Rodney

Gotta love those negative lights. The only thing you've got to watch out for with them (well... probably not the only thing but...) is shadows. Negative lights tend to make shadows go negative as well. The fix for that is to turn off Cast Shadows in the Light and if necessary set up a second light to cast the 'real' shadows. The negative shadows might work well in spooky situations however. Great stuff Matt!

Although the competition itself isn't going to be of much interest because of the limitations in who can enter there are some good things to take note of here that relate to us. They are especially noteworthy because often we neglect these areas to our own detriment when trying to create realistic models. The ideas are global in application and apply to all 3D applications: Five Tips for Perfect CG Portraits 01 REFERENCE Before beginning any actual modeling, collect as many reference images of the subject as possible. If conducting a photo shoot to get the references: Start from the front of the face then circle around at intervals of 45 degrees. Be careful to select images with similar focal lengths, sharpness and exposure. Select eight hero photos from what is shot. During the early stages of development, create a virtual camera which is used only for the reference work. On that camera, attach a background image plane that dynamically loads each of the reference images per frame. To aid in aligning the model to each of the images, keyframe the camera at every frame. In that way, whenever the Time Slider is changed, the view automatically changes to match the reference image behind it. (Note: There are other ways to set up Rotoscopes by this is the authors preference) 02 MODELLING The modelling phase is a careful balancing of technical construction and artistic sculpting. When building a model from scratch, establish the structure of the base model, then work in the detail. Avoid n-gons and triangles (i.e. three and five point patches). As the eyes are key to capturing someone’s personality, focus there first, working outwards, keeping in mind the proportions of, and distances between, the nose, lips and eyes. When laying out UVs on the face, place any texture seams where the hair parts on the top of the head. It's usually better to have minor distortion in a few areas than to have too many UV shells, especially when using displacement maps. 03 TEXTURING Preview and paint textures with a flat surface shading and no diffuse shading. Photoshop Layer Comps are the best way to manage variations of texture maps. Label each one with the corresponding version of the scene file and date in case it needs to be restored later. Since some applications don’t preserve Photoshop Adjustment Layers or Layer Comps, keep a separate painting PSD and a master PSD, with all of the integrated paint work and versions. The color map should have no baked-in shading, odd highlights or reflections, to ensure that it reacts properly to lighting. The specular map and any control maps for the Fresnel and Fresnel Edge intensities should coincide with the skin’s color and bump layers. 04 LIGHTING AND RENDERING Lighting can make or break the look of a character’s face. In fact, it’s one of the last big challenges for CG. Although we’re still some time away from a true physically based CG technology for simulating the interaction of light with human skin, it is possible to fool our audiences into believing a CG face is real. When lighting scenes, use a combination of HDR dome lighting with traditional key and rim spot lights. Final Gathering (Radiosity) is my preferred way to render and I usually set the Intensity of the dome to about 0.3 and the key light Intensity around 0.8. Consider placing ‘cards’ [planar objects positioned around the model to reflect light onto it] in optimum places. These have a flat surface shader to create Incandescence: this helps to achieve good eye reflections (that’s where you can win or lose a viewer) and simulate natural real-world lighting. 05 SHADERS Make sure basic shaders used are working properly by test-rendering them individually. Create bump or displacement passes (render those separately), keeping the general sculptural displacements in a separate layer from the fine pore-level details. Postpone the very fine level of detail of sculpting until the general colour map is done, so that small wrinkles, grooves and blemishes can be matched properly. Map a modified version of the colour map in the epidermal and subdermal layers. Map any Reflective Filter, Blend and Fall Off (Reflect Weight and Reflect Edge Weight) to a combination of the Bump and Specular maps, mixed with some Gaussian Noise. For the iris and lachrymal gland shaders, my Subsurface Scattering color is pure white, and about half the intensity of the one used on the skin. For the reflective parts of the eye, like the tears, conjunctiva and tear catcher surfaces, use a Phong shader with mostly transparent and reflective sheen dictated by fall-off perpendicular to the camera view. (Extracted information from the article and heavily edited by Rodney. All rights retained by the original author, Francisco A Cortina. Application specific terminology has been replaced by general terminology where deemed practical.)

