you scratch your head over that think about it for a second. the single most important thing that you need to do with lighting is to make sure that people can see things in the shot. if you make it too dark no one will see anything. so hit your key at no less than 100% and color it just slightly to cool it down (ie make it very light blue) just be sure to not over-saturate the light color as that can look weird.
What will make the scene look like night is the contrast level in the shot. you want to hit the fill lights at a 50% or lower level to get the contrast on the key light high. This will indicate a low level of reflected light. but at the same time you have to keep the fill lights high enough that you don't loose all the detail in the shot. fill lights should be even less saturated than the key and also a cool color.
beyond that use the negative light trick to soak up areas of light and de-saturate the scene in general. the audience will pick up on these cues to tell them this is "night" it's a lot more effective than the old hollywood trick of using a blue wash on daytime shot film.
Hope this helps,
-David
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Try importing the 'left' side model into the right side model (or importing both sides into a new model.) Importing will bring in the mesh relationships bones and poses.
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Whew!
well it was a busy week for me, and hopefully the other mentors, but the slots are all full!
I'd like to thank the Mentors for volunteering their time and the apprentices for signing up. If you applied to an apprenticeship and didn't get one this time round please don't fret, there are a couple Mentors in the wings, so the opportunity still remains for apprenticeship.
With any luck this should be a great experience for all involved.
-David
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Just to let every one know: there are still apprenticeship positions open. I will probably wait till the end of tomorrow to start setting people up so please get those apprenticeship interest emails in to me asap
-David Rogers
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APPRENTICESHIP OPENINGS:
Frank Silas is taking on two apprentices:
Frank Silas http://www.franksilas.com/devil.htm
What stage is the project in (i.e. pre-production, production)? Production!
Who is currently involved in the project? Just me alone.
Do you have a schedule for completion? Tentative schedule of 4 to 5 months.
What version of A:M will you be using? 10.5 and 11.0
Describe briefly what you are looking for in the apprentice: I am not looking for absolute beginners. I'm looking for talented individuals who are looking to further thier animation skills and get a good short film added to their portfolios. I need the apprentice to be self disciplined, honest, and a hard worker. I am looking for a person I can help be my equal and hopefully to create a great working friendship.
Describe briefly what jobs the apprentice can expect to tackle: Animation, Animation, Animation...everything else is done. So if they want to do more than that they are welcome, but not required.
Paul Daley is taking on One apprentice:
What is the Project you are Mentoring thru (url if applicable)?
[Paul Daley says:] http://www.cheesewars.com
What stage is the project in (i.e. pre-production, production)?
[Paul Daley says:] Production
Who is currently involved in the project?
[Paul Daley says:] Me and Gregg Wrenn
Do you have a schedule for completion?
[Paul Daley says:] 1 year
What version of A:M will you be using?
[Paul Daley says:] 11 for PCs, what ever is most recent and stable for MACs
Describe briefly what you are looking for in the apprentice:
[Paul Daley says:] Willing to work, can take direction well and NOT take criticism personally
Describe briefly what jobs the apprentice can expect to tackle:
[Paul Daley says:] modeling, animating, special fx
John Henderson is taking on one apprentice:
What is the Project you are Mentoring thru (url if applicable)? Investigating Jack
What stage is the project in (i.e. pre-production, production)? pre-production with some production underway. Currently storyboarding, building models and designing sets.
Who is currently involved in the project? Me
Do you have a schedule for completion? Jan 2005
What version of A:M will you be using? 11
Describe briefly what you are looking for in the apprentice:
Enthusiastic, ideally with some traditional art skills. Knows the mechanics
of Animation Master to the level of the Art of AM tutorials.
More interested in stylised cartoons than in realism.
Describe briefly what jobs the apprentice can expect to tackle:
I see the apprentice's role as modelling, texturing and animation on
secondary characters, props and settings. This could vary depending on the
quality of their work and the skills they bring to the project.
Sam Buntrock is taking on One apprentice:
Name : Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo
Involved : Sam Buntrock, Shaun Freeman, Matt Peters, Will Sutton and John Keates
Completion : TBC but around the 6 months mark.(The project is modular so
there are distinct goals along the way).
