dre4mer

Hi Gang! I've been pretty quiet around here of late, partly due to this project I've been working on. Animation Master performed beautifully through the duration as usual. Comments are welcome! They will go on the outer packaging of a line of winter toys this winter both in the states and abroad. Snowman, SnowDino, and Snowbear. This is just the characters themselves not the packaging of course. I may be able to post that later actually. Enjoy! -Ethan

Niiiice detail additions!!! Beautiful modeling! -Ethan

Hi Eric, Ah thanks for the interest! I've been waiting so long to finish this as well... Sigh. It's still in progress but only in my very limited spare time. I have most of the film (about 20 minutes) as roughed shaded renders where everything pretty much does what's it supposed to but the animation isn't refined and the lighting (apart from my base island scene) isn't completed. There is unfortunately probably a good 2 months of work left on it and I simply haven't been able to find those two months. I've even got 2 animators standing by waiting to help me but I don't have the time to organize the effort. One of these days it will happen. As for the look I tinkered with the water for a long time. The final resulting image comes from a water plane with a hole cut in it with a transparency map and displacement to give it the ripples. This is reflecting the sky sphere for the water coloring, and then a texture map on the ground itself extending into the water gives it the deeper water look as well as the "wet" sand. So it's cheating quite a bit. Hope that helps a little, if you get any where on some water I'd love to see the results! -Ethan

Are you sure your AO settings are correct it seems like we should be seeing more shadow happening from the building which would feel more real. Good work on the modeling and texturing! -Ethan

Lighting looks pretty good, can the shadows be softened at all? -Ethan

That's sweet looking flame man!

Very nice detail improvements, your most recent characters have a much smoother more professional feel to them. Keep it up!

uuhg.. it crashes firefox everytime i try to view it.... The still looks fun! -Ethan

Kinda nice looking dan, does it slow the render considerably to have that many lights? -Ethan

Nice looking model! I could see SSS doing some very cool things with his ears....

Thank you for the comments everyone! That's a good point about the color/saturation Frosteternal and Ken. I'll bring it up a notch! -Ethan

I've got a new Theodore N' Fink script in the works and I figured it was time to revamp the characters from a short I did back in 2004. If I can pull it off there will be a childrens series on the way! My dream would be to make a living with AM doing such a series. Here is the link to the old clip. http://migrate.hash.com/amfilms/search/entry.php?entry=1096 At any rate. The old rig had lots of issues and so i've been able to redesign him incorporating all the new things i've learned since 2004! I'm still trying to decide if I like the more realish look as compared to the older more cartoonish look. Also the new one takes 13 seconds to render as opposed to 6 on account of all the high resolution texture, bump and trans maps. Any thoughts or comments good or bad? Thanks, -Ethan

Thanks for the sort of mini tutorial about cloth Rich, I will definately keep these notes in mind when I'm working with Simcloth again. I kinda dropped a project I was using it on because it got to difficult. So i'm estatic seeing it being used in this application! I understand what your saying about lipsync style, I trust whatever the final result it will all look fantastic! -Ethan

It warms the heart whenever I see this kind of quality work being created in Animation Master! Keep up the great work guys! The hair looks great! If you got the cloth working well for clothing like that i'm pretty envious, that's tricky business! Don't wish to be critical cuz the stuff looks so good, but the lip sync doesn't feel quite right to me, I think a phenome where the corners of the mouth went back toward the ears more could help. That probably doesn't make any sense. But like the "E" sound in "egg". In this lipsync test the corners of his mouth never come back in this manner. Just a thought. -Ethan

Great Mikes back! Was wondering after ya man. Thought maybe the stress had finally gotten to ya and you'd jumped off the ol' bridge or something Welcome back!! Glad to hear you've still been making progress! -Ethan

niiice... the crystal looking tree fronds almost look like they have SSS?

Man that's pretty cool dan! Did you have to take perspective distortion into account? -Ethan

dude I love it! Very professional use of the Toon shader too!! Somehow the contest entry image doesn't do the model justice like your stills do though. -Ethan

http://www.babbagepatch.com/water.htm

nice start on jabba jimmy can't wait to see how he turns out! -Ethan

I happen to have a render farm of 10 systems i'd be willing to donate some time, maybe for a render farm credit at the end? Vern is right there is no reason the visuals should have to suffer due to render constraints for something like this. The AM community has the resources. If he's interested we could probably arrange something, also unless he's planning to take it to theaters isn't 1600x900 a bit unneccesary? -Ethan

that's awesome jimmy! certainly brings back memories of the game must have taken quite a bit of work too back in the day! It was the best adventure game on the planet! Must have played it through 10 times. Best of luck on this one, i'll certainly keep it in mind if I ever manage to find the 36 hour days alot of poeple on the forums seem to have Does this fall in the catagory of a fan game, since copyright issues would keep it from being sold? -Ethan

an adventure game... why'd it have to be an adventure game... I always wanted to make an adventure game. arrrghh your killing me jimmy. I wish i'd been born twins, get more done Did you ever play that old lucas arts indiana jones and the fate of atlantis game? That's what really made we want to make one for years and years. It looks like youv'e got an incredible start are you writing plot and dialogue paths and stuff for this? -Ethan

man jimmy you are going to town on these models! That lighting test reminds me of an adventure game, what is this project going to be for? Man I would love to help animate but i'm so swamped right now I'm having trouble even getting my TWO assignments done, so I guess it'll have to wait. Keep up the great work! -Ethan

Daniel great job on the fur! Massive improvments there, it would be really neat to see him rigged and walking lightly around with that sort of innocent expression I think you have the makings of a winner here! -Ethan