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brainmuffin

*A:M User*
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Posts posted by brainmuffin

  1. Fae, I see where you're coming from. I never really thought about this as a "serious" animation project, though. I see it more as an intermediate experience. A chance for people who haven't really focused on animation to do so, (since the characters are pre-built & rigged) as well as a chance for people to get a taste of directorial experience, planning out a shot sequence. Just something fun & a little challenging to do. The quality of the experience, in my mind, outweighs the quality of the finished product.

     

    That being said, if people are interested in this project, but would prefer a more structured environment, I would be happy to draft a script and storyboards for this. I'll just need a week to review as many "Tom & Jerry" & "Roadrunner" cartoons as I can get my hands on. ;)

  2. That's definitely understandable. I thought that having fully rigged characters already assembled for use might encourage participation though.

     

    Also, something to think about: The sequences don't necessarily need to be complex.

     

    To use Wile E. Coyote as an example again, there were plenty of elaborate devices that he built, rocket trains and the like, but plenty of them were as simple as a stick of dynamite in a pile of birdseed, or a pair of rocket-skates, or a comically oversized slingshot.

     

    One of the main reasons I thought this might be a cool idea is that, yeah, it's a little more complicated than the previous group projects, but it's a stepping stone to learning to create a full short by oneself.

     

    If anyone is interested, even if you're unsure of your ability to participate, let me know. I'll try my best to make sure that everyone who wants to participate can, regardless of skill level.

     

    I'm even willing to model the characters, if someone will volunteer to rig them. (Mainly hands/face rigging. Not my favorite parts of the process...)

  3. I had this idea a few days ago, and I thought I would run it by you guys since your always looking for fun & interesting group projects.

     

    It's one of the simplest classic cartoon conventions: Mouse wants cheese. Cat wants to eat mouse. Mouse has to sneak past Cat to get to cheese, devises increasingly clever/fiendish ways to do so.

     

    There are plenty of classic cartoons based on this formula, even going beyond the "Cat & Mouse" genre. Like Road Runner vs Wile E. Coyote, Bugs vs Elmer Fudd(or Yosemite Sam, etc) Sylvester vs Tweety... ad infinitum.

     

    What they all have in common, and what I think makes this an interesting group project, is that there are only two characters, and a very limited number of backgrounds (sets). For example, a cat and mouse cartoon needs only a living room set, a kitchen set, and maybe an interior of a mouse hole.

     

    Now, it would be a little more challenging on the participants, in that each participant would be responsible for a sequence, rather than a single shot, it would be like 5-7 short shots strung together. Think about a typical Roadrunner cartoon:

     

    1) Coyote gets package from acme.

    2) Coyote assembles trap.

    3) Coyote lays in wait for Roadrunner.

    4) Roadrunner races buy, unharmed.

    5) Trap backfires, causing grievous injury to Coyote.

     

    And a typical Roadrunner cartoon is really nothing more than a string of variations on that sequence. The cartoon always ends by just irising to black as the coyote looks beleaguered following the latest mashing. If its two animals, there doesn't need to be any dialogue. And the setup for the whole cartoon can be done in one 2-3 shot sequence at the beginning.

     

    If you guys are interested, I'd be glad to edit the thing together and do credits, and I wouldn't mind trying a sequence, too. As an added bonus, I have a library of classic cartoon sound effects.

     

    Let me know what you think.

  4. The problems I've encountered in the past are:

     

    If you watch the part of that video where the monkey head is being unwrapped, you'll see he marks a seam down the back of the head, and the mesh automatically unwraps, leaving the face seamless, and the whole head in one single "stamp". Right now this is not possible. You would have to split the head into at least two, if not more, stamps. This would not be so much of a problem if you could stitch the stamps back together in the uv editor. There used to be a way to, but it doesn't work anymore.

     

    There is no automatic unwrap, either. you have to manually flatten out the entire model, piece by piece, often in several different actions or poses. This is very time consuming.

  5. iirc, the droplet physics control how the particles stick to each other, (mainly surface tension) and viscosity controls how fast or slow they flow over other objects.