Version: v10.5 and v11
Looking for: Dedication to excellence, not "just good enough". The ability
to take crits on the chin, and have a laugh at the same time.
Jobs: Modelling, supervised animation exercises and work on allocated shots.
The apprentice has to accept that their work must eventually be top notch in
order for it to be included in the final piece - (this is as much the
mentor's responsibilty as theirs.)
oh and David Rogers is taking on One apprentice:
What is the Project you are Mentoring thru (url if applicable)? Super Secret Project
(aka David's thing, aka the Pickle thing.)What stage is the project in (i.e. pre-production, production)? pre-production, with production to begin soon
Who is currently involved in the project? David Rogers, Troy Gilliland, Vernon "busy guy" Zehr a couple others on part time basis.
Do you have a schedule for completion? December 2005
What version of A:M will you be using? 10.5
Describe briefly what you are looking for in the apprentice:
Enthusiasm is a must. Open to critique. Grasp of the basics of A:M (knows which end of the bone is pointy) willing to work hard. Good with communication and remaining in contact.
What can an apprentice expect?: I will likely start an apprentice out either with some rigging or modeling (whichever the apprentice prefers) as the project moves into production the apprentice will be given background animation or more simplistic shots. Once the apprentice has a handle on things he/she will be given a more complex "hero" level shot to work on.
All of the above Mentors have professional level work and are exceptionally talented folks (with the possible exception of that last guy
) they took a fairly hard quiz about A:M and animation and scored over 70% (none got below a 85% actually) so I think they know their stuff Ok apprentices take a gander at these openings and email me with your order of preference (by the mentor's name) I will need to verify your TAO A:M certification. For those of you who do not have a certificate you can either work through them or email me with your portfolio along with your choice of order. I will make a case by case decision. those of you who emailed me already please email me again. david@am-guide.com. I will take all apprentices on a first come first serve basis and assign them to the first open mentor on their list of preferences. Please read through the listings here completely and make sure that the match sounds good to you before you respond. If there is a mentor you don't want to be paired with... leave them off your list. I will give the mentor and apprentice each others emails and they will then be responsible for contacting one another and getting things running from that point.
I'm excited to see this happening and I hope everyone involved has a rewarding experience.
If you do not get a mentor this time through don't despair, I'll post more as they become available. As more people become more proficient there will hopefully be more mentors to go around!
ok apprentices fire away with the email
-David Rogers
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Hey gang,
Just to keep everyone up to speed we currently have five approved Mentor/Projects. and I will be posting a list of what I have by the middle of the day Tomorrow (Monday oct. 11 2004) and will then start taking apprenticeship applications. I will accept Mentors after that date and will add them to the list as I get them, but I wanted to open up the apprenticeships asap.
Anyone wanting the details of the program can go here: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8787
Again I'm pretty excited at how this is shaping up and the Mentors so far are all Top Notch people!
-David Rogers
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OK looks like we have enough interest on both the mentor and apprentice side of things. So lets get the ball rolling.
If the people who indicated in the Poll that they would be willing to participate as mentors would email me directly at david@am-guide.com with the subject line: Mentor. I will reply to each email with a small set of questions. Once you get my email please answer the Questions and I will add you to the list. For now I will be approving mentors for apprenticeships, hopefully that's ok with everyone. If/when this takes off we can set up a more impartial system. Once the mentors have been given the "Obnomauk" stamp of approval, (i guess I should let someone else approve me as a mentor just to be fair) a listing of the available apprenticeships will be posted here.
Once the apprenticeship list has been posted if you are interested in apprenticing send me an email to david@am-guide.com with the subject line: Apprentice. In the message body indicate your order of preference for each available apprenticeship. I will confer with Rodney to confirm your eligibility. If you have not recieved a TAO A:M certificate but feel you are at least on level with those that have a link to some examples of your work will be required and I may ask you some A:M related questions just to verify a base level of competence with the software.
A couple things that needed to be clarified:
Yes a mentor can request that an apprentice sign an Non Disclosure Agreement. If this will be required it will be stated in the apprenticeship listing. If you do not wish to work under an NDA then do not apply for those apprenticeships that require one.
