Wildsided

Those are some beautiful birds Nancy.

Thanks Robert, it's getting there. I totally agree Mark, needs a bunch of tweaking, possibly a complete overhaul. But it's a foundation I can build off of. Thanks Rodney, finding a direction that didn't take forever to render a 'quick' test was a massive step forward.

We'll get there Steve. Just gotta keep pluggin' away. Speaking of plugging away I've been working on this girls hair for the past few days. Had to abandon Cloth hair coz the number of collisions became astronomical and my PC started to cry and asked me to stop torturing it. Sooo I've gone back to particle hair, trying a few things and made some more progress. Here's a video of her hair at the moment. Far from finished but it's given me a few ideas of what to try next. Like I said experimenting is half the fun. hair_test_4.mov

Happy b'day Mark

Episode 3 of Parallel Worlds is now up and available for a listen. Parallel Worlds: Episode 3 - Broad and Bent - http://blip.tv/aceco/parallel-worlds-ep3-6720527

More hair testing, this time rigged mesh hair with dynamic constraints hair_test_4.mov

Whoa damn that's awful. Here's to a hopefully rapid recovery for Gene,

A problem with chasing realistic hair is that real hair doesn't always move as we want it to either. The folks at Disney and other companies have spent enormous amounts of money to get where they are now and their latest efforts haven't been in creating realistic hair but rather hair that can be artistically directed. If I were to suggest that we can control long (mesh-based) hair by manipulating the CPs on a three or four CPs control spline... would you believe me? I know what you're saying about Disney in particular spending a fortune on developing new technology for hair. I watched a couple of very cool videos recently about the development of Rapunzel's hair in tangled. I'm guessing you mean rigging chunks of mesh based hair and then constraining the bones to a control spline? That sounds like a cool concept. Also am I missing a setting somewhere that lets you adjust the weight of cloth?

My biggest concern at the moment is movement, unless it's super short, hair moves. All my characters have had static hair, be it helmet or particle and I've always hated it. I've tried setting particle hair to dynamic on many occasions and spent hours tweaking settings but it has this tendency of doing some crazy stuff on random frames. Like 6 or so strands will suddenly shoot off in a random direction for a couple of frames. Did some more tests with cloth hair and it just takes forever to settle down even when her head is totally still. Long way to go though, maybe I'll work on building her a body for now and tackle hair later.

Same thing with a hair texture applied hair_test_3.mov

Thanks for the suggestion Rodney. I have no problem going in different directions, figuring out what works and what doesn't is half the fun Was just playing with the idea of using cloth for hair hair_test_2.mov

Just throwing this out there. Could you make the legs a separate model that could be swapped out for a loop shape with a blurred texture and maybe a transparency map to make it look like the legs were moving fast. then when he stops swap the other legs back in?

Update. Gave her some eye brows and a fringe just to see how it'd look.

fixed it, somehow (and I say that because I know I didn't change it) the enforcement of the pose was set to 200%.

K so I wasn't gonna do anything with this model today. Today was gonna be all about writing Breckridge chapter 8. Then Robert mentioned smiling and well writing went out the window. So I screwed about and added in a smile line, added some eye lashes and then went into a new pose to make a quick smile pic. But when I apply the pose to the model in the choreography window, something weird happens. Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees a discrepancy between these pictures. The one on the left looks to me like she's smiling. The one on the right looks like she wants to eat my my first born son. But it's the exact same pose on the exact same model in roughly the exact same position. But it's like the choreography one has taken what I did in the pose window to the extreme.

Okay took some time to adjust the splinage, got the ears attached and the head all closed up.

Always nice to see Bahamut blowing stuff up

Not gonna lie David, I like your mesh layout for Bertram's face a lot better than mine and those tutorials you pointed at certainly gave me a lot of food for thought. I'm almost tempted to start over, but i'll start by seeing if I can modify the current mesh. As for the eyes they're just place holders, I just couldn't take being stared at by empty sockets so I just threw a quick ball + decal in there. I creep myself out enough writing Breckridge without being stared at by an eyeless Disney princess. (There's some nightmare fuel for you guys, picture your favorite Disney princess and remove her eyes )

Sure Mark, lol I don't think anyone's ever asked to see one of my mesh's before. She's a little further along than she was earlier but not a long way. This is also the first time to my knowledge I've ever posted something WIP that's got so little progress. I have to agree on Frozen, it felt a lot closer to old school Disney (think it was all the singing) and the Ice and snow effects were just mind boggling. I watched a couple of videos where they showed off the snow simulations at Siggraph last year. It's awesome stuff.

We could sort the aurora problem with a handsome prince or possibly a flock of seagulls...But that would mean running....running so faaaaar awaaaaay

Damn animation elves, always so darn unreliable.

That's how those Disney girls roll player.......Yeah it doesn't matter how many times I try to sound street it always sounds dumb.

Saw Frozen the other day. Loved every minute of it (particularly the 'Let it go' sequence). So I decided to play with making something in the Disney style. This is no princess in particular but here's what I have so far.

I really need to watch the walking dead. I think I've seen the first maybe 3 episodes. I'm miles behind

Heheheheh. Like it Mark For an extra cheap and easy laugh, you could make it a girls bike by lowering the cross bar, color it pink with white pedals and stick some tassels on the hand grips. Just thinking out loud, but if you wanted to go all the way you could make it a tiny 7 year old's bike that would be no faster than walking for him.