luckbat

Well, I'm not planning to generate much in the way of self-promotional materials until after I finish my first scene. But if you'd like to read the first chapter of the Ebon screenplay, you're more than welcome to do so: Ebon.org

Thank you. I slaved over those hands, too. As designed, the fingers use no fanbones, no Smartskins and no CP weights, just really careful spline placement. Yep. Fixed it. Scroll up to my earlier post to check out the improved eye rig in action. Agreed. I promise not to skimp on sound design in the extended version...

"The Death of a Rose."

I would have if I'd had one. Watch any making-of documentary involving voice actors and you'll see them using a filter. In a pinch, you can aim the mic up at the actor's chin instead of his or her mouth. With a good cardioid microphone, there won't be a huge difference in the sound quality, but it'll keep the 's' and 'p' sounds from popping.

As long as I'm posting overly detailed trivia, here's a movie of the new eye rig I built in response to earlier comments. I must have tried a dozen different combinations of nulls, "Aim roll at" constraints, relationships, fan bones and yet more nulls before I settled on my present solution, with its zen-like simplicity: 1. Constrain the eye-target null to aim at the head so I can measure how far left or right it is via its Y-rotation value. 2. Make a relationship that ties the null's Y-rotation to the eye-bones' X-rotation--when the null goes left, the left eye tilts slightly up, and the right eye tilts slightly down. 3. There is no step 3! I didn't even have to re-keyframe any of the eye-target null movement in the original animation. My thanks to everyone for their suggestions, especially to ItsJustMe for mocking up a .PRJ file for me to examine, and to Dearmad for convincing me to do the right thing--that's three days of my life I'll never get back. Anyway, here's a Quicktime of the new rig in action. The first thing you'll notice is that you can't tell any difference whatsoever between the two. That's because you lack Dearmad's magical ability to spot tiny defects in everything I do. Pay special attention to Ebon's right eye. That's mainly where the problems show up. On the "old rig" side, the pupil almost disappears into the eye socket a couple of times. On the "new rig" side, not so much. Sorry the image is so dark, but if I'd used the toon renderer, I'd still be staring at the progress bar right now... Eyerig_comparison.mov

Sure, I'll do my best. I recommend this only as a guide to getting reasonable-quality audio for hobbyists. If you need professional quality sound, expect to pay professional dough. (And be sure to ask a professional, not me.) PART I First of all, you need some good audio-capture software. ProTools in the industry standard, but the open-source Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ ) works perfectly well. Then, of course, you need a pre-amplified microphone. (This means the microphone has its own power source: either batteries, or preferably wall power.) Needless to say, you do not want to skimp on the microphone. A $50 Shure mic should be sufficient. Next, you need a way to convert your microphone input from mini to USB. This boosts the sound quality, so you'll want to do this even if your machine has a mic port. The budget-conscious may elect to use a Griffin iMic ( http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/imic/techspecs.php ) for this. You may need a mic-jack adaptor, depending on what kind of microphone you're using. At this point, you have all the equipment you need. (I'm assuming you have a computer and a quiet room.) Read all the manuals, hook everything up, and you're ready to start capturing voice audio. PART II Thought you were done, huh? Well, your equipment is only half the battle. The other half is your technique. It's like this: You don't just need quality recording abilities. You also need quality content! It's a lot of work, but your project is worth it, right? 1. Get real actors. Don't argue with me on this. You wouldn't let a voice actor animate your characters for you, would you? Then don't attempt to do the voice acting yourself. Get actors. Even if you don't live in L.A. or N.Y., your local area should at least have theater actors, and your local university will have tons of acting students. They're generally willing to work for free as long as you -- A) treat them like professionals, can communicate what kind of performances you're after, and C) have a decent script. 2. Rehearse! Ideally, your actors should have the lines memorized before you do any recording, and it's even better if you can schedule some time to actually play out the scenes in question. With movement, I mean, not just sitting around a table. Act it out! Both you and the actors will begin to spot little "moments" of performance when you run through the script physically--stuff that's different (and better) than what you had in your head when you were writing it. [Aside: Am I suggesting that I scheduled rehearsals for a 14-second animation? Yes, I am. The lipsync test audio comes from a longer scene that comprises about 60 seconds of dialog. The actress and I devoted an entire day just to rehearsing and blocking this scene, and a second day to audio recording. And we spent 6 hours on the audio recording.] 3. Do multiple takes. Try as many interpretations as you can. Tell your actors to intimidate, to seduce, to shame, to confuse. I guarantee you, whatever you thought you wanted, there's gonna be at least one line that sounds much better the way the actor says it than the way you heard it in your head. Moreover, not every single take will be usable. Sometimes the audio levels will be too low, or there'll be some background noise that nobody noticed while you were recording. Multiple takes are your insurance against this. 4. Record everyone standing up. People talk differently when they're standing than when they're sitting. Your onscreen characters aren't sitting, are they? Neither should your actors be. 5. Nobody touches the mic. A good mic is highly sensitive to vibrations. Even a sleeve rubbing against an arm will sound like a garbage truck falling down a staircase if that arm is holding the microphone. So mount it on a mic stand, or hang it from the ceiling--whatever. Turn it on and leave it alone. Bonus tips: If possible, try to have a friend handle the recording duties so you can concentrate on directing the actors. It helps. Also, be sure to label all your takes before you do anything else with them--"Angry, good performance" "Too soft, unusable," "Weird laugh," etc.--because you'll end up with a ton of audio files, and it gets really tedious trying to track down that one take you remember liking when you have to listen to 50 nearly identical performances of the same line just to find it. Whew! That's probably a lot more detail than you wanted, but if I can help just one animator make a better short, then I've done my job.