Yes a mentor can employ an apprentice on commercial gigs, however this must be stated up front and under full agreement of Both the Mentor and the Apprentice. payment or lack thereof is again up to the mentor and apprentice.
Grievances:
If you as an apprentice feel that you are being used more than you are learning, I would ask that you stick with it as long as possible before you file any sort of grievance. The mentor may be working on a plan or need some time to get into the swing of things. But if you feel that you are not getting anything out of this then you can email me directly and I will moderate a conversation with you and your mentor.
If you as an apprentice find that you cannot dedicate the time to this that you had thought you could. you may simply give your mentor notice. Please give notice, it can be very frustrating to a mentor to be talking to a 'brick wall'. Likewise if you are going on vacation or will be unavailable for an extended period of time please keep your mentor informed.
If a mentor finds that an apprentice does not respond to email or complete assignments and have not given notice. They have the option of 'firing' the apprentice at their discretion we can then either re-open the apprenticeship, close it permanently, or simply give it to the next person in the Apprentice Queue.
An apprenticeship is not a legally binding work agreement. You are not entitled to monetary compensation unless you and your mentor negotiate a private contract. likewise mentors are not to charge the apprentice for training. We are not associated with Hash inc. and they are not liable for anything here. I am not responsible for the conduct or content of training so any issues you have with that should be addressed to the mentor. Umm don't take internally... uh void where prohibited by law... common side effects... ummm... please no one sue anyone else ok?
Overall I would hope we can all be adults here. We will give this a shot as it stands and amend the 'rules' as it becomes necessary.
Ok Mentors fire away with your emails please.
-David Rogers
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Hey Gang,
If you all have a moment please look at this topic:
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8730
at the moment I am looking to get a feel for how many users would be interested in signing up for an 'apprenticeship' on a short film project with one of the Fellows. I think we still have some organizing to do in order to get it off the ground so for now I am kind of looking for a show of hands.
This will hopefully allow everyone to take the next step in learning A:M and improving their skills.
So if you are or would be interested please click the little button right at the bottom of my post here that says PM and send me a Private Message (so as to not clutter up Rodney's forum here.) I'll take a little count and this will also let me set up a basic list of who is interested so if/when we get the program off the ground I know who to contact.
Remember if we do this apprenticeships will only be available to those who have received a certificate from Rodney here so keep up with those TOA:M exercises
-David Rogers
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aww shucks vern I love you too... in a strictly non-platonic way (wink wink)
However
flip books of stickmen are one of my favorite mediums for animation I have drawn them in the margins of most of my books. And I would submit to you that done properly a stick figure is more art than final fantazy could ever hope to be... again my opinions are my own. But the point of Gollum should really be counted in my favor... take a look at the design of the character and the skill of the animation does the neck wobble? dunno never cared. the design and the overall environment enabled a suspension of disbelief and the artistry of the animation maintained it. he didn't look 'human' his proportions were extremely exaggerated and his motions were likewise exaggerated. to the point were the brain didn't register him as "person" but as "character" which is frankly a much more forgiving place for the nuances and subtleties that totally real humans must exhibit for them to be believable. Further to my point Steven Stahlberg... good looking models very realistic looking, until they move at which point they look 100% CG..... Photo-realism in general bores me...that's a personal aesthetic preference but i can see the draw... but virtual actors (shades of Max Headroom).... call me a luddite but I just don't see it
remember more people die attempting everest than make it to the top.
just my erm... 6¢
-David
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I am thinking there has to be "minimum" amount of clues for the eye without going overboard to fool the brain that this is real.
That's just the thing though.... the closer you get to hitting the big stuff the further you get from being able to define what exactly it is that makes it not real. but there remains that nagging 'not-real' voice in your head. you can't figure it out but something feels off... way off..
there are times and reasons to use CG people instead of real people (integration into all CG environments for instance (but if you are doing that go all the way and give the character design some tweaks to take it all a notch off real and save yourself the headache.)) but if the goal is to make them indistinguishable from actual real life people in up close actor like moments where they show emotion etc etc etc... save yourself the time effort and ulcers. (MNSHO)
i guess that's 4¢,
-David
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Ahh yes reason 12 (of David's 999,999,999 reasons to hire an actor instead) Ok so you get the neck, now you notice hey the ears they should move a little too... ooh and hey the nostrils have the wrong shape on the O sound and doesn't the hairline need to move a little? shouldn't the left eyelash flutter ever so slightly? and down in to the abyss you go with it all.
