Godfrey
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Posts posted by Godfrey
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Wow - wow! I visited the Gerritan website and saw the demo video of the Stradivari violin synthesizer or soundfont (not sure how it is packaged exactly) but it sounded super. That is the sound I am looking for. The orchestra demo mp3s are very realistic as well. does Gerritan also have Guitar and ethnic instruments like banjo? Or is there a source for these kinds of instruments with the quality of Gerritan?
The Garritan instruments use Native Instruments' Kontakt sampling technology (like soundfonts, but you can do more with them programmatically). The Strad library currently requires Kontakt 2 (not cheap), but there will soon be a standalone player for it like the ones which come with Personal Orchestra and Jazz & Big Band.
The J&BB library has an acoustic and a couple of electric guitars, but so far no banjo from Garritan. (I was hoping there'd be one in J&BB -- what's Dixieland jazz without a banjo?) I'm sure there are plenty of guitar libraries out there, but I haven't really looked into them (I just record the real thing if I need a guitar part).
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The secret is to get multiple clean samples throughout the range of the instrument, ie; getting C3, C4, C5... then "layering" them, at least in the case of soundfonts, together.
For an ideal soundfont (or other sample-based library), you should sample chromatically -- or at most a third between samples, to minimize formant artefacts. If you're doing a stringed instrument, you'll probably also want to make sure you have one sample for the open string, and other samples for the fretted/fingered notes immediately above and below them, for greater realism.
For an even better soundfont, you should also create samples for each note at several different velocities, normalize the samples, then layer each note based on a velocity map: e.g. if you sampled four different velocities for each note, then velocities 0-31 trigger the "softest" sample (I put it in quotes because once you normalize the samples, they may be roughly the same volume), 32-63 trigger the next loudest sample, 64-95 trigger the next loudest, and 96-127 trigger the loudest sample.
This way, if you're entering the MIDI data with a velocity-sensitive keyboard, then how hard you strike the key will change the character of the note. So if you're doing a string bass, you can get a light pluck by lightly pressing the key, or a nice slap if you really hit it hard. The more velocity layers you have, the more "alive" it will sound when you play it.
Of course, using multiple samples for each chromatic note will make for a huge soundfont, but with memory as cheap and plentiful as it is today (and with the advent of VST soundfont players such as sfz, which can stream the data "direct from disk" to conserve memory), that's not really as much of a problem as it once was.
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I can't get a good free violin soundfont either - maybe its impossible to synthesize a solo violin or fiddle.
If you want to hear something that'll knock your socks off, have a listen to some of the demos for the Garritan Stradivari Violin. It's not free, unfortunately, but damn.
I don't have this particular library -- yet -- but I've got both the Garritan Personal Orchestra and the Garritan Jazz & Big Band library, and they're well worth the money. While GPO doesn't have all the articulations of the Solo Strad, it's got a full orchestra's worth of decent instruments (I used GPO for the soundtrack of Soap Opera).
While I use Finale for composition and score production, my main audio tool is Cakewalk's SONAR. The price tag is a little steep (you can get better deals at places like Musician's Friend/Guitar Center), but if you don't need all the features of SONAR, Cakewalk makes some really good, yet less expensive, software in the same vein. If you want to mix MIDI with recorded audio, this is where it's at.
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I recently discovered the CrystalSpace engine. It's opensource, free, and has some impressive features (reflectivity, normal maps, height maps with parallax!, skeletal animation, and so forth). It doesn't look like there's an A:M exporter for it, but the (plain text) model format is fairly easy to understand. Textures are UV mapped, points can be assigned to multiple bones with weighting...
And CrystalSpace is the basis for an opensource MMORPG, PlaneShift, which though it's still in its infancy (it's billed as a "pre-alpha tech demo"), is a great taste of what's possible.
I would love to be able to use A:M for CrystalSpace models and animation cycles. Right now, the main modelers used for CrystalSpace are 3DSMax and Blender. Don't have 3DSMax, but Blender really makes me appreciate how easy A:M makes things. (And how much more intuitive A:M's interface is...)
