frosteternal
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Posts posted by frosteternal
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Okay, Week Three is done, I'll probably work ahead of schedule rather than fall behind.
I've included the Week 1& 2 parts as well.
Thanks for all the encouraging compliments, I'm under a ton of pressure with this project. =)
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Back to class, LAST QUARTER EVER!!!
I'm on a tight schedule for wrapping up this project. =) This is good, I thrive under pressure.
Each Thursday I show a work-in-progress to my class/instructor. This is this weeks'...a combo of week 1 and week 2.
Except some rough sound, this is pretty much final render stuff, visually. I've decided to render piecemeal to help keep on schedule, so no long week of rendering at the end of it all.
Note: for some reason Quicktime ignores my pixel aspect ratio settings, so it may be squished horizontally.
edit: fixed the aspect ratio problem
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Nice, Nancy. (I always thought those "lion cuts" are ridiculous.)
This is a fun, very "you" sort of character.
Can't wait to see the animation =)
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This is the first rough cut. For class, by um...one week ago, I had to piece together a rough version of the film for review. The sound is 80% there, the timing is 75% and the narration is going to be re-recorded. The backgrounds aren't all done, and the animation is obviously at like 10%.
(I have about 4 months to have it done and polished and beautiful. I LOVE deadlines.)
Enjoy.
I like that one very much... nice looking character, nice storyline and even in this pre-finished state it is looking great.
Polish it a little bit up and it will be extremly well received. Keep on rocking!
See you
*Fuchur*
Thanks! My instructor described it as "taking this really morbid subject and making it cute...which makes it even more creepy"
I take that as a compliment. =)
Thanks for your encouraging words!
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This is the first rough cut. For class, by um...one week ago, I had to piece together a rough version of the film for review. The sound is 80% there, the timing is 75% and the narration is going to be re-recorded. The backgrounds aren't all done, and the animation is obviously at like 10%.
(I have about 4 months to have it done and polished and beautiful. I LOVE deadlines.)
Enjoy.
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Great little character, terrific chair. I am intrigued.
(Your poem, character reminds me of Harold in the movie "Harold and Maude", one of my all time favorites)
Thanks!
I'll have to check out your film suggestion, never saw that one.
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Been busy working on this and my portfolio for school, so I haven't had a terrible amount of extra time to post. Here's Garret in his library, just finished the chair and library set.
Most sets are 2.5-D with Photoshop and AE but the library/fireplace shot requires a drastically rotating camera and thus needs a full 3D set.
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So, I am now in my last two quarters, and for my Senior Project (a 2 quarter course) I have been given the green light to re-make a very old animation I did years ago.
The original piece (keep in mind, I was working on borrowed computers and living on a friend's couch at the time) is posted below:
My original poem will remain the same, but I was never happy with the way this one turned out. My instructor is very excited about the piece. I'll be doing all the character work in A:M and building sets in Photoshop to composite in AE. My major is Visual Effects & Motion Graphics, so I do want to keep the animation somewhat stylized, but not quite so...um...crappy. Yay.
The first order of business was to re-model the main character. Pic below...
I also drew all new storyboards, which have more interesting actions and expressions on the part of the main character. Hooray for progress.
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These are the "breakdowns" showing how the film was generally accomplished (required for our class)
Great fun, kind of a behind-the-scenes montage.
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Okay, done with most of the project, just fine-tuning here and there. =) Yay.
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Thanks for all the comments, WD40tini LOL
=)
Chugging along here, rendered out a low-res of the work so far, with compositing, proper shading etc.
Working on the next scene now...
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Well, it has been a busy quarter, and it was spent mostly building a scale model - no, not a digital one, a real one - of a sort of military interplanetary outpost. In order to utilize the footage shot of the model, I built a digital landscape (the group responsible for the model landscape utterly failed at building it) in a nameless Other Software package that specializes in landscapes.
However, just a pretty picture won't do, so I brought a robot model I built in yet another Other Software package into A:M, rigged it, re-textured it, and now it looks ten times better than the original ever did.
The animating & rigging is going to be a bit of a challenge, since the thing is designed to walk or attack with any appendage.
I'll post my test shots here over the next few weeks. =)
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I should also note that after the cloth was simmed in that test I moved Thom down a bit overall to close the gap between his feet and the mattress that "Collision Tolerance" creates between any cloth and deflector.
It might be possible to set that to 0. I've never tried.
0 makes it all go haywire.
Your trick with moving the character after the sim is brilliant and effective. I'll be using it later =)
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If you are looking to import actual models - which modern extended versions of both photoshop and AE will accept - the best formats would be OBJ or 3DS, which A:M can export nicely.
The resulting objects will be polygonal, and may have some surface artifacts due to differences between polygons and patches, but should work fine.
