shaunf

This isn't complete (the animation is still fairly rough) but I've had to put it down due to other animation commitments. I thought, rather than having it sit on my computer at home people could have a look. When I get a chance I'll get back to it, but in the meantime I'd be interested in peoples thoughts. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/samples/night_...ld_mountain.mov Its about 9.6 Mb Many thanks for William Suttons generosity in letting me use his model!

Definately keep the pupils Colin! It really is an elegant model, and the hair works wonderfully!

Beautiful work Christina! Your attention to detail is wondeful! I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your project!

Hey John, Thats actually rather peaceful, you just need some gentle chimes to go with it and you're set. :-)

Thats very funny!

This is worth a look people.... Just another small addition by the talented Jow Williamson HunterDMC_MD.mov 18Mb (Amfilms) HunterDMC_TNY.mov 11Mb Its kind of mesmerising

Thats right! Get a wriggle on John. You have to many idle moments!

Great stuff Sam. Its really conveys the guys irritation at not being able get past. Just a thought, as he's walking away, it might emphasise him thinking about his other options about getting across the gap by perhaps have him rub the back of his neck/head with his left hand rather than holding it half cocked (which also works well too BTW). Really terrific Sam!

HI Sharky, If I do any test animation of my characters I'll definately post those, but I'm not planning to show people any clips of the actual short film until its finished. I don't wanna give it all away! :-)

Thanks very much for the comments chaps. I had fun animating it. Thanks to Sam for suggesting I have a play with him. It's certainly a great little character to test out the animation basics with! Cosmonaut: It didn't actually take very long to animate. I did the majority of it last sunday. It took about 6 hours? And then a little tidy up tuesday evening, before getting it rendering. So all up maybe 8 hours? I was pretty happy with how quick it took. (admittedly, ball man has only three main bones, so there's not that much to think about... :-) There's a few aspects that I could still work on but it was rendering by the time I noticed it so I haven't tweaked it any further.

I had a little play around with the Mr Ball character. Here it is if people are interested in having a look. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/samples/mr_ball_small.mov The sound is a little slapped together, but you get the picture. Its about 3.8 Mb

Hi Dennis, The character looks good. Just a thought though, his body shape looks vaguely feminine to me. Perhaps chunk up the upper torso a little to make it a more convincing male character. Other than that is looks well constructed and fun. Cheers Shaun

I love them John! They're oozing character. You've gotta animate them. I want to see them do stuff!

Hey Sam...... WooHOOO!

I was going to say... cp weighting would solve that particular animation problem very quickly and easily!

I remember when I was just starting out with A:M in 2001, there was a long thread on the Balrog effect and a discussion of 'spriticles' as it was used in 'the fellowship of the ring'. Three months later, v9.5 came out with sprites, so its fantastic to see this, as it kind of proves the point of the original discussion way back then. WONDERFUL stuff! I'd love to see the balrog with a reference to the Silmarillion. You're an inspiration William!

Very nice work Zack! Thats an elegant looking guitar!

Wonderful stuff William!!!

Thanks for all the positive comments! I did the nest using v11 hair (what a feature! So quick to set up). Up until the implementation of hair, I have been unsure about how to go about creating the nest. I made a few abortive attempts at modelling a nest, but the patch count became crazily high so I put it on the backburner while I did other stuff. Thankfully v11 hair appeared and has solved my problem. A few twigs are sticking through the branch (I didn't pick that up until after the render) but its a relatively simple fix (just tweak the hair guides a little). I basically used some bark textures to create an image of a stick, and stuck them straight into the hair material the nest appeared. It has a relatively low hair density also which is good, as the realtime play back is reasonably quick. I'll continue to play with it, as a few leaves in the nest etc might improve it also. Shaun

I've begun building the sets for my short film project, and I thought people may be interested in having a look at how they were working out. I've posted an image to my website with an example. I'd be interested in peoples thoughts. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/cuckoo_images.htm Cheers Shaun

HI Sharky, Re: eyeball design, I originally made my eyeballs back when I was learning to model, and following the steps outlined in Jeff Paries animation master manual. Essentially I created the structure of an eyeball (cornea, iris, retina (make it black)as it is found in real life, without the lens behind the cornea. So the simplest solution in the interim is to look at the structure of an eyeball, and try and model it. http://www.stlukeseye.com/Anatomy.asp If I can fit it in I'll post some pics of the structure of the eyeball. With regards to the lip sync rig, I'll be recording a tutorial on it at some stage but it won't be available for a while at least, as I'm VERY busy down here.

Sorry about the late reply Sharky. I made the eye textures AGES ago, and I now just reuse them and alter the hue. The below link is the one I used to help design the iris. I hope that helps. http://www.kandsdesign.com/kim/eyemap-tut.html

Thats a good point! When I animate her I'll make it a point of animating like that (ie. looking over her glasses etc), as I think that would improve interest in the animation of her character substantially. Thanks for bringing that one up. Thanks chaps Sigh.... I wish!! BTW Zack, thanks for the plug on CGTalk! I think I agree again! I'll play around with it and see how it works. Thats a good idea. I'll try it. It depends whether it will distract for the main animation, which while I think about it, it may do, as much of the focus of the animation is where she is looking. If you're staring at her eyes you might start staring at her glasses instead. I'll try it on though and see how it looks Thanks for all the feedback and positive comments!

I had another little fiddle last night. I've uploaded another version with the heads tilts a little more understated. I agree. I think it was a little distracting. I've also tightened up the sync a little more and changed some of the blinks and eye shifts to more appropriate places. http://www.shaunfreeman.com/motherwren_sync.htm As soon as I get a chance I'll do something like that. Thanks for your comments Sharky. The textures are just colour maps at the moment. No hair or other maps such as bump or specularity. At the moment its looking to be about 6 --> 6 and a half minutes. I LOVE animating!!!

Ooh, forgot to mention, I've added in some eyebrow controls and have updated the animation with some of the suggestions. ANy thoughts would again be great.