KenH

Here's the first pass of the first half of my troll short. It's small and compressed and dark and there are lots of planned improvements as a result of seeing it but you'll get an idea. 3.8MB Quicktime

That's excellent! A few tips on the blinks: 1) A blink only consists of the upper lid closing and opening. The lower lid pretty much stays where it is. (Look in the mirror...or put your finger on your lower lid as you blink) 2) Instead of having the lid come down and go back up at the same speed, it looks more convincing if the lid comes down faster than goes up. So, if the blink takes 5 frames, the down motion would take 3 and the up take 2. 3) Johns right...everytime and I repeat...everytime (except in a very few cases ) a characters eyes change direction, the upper lid blinks. It's not quite as long as a normal blink...more a flicker over 3 to 4 frames.

Oh! I thought it was a partially hidden crocodily sort of thing.

Nice! Any theories on what it is?

LOL He does doesn't he! I'm not sure what you mean by snap, but if you mean his toes, they do it slowly because he's got long nails and they would intesect the ground if it was too fast. On the sound issue....I wrote this before, but it didn't seem to post.......you should put sounds into a project to get the timing of the action right.

Absolutely. Any long renders are best rendered as tgas(in case of crashes). Then put the sounds in with a video editor.

Nice! Make his antenna move. Make his face really angry!

Thanks Will. Couldn't have done it without your tut. Here he is breathing. Although the effect isn't that convincing....it' just a breathing pose that controls the lights falloff. I think it still needs something. Breathing.mov

Nice Flog!

Wow! Cool job! Thanks for the generous offer! But I wouldn't want to put you to the trouble. I'm not even sure of the sounds I'll be needing for the short. Something you could do though....let us know when the stuff you're working is online. I'd love to see/hear it.

I like IT! The shadows are better and the kleig lighting seems to have cleared up the neck problem I was having too.

I've uploaded a revision with sound. It's home made, so it's quite basic. It's amazing...you just put the sound in the action and it will appear in all the cycles in the chor! I'm working on giving him breathing effects(John are you there?) in a pose. My plan is to use volumetric lighting to create that "breath in the cold" look. I'll have to get experimenting. PS You might notice a mark appearing in his neck. There's a hook there. But when I render it in the window to check it, it doesn't appear....

He's about 8 foot in height. He's moving fast cos he's running and his run is a speeded up walk. I can always slow him down by reducing the walk cycle length. Yes it's just bump maps. Marsh sounds complicated! I'm going to put him in an underground lab first and then maybe graduate to that.

LOL I might just do that!

Thanks! His shoulders do rotate back to front, it's hard to see from this angle. Also, his vertical axis is almost horizontal because of where his head it. Hip rotation is at a minimum as there's so much bulk there and it would all be intersecting if I put it too far. His legs go all "popy" if I put it too far too. The only dynamics is in the loin cloth. TSM2 is great! There is sometimes some poping in the shin area and I think that's a known problem. But then again, it might just be the shape of this character that's causing it. PS I've since added some breathing into it and footstep sounds. I'll upload it soon.

There seems to be alot of cps and I'm not sure doing a profile is the right way to go about it. Xtaz might offer you some advice. But good luck...you'll be learning too!

You might check this thread out: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...4673&hl=whiskey

Looks great! You could always donate that material to a certain cd I always think Officer M needs a hat. He looks cold without it.

I followed Jeff Lees advice on this thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=8265&hl=white Search is great when you know what to look for.

Thanks for the constructive comments! I've uploaded an improved version based on them. The loop point isn't as smooth as I like, but it's good enough. Edit: It seems quicktime is putting an extra frame at the end and that's what's causing the slight pause at the end. It looks fine in AM.

Gorgeous detail! Even the glass has smudges Stuff like this should be used as promo material to bring in the architetureal type crowd.

Yes I'm going to use him in a 30 second animation. He's got bump mapping on him to give wrinkle effect. I don't know how to set it up to loop, but if you save it to your desktop, quicktime has that facility in Movie>Loop.

I finally got my troll moving! Here's a 2MB WALK CYCLE There's something about his arms that I can't quite put my finger on so if you've any ideas...

LOL Cheeky slug! Is that all one expression or is it made up of several(blinks/mouth open etc)?

That's great lipsyncing. Obviously the expressions are abit muted. Amazing first effort.