Dearmad
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Posts posted by Dearmad
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Yeah, I don't know... mine was silent too... must have been some strange esoteric codec. Too bad. Did anyone else check out westvale? The theme song is hilarious.
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The westvale short is pretty darn funny though. Warning, don't d/l it if you're easily offended by words and potty humor.
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Thank you all! I've always wanted to see how it turned out. edit: wow- it's rather, uh... low resolution. Looks like it had a lot of aimated stuff going on. Too bad there's no better version available.
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I agree, now that I think about it- I will tone down the lights- I think in that render I was just making sure the darned volumetrics were working! Took awhile to get them on.
Zaryin,
Have faith- the final renders are at 1600x900, and the final short will be at 800x450- so I'll post a few high detail renders once I get to final renderings- I'm only doing wireframe renders and a few shaded renders to test out animating at this point, and I'm outputting compressed DiVX instead of frames (TGAs) for now.
Next one I post will be high rez though, just because you requested.
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Just cut out your wind in time to have the flag stop. That didn't work for you? Works for me when I use it.
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Arg, I meant FANTASY not FANATASY or whatever.... It was all hyped in the AM 2000 handbook- and you had to buy it on videocassette- I never did- anyone ever seena version of it on the web? I would just be curious to see how this short turned out, done by the AM crew.
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Another scene. The village outside of Verdun, 1916. I'm not animating in this scene yet, and this render was done awhile ago. This is the most complex set. Thousands and thousands of splines....
I'm pretty happy with the atmosphere. Only non-procedural textures in there are the stars and the cobblestone bumpmaps. Everything else is procedural. Yeah, I know... longer to render, but I just love the way procedurals hold up at any angle and at any distance if you design them right. And this way the clouds can animate and blow with the wind and deform just like real clouds. I love that effect. Trust in me to overuse it in this short!
My second favorite building in this set isn't visiable, it's JUST around the corner, a church with a really tall spire with a ballerina at the top of the spire in gold. You can see the spire sort of.
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Dearmed said "relative to their previous places on the 2 dimensionally mapped viewing plane" this is only true for method a. using method b (multipass), you will obviously get blurs when the camera is moved. ---- Actually what I said is true in both cases or it wouldn't be simulating a photographic motion blur. It is always relative to the movement of the object to the 2d viewing plan as calculated by the raytracer either directly or indirectly by simply blurring rendered frames. This means, as I wrote, it doesn't matter if you move the camera or not, only if the subject on screen is changing position *relative* to the viewing plane. And as I wrote, regardless of either method, if you camera track your fast-moving target so that it appears staionary in the viewing plane, it will be in focus and not blurred, the background will- in both methods.
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A really tidy sum? AMD 64 3200+ Asus K8V deluxe ATI Radeon 9800XT 256MB You could always go the intel P4 3.2 Ghz route too in the above case, they're similar in price to the AMD's. A not so tidy sum: AMD XP 2500+ MSI K7N2 Delta-L (nForce2 Ultra 400) this IS a nice board, I have its predecessor. Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ensure a minimum of 512MB ram, but make an effort to get 1GB of it on as few sticks as you can. And those vid cards are recommended to you by someone who has two computers using nvidia cards- the ATI's are just better at this point- I'm not brand loyal. Soon as nvidia gets it act together I'll be back to them. As to the video cards, who really cares anyway- the quality on video cards is so fine these days, you can't go wrong between ATI or Nvidia. Windows XP, probably, though I hate it for the registration bullshit- however Hash seems intent on supporting it and is writing code to suite the OS. For 8.5p+ I stick with a win98 flavor, until I finish my current project.
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From my experience with AM's motion blur- it is objects moving relative to their previous places on the 2 dimensionally mapped viewing plane. I could be wrong- but that's how it looks to me. So if you track with the camera you will get little or no blur onthe object you are tracking so long as it's 2d coordinates on the final image remain approx. to their previous positions.
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Why not post this and other -uh- detritus in the OT forum then?
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To me it looks really like a two-dimensional effect- something more easily done in AE than in AM. I would do it by rendering out a sequence of animated material turbulence material and then use that in a filter in AE while placing it over a an already rendered sequence of the Bird fading out- or just practice using the bird on one level of- nevermind... I'm too tired to go on and you probably wanted a real internal AM solution to your image. :rolleyes:
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Yeah man, that ain't no thing- just render with an alpha channel and have nothing in your chor but your model and a black background.
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Interesting. I usually do a color map first for a few reasons: 1) It takes more finesse to get it just right- bump maps are usually pretty straight forward for me. So I may end up totally redoing colors (not just vlaues but overall placement/shapes, etc.) until I get the right look- which would mean redoing the bump map had I done it first. 2) Deriving a bump map from a color map is pretty easy, especially using color filter layers. Just my opinion.
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One small detail in case it wasn't clear: Fireflies was done using Polyray, not AM- and my own animation program for keyframing ('Tweener, a program in the DORK section of my site). In a word- PRIMITIVE tools. I have no excuse for animation like that any more, though I was very proud of Fireflies when I did it- since hey, I coded the animation program.
