luckbat

Well, let's get the venting out of the way first, so we can end this on an up note. GOOD: The Hash team fixed the bug that was preventing me from rendering blended actions. BAD: They only fixed it in v.12, which effectively forced me to purchase the upgrade. GOOD: I have the upgrade now, and the software no longer crashes when I try to render my Ebon character. BAD: The software now crashes when I try to render the other character. Yeah, I'm serious. The new v.12f force-quits before it'll render even a single frame with him in it. I'll submit it as a bug report when I have the time, but man! How infuriating is that? Fortunately, I always render Monk and Ebon in separate passes, so I can use A:M v.11.1 for Monk and A:M v.12 for Ebon, but it still feels like there's some sort of cosmic joke being played on me. Anyway. This was a tough couple of shots, for two reasons. One was the lighting. Toon lighting bears very little resemblance to real lighting, and duplicating it using 3d lights requires nonstop cheating. Case in point: the sunlight in shots 10 and 11. Ebon's close-up in shot 11 has some really nice rim lighting that I think looks really flattering, although it doesn't remotely match the lighting on Monk. (Each character model has its own orbiting "toon light" to allow for full customization of highlights and shadows.) But in order to achieve it, I had to aim Ebon's toon light almost directly at her back, which made the reverse shot (shot 10) look like crap--no shadows at all. So, I had to grit my teeth and add a second orbiting toon light, to be used only for situations like this, when I can't use the same lighting for consecutive camera angles. The big killer, though, was that damn hood. I'd always intended for it to remain in place for the length of the scene, but once Ebon and Monk got right up close to each other, the hood had become a liability. It makes it nearly impossible to position the camera to show Ebon's face, at a point when her facial expressions are crucial. So, as seems to happen nearly every three or four shots, I had to re-rig. This time I added a pose slider allowing the hood to be retracted, and after some further experimentation, I also added a "grasping" bone that allows the right edge of the hood to deform when grabbed. I'm relieved to see that the end result looks pretty decent, considering that the model was never designed to do this. Not much of an improvement to my ratio this time around--18 seconds in 15 days, and a third of that was a walk cycle. Not to mention it took me three days just to render this clip. Griping aside, today's is a significant update for me, as I have finally broken the one-minute mark, and have therefore passed the halfway point on this little project. In principle, anyway. The second half has a lot more movement than the first, and may prove much more difficult to animate. But it looks like I've got around 45 seconds left to go. I'd like to close with a shout out to the A:M toon renderer. When you watch shot 11, check out Ebon's inner ear, nose and lips. Look how the nostril lines become a rounded v-shape as she lowers her head. And how the lower lip line broadens out, then shrinks back to a small curve. That's exactly how you'd draw these things if you were doing this by hand. The lines are clean and smooth (I render them at double resolution), with no artifacts or dropouts. It's just terrific. That's all for now. Stay tuned for next update, in which the characters... well, let's just say the conversation is over. Download: Ebon: Shots 10-11

I always wondered if the characters in Myst drank espresso. Now we know.

Porcelain's a useful tool, but it's no substitute for learning proper spline flow. That comes from experience--don't be afraid of trial & error. DWS' tutorial on making a head is a good place to start: http://www.hash.com/users/jsherwood/tutes/DWS/TOONZ/T.html

Looks nice, David. Be sure to post a wireframe, too, so that the forum folks can give you more specific feedback.

Okay, you asked for it. Admittedly, it's hard to criticize a run cycle when you can only really see it for one second before the camera goes all wonky. But here's what I was able to glean from scrubbing through the first third: 1. That's some crazy hip rotation you've got going on there. Nothing wrong with it from a cartoon anatomy perspective, but the timing is off. The hip's rotation is directly tied to the weight of the leg swinging forward, so it should reach its peak just as the leg is reaching its full extension. At the moment, the hip whips around too early. 2. Given how much his knees are bending, his upper body should be bouncing much lower to the ground on each step. 3. When he swings his right arm, his elbow seems to stop moving before the rest of his arm does. Notice that his left elbow is swinging away from his body, while his right one pulls into his side in an unnatural way.

That's normal. The CD functions as copy-protection.

With monster characters, I often seen exaggerated knobbiness on all the finger joints. Perhaps some gnarlier hands would give you what you're looking for.

Hmm... Isn't that more of a satyr, though? I don't think werewolves have hooves. Have you seen Dog Soldiers?

They look so happy!

If you leave the lights on, even when your model's at 100% ambience, you'll still get highlights. If you turn all the lights off and set your model's ambience to 100%, you'll get flat shaded.

Whoops! I meant "Global Ambience." It's in the camera properties. Sorry.

Have you tried turning on global illumination?