I say skip it myself, if your characters a designed well no one will notice... I mean did Buzz have neck wobble when he talked? I don't know and never really cared....
my .02¢
-David Rogers
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Nah, it's simple enough to just type in a scale value in the Pose that I scaled the Positioner bone and just scale it back heck you could even just eyeball it (no pun inteneded) if there were a case where I was not dealing with a constant and given scale for the distortion then I would pull up a simple expression to do the trick. so for instance if you have a smartskin to make the eyes wobble (for whatever reason you might want or need to do that) then you would want to control the scale of the iris with an expression since you might not be 100% certain what the distortion scale was at any given point.
-David Rogers
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just to add to what Jeff has here:
I have a character with non-Spherical eyes but round shaped irises. in order to keep the iris round I added a third bone the child of the Orient bones
SO:
Left Eye Positioner
Left Eye Orient (the left eyeball CPs except the iris to the pupil are mapped to this bone)
Left Eye Iris Compensator (all CPs from the iris area are assigned to this bone)
now whatever scale I used to flatten and squash the white of the eye in place I put exactly the reverse scale on the compensator bone to simply round the shape back out (ie I scale it up in X and Y but not Z ) this creates a round iris that rotates inside a oval white, works quite keenly.
-David Rogers
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in the PWS after the channel item (ie Transform.Rotate.X) you will find the Pre, Channel, and Post interpolation method icons they look like a little channel graph. click the center (dark not ghosted) portion of the graph icon (this is the channel interpolation icon) and select the desired default interpolation from the pull down menu.
If you just want to change a particular key simply select the point in the Channel graph right click it and choose the interpolation method you desire from the contextual menu.
Hope this helps
David Rogers
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In defense of dope sheets:
I recently spent some time with dope sheets in relation to a job. the client is new to A:M and wanted a way to animate dialog and was looking to the dope sheet. my initial reaction was similar to what you have heard so far. However.... after a day of nothing but digging through dope sheet based animation to find a way to get not only acceptable but good results with this tool I have to say that it is definitely possible. other people have mentioned hitting just the main shapes and not worrying about every sound, and if you really look at it close that is exactly what dope sheets are good for. in fact I have come way around to this misunderstood tool. As with most things you don't want to make dope sheets the final say in your lip synch, but as a way to get the mouth shapes in and timed to audio this tool is more maligned than it should be.
I don't have a sample to show as it belongs to my client but if there is interest in how to set-up and use dope sheets I could be convinced to put together a tutorial. if you are interested Private Message me here on the forums (no email please) if I get more than say five replies I will make a tutorial.
in general though: you need to know a few things to make dope sheets work with you not against you. first the sentences that you put into a dope sheet must be done In order. second the auto-breakdown can use to many phonemes you must judiciously delete the extraneous ones (this does not effect the word as a whole.) third the phoneme poses must be percentage sliders. fourth, the channels that the dope sheet assigns to the phonemes in the dialog will be created peaked you need to open the channel editor for each phoneme pose slider and smooth the channels and adjust their slopes by hand. (there are some sort cuts for number four there but that can be slightly involved.) and finally fifth, by using a small set of blended pose sliders you can adjust any shape at any frame.
what you need to look at a dope sheet as is a blocking pass on your dialog, but since that is the pass that generally takes the most time it's a good step to let the computer handle. don't just leave it as it is created by any means but the tool is far from useless.
-David Rogers
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if you mean can I have a light orient like the normal then yes you can do that pretty easy. if you mean can I have the light point at the _base_ of the normal on the surface of the patch then again yes you can do that. if you want to aim at the tip of a normal... well not so much then. since the normal is actually a 'ray' and has no tip per se.