Dearmad, I noticed something really weird with Sorenson compression a few weeks ago. When I unchecked the "Key frame every" box, the resulting file sizes were huge! After I went in and changed it to "75," which I believe is one of the defaults, my 18MB file dropped down to 4MB with no difference in quality. So try playing with that value and see what happens. Edit: Oops. I just repeated what Robcat said. Wasn't paying attention.

Hey folks! Didn't mean to be away from this thread for so long, but I started work on character #2 and got distracted. Also, I didn't want to post an update until I solved the eye-slant problem--more on that later. Thanks for all your comments. They keep me going. You should've seen how she looked in my original sketches. "Short and stubby" was how I envisioned her, with legs like a Kewpie doll. Unfortunately, I was never able to translate this look into 3D. Just when I'd think I'd gotten it in the modeling window, I'd switch to the choreography and she'd suddenly look like a caveman. So I had to settle for "strong and stout." There's still room for improvement though, so her legs may end up slightly curvier down the road, though probably not much thinner. Personally, I think the problem is more the range of motion rather than the speed, but you're right--it's a bit too vigorous. If I were planning to do another pass on this, I'd probably start here. To be fair, she's not making a dismissive 'shooing' gesture, she's actually indicating the (offscreen) blood on the floor. You can see her eyes glance down at it a moment beforehand. Both! This single lipsync test has forced me to learn tons about A:M's intermediate-level features like non-linear animation, lighting design and CP weighting. But it's also a tiny excerpt from a two-minute scene I'm working on now, and that two-minute scene comes from a 94-page screenplay. If the finished full scene generates any interest, I may expand the project further. 1. Thank you, I will! 2. Yes. The walk cycle is floaty. I am aware of that. 3. Thanks! Yeah, that's one of those "easy fixes" that can wind up making things way more complicated if you're not careful. I don't know about you guys, but I'm always tweaking and experimenting with the eye movements via the target null, and if I had four extra sliders or two extra bones to deal with, the process would, I fear, become depressingly sluggish. I think I may have come up with an elegant solution, however, which I'll describe in detail in the next update.

Yup.

Can you wait for v12 and use compositing?

Another one...

HOLY SCHMOLY, THAT'S A LOT OF TIME! Let's hope Mr. Jaqe never finds out about radiosity.

