strohbehn
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Posts posted by strohbehn
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Go Bears, eh?
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Hey Rob, I live 15 minutes to the east of WBL in Stillwater. Are you originally from White Bear Lake?
Mark
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Fascinating thread you've got going here, Robert! I really hope you get this done on time. Can't wait to see how the sock puppet works out.
Mark
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Awesome idea.... and the puppet looks great already! Looking forward to seeing where you take this one, Robert.
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Thanks, Gerry.
The experience of having a deadline and a lot of critical viewers was a great motivator to actually complete a project and try to make it decent. It was satisfying to finish one, finally. The whole process is good to go through at least once, because you learn so much about workflow.
Give it a try in the future if you have some spare time. One suggestion would be to go back to the 11 Second Club archives for whatever month and go through every single animation in rapid succesion. You'll quickly see what sets the interesting clips apart from the others. I found that if they didn't capture my attention within the first 2 or 3 seconds it was too late. Wish I'd done this myself before spending a whole month on the project!
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Thanks, Robert and David. I had hoped for a much better showing, but my clip didn't have enough interesting content to make it stand out. It was a great learning experience, though. Thanks, again, for your feedback during the process.
The second and third place finishers got ripped off, in my opinion. Both were so much better than the winner, it was a shame.
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I'm down to 21 compensates remaining in the biped rig...I'm pretty sure (not 100% though) I can get rid of all of them except one, which wouldn't be a bad thing.
Are you saying that it may be possible, by the time you're done with this, to install the entire Squetch rig and only one compensate would need to be reset????
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The final product came out great!!!!!
Thanks, George. I was looking at some of the previous competition entries and even the middle-of-the-pack animations are outstanding, so I don't have huge expectations. Hopefully it will hold up OK.
Thats looking GOOD ,where do we vote ?The 11 second club website has a voting section. You rate each animation (I think over 160 this month) on a 1-10 scale. I think you need to rate every clip for your votes to be registered, so it's a long process.
I like your solution Mark.Go get 'em!
Well, it was your idea. Thanks again for that, Rodney. It'll be fun to see other people's take on the audio clip.
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Hey Rodey, your suggestions were great and very timely. I deleted the ground plane and added a large cylinder, shifted off to the side so it looks like they're near a steep drop off. The effect is just as you described. Hopefully it won't be distracting anymore.
The entry is submitted and no time for changes now. Funny how the finality of it suddenly gives me a keaner eye for things I would have done differently. My goal for this was to FINISH an entire animation for once! Learned a ton and had fun, so I'm satisfied.
Here's the finished piece:
may_11_sec_31k_final_with_counter.mov
Thanks, everyone, for your encouragement and help. Great people, here!
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I like the animation, very smooth, my vote is for you...good luck in the contest
Thank very much!
Lookin' good!
It may be too late to get this in but you've really got to do something with that default ground plane. My attention got lost in the ground plane when it should have been on the character's face(!!!)
My first thought is to shorten the depth of it to create more 'sky' at the front.
That might even give the appearance of the ladder being on a thin (precariously balanced) platform.
It might add a sense of tension/danger to the scene.
Edit: Bringing the left side of the ground plane down vertically to make the ground angle upward toward the right would give the impression that the ladder and sign were there at the edge of a cliff. The eye would then be drawn up and around and back to the character.
None of this is animation related but... the composition is important.
Good luck with the competition!
Hi Rodney. Great ideas on composition. Wish I had an extra 2 days, but I'll see what I can do in 2 hours. Thanks!
Mark
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Very well done.
Smooth.
Thanks!
Less certain are the moves he has to do when he is shifting from one foot to another or repositioning a foot. (some of those may be unintentional foot slips. I'm not sure.) Those are hard to do and hard to diagnose. The way he supports himself sometimes with his right arm helps to cover these up a bit.I think the big pulling up gesture he does around 180+ would have served better to accent "see 'em back". Too late to change that now; that would be a major rework.
Does the right hand really need to be drifting from about 150-175?
