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cfree68f

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Posts posted by cfree68f

  1. So I got inspired by another thread and dinked for about an hour to put this together.

     

    [attachmentid=21884]

     

    It brings up something we've discussed in other threads for Tin Woodman, reflection and how to make it better in darkly lit situations. Yves is working on solutions (I think) but I wanted to get input on things that might improve reflection in AM and get input on this guy as well ;-)

     

    The thing I find I miss most is a reflective color. Is there a way to do this and I'm just missing it? One thing that kills metals is when they reflect to much color from the environment if they have color themselves, like gold or brass or copper.

     

    The other thing is how to fake a brighter more reflective surface while keeping the reflection high. If you crank it up and the environment is dark you end up with a dark character (realistic sure but not good for cinematography). being able to add a diffuse element to the shading while still keeping the reflection high could fake this. I don't know how you'd do it and it could really be used in wrong ways, but theres got to be some way to pump up the metals brightness without blowing out your background with lights and bright colors.

     

    Any ideas?

  2. I can see some texture in the red velvet...kind of stitchy losange or

    tone on tone flower design ?

     

    Not seeing it. where do you mean and which image? The last or the one before? The Chair or the reflections of the carpet. I did change the velvet on the char to show more diffuse shade and gave a wider spec amount to it, but I don't see a pattern in it.

  3. I prefer camera focal lengths to be as wide as possible....around the 27 mark.

     

    lol.. I thought I was the only nearsighted individual here Ken. Thats around where I usually sit as well. I think this one is 35.. Maybe 50 would work better for all. It was 95 in the first shots. I'll keep playin... I mean testing ;-)

  4. I do like the idea of Tinwoodman changing clothes/parts allot. What if he was a "Fashionista" and one of the gags was that in every other scene he had some new accessory or clothing item (maybe not every other scene ;-) but then you could do some funny things where Scarecrow and Woot start looking odd at him, and he's like "What?".

     

    The idea that he could be slightly schizo seems on character as well.. Sometimes he could be macho and sometimes he could be a "wussy". It might help to explain different peoples take on his animation style as well?

     

    The more I think about it the more I like the notion of him being made up at points. It may be that I probably have the least invested in this movie at this point ;-) but for some reason Nancy's take seems fresh and new. Sure she's taken it to the "Nancy" limit, but you have to admit, it opens up a wide array of possibilities for the star character ;-)

  5. Heres an alternative camera focal length and angle. It shows more of the throne room but lets me get closer to Tin Man as well. This is my usual MO.. but I'm not sure which I like better yet. I also dinked with Tin Man's face a little the stare didn't work from any other angle.

     

    Oh and thanks for the kind words guys.

     

    [attachmentid=21789]

  6. The only comment I have about the purple is that it seems very dark.. could make it hard to see his body movements in the dark places like Yoops or night shots. Other than that I liked the idea when I saw it. I think it makes him look very vain.. which I like the thought of, it could make for some interesting acting.

     

    I'd still like to see some reflection in him though.

     

    Don't change Nancy.. I like you just the way you are ;-)

  7. And be prepared to re-re-animate those parts of the character(s) that didn't get touched because they weren't in view in the original "assigned" assumed-to-be-appropriate camera angle.

     

    not to mention starting facial expressions that don't work from a different angle ;-) Ran into that already.. and collision with parts that can't be seen from the current angle.. ayayaya... what have I done?

     

    Its all good.

  8. Could this be tweeked by the lighting team.. not the multiple character shots most likely, but the closeup and medium shots.

     

    Personally I'm surprised at some of the camera angles I'm seeing. Probably just a matter of choice but I like wider angle cameras most of the time. What I'm seeing in some shots is a focal length greater than 80 which seems very narrow.

     

    I'll see if I can post shots to show what I mean.

  9. Yeah I think going overboard with the Tin thing in the castle could be problematic and in my opinion rather boring to look at.