Keep in mind that some of the Tech Talk (perhaps most or all of them) may require the Ensharpen Codec from Techsmith. You can find the download links for both Win and Mac on the bottom right of this page (you'll have to scroll down to it): http://www.techsmith.com/download.html

Disney stands to make sooooo much money off of this movie. The gaming side alone is big $. More video: http://video.disney.com/watch/vault-4c5af1b81a448d1e8087a91c This one starts out with a Newton Physics-type cascade of falling bricks: http://video.disney.com/watch/wrestling-4c...2c37e85ab9baead

It should be noted that the main reason for rendering out to sequential images is to ensure that if something bad happens (like all the power runs out in the middle of a render) you don't lose everything. When rendering to single images you would just have to pick up where the rendering left off. There is also the matter that rendering to a video file is going to require more memory because that video file has to be maintained in memory while the images are being added into it. With single images that memory... or at least a large portion of it, is freed up after each image is successfully rendered.

I'm really looking forward to this movie so thought I'd try to WIP together Ralph... from the upcoming Disney feature 'Wreck it Ralph". Disney's response to the other 'it's good to be a badguy' films from other companies. This is as far as I got before getting a little bored with him. I'm not pleased with the likeness but I like the eyes and may use them again. Edit: I was trying to be clever by making a reference to 'Runaway Ralph'... the famous children's storybook mouse. Before I was done typing I had confused myself! Wreck it Ralph is the Disney movie coming soon to theaters. There are at least two trailes for the movie currently in circulation: http://disney.go.com/wreck-it-ralph/ Trailer Number 2: Meet (Fix it) Felix: http://video.disney.com/watch/meet-felix-4...cf127d75ff3584a

Yes, unfortunately. This is an example of why we should not link to external images from the forum. They are only as reliable as the location we link to. I suppose you could contact David Rogers and request the files. He might still have them. If someone else in the forum downloaded the images or converted the tutorial to a PDF they could upload them and we could add the images back in. Note that the project file should still work fine with the text as it is. Also, if you haven't viewed Noel Pickering's Tech Talk on Compositing that's a good one: http://www.hash.com/ftp/pub/movies/techtal.../Composite.html

Hehe... Well, of course it is! Now that you mention it though... the theme music from H.R. Puffinstuff is stuck in my head. That's odd. I suppose it should be 'Puff the Magic Dragon'.

I'm going to attempt to bring this topic full circle and back on the original thought of the 5 elements of a good story. Let's see how this might look... The five key elements of a good story now enhanced with the five Os of a good story: Audience (who remains engaged): Ordinary: Objective: Obstacle: Overcome: Outcome: Content (what assets are maintained): Ordinary: Objective: Obstacle: Overcome: Outcome: Motivation(why forces are in place): Ordinary: Objective: Obstacle: Overcome: Outcome: Semiotics(where words and images are retained): Ordinary: Objective: Obstacle: Overcome: Outcome: Timing:(to what extent the story is sustained) Ordinary: Objective: Obstacle: Overcome: Outcome: Note that the 'when' of it is just the reciting of the story (the record of events that is played and replayed). This then forms a framework of how (very roughly) stories are created. As a for instance let's try to break down this last element on Timing: Timing: The Ordinary Timing. Within the context of the story what is the 'ordinary' pace of the story? Is it quiet and serene or is it all out action every moment with endless twists and turns? Another term for this might be the status quo. Principle characters will usually come into conflict with ordinary timing or they may be ripped out of that and seek to return that balance to their lives. The Objective Timing: This is the pace with which the characters would live their lives in their ideal world. This grants us insight into who these characters are. The objective must always be seen from the characters point of view. Where there are competing objectives there is conflict and the story will dictate how the timing of the conflicts play out. This is in stark contrast to Ordinary Timing and can be used to better understand the motivation of the character. Obstacles to Timing: What is preventing (or assisting) the characters in achieving their ideals. Obstacles tend to increase tension in the story and direct the characters to either maneuver around, climb over or break through to the other side. The obstacles represent friction that slows down the pace of the story and gives it texture... and provides room for the audience to breath and reflect before moving on to the next (more impossible) obstacle. Overcoming Timing: It is how the characters deal with the challenges they face and overcome them that forms the primary story. Quite often it is because the character steps out of the present... moves out of sync with the others characters... and even if losing the battle, achieves satisfaction. They have found their balance and equilibrium and things have been set right again. There is an aspect of this which I hope to delve into into the future that I believe will be a useful tool for motivating imaginary characters and concerns the character's OODA loop. Outcome Timing: This is a projection of what will happen as the story moves on when it is no longer specifically drawn out for the audience. It is the implication of events set in motion by the acts of the characters. Now the audience is free to imagine their own subsequent stories. And as we know from physics 101, an object in motion tends to stay in motion... we can therefore chart a trajectory for the story once it has gone off to live with the audience.