Normal information can be transfered to bone information through the magic of the surface constraint. with the surface constraint you can determine the direction of normals at any point on the model's surface and by default the bone that has the surface constraint applied to it will orient along the normal of the surface where the bone currently rests. so a simple orient like constraint will point the light along the normal at this point (translate too as well if you want the light to 'emit' from the normal. if you want the light to point at the surface normal's base the orientation is not important and you can simply aim the light at the surface constrained bone.
with this basic technique you could have a light follow along a surface and always shine down the length of the surface normal. If you would like a simple project demonstrating this let me know and I will put one up for you.
-David Rogers
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i just copied the toys project from the Cd to hard drive and gave it a whirl
FPS was determined by playback in the chor from the camera view
I rendered the three frames listed below and changed how A:M was in the os.
it would be interesting to see if there are any speed improvements with the new rev.
-David
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I just ran an informal bench with the OSX version on my mac:
systems specs: G4/533 dual processor ATI Radeon 9700 1.5GB RAM
A:M for OSX rev 0
FPS: 16.5 on average (high 27, low 6)
frame 97 11:29 (A:M in foreground)
frame 98 12:53 (A:M in background, render panel minimized to dock)
frame 99 10:52 (A:M in background, render panel not in dock but pushed below the bounds of the monitor)
still way behind the classic render speed... but I would imagine that once things are sorted out we can expect some optimizations from randy. It also tells me I should get a new computer
-David Rogers
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simply animate the enforcement of the constraint via a pose slider (be sure to change the interpolation from hold to spline or 0 slope) and then animate the pose slider in the smartskin window to increase the percentage of enforcement of the constraint.
easy as pie, no need to get all complicated with expressions
hope this helps,
-David Rogers
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If I've said it once I've said it a million times: Learning to draw is the single best investment you can make in improving your skills in 3D. not just modeling but lighting, composition... just about every aspect will see improvement. why? because it's all learning the same thing: how to see things. you learn how to see shapes and masses, and that understanding will aid in putting your splines down to define your characters.
after drawing the second best investment is learning to animate the old fashioned way. nothing drives home timing and pose building quite as well as hand drawing a few hundred frames.
-David Rogers
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I think that perhaps the most elegant way to handle this is actually through the Pre and Post interpolation methods.
When you have a channel driver it has three interpolation methods that are represented in the interface after the name of the driver (ie
) there are two lines by default on either side of a hump each segment of this is in fact a pull down menu that indicates the Pre interpolation, spline interpolation and Post interpolation respectivelyyou can change them to a number of useful methods. you might find for a pendulum that ping-pong or repeat would do nicely for a propeller or something like that accumulate would be fantastic.
what this does is frees you from having to set up an action and make sure that it continues to repeat throughout the duration of an animation so that if you change the length of the chor you don't have to worry about the action coming to a stop.
Hope this helps
-David Rogers
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boy vern I feel bad hoping your work falls through
I probably won't be making it this year either, just not in the cards I don't think. I hope to have something to send along in my stead though. we shall see, but no promises.
-David
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I believe that animated ambience maps are what you are looking for here. that combined with the glow option at render time will make lights seem to flash on and off... of course they won't cause any actual illumination (and are therefore easy on the render times) but if you need that you can add some hierarchical lights to your model to provide the lighting, but since light sources themselves are not visible you will need to use both in your model.
Hope this helps,
-David Rogers
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Well as character modeling wraps up I thought it might be nice to post a render of the Villains of the short assembled for all to see. This is just my scale test chor (to make sure the characters are all the same scale) lit with Skycast to make it pretty
from right to left: Thug, Roma, Rutger and Peppe.
The tomatoes were modeled by myself Peppe was modeled by Troy Gilliland. These characters are not textured yet, but I'll be passing them off to the texture artist as soon as I finish rigging them.
Comments and Crits welcome.
-David Rogers
night lighting
in (2003-2004)
Posted
Well.. First Use a klieg for the outside source. Second, a sun light to do basic fill duty on the room and then a select set of Bounce lights will do the trick. Note that with that little lamp on it will wash out a large part of the moon light and cast some fairly harsh shadows of it's own (and come complete with it's own fill and bounce lights)
But yeah I can tell it's night for certain.
keep up the good work,
-David