     

    Yves.. you're right it's not the soft reflection.. I turned it off and I still get a crash. I'm trying to get to the problem of it right now. If I figure out whats causing it, I'll submit a report. As it is right now, I've changed so many things it could be any of them.

     

    Once I get a render again I'll post the result.

     

    Rhett.. don't worry I wasn't planning on updating SVN until we worked all the issues with multiple people working on the same things.

     

    I'm sort of in the debug phase right now.. figuring out whats problematic.. i.e different things with reflections and lighting, and dark scenes. Its good we are having these discussions though.

     

    C

  10. My "Two" cents...

     

    The final lighting for "tricky" scenes will require some compromise on texturing or else they (the scenes) will stick out as bad. Tin woodsman and any other predominately metal character will be extremely difficult to light well in dark or complex (noisy) scenes. There will have to be trade offs.

     

    Nancy can go ahead and texture him, it'll just mean we'll have to adjust lighting or his textures later (hopefully only slightly)

     

    I'm playing around with soft reflections Yves, but they seem to cause my renders to crash.. I havn't had a successful render finish since I turned them on.. I'll check that when I get home.

     

    Kevin.. I'll work on painting some stained glass textures for the windows.. they take to long to render with all the geometry and they look to plain. Otherwise it looks like our lighting schemes are pretty close.. I to stuck lights in all the modelled lights, but our times are different.. ie your's seems to be day and mine is night. I'll focus on the windows for now and let you work more on the day scene then modify from that.. how's that sound.

     

    C

  11. Thanks for the input guys. I figured out the finished throne room, and started lighting it based on the light positions. With the exception of a cheat light on the tin man it worked well enough. I ended up taking the reflection down to 60 percent in order to keep the red of the carpet from overwhelming Tin man. Overall I like the separation, but I know this is only a cheat for now... I'll check the reflective softness next.

     

    The only difference between the first 3 pics was mainly bloom level and adding a slight AO in the bottom one. Its hard to pick them out individually, but when you run them as an animation they pop allot, in different ways. I think the blur and bloom is better than a straight render since real footage would have this naturally, otherwise the shots would be to clean.

     

    here's where its at with Depth of field and I played with some volumetrics coming through the stained glass. Its barely noticable and probably not worth the render hit.

     

    Oddly the baseboard material around the room didn't seem to pick up the Depth of Field.

     

    [attachmentid=21697]

     

    C

     

    One other thought.. when we look at these shots for contrast and gamma, we should look at them on a neutral background. I had been seeing them on the default white of firefox and and thought I must be going blind, they seemed much darker than my renders.. I set the background to 50 percent gray and their looking normal now ;-)

  12. So I started lighting the "plan" scene in Tinman's throneroom.

     

    First a question, Is there a "finished" version of the throne room put together. I found all the parts but no model or chor with the stuff laid out. I also noticed the windows aren't complete. Is that for me to finish? or is someone else working on them? I can put all this stuff together, I just don't know who's toes I'm stepping on doing so.

     

    Anyway. Here is a first draft of some lighting ideas for the throneroom. Basically a bunch of lights along the walls and a backlight from the moon outside. I'm also playing with some compositing tricks to help the render look, ie blooms, blur and AO.

     

    Here are some pics for comparison. Any input is greatly appreciated.

     

    [attachmentid=21682]

     

    In addition I had to modify Tinman's materials. The reflection was way to mirror like. I gave him a reflection falloff of 2000 to 3000 cm and that helped make him show up. I think its a good idea to add reflection falloffs to every reflective object in the movie in order to make them work in darker scenes. These could be tweeked for distance. Can the powers that be let me know if this is cool before I start to update my changes to SVN?

     

    C

  13. Another late chime in, but I've started working on some lighting scenes as well and I just came to this thread.

     

    I love the Maxfield Parrish look. But something about the skydome seems off from it. the last pics are getting better, but it seems that the blue of the sky should graduate from right to left based on Yves Sun position. ie the right blue should be light and the left blue should be darker with pink clouds.