When filing a report you could link this topic and/or include this discussion (see attachment): Problems_with_Baked_Decals.pdf

Well, that's an oversimplification (i.e. not the case in all instances) but we have closed in on a significant problem area. Some of the test meshes shown here have geometry that can be avoided altogether (i.e. unnecessary 3 and 5 point patches) and if avoided would produce accurate bump maps.

Yes, but I'm just noting that the difference between what is rightly and wrongly bumped doesn't conform to the area of the patches themselves. That is particularly odd. It would make a lot more sense to me (normal wise) if it did. Where the patches overlap.. those seams... appears to be involved in this. We may be seeing two issues here: Baking is reversing the surface... Except where some specific splines (creating overlapping decal seams) exist. If it baking reversed everything then a workaround (and something that would lead to the ultimate fix) would be to simply invert the bump of whole image.

Yes! Thanks for the catch. I've been working in 'Feet Per Second' too much these days.

At first guess I'd say it might be your FPS (Feet Per Second) setting? Perhaps you have 'Stepped' turned on to something other than '1' in the Render Options? If it was set to '2' that would produce half of the images (i.e. it would only render every other frame). Note: I would always render out to a standard image file first rather than AVI or MOV but it's interesting to note that when rendering stepped frames .MOV and .AVI format become a more viable option because then we don't have to rename/renumber the resulting imagery. So that is one of the rare times where I do prefer to render to a movie format.

Hmmmm.... That looks to me more like a seam issue than one concerning normals as the oddness is directly over the splines.

I've ran into several useful thing regarding Storytelling since last posting here. Here is one that was from Michael Comet that was posted to the old CG-Char list (That's where folks hung out and shared information back in the heyday of computer animation): T For those with the nostalgic interest here is a write-up concerning CG-Char:

So something in the baking process is creating inverted areas on the decal? You mention projection so... I assume you are baking in A:M but then painting in 3DPaint. Could you apply a standard cylindrical decal and then project paint in 3DPaint?

I believe the purpose of the short was to test out the technology with subtle gestures and minimal effect. If that can be captured then it's easy to extrapolate to the extreme performances. Getting 3D to look like it was hand drawn and to be approachable in the same sense as if an artist was drawing it with his hands rather than manipulating a puppet has been something of a holy grail for Disney. I'm sure there are a lot of rough edges to work out but Disney has hit a new level of 2D/3D integration here. I can only hope that some of it will filter down to where the common artist can leverage the technology as well. For those that didn't see it at the youtube site here's a interview with the Director of 'Paperman', John Kahrs: Those are very short (only a minute or two). This is a long interview:

I could not resist ...

