NancyGormezano

Not boring at all - very entertaining ! Great fun to watch. Love seeing your progress.

Ork model design by Alain Desrochers, mods by Robert Kelley?, Nancy Gormezano, Mark Skodacek. Modeled by Ken Heslip, mods by Nancy, Mark, Holmes Bryant. Rigged by Mark, mods by Nancy, Holmes. Textured by Nancy, mods by Holmes. Feathered by FrooFroo Cake. (SquetchyBall model by Robert Holmen) EDIT: switched movie to looping version orkballLowLoop.mov

Thanks, Nancy. Don't worry about any lighting glitches in any of this early work. These are just renders done in the process of building the set and there will always be a million things that need fixing. Although I will be playing around with the lighting I won't be giving it too much attention until I have the set finalised. That could be take a few weeks. After that I can start building the characters and props, rig and texture them, animate them, etc., etc., and finally... I can tweak the lighting. That's a long way off yet. Sorry to disagree, Nancy, but you'd have to be blind to miss that. I'm not saying that you are blind but fog just doesn't work with particles as well as I would like. Why isn't the colour data from particle hair treated the same way as colour data from the geometry from which it sprouts? Doesn't make sense to me but perhaps there is some logical reason. I can work around it. I will just have to restrict the fogging to the farthest parts of the set, where no particles will be used. I didn't think that was your final lighting - but since the first frame appeared to be darker - I was wondering if the halo effect might be minimized with different lighting, fog colors, better alpha (maybe premultiplied funny stuff afoot?). Maybe change the surface color of the hair emitter (to black, or darker)? Might help the halo? As for why is hair different, as you know, the color of hair is computed from so many different things - and I would guess in the computational stream, that there were tricks used to speed the computational process. And I just might be blind - Since there was so much in the scene to look at and the camera movement was so quick (yes I realize its not your final movement), I had to scrub thru many times to figure out what "halo" you were talking about - I was giving you feedback as to how a first time view/glance is experienced. Like you say - there are many work arounds - and you only have to satisfy yourself.

Like I said before - Fabulous set! I notice a lighting glitch at the very beginning on the last mov? frame 0 & 1? Are you doing multipass? how many passes? Is halo the same if you do AA, or up the number of passes? Perhaps change the color of your fog (drab it down) to alleviate some of the halo? My guess is that with camera moves, framing, focusing on animation, etc - that the halo wouldn't be noticed much by most viewers, given that it's a stylized set, and "accurate" isn't something one would be expecting. Lighting glitches (abrupt inexplicable changes) does get noticed. Yes, I am still in awe of set!

That's a mighty impressive set - always amazes me how people do landscape sets Are you using a combo of hair trees and cookie cutter trees? And maybe painted tree backgrounds? And when you say hair tree - do you mean the hair emitter is a tree image? or the tree(s) have hair leaf emitters? really nice job !

delete the locked keys - it does not appear as if turning on/off helps (not sure why you are using lock ik either)

Hey! That doesn't look like no chopper to me! - But what do I know? Tis Very Enterprising, anyhow... (I'm just full o' 3rd grade cornball this morning)

wellll...sure...but it involves using a text editor. Can not do it directly in A:M The code is not very different for a null and a bone - this model contains 1 bone, 1 null only To see more complexity, create a model with only 2 bones chained and 1 null as a child of 1 of the bones - then examine the file in a text editor - If your model is too complicated, you might want to change it manually in A:M versus in a text editor

do a search on liquids or fluids - Fluids/Liquids are just a material - here's a post that can get you started: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=269843

very good as usual!

That's a really good idea ! - Could be a fun animation - could use a very simply pseudo-rigged ball to convey body language - and then they could go off into the sunset...er...red fog...er... blue ball goes off into the fog with pink ball..as bad evil bloodied red ball is left flattened or is flung out of the scene to meet it's fate in the next scene by some other evil animator...or sumpin' like that...

Thanks peeps - I can not take credit for the original models: The HippoGyraf was used on TWO - originally designed and modeled by Will Sutton, rigged by David Simmons (not sure if also by Mark Skodacek). The Squetchy Ball was by Robert Holmen, for the 1st "Pass the Ball". I've just re-textured and re-hairyized the HG to become "Gung-Ho Fat Boy". For now, I've played with the "ripple waves", and tested out soft reflections on ball. Also changed lighting some (to color white, AI - 50%, instead of from Image). Rodney - I played with moving the camera back - but I prefer it up closer for now. TNT - Yes, I did ballet as a young-un - gave it up when I went to college. It has never left my soul. This clip rendered at 4 pass, 24fps, 1 level reflectivity, soft reflections at 20% quality - total render time = 46 minutes (122 frames, 432x243). Ave 22 secs/frame, ranged from 6-38 secs/frame. Used QTpro to compress to medium mpeg4, double the resolution, and slow the fps LoopSloMedDblsiznormalspeedsize4pass0.mov

Rendered with 1 pass final, at half size, no compression, 121 frames at 24 fps, hair, transparency, 1 level reflection, IBL, AI = 50%, 1 zbuff light. (2-4 secs frame render time). Then slowed animation down using QT pro to 1/2 speed (doubles number of frames), doubled the resolution to 864 x 486, mpeg4 medium quality. hipwatercomp9slo.mov

Mebbe (see Robcat's ball) - depends on how picky you are, and how you want ball to deform. You can always just use the scale manipulator in the chor to fake it.

