pequod
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Posts posted by pequod
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Hair
in (2003-2004)
Whilst on the subject of hair, I am trying to render an old hair project for the documentation but I seem to be getting some kind of memory leak or something. Everything slows down, even when I quit AM. Is anyone else getting this?Yes, I'm getting this too. I can't open my werewolf creature, which I used to experiment with when the new hair first came out.
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Wonderfully distinct and characterful work Parlo.
I too like his 'crane' like walk towards the camera.
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Ditto the praise everyone else has given.The squash and stretch works really well and his little furrowed brow is just too cute.
Have you thought of a solution to attaching those horns?
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Most excellent hair.
I didn't know there was a video tutorial on hair locks
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Thanks everyone for the continued pats on the back! My head is beginning to swell to giant proportions
Nancy..... in further attempts to persuade you to do more of your animation in the choreography, here are a few more tips.
When you start to animate, try deleting all the lights in the choreography, you'll end up with that much clearer default light you get in an action.
Also, I make constant use of the 'active' option to hide models, lights etc that are interfering with my views. Be sure however to toggle the animate button off when you hide a model, so you don't create any keyframes.
I look forward to seeing your WIP.
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Animation Master is the best 3D character animation tool out there. Compared to other 'professional' 3D apps, where overcoming their arcane interface is seen as an achievement in itself, AM makes it almost too easy to produce professional looking work.
In fact, I'd rather keep this software secret, it gives me a wonderful unfair advantage!
Stephen Millingen.
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Stephen, What is your technique for animating? Do you work in the chor with the prop or in an action? and how did you get them to stay so attached? Did you use kinematic constraints? as well?
Hi Nancy,
I tend to animate solely in a choreography. Animating in actions is for repeatable sequences where you have to make sure the character's movements look good from most angles........and this takes time. The advantage of animating through your choreography camera, (once it's setup for the scene,) is if your character looks alright from this view, then that's all that counts. I realise these are sweeping statements and AM's powerful NLA tools as demonstrated by Raf Anzovin show what good results you can achieve by blending actions. I do use the 'add' blending quite alot, especially on cycles. But, for this short, blending a series of choreography actions didn't seem necessary.
I've had a mistrust of action-objects ever since version 5, but I'm sure they are working fine now.
Even so, I find it much easier to keep track of constrained objects in a choreography.Constraining the piece of paper to Schlitzy's hand was your basic 'translate and orient' two step. I always use compensate mode. Kinematic constraints are similar. Normally I would move the hand (arm) and the paper being constrained to the hand would follow. But at one point in the animation I needed the constraints to be reversed. I wanted both Schlitzy's hands to be constrained to the paper, so I could move the paper around and have the hands follow. I used kinematic and orient constraints for this. Exercise 6: 'The stuck door' in the manual that comes with the program is a useful chapter to read. It explains how to use kinematic constraints amongst others and also how important it is to keyframe the relevant bones before unenforcing these constraints.
My paper model had lots of bones which I rotated to quickly simulate folding and creasing. I also made sure that all these bones were children of a master bone. When I constrained the paper to the hands of Schlitzy I didn't constrain this master bone to his hands but instead used the paper's 'model bone' or 'shortcut to paper'. So, during the course of the animation if I needed to slightly move the paper in relation to his hands I could, and not worry about ruining the offsets that were created between the paper's 'model bone' and Schlitzy's hand.
I find constraining props difficult too. It was technically challenging to have the paper constrained to his bottom, to his left hand, then to both his hands etcetera, etcetera, and make sure these enforcements gently eased in and out without obvious jumps. I was making lots of keyframes and inspecting the channels to ensure that their wasn't any channel drift between them.
If you are doing an animation which has a lot of constraints popping in and out of hands like this, only apply these constraints towards the end of the animating process. Because if you decide to change the timing or readjust your hand movements for example, it can once again mess up the offsets on your constraints. This advise can equally apply to a lot of other details like secondary action (tails, floppy hats etc) which should only seriously be worked on once you are completely happy with the rest of your character's motion.
Okay, I've gone on long enough and you are probably more confused than before. If you've anymore specific questions you can ask here or email me if you wish.
Stephen.
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Ok BakeRod, Dan , and all the others who have asked for more
Here's an old piece I did in the first version of master to have fur( was that 7?)
It's an oldie, but a goodie! You don't have a better mov. version you can show us?
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Great model Mike. Aside from the rather frentic arm swings mentioned already, this is a really nice walk cycle too.
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Cheers everyone for the compliments, I'm chuffed.
I think well over half it's appeal is down to Jim's excellent model, Schlitzy is just oozing personality. Not that being a drunk is a light hearted issue kids!
Parlo- I did originally have his 'hat droop' dynamically constrained, but no matter what i tried it never looked right.
So I animated it the old fashion way. I don't know how you and others are having so much success with dynamic constraints, I just can't get the blasted things to work well for me. The stiffness settings on a chain of bones, to my eye, have virtually no effect, or not the effect one would expect anyway. It be cool if you could bake the simulation, giving you a chance to tweak the motion manually. -
Cool,
So the mad scientist sits inside?
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Lovely model Javier,
It's both sinister with that sort of klu klux klan hood, and cute with those ears and flat snubby face.
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Splendid spline work Jim.
I agree with others, the bags under his eyes are wonderfully crafted and observered. Sneaky use of 3-point patches also.
There's some nice warm turning edges on his skin, is that just good lighting or are you using some shader or other?
Personally, I think he looks French, like Charles de Gaulle!
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Those test are very misleading. This PC site omits the Photoshop test, which saw the G5 trounce the PCs. What's particularly important about using Photoshop to test between platforms, is it's optimised for both, unlike Word (Microsoft), Premiere 6.5, Quake etc. Suffice it to say, the latest Mac or PC will certainly be as fast as you'll need......for the time being anyway.
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I use Commotion 4.1 in OSX. It's excellent for painting on movies, handles layers, motion tracking and it's rotosplines (making moving masks) are still considered the best in the industry. However, ever since Pinnacle bought it from Puffin, they have deliberately neglected it. The original programmers have left the development team and it's unlikely to be updated, it's very sad.
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Briar
in (2003-2004)
Here ya go Jerry,
She doesn't really have that triangular shape for the tear ducts, I felt it unnecessary for this type of stylised character. Best look at the work of someone like Jim Talbot for that type of detail.
Stephen.
Specificaly, I would like to see soomed versions of Briar's mouth and tear ducts. These areas are sort of mysterious to me. -
Hair & Multipass
in (2003-2004)
Posted
I've not experienced your shadow problem, but I'm getting similar bad effects with multipass on hair. Perhaps the two problems are related.
Multipass with motion blur obliterates the effects of dynamics on hair with each successive pass. After 9 passes it looks like the hair hasn't moved at all.
It could be a feature limitation of multipass and not a bug, but I shall inform Hash anyway, after I've ruled out any mistakes I've made at my end.