     

    The other thing that bugged me is that the Castle seems Uber clean and shiny. Maybe thats magic, but it seems more like a model set than and enormous outdoor scene. Is it possible to but some patina here and there to age it a little?

     

    C

  14. First off.. its pretty good for a first shot.. I recognised the mesh right away! of course I should.. I've been staring at it for almost 6 years now.

     

    You also have some odd things going on in the cheeks on the side. I'm guessing that they may crease as well but they can be fixed easily.

     

    I really need to update this tutorial with what I know about modelling faces now. to much to do not enough time.

     

    To get rid of the klingon ridge you can just select the center spline and pull it back into the face a little where it needs it.

     

    If you see creases try using hooks or 5 point patches instead of 3 or more splines running into the same point. And one other thing you can try is moving the offending crease to a point that cant be seen (sometimes hard to do) ie.. take the intersections around the mouth and try to shift them inward into the mouth, same around the nose and ears.

     

    Great so far though!

     

    C

  15. Sounds fun! I'm better in the early day.. still wear out by 4 or 5.

     

    Where are you located David? It might be a good option for some of the Chattanooga people, and I'm willing to drive halfway, especially in the fall.

     

    pick a date.

     

    C

  16. I had an idea to have one thread where we can brainstorm ideas for effects for the movie and where we can post the results. Or link to other "winners" and ideas.

     

    So to start it off, heres one idea I had for a type of Magic or environmental effect.

     

    It is a 3d "bolt" (what that bolt is can be anything.. light, electricity, particles whatever)

     

    I thought well the traditional tentacle like approach of a snaking object going across a line is limited, but what if I added lag to the bones to make them controllable by one starter bone that kicked off the chain reaction. here is the result.. on bone animated on 2 keyframes in an action. The rest is all constraints ;-)

     

    http://www.colins-loft.net/free/examples/e...agic%20bolt.mov

     

    and the project to check it out...

     

    http://www.colins-loft.net/free/examples/effects/bolt.zip

     

    The advantages are complete control over the look of the bolt and how it might interact with an object, and the fact that you can apply all kinds of effect to it.

     

    The disadvantages are.. that I can't figure out how to make it scale in the opposite direction.. ie.. get it to trail after itself.

     

    Any ideas?

     

    C

  17. It could be your ram.. but it might be that you have a shader turned on that is causing problems.

     

    I know at one point Yves Skinshader and hair would crash on my machine. Try turning off any diffuse, ambient, or specular shaders to see if that fixes it.

     

    If you pinpoint a problem, you should try submitting it to AM reports.

     

    C

  18. Hey Stuart,

     

    don't sweat it.. I welcome all critics... and yes fixing those manicured hooves is on my todo list.. when he's done.. he'll be craggy and nasty ;-)

     

    I actually did groom the hair.. which made it messier ;-) and something about the version 12 and up hair is different. It seems that the kink has changed.. and become more spiral or something.. it looks more like curly or kinky hair than frizzy hair. I did some test renders between 11, 12, and 13 and theres definately a difference after 12.

     

    I also took the density down by 75 percent and increased the thickness.. which causes some issues in the chest, but nothing thats not fixable. His render time got cut by an hour and 10 minutes doing this and the result seems nicer for the most part. He renders in 50 minutes at 1600x1200 and 16 passes now (normal render.. not AO)

     

    C

  19. It took about 2 hours at 1600x1200 with 16 passes and the AO sampling set to 30. ( I'm running a 2Ghz AMD with 2 gigs of ram)

     

    I also did a simple color pass with an interesting result. and It only took 5 minutes at 1600x1200 16 passes....

     

    Here it is.. (might be an option for really fast hair rendering in a seperate pass or something.. but it looked pretty cool for 5 minutes, take a look...

     

    [attachmentid=15428]

     

    C

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