Something (actually some things) are definitely out of whack here. I note in the little time that I had to test that some mild distortion around the added circle itself was corrected by changing the in and out bias from 100% to 166%. That really doesn't do anything with the decal images and their apparent inverted-ness however. There is one aspect of this that I'd like to know more about and it is this: Is there any chance that the initial decal was applied onto the model when the normals were facing in other ways than what they are in these test models. In other words, were any normals changed after the decal was applied to correct them? I'm trying to rule out that variable as well as understand how the normals effect the application of the decal itself when it is originally applied. My assumption is that it shouldn't matter as flipping the normal should flip the image applied to that location but there is something nagging at the back of my head regarding why the decal doesn't seem to flip orientation even when the normal itself is flipped. This seems to indicate a flawed decal image and not a flawed model... which is impossible because the test model we are looking at has all of its normals facing out. My pea sized brain is just trying to understand why the decal seems to be flawed and yet the model doesn't. I suppose the easiest way to test this would be to supply a different image (perhaps completely the same color) in place of the one currently applied and review the results. If the decal might have been applied to a model with normals incorrectly aligned perhaps another test would be to reapply the decal again knowing that the normals are all facing the right way. Another question to reduce the variables we are looking at would be to make sure we understand where the decal was initially applied: In A:M, in 3DPainter or in some other place. This is important in knowing if the fix needs to be applied to A:M or some other place. P.S. Thanks for sharing the Project File as that helped in understanding what the problem is a great deal.

Yay! Thanks for confirming that. As of this moment antivirus software is the most common reason that activations don't work.

Pretty amazing stuff. As amazing as this is we can come pretty close to that stuff where they draw on top of the guys hand and it inbetweens the rest automatically with A:M's new 'Snap to Surface' feature. Of course there is a lot more going on than just the matching of animation lines to surfaces in 'Paperman'...

Steve, I see some nice improvement in this last one. There are a few frames (maybe four in total) where the upper leg either stops or moves in the opposite direction that the movement the leg should be going. Extracting those frames seems to make the animation flow a little smoother. This may relate to that comment you made about having her feet on the ground for too long. Attached is a compilation of the run just for the purpose of trying to figure out where everything was going. It may not be of much use to you but noting the change from one image to the next in the arms and legs might help to understand better which way the bones are moving. There was an aspect of weight, squash and stretch that I started looking for in the sequences as well but I didn't get for with that. I suppose you could say that the circled areas represent what I would call extremes and they should tell the story by themselves. You've got some nice poses there but the others don't seem to flow very well into and out of them. The inbetweens just make the motion smooth and finesse the sense of weight and the timing of the motion. If you draw a line on any of her arms and legs you'll see that from frame to frame there isn't much change (in direction or shape) going on and this is working against you in my estimation. These held poses in the extremities should be free flowing and running on smooth arcs. I'd be very curious to see your keyframes and channels. Added: In just looking at the thumbnail image I've attached and glancing from figure to figure you should be able to see the girl running but that isn't happening. You can see a couple poses that read well. Those are really important but there aren't enough of them. In (I think it's frame 10) I made a small note that bringing the other arm/hand up and forward might strengthen that pose.

Simon hit on this aspect and I see the same thing in Robert's video: The range of arm and leg motion is constrained a lot in your animation and more flowing in Robert's video. Interestingly, I thought the arms might bend more on the back swing but you've got that pretty close. It's when the arm goes forward and cross over in front of the chest that yours loses that smooth arcing motion. Similarly, on the movement of the legs backward Robert's fast run has his foot almost up touching his butt while your girl's knees hardly bend upward at all. Aside: I note that that Null (which I assume to be an Eye Target) is moving up and down. Make that a fixed position and you've got it going! Heck, constrain it to another Null that is somewhere off screen. Even if the head moves then the eyes will stay fixed on that location. Back to Robert's video: Note the range of motion of just his upper arm alone. There are some aspects of your video that work 'as is' but almost as if there are missing frames from the end of the sequence. That just so happens to be when the girl's arms would move in front of her.

Just to be clear, I didn't mean to imply Open VDB was like SVN.... I was just responding to the idea of Open VDB as being useful for storing production assets. While it's been said to mean several things at different stages it's name literally means Voxel Databse. At SIGGRAPH one of the developers (Ken Museth) had this to say about Open VDB: I was going to start a different topic to discuss another open source program that focuses on a more SVN-like approach to resource management but with a focus on production management. That program is called 'Tactic'. Look for a topic to be started on it in the near future... or if someone can't wait... they can start a new topic on their own.