fae_alba

well, for giggles I out Pappa Bear through his paces. Why I used the chicken dance I can't say. Perhaps too much sun and beer today, but here it is. Doing this little test exposed some remaining issues with the rigging, but he is getting closer. chicken_dance.mov

it looks like the interactive bits are more in support of the documentary portion. Almost feels like the digital encyclopedias of the 90's. Really if that were true, the app would be worth it for me. I'm still a little flomuxed that it is not being ported to the win or droid tablet platforms.

I've been trying to get straight the rigging of Pappa Bears' rigging for his shirt sleeve. I'm seeing a lot of bleed thru of the arm thru the shirt sleeve. and no matter what I do I can only clean up some of it. I had thought about simply removing the arm geometry where the sleeve is but for some reason I have an aversion to doing that. So my question is, with the 2008 rig, which bones should be assigned to the cp rings in the shirt and arm... PappaBear2008RigFinal_WithShirtV3.mdl Any help is of course much appreciated

No worries Jason! I think it is simply a great thing that there is so much interest in this mascot contest.

I'll say it again....this mascot contest has peaked a lot more interest in the forums of late...feels like we're anxiously awaiting the Academy Awards announcements! And yes I'm checking a lot more often too!

I'd seen this on the Disney news site. Wish I were an Ipad user!

One of my desires is to match the look/feel/color pallets from the original Disney shorts as closely as possible. I like the effect that Disney had with the multi-plane camera (Bambi) but the simplicity of the earlier shorts. Call me nostalgic, but that is what I am looking for. Add to that, with the complexity of the sets (the Disney theme parks) I can take some artistic license with the backdrops, making them simpler and quicker to render, and the audience will accept them as the theme parks. So I am leaning towards toon ass well. Anybody else wanna weigh in?

One of the decisions I need to make with my planning of Pappa Bear's career is whether or not to do these as toon renders or straight up 3d. One of the considerations is the setting. These shorts will be based in the Walt Disney World parks, initially Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. So I need to figure in creating the buildings as either models or simple projection maps. Also, while I really dig the old timey toon look, I'm not entirely sold that it is appropriate for this. I put together a quick test to see how Pappa Bear looks in both 3d and toon renders. I used a back drop painting that I had acquired at an auction that was used in an unknown Hanna-Barbara 1960's cartoon. I know the camera settings are all messed up for this test, but for the purposes of this comparison it'll do. for reference this is the panel So what I am looking for here, is input, thoughts, considerations on the "best" way to take this.

Wait, "was"? We're not done with the year yet...

Sorry about that, no it's not your eyes Paul ! I meant to post the project as we'll yesterday but somehow didn't!? When I noticed today I added it to the post. 40℃ here and no air-con, makes the brain sluggish and a bit fuzzy I fear! No worries!

I'm fascinated by how much enthusiasm this particular contest has garnered. Perhaps it's a sign of renewed excitement out here in A:M er land.

Mark, thanks for the examples. I downloaded the chor last night (am I blind or were my "beer goggles" on too tight and the project was not there then?!?). I looked it over briefly and noticed that the dynamics on your simple shirt are really damped down, which is exactly the behavior I was aiming for but couldn't seem to achieve. I think that sedate movement is key to controlling the shirt in the first place, and the willingness of my shirt to jump like Mexican Jumping Beans is part of my problem. So I'm going to dissect your settings, apply them to mine, and see if I can replicate the behavior. I really want this to work since animating by hand is an added worry that I was hoping to avoid.

John, I'm going to perform one more test tonight, but I have a sneaking suspicion that you are correct. What it comes down to is how "realistic" do I want my shorts to feel. I'm on the fence about that, and I will most likely open up another thread for an open debate.

I had thought that too, so I added a pose to increase the size of the shirt (scale it up to try and make sure that that wouldn't happen. Sadly it didn't do any better. I'm going to try and re-work the bone chain and cp assignment so that the bones influence cp's running the height of the shirt and not the length. perhaps that will help.

I've been trying to get a dynamic bone chain to bring life to a shirt worn by Pappa Bear rather than using sim cloth. I added two dynamic bone chains to the shirt opening, then enabled collision detection. The issue comes about when stressing the range of motion as shown with the attached movie clip. I've fiddled with just about all of the settings with no real change in the behavior. I'd really like to get this to a point where I can animate the character without having to worry about the behavior of the shirt, but at this point I don't know if that is realistic. shirt_testc.mov One thing I'm wondering is if I need another bone chain to run along the bottom hem of the shirt to prevent the shirt from occurring. Anybody have ideas let's hear them.

I'll be honest here, with the exception of the feet, I liked your first iteration with the spikes. The feeler idea I think is a good one, only have them pointing down not up. Add a dynamic bone chain to the feelers and let them move freely with body motion. That would add some "character" to the character.

So I tried sim cloth, didn't like the results so much and the effort required. Since I plan on Pappa Bear being in a series of shorts I need to streamline the animation rendering process. So I went the dynamic constraint route and added a bone chain to each edge of the open shirt. Below is a first pass test using all default values. Looks passable, though I think I'll be damping it down a bit more, then I have to look into collisions with the body mesh. shirt_test.mov

Go tall my son, go tall

I thought it would be easy too...then I caught myself in an endless loop of tweeks, changes and re-renders. Last night I simply said enough is enough and sent the beast in.

how to "stage" my character is what I've been struggling with. What to use for render settings etc to give the most impact but still fit into the ability to reproduce for Hash is proving troublesome to me. I've re-rendered half a dozen times already and still not happy with the results. Edit: And having just said all that, I made some changes, rendered, liked the results, and sent it in!

Well then It's been awhile since I updated this but low and behold I have, finally, something to show. There is still a lot of rigging work to do on the head, but PappaBear is nearing the point where I can move from the modeling phase and into story telling. I wanted to put a sim cloth shirt on him, and worked for a bit on that, but the sim went wacky, and honestly I came to the conclusion that simcloth posed more overhead in modeling and rendering than what I am intending to do with the character. So I modeled a shirt, and perhaps I'll add some dynamics to it with a rig, but for now, it is a simple mesh. I don't really like the decaling and how it stretches on the sides, and will need to do something about it, but for now, here it is...

I'm pushing my limits...trying to get a cloth Hawaiian shirt to work on PappaBear....first attempt never even made it passed the sim...so tonight I'm back at it. Feeling the pressure of the sands of time though!

pappa bear will definitely make an appearance...cleaning up the model as we speak!

David, thanks a lot man! I figured I had nudged some CP's out of place during weighting. I appreciate it.

Right, so attempt number two. I had the whole right side so that it felt good to me. Weighting done, etc. Ran the mirror bones and it only sort of worked. It left some cp's unassigned (all of the left toes, cp rings around the left elbow) and it didn't add the left foot null. I've attached the version of the model just prior to running the mirror bones wizard. Any guidance would be appreciated. PappaBearRigged_V3t11.mdl