Hutch

I think that last one looks great too Mark!

That looks awesome Mark.

Here you go Steve. This is basically how I have done all my cloth 'skirts' so far. I still continue tweaking it here and there. The top spline ring of the cloth group does not move when you simulate so I have been smart skinning it to keep the cloth from intersecting the thigh when it raises. It may not be the best way to do it but it works ok for me for the most part. My cloaks use the same material with a bit less mesh density. The sleeves are the same material and required much more smart skinning. clothsetup.prj

I have the final character rigged. He still needs a little work here and there and I will make a couple variations on him. Maybe one will have some stubble, slightly different faces etc. I am going to get rid of the rust on the shield. I made it a while back when I was thinking of going for a more realistic look. I may add some doodads to his armor like straps and hinges but I don't want him to look too detailed compared to the others.

Thanks Rodney! I had thought about doing something to get the composition away from totally centered but wasn't sure what to do with it. When there is a background I think I will have more options. I didn't want to focus in on the bird and lose anything to give it a sense of scale. The illusion might be a bit harder to pull off from an angle but when I get to the final shots I will probably have to work it out. This is just a personal project. I am shooting for something around 2 minutes with one more character (and a couple minor variations on him) that is in the rigging process right now. If it goes over well the short will be just the first bit of a piece about 10-12 minutes long.

I don't know much about star trek but I wonder how big those windows are supposed to be. Unless they are huge bay window sort of things, the plating seems too small. It looks like 4 foot wide windows surrounded by 1 foot square panels. Maybe this is accurate but I would think the panels would be bigger than the windows.

I forgot to mention it but that last one does have motion blur. It's only 4 passes so maybe more would bring it out or maybe I should up the percentage. I just left it at default.

Ok, I added a pose to the valkyrie to change her to solid black and shrink her legs and head. I also changed the shape of her cloak to look like wings. I haven't added the dissolve yet. Do you think it still needs it? AO is so awesome. It makes it look like she is a little miniature or something. Oh, I also went ahead and simulated the cloth and animated her braids by hand because the movement was too fast for dynamics. transformtestAO.mov

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I will add a short dissolve as you guys suggested. I think making the valkyrie start off black and shift into her normal colors sounds like a good idea too Darkwing. Paul, I will look into the transformation poses as well. Maybe I can make valkyrie's body and head start off smaller and her arms sort of flattened out like wings. I will send you an e-mail brainmuffin.

Thanks. How do you mean dissolve? Like the raven fades to transparent over a couple frames while the valkyrie fades in? I went ahead and added some to it. Trying to get her arms to mimic the flapping wings some. Does it give the impression that she is changing or just like the bird disappears and she appears? raventovalk.mov

David, that thing looks amazing! I can't even imagine trying to figure out how you set all that up.

This is pretty rough but I wanted to see if it is conveying what I want to others before I try and refine it. So, does this look like I am on the right track? Any feedback would be appreciated. raventovalk.mov

15.0i

Robert, thanks for your help. I really do appreciate it. It still doesn't work for me the way it does for you in your video tho. When I paste mirrored, the ss bone goes back to default but the other bones move to the mirrored key. Moving the ss bone does not then move the other bones the way it should. Adding another mirrored key makes that the new position for the bones, apparently just over writing the previous one. I am getting frustrated now so I am just going to leave it and come back to it later.

PC, it opens in chrome and ff but just shows the 'loading...' My flash player is up to date. Edit: downloaded a free stand alone player and got it working.

I just get a loading bar.

I guess I spoke too soon. That is a real pita and I have too many keys. So, I started looking at the text editor again. Here is a small sample of what the text editor has for a bone (I added indentation to make the structure easier to see): <OBJECTSHORTCUT> MatchName=Left Shoulder Armor <EMPTYDRIVER> MatchName=Transform <RELATIONSTORAGEDRIVER> MatchName=Rotate ValueDim=4 Key=0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 Key=0 -0.707107 0 0.707107 0 -0.596213 0 0.802826 Key=0 -0.382683 0 0.92388 0 -0.139173 0 0.990268 Key=0 0.382683 0 0.92388 0 -0.0282362 0 0.999601 </RELATIONSTORAGEDRIVER> </EMPTYDRIVER> </OBJECTSHORTCUT> I believe each bone has a set of keys like 'Key=0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1' with the first 4 digits being the quaternion rotation of the bone being smart skinned, followed by four digits for the quaternion rotation of the affected bone. Can anyone verify or correct this? So, If it weren't quaternion I would make X rotation values the same and Y and Z rotations opposite. Since it is quaternion (or at least seems to be), I don't have a clue. I have tried reading about quaternion rotations but it is too technical for me. Can anyone break down what I need to do to mirror the rotations?

Well, I figured a way to do it. I am going in and copying the rotations from the properties of each affected bone at each key frame and pasting them into the other one. It is tedious but it works.

Thanks Robcat. That is sort of what I had tried with a few variations. However, even following your directions I am not getting it to work. The first key frame on right side is 90 in Y. So, I select the bones like you say (ctrl clicking the ones that move but not bicep) and copy the key frame with key bone on. Then go to the left ss and set it to -90 in Y so each ss now has the arm straight up. I switch to key model and paste key frame but now the left bicep also moves. Since it moves 90 in Y it ends up at 0,0,0 and so the other bones just become the default position.

I think the second one looks more realistic but both look good.

I have tried pasting mirrored from one ss to another and can't seem to get anything to work. I looked at the file in notepad++ to try and figure a way to transfer the rotations over. I can find where the one ss has a bones container and see the rotation and translation values there. I also see where those containers are absent from the other side. However, I do not understand the values well enough to know where to start transferring them over. Is the text editor a dead end? I guess I may just have to eyeball the other side

I have come across a new ss question. Does mirror all ss not include bone rotations? My valkyrie's shoulder armor has bones which I moved in the bicep and shoulder ss but these did not mirror properly. All the muscle keys mirrored.

Thanks Nancy. I tried using fog with no image (not quite sure what an image does on fog). I may not have understood your suggestion fully tho. The reason I was using a roto was I don't want tom's innards showing like what happens when you make the model transparent. On him it wouldn't be too bad. You would see his eyeball inside his skull for example. So, what I did was render the scene with the ghost inactive and used that as the roto with some transparency so you can see thru him. Here I tried dof on the roto render and also adjusted some lights. The fog one I tried might have been cool but it just didn't seem to work at all when I applied it to the camera. I have been experiencing wierdness with changing out the roto's and had to revert the project several times. Sometimes they just won't show up and sometimes it is like it is tiling it in a strange way. Maybe this has something to do with the empty roto folder issue? tomsghostroto.mov tomsghost2.mov

Experimenting with front projection roto to make a ghost. I am not sure why the sky came out white, this is default chor. It looks kind of cool tho. tomsghost.mov tomsghost.prj

I completely agree, that is what I was going for. There is a term for that that was coined in the fifty's, I forget the term but it causes/triggers a primal uncomfortable felling in us human beings because what we are viewing is something that is not human or reality but is so closely imitating a human or reality. It can actually scare us when we see this in real life. The term that I cant remember has been brought up in resent years because of real life robots made in Japan that are so closely resembling actual human beings and our movements. I shot 4 takes with a real video camera at true 24fps as you can see below. So the Shots are mostly NOT hand animated at least not in AM/ CG land. The real life camera move is actually shakier so I smoothed the shot out in AM by just deleting every 2 key frames but as the shot gets towards the end I only delete every other key then not at all. I also modified the shot by "ADDING" an additional minor choreography action that modified the original move / action. Origional_shot_03.mov 'Uncanny valley' I believe is the term.