Robert, thanks a ton for the great critique and video. Awesome!
The feet shifting from 208-220 is intentional to show weight. I don't like it when feet are stuck to the ground. There's a lot of small feet shifts that I've noticed in myself, but maybe the clip is too short for this.
The big shift on 180 was originally on "see 'em back", but I think what happened (now I see it) is that I did the lip sync exactly to the sound track, then actually slid the sound file forward instead of pulling the lipsync keys back. That screwed up the timing. Hmmm...
I think all of the pass-throughs happened after I splined this thing. I should have been more careful to check for that. In the linear stage it all worked. The elbow issues at 290 happened when I was adding more hip movement to the moving hold late last night and I didn't catch it.
The right hand slide on 150-175 was intentional, but if it looks like a mistake I'll take it out.
Your comments about hip motion from 325 on are great. I worked hard on this up until that point, then dropped the ball. Thanks for catching that!
Thanks again for the great help, Robert! I'll fix all of these things tonight.
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Here's the latest update.
- Fixed moving holds so they don't "hit a wall" at the extremes.
- Made some asymmetry in mouth poses and worked on jaw movements. "O" pose still not great.
- Worked on eyelid asymmetry and expression (still needs work).
- Changed the sign wording.
- Improved head movements.
I'm open to feedback/suggestions. One day left!
Thanks
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Well done... some gestures are a bit fast for my taste, but the motion is very fluid and quite believeable... nice job!
*Fuchur*
You're right. I slowed down the head nods and made them more subtle. Also slowed a few of the movements that preceded moving holds to make it look less like he "hits a wall".
You could maybe have the sign hanging on a bungee cord and break at end ,just a thoughtI decided to just go with a new decal on the sign. Thanks for the idea, though, Steve.
VERY GOOD! You need to remind us when to vote for it, for ya. MY only tweek- if I may...is I seemed to want to see his mouth making more of an 'O' phoneme from time to time. OTHER than that...it's great and should do well in the competition!Right about the 'O' phoneme. That's one of the hardest shapes for me to model. I'll have to work on the lipsync more tonight. Thanks.
What about a crumpled heap of bungee jumper in the background, balanced on his head, teetering a little. Then when your main character climbs the ladder the figure in the background topples over? Very little animating for the extra dimension.I'll see if I have any time left for something like that. It's down to 48 hours. Good idea, Paul.
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You could put another character impacting the ground horribly in the background...maybe with the bungee cord landing on top of him like it broke? Maybe too much work to add it...not as easy as just adding a sign.
Hi David. I tried having a guy come down, hit the ground and recoil back up but it didn't work. It was a little creepy. Your idea of having the cord break is better, though. That could work well. I also thaought of having something else fall and hit the ground, as if it fell off the guy during his jump.
great character and animationThanks, John.
I think having the sign obscured by the character until the very end is what makes the gag work.You're right, but there's got to be something with more impact/wit than what I currently have there. Any ideas?
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It may be too late to re-rig him for this spot, but for the future...
He's currently rigged with sculptable eyelids, so I'll work on that tonight. See if I can capture some emotion there.
This looks great. Nice gag.... I gave up on my entry because it was more than I had time to do.This has been a huge time consumer. Frustrating, rewarding, etc. Definitely tedious, but addicting. Sorry you had to scrap what you started. I've done that several times.
Terrific! I particularly like the posture and acting when he says, "Well... it's dead exciting". Best of luck with voting!
Thanks for the critique and the kind words. I wanted a different angle for this sound file than everyone else would be using. Don't know if this succeeds or not. Sometimes what works in my head doesn't translate well for others.
Is there a way I can make this bungee jumping gag work better with my existing animation? Possibly something different on the sign or in the background?
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may_11_sec_29b_h264_framecounter.mov
All major animation is complete. Still needs to be polished.... especially head and eye movements. Most of it is still in linear or stepped, with the body and arms splined. I can still make minor changes, but the major action will stay as is due to short time remaining.