In Rustboy's defense, I should mention that I didn't hold out much hope of ever seeing the Ninjai project completed, either. But lo and behold...

Except that Big Bang might actually be finished someday.

Nah, it's the other way around. The pupil movement should adjust for the slant of the eyes. I'll probably give the Osipa method a shot the next time I re-rig her--I'll have to in a few months anyway, when TSM2 comes out for Mac. I know, what is up with that? When I look at the animation from the side, the hips move up and down plenty. Ah well. This shot won't actually be used in the final piece anyway. If it keeps happening, I'll post the walk cycle in the WIPs and let the masters take a crack at it. Thanks! Based on the rehearsals, it should come in around the two-minute mark.

No idea. I guess now would be a good time to learn, huh? Edit, hours later: Nope. I'm totally and completely lost. It seems like the ideal solution would be to have the left eyeball bone's Y-rotation value drive a X-rotation offset of the aim-at-null constraint of the right eyeball bone, and vice versa. This would compensate for the slant of the eyes. Problem is, I can't access those aim-at constraint offsets from within the eyeball bone's relationship window. In fact, I can barely understand what I just typed.

Thanks! I'll give credit to Justin Barrett's "Animating A Face" CD for this one. It really drove home how the tiny eye movements anchor the larger eye movements. I'd never seen it broken down like that before... Yeah, that's a problem. I have the eyeballs both constrained to aim at a null target, but with an X-axis offset so she doesn't look crosseyed when she's looking straight ahead. Problem is, her eyes are slightly slanted, so when the left pupil swings to the left, the right pupil almost disappears into its socket. Honestly, I'm stumped. I have no idea how to make her eyes act according to the laws of cartoon eye anatomy. In essence, because of the slant, one pupil needs to shift slightly upwards as it moves away from the nose, while the other one needs to slide downward. Can you see what I mean? Any suggestions, anyone? Should I just abandon the "aim at null" method entirely, and switch over to the Osipa "joystick" technique that all the cool kids are using? Well, she is undead.

Footstep sounds would be an improvement, but at the moment, I'm not equipped to do foley work. There's a lot more walking around in the upcoming "long version" of this clip, not to mention fabric rustling, doors opening, and even a brief fight scene! I don't know how I'm pull it off--I may have to outsource the sound-effect work to the professionals... Thanks! The actress and I did over 20 takes of this scene...

Okay, last update/re-upload. (Scroll to the first post in this thread to see the newer version. ) I disliked the old color scheme, so I changed it from its original dingy yellow-brown to a greener, "let's rip off The Matrix" look. (You can see the original colors in the screengrab one post up.) I then tinted Ebon's skin and shadows to blend in with the new palette, and also added some slight blurring to the background for a better sense of depth. At long last, I added the backlighting that I talked about earlier, which helps match the strong sunlight streaming in from behind. There are other small glitches here and there, but I'd prefer to call it a day and move on to my next animation project. Thanks to everyone for the comments.

Hey, I'd love to see Arctic Pigs animations, but it's Windows-only, so...

Another revision. This time, using really tedious compositing techniques, I've updated the movie file again, this time replacing the jagged raytraced shadows on Ebon's skin with smoother, more stylized ones. It's not perfect--for one thing, I don't think the hair should be casting a shadow like that--but the shading on the legs, in particular, add a sense of depth which makes the walk cycle seem a bit less floaty. One last thing I have to do is create a highlight/rim effect to simulate backlighting. Then I think it'll be time to move on to bigger things. (Seen below: What the old shadows looked like.)

Cool! Because that'll be around the time when I feel qualified to critique Victor Navone.

Nice! Very Nickelodeon-esque.

I heard you can download it from here if you give them $90: http://www.rafhashvideotapes.com/setupmachine10.html

Okay, so I just replaced the Quicktime file with a newer one featuring toon-style shadows on the floor. It doesn't solve everything, but it helps. Personally, I still can't see the foot slippage that's been mentioned previously, but I'm sure you'll agree it looks a lot better with the floor shadows.