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It's so... generic.
If only there were some software readily available to users of this forum which could create nifty 3D buttons, icons and such to replace the default forum graphics...
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Does anyone know where i could get a movie of an AT-AT walking?
Uh... The Empire Strikes Back?
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Very nicely done! I especially like the grunge.
Do his little control arms pop out?
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I think Jeff linked to the wrong image. The one he was talking about is this one.
Weird... when I click on the link, it takes me to the image I intended to link to. I've edited the link to point directly to the image, rather than its gallery page.
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otherwise, i'd suggest more nurnies, and or some other escort vessel that's more easy to visually scale with a human, or other recognizable object.Maybe a tiny space shuttle or space walkers in front of this, umm ...laser cannon? Anything recognisable that can be used as a reference of scale.
Well, I might could do, but it's from a story I was writing set in the far future (the ship itself is several hundred years into its journey), so any support spacecraft on board probably wouldn't give the viewer a good feeling for how big it was (unless shuttles look the same in the future as they do today).
At any rate, here it is with a Saturn V rocket sitting on one of the clamps for the (not yet modeled) supply section (which sits between the engines and the habitat section):
You may want to move the camera closer and reframe the shot so the effects of perspective are more visible. The only way to convey the size in a wide shot like this is comparison, and none of the objects in the scene are helping:1) The laser doesn't help much, the size can change, and we actually expect it to be small
Laser?
Unfortunately, because of the way the model is designed, it doesn't really lend itself well to perspective:
Since the forward asteroid shield overhangs the rest of the engine section, it doesn't look much smaller when viewed from behind the ship -- and when viewed from the front, the shield obscures the rest of the section!
Compare it to some building? This one eg:Mr. MM? Is that you?
If the lower solar cell wing were actually obscured by the edge of the earth... now that would have to be a HUGE satellite. Bigger than you intend, i suppose.Just a touch.
But I like the way you think... -
Try as I might, I couldn't find a way to convey the scale of the model from one of my image contest entries.
I tried several different camera angles, but none of them really said "this thing is freaking huge". Any suggestions?
(For reference, here's a streaming QuickTime movie which shows how big it is relative to a human-sized object.)
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I think it would take to long now to remake and reposition dozens of slabs.
Actually, that wall could be done with five boxes: two long ones on the top and bottom, which reach to the bottoms and tops of the windows, respectively, and then three more boxes to the left of, between and to the right of the windows.
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I would set the ambiance at 100% but it doesn't have the same affect as 150 or 200 % that i want. I'm using AM V11.1e and the ambience color is as orange the ground model's surface properties, with a simbiont AM texture applied.
If you're trying to get a more impressive glow, leave the ambiance intensity at 100% and bump up the Glow Intensity (and possibly the Glow Radius) in the choreography's properties.
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Great soundtrack!
(The modeling/animation's nice too.
But an original soundtrack like that is rare on these forums!) -
Well, the obvious answer would be "don't set your ambience above 100%".
That said, what version of A:M are you using, and what are you using to provide the ambient color? (a material, surface properties on the model, etc.)
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this is looking alot better now but the torches fire isnt brightening anything. how do i fix that?
Do you have a light source attached to the torch? (If so, if it's in the flames, make sure the flames themselves aren't casting shadows.)
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The Janitor is about 8 feet tall. I know what you mean about the miniture feel though. I'm not quite sure why that is.
Part of it, I'm guessing, is the depth of field. The janitor bot is in sharp focus, but the little bot in the background, which looks like it's very near the janitor, is very out of focus -- as are the foreground rocks. This makes it look like a very narrow depth of field, which is the effect you see when you take a picture of a small model from very close to it.
Try widening up your DoF so that the background spaceship is only slightly blurry, and see if that makes a difference.