My character doesn't have eyebrows and I'm concerned it won't read as well as it should. The eyelids can be sculpted as if they're eyebrows, but I haven't done any of that.
The render is very basic. I'd love to try Ambient Occlusion, but don't know if there's time since I don't have a clue about it.
I'm curious to see if you all think the concept works. This guy works at the ACME Bungee Jump Co. at their cord testing facility and loves his job. Especially when things go right and the equipment works
Critiques welcome.
Thanks
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Success!!!
Robert was right about a 00:00 keyframe anchoring and preventing a shift of keys for these On/Off poses and certain others in the PWS timeline. What worked was to select the desired channel in the PWS, with the "All" folder (at the top of the PWS) selected. Then switch to the "Selected" folder (so now your previously selected channel(s) are isolated from the rest. Then select all of the keys except for the one at 00:00 and use the MOUSE, NOT the arrow key, to move the keyframes to the right. Crazy, but it worked for me.
Thanks for the help, guys!
Mark
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In V13 I can move multiple keys (including pose keys) as long as I don't select any Pose ON/OFF keys at 00:00
a Pose ON/OFF key at 00:00 seems to act like an anchor preventing the others from moving.
That's exactly what I'm seeing, Robert, but can't figure out a way around it yet. Tried deleting the 00:00 key first, then shifting.... no luck. Tried copying all keys from that channel, deleting old ones, then pasting at frame 100... no luck. hmmmm???
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Did you turn on all the filters in the left_down_corner?
*Fuchur*
Yes. All of the filters I originally used for keying (everything but muscle and bias) are turned on. I tried turning those two on as a test and it still didn't work.
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This should be simple. I started my chor animations at frame 0 and now want to shift everything over to start at frame 100. In the PWS graph I switched to key mode and tried to select everything by dragging a box around all the keys, then hit the right arrow key to shift them. The problem is that there are about 6 channels that won't shift. They are user properties (poses) that turn IK hands on and off, a null's translation keys, and camera translation keys, among others.
I've tried everything I can think of, including the "Move Keys" command, and those few channel's keys still will not move. Any suggestions?
Using V15.0e on WinXP
Thanks!
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If you don't already own a 3D mouse, you may want to give this product a try: the n52te SpeedPad from Belkin
A couple of weeks ago I bought one for use with my tablet PC and am absolutely amazed with how well it works for A:M. I programmed all 15 keys (on one of three "keymaps") with shortcuts for A:M and can fly around the different views and operations with ease. It's a fantastic way to work, especially if you don't want to be tied to a traditional keyboard. Price is reasonable, too.
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Wow! Beautifully done, Luuk. The only part that doesn't completely work for me is the last 1/4 or so where the ball lands on the tail and rolls off. Based on how much he's affected by the ball coming into the scene, and how much effort it takes to throw it up, it seems like the ball needs to show a bit more weight when it lands on his tail. Great job.
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Pretty cool Mark. Very fun to play with.
Thanks, Mark. Now he needs a body. I may hook him up to your 2008 rig and the Squetch rig next for a nice generic character for everyone to use.
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Here's the model file... cleaned up a bit for you all. Just open a new action and rotate the facial controls to see what they do. I used mtpeak's style facial controls because they were quick and easy to set up for testing. There are lots of fine-tuning controls to play with in the pose sliders too.
If you want to add a distortion box, open an action and do New>Distort. Then set the target of the distortion box to "Head" bone. Go into muscle mode in the action and pull the distortion box CP's around to change the shape of the head.
Thanks, Mr. Simmons for taking a look. You da man!
3DArtZ.... Thanks for the description. I forget now if you posted any examples of that? Did you? I'll have to check the archives. Watch your kneecaps, too. Sounds like they're coming for you.
TWO plays White Bear Lake MN
in Off Topic
Posted
.... taking that trophy from the mighty Ponies who won the title in 1975, I might add. Did you celebrate at Cup & Cone after the game, or were they closed for winter?