John Bigboote
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Posts posted by John Bigboote
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I did a quick try on that 36-pass global GI trick Elm was using- and not getting predicted results... I put an object in my chor... made a 'cyclone-coil' path in a model and in the chor set a kleig light to it with a path constraint and an aim-at to a null center stage. I animated the ease on the klieg to the path from 0-100 over the course of 1 frame and rendered in multipass at 36 passes. I am not seeing the klieg move from pass to pass... what did I miss?
EDIT: Motion blur!
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Had you checked that all the CP's are properly connected to one another?
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Using 36 pass rendering had this other purpose, too:
The fuzzy surface / look of the characters was achieved by using an animated displacement map for their 'skin'. That means that 36 times a frame, another displacement texture is rendered. A:M then blends these passes together, so the fuzzy, yet smooth surface develops.
THIS merits another look... GREAT techniques!
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2nd episode is up now too... the 'plot thickens'... so does the pizza sauce! Actually, I render out from A:M with the toon shader, I make minor embellishments in Photoshop sometimes- because there are so few limited frames... and then I am putting a cartoon shader on again ovder it in after-effects, which can redouble the toon-shaders effect. I have to avoid some things like the pizza, which looks weird with a toon shader. PRODUCT IS KING!
This entire cartoon consisted of four 6-panel storyboards which the agency had produced. They had a video editor working on it in avid (wtf?)and they didnt like his results. I looked at the boards and liked the story with it's ups-and-downs and agreed to take over ONLY if I could recreate the art my way, which meant 3D A:M Jet Man, and they said yes. I did 4 episodes in 1 week, last week.
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Oooh. That link sent my Kaspersky into high alert... phishing scam detected. Beware. Would love to see it tho!
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Doing a 4 part 'comic-book' style animation for Jets... featuring Jet Man's quest for 'the Perfect Aloha BBQ Chicken Pizza'... I have all 4 parts done and will show them here as Jets Pizza releases them. A:M was used to keep Jet Man 'in-character', rest is a big After Effects build... HEAVY use of the 'Turbulent Displacement' distort filter thruout to gain simple motions. Here is Part 1:
https://www.facebook.com/JetsPizza/?fref=ts
Can't seem to link right to the video (dang Facebook!) so look under their 'videos' header.
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Those were the DAYS!
I saw Raf Anzovin and his father Steve speak at Siggraph about this time... at the Hash booth if I recall. They were the 'big fish in the little pond' with A:M and maya makes you a 'small fish/big pond'... It was really-really-realllly nice of Raf to donate his Setup Machine free to the A:M community after his father's passing.
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My editor and I have been toying with this... it works really well and seems to have everything you could think of. Shows-up right within Premiere, you can see the edit and make comments in a browser... soon to be available on phones and After Effects. We do a LOT of work with clients out of the city (there is hardly ANY work to be found within Detroit these days...!) and this should be 'the next big thing' for getting the advantage over feedback, teamwork and integration.
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Can Flash just be dead already? I had a client that needed stuff transferred to FLV video files this week. It was like a collect-call from 2004... My CC versions of After Effects, Premiere, Media Encoder and Animate(formerly Flash) all do not support FLV... various online transfer solutions failed, and I ended-up buying movavi(?wtf?) to make a simple flv file.
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SO MUCH TO LOOK AT! Ya gotta watch it 4-5 times over. Very cool!
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Also- when using NetRender render nodes... after re-subscribing you will need to contact Jason to have your new .lic file modified.
I HIGHLY recommend NetRender for those doing paying jobs and have a fast machine... it is the bees-knees!
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Looks like quite a trove! What a FIND!
SO- You download and install their software... choose a model from their website... run it thru their software and change-out colors or image maps...export as an OBJ... import into A:M as a prop/model (are they props or editable models?)
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I'm not so keen on that "Fake' DOF/Depth Buffer... Look at the far elbow... it does not know if it is IN or OUT of focus, that hard edge does not work for me.
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I will be interested in what you learn- please keep us posted on this workflow. BTW- How much is ZBrush nowaday?
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Cool video posted by Tore... great DOF usage as well as many cool visuals there.
ROB- So in V17 there is a feature called FastDOF...? How does one go about implementing this feature, and why do we suppose it has been lost in current versions?
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I never heard of FastDOF!
Would you be able to 'push' the un-focus a little more... or a LOT more... say you had an art-director who said "Looks good but I would like to emphasize the blurr even more... can you push it?'
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CRAY-CRAY COOL!
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DOF is tricky, and time-consuming. I am messing with it now in non-A:M Element3D and frustrated with the speed. A:M does produce a depthe-buffer, and this method does work, however with DOF I always want to push it...more-more-MORE! and this method will leave you wanting for 'more' eventually... it is perfectly fine for a long-shot like you have illustrated, but let's say you were doing a macro-micro-closeup scene where a little bit of DOF just wasn't enough. A main problem with A:M's depth-buffer is that it is 8bit, producing 256 levels of black-grey-white- which is minimal. When combined with AE's camera lens blur effect clean edges around in-focus objects over out-of-focus objects are unobtainable- with the 8-bit depth. A better way, which produces full 24-bit depth involves using A:M's Fog feature, setting a white background color and rendering black objects in your scene... this too can get tricky with more complicated scenes. Another method would be to break your scene into multi-planar levels and rendering each out seperately with mattes...
Also to note, A:M's DOF feature works differently in multipass or standard renderer, and with Hash's robust and affordable rendernodes and NetRender speeding-up the render process might make real 3D DOF feasible on faster multi-core machines.
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Happy Birthdqay Jeff... he hasn't been here in over 10 years I'd say... one of our 'legacy users'. Speaking of which...The other day while researching a possible path to get A:M models with animation via FBX file format loaded into Sketchfab.com thru a A:M(obj mdd output) to C4D(FBX output) to Sketchfab.com ... I came across a C4D MDD tutorial by William Eggington.
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Thanks, no- no pizza. Jet's has fantastic pizza and I would weigh 400 lbs!
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This has been a fun little project, every month Jet's Pizza asks for 1-3 little vignettes to add to their Facebook page to keep it lively... highlighting some event for that month. Initially, they wanted 2D hand-drawn animation... and as I have aged I have not had the where-with-all to do 2D hand-drawn cartoons anymore... its a LOT of toil! I designed JetMan in A:M trying to keep within their established design and added the SAUCY Rig to animate him, render with the toon shader... its working pretty good! Each month 2-3,000 people view the segments- and Jet's is happy with the turnout. They give me a very-very rough idea and the freedom to take it from there... I try to put between 4-8 hours into each and there is usually 1 easy revision round. The fun part is quickly coming-up with the various 'props'... like a stadium for football, a cupid, a basketball backboard, a lit-up Christmas tree, a 4-Corner Pizza character...! LOADS of effects added in After Effects, and all music and sound-effects are Royalty-Free from the Youtube sound library.
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This is developing nicely, can't wait to see some motion.
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My transition to Win10 has been seemless, with A:M and NetRender loading running and working 100%. BIG THUMBS UP!
Detbear Simple Cartoon Eye Rig
in Animation:Master
Posted
Just made a pretty cool little discovery with my own eye 'aim at' simple setup- consisting of a bone in each eye(ouch!) and a null with 'aim at' constraints for each eye... THE DISCOVERY IS... if on 1 eye's 'aim-at' constraint you give it a lag factor of .25-.5 frame(fraction of a frame...)... it makes the character look more human and less robotic...