Sorry, man, but that image is correct. Those aren't shadows, they're reflections. Reflections on water always show up directly beneath the object they're reflecting. It has nothing to do with where the light source is. It has to do with the angle at which they hit the water, and the location of your eye.

Paul, I'm guessing I'll have to use an animated decal on the floor, a static decal on the palm, and additional droplet geometry on the fingers. It pains me to have to do so much work for such a brief shot, but that's how it goes sometimes.

I will in the final version. These are just motion tests. If you know of any online examples of what you're describing, I'd be happy to take a look, though. Also check out Shao Guee's suggestions from page 2 in this thread.

Sigh. Twenty days later, fifteen seconds of new content. My ratio is actually falling instead of getting better. (Yeah, okay, the fact that I re-rigged Ebon with the TSM2 skeleton and manually re-keyed most of her existing keyframes was probably also a factor.) My thanks to all the people who posted words of encouragement or sent me fan mail. You drive me onward. Five (well, four and a half) new shots today. Here's the deal: Shot 5 - It may look the same as before, but Ebon's sporting a shiny new TSM2 skeleton and a new walk cycle. Shot 6 - Obviously, the blood dripping is supposed to be animated, but I have no idea how I'm going to go about it. Maybe some unholy union of animated decals and additional geometry? I welcome your suggestions. Man, that is one boring-looking shoe. Shot 7 -- Ebon's costume is missing the bandages on the arms, but they'll be added eventually, just so you know. I will say that I was pretty psyched to see the way the light catches her fingertips. Shot 8 - Fun fact: the blurriness of the walls is depth of field, but Ebon was blurred in post. Why are the handles on her umbrellas suddenly yellow? I have no idea. I'll probably make them black in the final costume design. By the way, we should definitely be able to see the back of Monk's head in the mirror over there, but rendering this shot with reflections turned on would take a million jillion years. So I skipped it. Shot 9 - Sucks. As I explained last time, I'm going to be doing lipsync/expressions in a separate pass later on, which is why the characters act like they're talking even though they're not currently talking. Feel free to invent your own dialog. However--and I may regret doing this--those of you dying to know what Ebon is saying in shots 7-9 can check out this ancient lipsync test. Different outfit, same lines. That's all for now. Tune in next month for more shots of people standing around and moving their arms slightly. shots_5_9.mov

I assume the neck will widen when the new head arrives, but in the meantime, those hands are looking a bit slender compared to the meaty physique of the rest of the body. The skin texture's nice, but it may make it hard to read facial expressions, depending on the proportions of the face.

Oo, pretty! The clay look works great. But I don't think you're going to be able to get away with those potato hands. You'll need to give them some definition, even if it's just some stubby paw-fingers. (You wouldn't necessarily have to rig them, if you don't want to...)

Here's how I'd do it. The proton stream isn't straight, it's more like cooked spaghetti. You could model a single wiggly proton strand, attach bones at various points, and create an action that jiggles them around randomly. If you combine a few of these streams in a choreography, with glow and transparency, you should be able to get a nice, chaotic proton stream.

Christina, I get this problem all the time when I do walk cycles, and unfortunately, the only way to fix it is with subtle adjustments to the curves in the curve editor. Very often the difference between a smoothly bending joint and a popping one is a few centimeters. Try increasing or decreasing the length of her stride to see how the knees are affected. Try adjusting the bias on the foot bones' Y-position. It may be coming down too quickly or too early. I know you said not-straightening her legs was not an option, but consider moving the pelvis bone just one or two centimeters up or down. This can sometimes make a huge difference in how the knees behave. You could also introduce some "rocking" of the hips, which will also help absorb the "impact" of the legs reaching their full extension. By the way, have you ever seen a really skinny woman walk? Their knees really do quiver like that in real life! It's maybe not as pronounced, but I've seen it lots of times.

You need a woman, and a really big scanner.

Simply amazing. So the 3d bench bolts onto the painted-on holes in the wall? I never would have thought that would work, but it looks just great. My one critique: I think your blacks are a little too high-contrast for this environment. I'd soften them up, make them a little milkier.

I can tell what you're trying to do with the mouth fog, Mike, but I don't think it'll work in a 3d character. You'll probably have to either A) eliminate teeth entirely, or model a pair of white slabs to represent the teeth. If you really want to play with the fog/teeth idea, though, I'd suggest making the transitions less gradual. In fact, those "teeth" should really almost blink into and out of place...

It's not so much the arms as the hands. Right now they're looking a bit like paddles. Try giving them a relaxed pose with slightly bent fingers, then have them swing along with the arms instead of being locked in place.

If you don't get a lot of responses at this point, it may be because no one can think of anything to criticize. Those shins are looking a little sharp to me, but apart from that, I'm speechless.