Wow - thanks y'all for the new comments - much appreciated. Steve - glad you found the documentation on Hair - Do you still need info? I would say I identify more with Bette Midler or Phyliss Diller - rather than the one-and-only Ms. Meticulously & Tastefully Subdued - but now that Big Martha is out of the slammer ...Who knows? Maybe she picked up some creative new tips on making do from the gals... Speaking of Phyliss Diller - here's 2 versions of a Hippogyraf Makeover - that I'm considering using for interacting with Orkerella, as well as maybe having a cameo appearance in "pass the ball". It's a great model (designed, modeled by Will Sutton, rigged by David Simmons). ps. I notice Dagooos also felt the model was a fun one to use. He did a terrific job of animating (as he always does) Here's the scale:

There are many ways to make a ball go squishy-squashy. Here is a squetchy ball that Robcat did at one time. I don't think he would mind me uploading it. At least I hope so. It's a good one to study. Essentially there are 2 poses - 1) to set the pivot point for the squetch action and 2) to do the squetch (using expressions). But I think your idea of trying to figure it out for yourself and let others tag along with you is a good one - so don't peek if that's really what you want to do. Squetchyballver15.mdl

Lotsa very good fun! Great song too. Yee haw!

cute little guy - nicely done - definitely looks like a young-un

I agree with Largento - It worked fine with all different balls - don't limit yourself so much. It doesn't have to be about character animation either - one might choose to do a newton chain reaction simulation initiated by the incoming ball, exploding balls, fireballs, liquid balls, blob balls, flock balls, music note balls, ball lightning, lens flare balls, kitty hair balls and on and on... Last time (2005 - yikes was it that long ago?) there were only 15-16 participants with 21? clips final - people say they're going to participate, and then drop out. I would guess more people would finish if it's just done for fun, and accomodates the interest, skill level of each participant.

I don't think limiting the ball to one choice is necessary (or desireable) - Why would one would want to limit it? I thought it worked very well in the previous effort when the only restrictions were a time limit (5 secs?), frame rate (24 fps) and frame size (720x486 then) and that ball entered from anywhere left and exited right. In between, the sky's the limit. And submit as many clips as you wanted. Use whatever ball you wanted - could transform it within the clip. Stringing together, ordering of the clips, and soundtrack was added later by Will. People could use sound effects if desired (some were left in, others not). No clip was rejected. Even Seven's. One clip got lost accidently. That allowed very interesting combos and interpretations - seemed to work well.

The palette in my home decor uses the subdued tones found in thick layers of "dust" and early pre-rococo dumpster diving. I would prefer the image contest to be called "Clean Nancy's House". Actually - Under the dust - the floors, furniture, walls are white, neutral lights - Color, patterns comes from my paintings (those that aren't stuffed under beds), as well as primitive sculptures, artifacts, fabrics brought back from Africa, Indonesia, South & Central America, etc. OH Yeah, it's colorful. My flower garden also tends toward the riotous, overgrown, overplanted, colorful and wild look. And lawd knows, what kind of esoteric concoction of food I might try and feed unsuspecting guests. Funny...most people are busy when I invite them over...wonder why?... There's 2 different hair materials used: 1) the feathers on the main body/legs of the Ork is driven by a color decal. The varying of lengths and direction combing were done in grooming mode. There is no image emitter (tho - I've tried a variety of images that could also be interesting to use) 2) the feathers on the top of head, wings, tail - all use same hair material - but with 3 different image emitters. All direction, length combing done in grooming mode. Density, lengths and thicknesses were modified in the instance data for the material at the group level, as well as image to use. Although no decal drives the different colors for these - I have done variations where I also use a decal to vary the color of the image emitter. One can get very interesting results.

fun character ! Great for a first. His arms may be a little short, and typically arms/hands are modeled palms down - as it makes it easier to install one of the standard rigs floating around (I think?)

Good golly good goat! Nice modeling. But currently he doesn't look that young - I'm at a lost as to what to suggest to make him appear younger. How young do you want him?. Will have to see the proportions of head/body. Perhaps then he'll look younger. Maybe he needs rounder, fuller face? shorter snout? to look young kiddish.

Weird. I'm wondering did you bring this in from another project? dif version of A:M? Have multiple windows (chor, action) open when modeling? Gerry - phantom folders haven't happened to everyone - but it pops/popped up in some form or another on TWO, SO on occasion. Shelton - Glasses on character look good, he looks like a more thoughtful character - the whole personality changed from how he looked before - I thought he was going to be a schmarmy type guy - now he looks more like a genuine nice mild mannered guy (clark kentish) The image with glasses looks good, but it looks very dark to me (I thought? my monitor was calibrated)...how are you rendering this?

Thanks Peeps - Your comments warm my hardened heart. Thanks John - (John's just thankful he can't recognize his face underneath all those feathers) Steve - Yes, this is done in 15e Myron - L'Orkerella is the current leading contender for "Fairy Tales Can Come True". I've an audition tape of her singing the theme song, recorded last year sometime, done in the key of Bwack Bwack Bwaaaaack.