Modernhorse: Yes the music is french... big clue at the site: It's Ravel's of course! In fact Fireflies sort of led into the dreamy plot idea involving Ravel himself for "Ballet pour ma fille." The Firefly music is one of his waltzes from "valses nobles et sentimentales" work. Played by me- which avoids *some* copyright problems, but since there's still an active Ravel estate, not all of them.
Well, to all interested in following the film, I wish you luck, since it's going to be a long ride.... but I *will* finish, no matter what.
Thanks all for looking!
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Assuming this ins't a problem with 10.5, my thoughts: Check your patch normals (though I'd be surprised if it's this simple). Check your patch scales- how small are the patches? When they are too small (like <.5 cm) mapping decals becomes problematic. Does the cookie cut map apply as a color map or is it strictly a function of when you make it a cookie cut map? Are the 5 point patches bordering other 5 point patches? If so, try to avoid that, if you can't- then ensure that no splines *end* at any point along the 5 pt patch- that's fixed this problem for me before. Out of ideas- HTH. If you solve this problem another way be sure to report back so I can learn!
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Nobody respondonded to the more important (IMO- heck this whole post is IMO!) questions you raised: ----- I want the eyebrows on this character to be very expressive, so it's an separate mesh within the model. I know that I'll have to add bones to it and do some smart-skin hoodoo. Is this a good way to go? Or should I make the brows a part of the head mesh and then when they move, the surrounding mesh moves also (would have to adjust the influences of bones, I guess) Any ideas on any of this, anybody? ----- I vote seperate. That's how I've done it for my current project. Made adjusting their shapes and positioning with poses a snap. I can't imagine the headaches I would have had had I attached my characters' brows. HOWEVER: Had I designed non-human looking characters the underlying style may need a geometry for the brow that is attached (a treant or living rock giant type creature come to mind). I would probably build in massive brow ridges to the geometry and move them that way. Since human character's have mostly non-ridged eye brows- I ust stick 'em on and then blend them via texturing. Next: ----- 2] When creating a clothed figure, are the clothing done as a separate mesh in the model or as a separate model? And if the clothing is removed, it would have to be a separate model, right? Some kind of constraint would have to be added (like the Thom carrying the lamp video tute). ----- I've done all mine as seperate meshes in the same model. However for my use (and I'm using v8.5p) the built-in cloth features of AM were worthless toys. I'vehad to hand animate any type of clothing effect if it's critical the geometry not pass through the cloth. Maybe v11 has improved things to make cloth actually useable quickly and reliably, but I use it only for drapery and bedclothes. For constraints, I think about how I want to animate the cloth, and then try to approach that- a skirt I made comes to mind. I added some further leg bone type rigging to the woman and attached the skirt's points to those bones. Then I had those "legs" follow the real ones in a staggered sequence (enforce at various %), so the dress naturally followed her gait. Then I could go back and hand tweak where I wanted. ----- 4] Any major "gotchas" when modeling for animation? What are major things to keep in mind when modeling so the animation will be as snafu-free as possible? ----- YES! SCALE things to match BEFORE you get to the rigging stage! Scaling once bones are in place is a bitch. Scaling objects in the choreography is a workaround if you forget, but can cause other problems. I model things intended to all be in one "film" to be scaled accurately relative to each other. It's simple and saves major headaches. Other than that AM is relatively forgiving. I've been halfway through animating a choreography when I realized a model needed tweaking- without closing the chor. I went to the model, added a few points, a bone, a new constraint in an action, then went back to chor. redropped the action, hit the spacebar (to update) and voila! No problems. HTH Sorry for my english.[i][/i][i][/i][i][/i][I]
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Ouch, but
at the same time. (For inscrutable reasons since before this forum was born). Try removing the plug-in, as in delete the offending sucker and run AM. If it works, then maybe try reinstalling just the plug-in?Alternatley, delete AM, defrag, reinstall components from a clean slate?
I'm still back with 8.5p and that shader's been with AM since at least 8.5. I cna't believe this bug is something added in via the .exe... that would be pretty silly.
G'luck.
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The site sort of explains it all better than I can here. Not expecting reams of critical feedback on it, but if you're gonna be real thoughtful about it, then go ahead.Been working on this monster for over two years (since May of 01)- so 2.5 years. It's your typical one man, one machine (well two and needing a third for the final rendering) sort of thing.
And in 2 and half years I FINALLY get to post an image from the actual production. So there's proof that STICKING TO IT WILL GET YOU THERE- oops, not done yet, I spoke too soon!
Oh one other thing: My focus for this film isn't (oddly enough) animating. It's more on design, story, and the dream of being able to tell a deep, thoughful, mature story using the tools I have. I admit of all the skills that have gone into this film (writing, modelling, texturing, design, etc., etc.), my animating is the poorest- so I'm not posting anything on that until I've had a few months working out my kinks. Only stills for now!
A WIP of sorts...
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
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Oh, I'm definitely keeping the volumetrics on the streetlights, just toning them down. In fact the cars that go through the night scene have them too... old fashioned 1910-style cars with volumetric lanterns! I *like* the look.
Thanks for all the comments folks. I'll post other things in here in the months to come- but don't expect much with graduate school on my back!
Hoping to finish sometime in 2004, though.