AniMattor

He Walks! I did a walk Cycle tonight and thought I'd share it. have a pleasant day. matt [attachmentid=10432] CaptWalk.mov

Pretty nice. I agree with robcat that the action needs more weight. But in the second clip w/out camera aim, it looks much better. The two kicks look good. Especially the way his body turns with the back kick.

Thanks again for the comments, and pointers on bird wings. I'm going camping this weekend, and my computer isn't coming, so there won't be any updates for a while. Hopefully in a week or so I'll have him finished up completely. I'll try to post a wireframe next week, too. Happy splining! matt p.s. Alonso, Here is a link to that project. I entered it in the Mini movie contest #1. Try the direct link near the bottom of the first post.

Thanks for the comments, everybody. I'll certainly update as soon as I get any animation done with him. I'm very happy with the captain. I managed to keep the style of my sketch better than my models usually do. I'll check the rigging forum for a wing, Trajcedrv. Thanks for the tip. Keep splining!

This is Captain Barnstorm. A new character I created...because I wanted to! He doesn't have a story right now, but I have a few ideas percolating. I'm not entirely done rigging and making poses, but I'm pretty far along. No textures at this point. The next picture is a few characters from a story idea my wife came up with. If I get it finished it will be in storybook form (hopefully!). I'm very happy with the cow, but the horse is giving me trouble, and I just can't make the duck's wings look right. Bird wings that work right, to me, are nearly unattainable in 3d. I just can't get my brain wrapped around them. Any suggestions from bird modelers would be appreciated. Cheers, Matt [attachmentid=10241] [attachmentid=10242] [attachmentid=10243]

You got some nice splines going on. I feel like his dimple should be closer to the corner of his mouth. It looks too far back to me. Other than that, I love it. matt

interesting... it reminds me of some hallway you'd have to get throuh in Prince of Persia. OUCH! I've never made forays into expressions yet. but maybe when I get some free time... LOL matt

I wish I had time to figure out a good way to explain pose sliders to you, but I don't. Here's a few tips: Page 139 of "the art of Animation Master" (exercise 12) link to an older Pose slider Tut. http://www.alienlogo.com/tincan/pose1.html Also check out exercise 12 in the video tutorials on Hash.com. Once you have that down, it is just a matter of using the scale properties on the bones in your poses. Sorry I can't take you through it right now. Matt

I'll try to do it this evening. I'm at work so I suppose I should so some work. If you can find some tutorials on pose sliders, and get used to how they work, what I did is just one little step further. matt

I was experimenting with distortion boxes today, and I realized there is an older trick that I had never tried before. so I tried it! I scaled a parent bone and put it in a pose slider, and then I could control squash and stretch very easily. The only distortion box I used was one around the "nose" of the green character. Thre rest of the squash and stretch is done by scaling bones with pose sliders or just plain scaling them in the chor. What fun! My next project is going to have squishies!!! matt The file is a DIVX. sorry Apple users GooberJump.avi

You got some definite ANIME hair going on there. Is it fur or geometry?

Nice Critter. Is the squirrel right on the groud plane? if its up a little it would do that with your shadow. cheers, matt

pretty nice. Did you make the cycle in action and put it on a path, or do it in the choreography? He seems to turn very abruptly at certain ponits. matt

I'll answer questions in revers order. michael:I'm rendering Joe and the truck interior as .tga sequence, because it takes 15 minutes per frame, and I don't want to lose anything. The backgrounds are rendered as .mov, and I composite in after effects and put in the rain at that point. ken: the iris is a texture, the pupil is a modeled hole in his eye. Outside of that I have another layer that is transparent except for a very high specularity to give the highlight. pixelmech: mini movie contestt? I hadn't thought of it actually. I may. I still have about a minute and 20 seconds to render, so I may not have it done in time. I only have my own machine to render on, so I can't render all the time. But I will enter if I can. Doug: I'll put another render of him up if I have time. He's also the star of my contest entry for mechanical a month or two ago, if you want to see him in a different environment. happy splining!

I just got done with a personal record on rendering time... 79:01:54. what it took for 22 seconds. Now I ony have a little over a minute more to render! Here's another shot of Joe. A closer shot from one of his more contemplative moments. enjoy, and thanks for all the comments. matt

nah, I don't like the new bone weights. I hate weights when trying to work in maya at work, and I don't like them in AM either. I prefer smartskin and fan bones. I don't have TSM, but I',m thinking about it down the road. It sounds pretty good.

And another walk with more emotion. SadWalk.mov

Here's a walk cycle I did this morning. Probably won't use it in my animation, but I wanted to test him a bit. WalkTest.mov

I like his texture. The way you light it, he looks like a clay model. matt

The texturing was actually very easy. I just put an old flannel shirt on the scanner and tweaked it a little in photoshop. Then I just flattened him out a little in a pose before applying the texture as a deca so it wouldn't warp around the edges. It's the same texture every where, just oriented a little differently so it doesn't look too deliberate. I'd like to give him a patch or two of different material (as if he were patched by hand, not just a HASH patch of different material!). I'm very pleased with the way he's turning out, and I wish I had time to get some more done to share. I'll try to get a little bit over the weekend. Maybe some poses or something. Thanks again for comments.

Actually, I was planning on having him run over by a bowling ball! (and surviving, of course)

He's on a long commute back from the city where he works on a cold lonely day...and his radio doesn't even work. It'll be a while till I have it all done, but there'll be a link here for sure. Thanks for the comments.

Awesome toon car! I love the style. Very nice.

This doesn't quite fit here, and it doesn't quite fit in WIP. I've finished the animation, but I'm still rendering--and will be for some time! The story came from a sound project I did in college a few years ago. Today I realized that it's easy to add pictures to my posts, so this is my second one of the night. Comments/Crits welcome, but I can't change much at this point. I've rendered in multiple passes and composited in photoshop. I'm compositing the final in after effects. Cheers, Matt

Thanks for the comments. I'm leaning toward not having expressive eyes, and using ears and whiskers as Alonso suggested. I've done some sketches, and I can get some good emotion in poses. I haven't posed him in 3d too much yet, but I think he'll work. I'll try to post updates as soon as I can. I'll look into expressions. They're something i've been avoiding like the plague thus far! matt