You could also try moving the camera about halfway down towards the ground, so the janitor looms, and perhaps scaling the distant little bot down a bit so it looks as far away as it is (the narrow viewing angle disguises the distance quite a bit; the closer you zoom, the less an object's apparent size changes with distance).
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hmmm, that's a damn good model, hey, how about a white eye?
Óđinn (Odin, Oden, Wodin, Wotan...) plucked out his eye and cast it into Mímr's well in exchange for wisdom, so MixePix's sewed-up empty socket is quite fitting.
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The purpose of the contest is *not* to win it but to be challenged to show off the *best* that you are *currently* capable of using *your own style*. It does not matter that someone has had the 'advantage' of seeking advice on how to improve. If you haven't asked then more fool you for *not* asking!
Actually, I suspect the ultimate purpose of these contests is for Hash to have spectacular images and animations which show off the capabilities of their product. In which case, if getting help on an entry or collaborating with others changes a viewer's response from "that's pretty good" to "holy cow, I've gotta buy this software", I'm betting Hash wouldn't mind at all.
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I have tried to use fan bones - not understanding when to apply the orient like constraints. I have to do it in an Action? or when? And choosing what to orient to? None?
I'll generally set them up in an on/off pose (which I set to default to ON). That way, when you drop your model into an action or a choreography, the fan bones are already activated.
They orient like other bones in a chain. Say you're putting a fan bone in an elbow, to affect the spline ring through the center of the elbow. Both the forearm bone and the fan bone will be children of the upper arm bone; orient the fan bone like the forearm, with its pivot at the same place. Add the Orient Like constraint, make its target the forearm bone, and set it to 50%. As the arm bends, the fan bone will rotate in the same direction as the forearm, but only move halfway.
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Sweet textures!
Tripod forbids remote linking, so the only way to see a Tripod image from an external site is to copy the link and then paste it into a new browser window -- or disable the sending of HTTP referrer information, if your browser supports it.
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I agree as well; perhaps if he were snarling at the camera and stretching out an arm as if to grab the viewer, with the other one pulled back for balance; and with the camera positioned a bit lower, looking up at the figure so that he seems to tower over the viewer. (Too late for the contest, I know.)
On the image competition front, while Hash seem to discourage identification, how many people can identify which entry is Will Sutton's, or mine. At least a quarter of the entries are identifiable by characters or style.Yup. Especially when you see a model in someone's avatar dancing around every day.
But I vote based on a whole lot of criteria; the artist's identity isn't one of them. (Well, okay... I won't vote for my own work, but other than that I don't consider who made an image.) Composition, technical skill, originality, adherence to theme... those are a lot more important to me. -
If that's how evil Óđinn looks, I can't imagine what you've done with Loki!
Nice modeling, though.
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It may just be the angle, but it looks like his right arm is a bit longer than his left one.
Otherwise, excellent!
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So is this the good guy or the bad guy?
That would be telling.
Looks very good. Can we see a wireframe?But of course.
The only crits I have are that his ears protrude from the side of his head (the front part of the ear should be relatively flush with the side of the head) and the jawline looks a little odd - almost concave.Thanks for the ear pointer. I knew it didn't look right, but couldn't stick my finger in it.
The bottom edge of the jawline is slightly concave, but I think the effect is being exaggerated because the beard is altering the silhouette of the jawline; and in the second image, the head is tilted forward, so what you're seeing is the cheekbones instead of the corners of the jaw.
Mind you, this is supposed to be a stylized character, not a realistic one.
Space Sunrise
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Actually, if you're going for realism, the bright sun would wash the stars right out; check out some authentic NASA shuttle pics -- no stars! (Of course, the tinfoil-hat-wearers would have you believe that it's because all those photos are faked, and NASA just forgot to Photoshop stars into all those pictures.)
(It's ironic, but Hollywood's unrealistic treatment of outer space actually looks more real than reality...)
Comparing your image to the NASA pics, I'd suggest making the planet a brighter blue, especially the arc nearest the sun -- maybe even fading the rest down to blackness.
Nice job on the Shuttle, BTW.