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Thank you so much, for these answers. I have Hash version 12. When I get back to my workstation I'll try this. I also have not used the hair or particles. Just a whole figure with dynamic constraints on certain body parts.
I do not believe version 12 will bake dynamic constraints - but I'm not sure. If you are having problems with dynamic constraints, you might try rendering final with multipass OFF - rather than ON. It might work better (can't remember ver 12)
when you "simulate spring systems" it effectively bakes the motion into the action's channels. it just wasn't called "baking"
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right-click on the choreography or action and choose "Simulate spring systems" this will "bake" the motion into the action/chor. The "simulate on the fly" option in the constraint is mainly for preview purposes, not final render.
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Well, your sense of mood has really come a long way, Kat - the lighting is very strong here. I also love the little character acting details - like the drumming the fingers on "but its meaning is concealed."
One thing stand out though - the eyes - while you have shapes and expressions, they always stare straight ahead. Once you have all other animation done, go back and add some eye darting, swiveling etc.. nothing too extreme - and your characters will really jump off the screen!
Your tenacity is admirable, I can't wait to see what you are up to next!
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Even when I do actions in the Chor, I like to export to a separate action as well so I have a backup. (Besides, you never know when you want just one pose you did back 3 scenes ago) When doing "The Mountain", this approach helped us pre-sim TONS of cloth and saved HUNDREDS of hours that would have gone to re-simulating (we had many, many changes over 3 years)
Even some sims were able t be re-timed without glaring defects.
As others have pointed out, using actions has re-timing advantages.
Now, back to the original post : I never use them for blinks, that is what poses are for. Auto-blinks are as Robcat said, LAME.
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This may sound obvious - but does the problem show up in final render, or just in the real time (shaded) mode. By final render, I mean rendered to a file (not the quick render or bounding box render.)
It looks suspiciously like a video card quirk. (Oh, and the double image after you hit "apply" is just the stamp floating above the applied version, waiting to be applied again.)
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I like this one, the lighting and camera angles are very strong. I really enjoy the "banshee spin" as it moves into capture mode
The only thing I might add is have someone from their group of friends run after the banshee in vain, maybe see them shrink away in the dstance from an over-the-shoulder shot of the banshee?
Nice job!
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Hi frosteternal, thanks for the advice and encouragement, while fighting the mobs at work today I was think about this and have a question. Should this cloth work be done in a chor.? Can it be done in an action or just what are the specifics of working with cloth?I have seen several times coments about choro. So it makes me wonder.
Wally
Choreography is where to run sims, and then when you like them, I like to (rightclick on chor action) "export as action" and save the sim in a separate action file. (this has saved me time in a pinch before.)
The actual simcloth materials are applied in modeling windows, like any group material.
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SimCloth is not hard to use, it just takes a little practice, and what Fuchur said about experimenting a little first is helpful - but really, the best way to get the hang of it is to use it on a character. Cloth sliding down primitive shapes and tables are not the same as a real sim.
If you wish to understand simcloth (it is fascinating and powerful) pick a character from the cd (with moderately dense geometry) and add clothes to it. Shirt & pants. (Skirts are fine too.) For your settings, set the stretch values low, and the stiffness high, and adjust from there until you get the look you want.
SimCloth becomes more predictable the more you use it, and the setting will slowly start to make more sense as you tinker with them. Oh, and save often, just in case your sim takes too long and you want to force quit the program
Also, don't have all parts of the cloth self-collide. Around joint, like inside armpits, elbows, etc, you can group these, and in the group property setting there are "plugins:simcloth" options - turn off "self-collide" where you don't need it.
For my "Figure Drawing" project (which I work on in between school and work) I do have full-body cloth sims; all characters have fully simulated clothing. Our previous project, "The Mountain", had simulations on all shots of the main character's cloak. In the years this feature has been available, it has been improved tremendously, and is now very robust.
Good luck!
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The subgroups are key. As tempting as it is to just apply cloth and let the sim run, all cloth sim technology is still very touchy.
(I read an interesting list of cloth sim tips from a Pixar cloth-sim lead once - made me feel better...even the pros have intersections and failed simulations.)
Sub-groups tell the computer what is truly important, and how that importance is to be dealt with. Essential for good/stable sims.
Oh, and the rule of thumb on cloth mesh density - build the mesh to the minimum resolution to display the maximum detail desired. If you need to simulate wrinkles 3 cm wide, then you will need patches no wider than 3 cm.
Ask yourself, "does this tell the story, sell the effect, etc?" If the answer is no, then explore other options.
"Less is more," is not true - that is a logical fallacy - but less can be more effective.
Garrett
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
That reminds me, I have to re-record the narration. It's from ten years ago and I used kinda crappy equipment. =P
Thanks!