  6. Ideally you're going to want the fluid particles to be as small as possible, depending on the type of fluid you want to simulate. For free-flowing liquids, i.e. water, milk, alcohol, you should have them under .5 cm. Maybe as low as .2cm.

     

    .5cm - 1.5 cm: paint, liquid caramel or chocolate, motor oil, etc

     

    Where you are now, 3cm-5cm is better suited for "clumpy" or "chunky" liquids: grape jelly, lava, vomit, raw sewage, etc.

     

    Of course, the scale of your simuation needs to be taken into account, too. If you're simulating water being poured into a glass, then .2cm particles are good. If you're trying to simulate a 100 ft section of a creek flowing, then you should definitely make them bigger.

     

    It's relative. Think of them as 3d pixels. The more of them you have, the better it's going to look.

  7. Rob, Last night I briefly played around with it. I was able to get an object from A:M into sculptris and paint on it. I couldn't figure out how to export maps from sculptris, though. But to be fair, I was half asleep.

     

    Will, They don't work with the new screen-based AO either?

     

    Fuchur, I would really like to see the retopology tool developed in A:M. I'd love to be able to bring something like this in and model splines over the top of it...

  8. Why are the people who make ZBrush doing this? It seems like overlap of what they already do.

     

    That's a good question, Rob. Two years ago, just to amuse himself, one guy programmed it over six months. He released it for free, and got enough donations to buy himself a laptop within a month.

     

    A few months later, Pixologic hired him, and that's when the download moved to their site.

     

    He's The Mad Hatter.

     

    A friend mentioned him on facebook, so I felt like making him. I started out without any references, but near the end I googled Lloyd Bridges for reference, for the wrinkles. But looking at him now, I think I was mentally referencing a Willy Wonka cartoon and Sid Ceaser. The whole thing took less than an hour, start to finish. I don't know that I could even have sketched a profile of with a pencil that fast...

  9. I recently found this amazing free sculpting program:

     

    http://www.sculptris.com/

     

    I've been using it a lot lately. Here's something I doodled last night:

    post-2085-1301874359_thumb.jpg

     

    The sculptures could be useful for making rotoscopes, and modeling reference.

     

    You can also import an .obj that has uvs and paint texture maps with it. I seem to recall someone (possibly Dusan?) exporting A:M models as objs and painting them in zbrush, then using the textures on the original A:M object.

  10. EXCELLENT, Will!! It looks awesome, It'll save a lot of time, and it doesn't look like a cheat. This is exactly one of those things Robcat brought up in the other thread, finding ways to save time without skimping on quality.

     

    Try one with a couple of simple 3d foreground elements, maybe a rock and a plant.

  11. Unlike A:M, sub-d doesn't let you control the actual surface of the object, you have to manipulate a cage that influences what is inside it.

     

    That's some really out of date info there, Rob. The lines you see in that image (isoparms) are directly selectable and editable, as are the faces and vertices. The subdivision level tells the software how many polys make up each face.

     

    The "problem spots" are called "poles" where five sides come together into one vertex. you can see one on Geek's cheek on page 24, it looks like a star.

  12. I gotta agree with Nancy on this, if netflix wants to put up TWO & SO Then you should definitely go for it! It's people watching, & money coming in. Put up one & not the other, make people buy the second one if they want to see it.

     

    & yeah, sell it on ebay. Why not? Don't just sell one at a time, sell cases, 24 packs or something. You might find video stores & discount stores picking them up to resell.

     

    I don't think Bakshi meant ONLY ebay, I think he meant that there are enough ways for the individual to reach potential buyers/distributors now, that we should taking advantage of as many as possible. Every dollar counts.

  13. I think if A:M wanted to try something like this they could say that if enough people in a limited amount of time purchased a web subscription then everyone would get the CD as well. If not, then you still have a year's subscription.

     

    Or: For a limited time anyone who purchases a web subscription gets entered into a drawing to receive one of a limited number of CDs (Or training materials, etc.)

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