Biotron2000

Another update. I finally broke down and bought The Setup Machine - should have done that a long time ago. Anyway, here's something besides the default "T"-pose. Still have a lot to do: Smart Skin, tweak the mouth, create some poses, etc. before I can animate him. Quick question: does anyone know if you can change CP assignments after rigging with TSM?

Here's an Opus Update: I finished the main body and head, did a CFA, and Opus is now whole! I resized and tweaked his feet, shaped his face and added a mouth (which still needs a lot of work). Added the bow tie and collar, too, and gave him some hands. Thanks to Chris Thom's inspiration, he now has constrained-to-surface pupils. The modeling's nearly done; time to tackle the rigging. I hope to be animating by next weekend. Here's a pic:

And now, you are a Master. Great tutorial, too. Thanks!

Don't let that fool you...the designation is merely based upon the number of posts...one more and I think you'll be a "Master", too! Looking at the wireframe, it looks like you lathed a shape, selected individual splines, then scaled them down to make the indentations. It looks great rendered. What settings did you use for index of refraction, translucency, etc.?

Good start! I like the jaunty attitude. Watch the floor to foot relationship-looks like he's sinking a bit. The one thing that stood out for me was the way the pelvis tilts upward before there is any weight on the leg--it should not tilt upward until after the foot contacts the floor and the leg straightens out to bear the weight of the body (this is more exaggerated in women, as they have a wider pelvis and hips). Remember walking is basically a series of controlled falls; you try to keep your balance as you pick up each foot and fall forward. I hope that made sense.

How about a wireframe? Maybe a quick tutorial? It looks very good.

Found it. The image was offered as a free download from Animation Meat. I converted it to JPEG and resized it.

I have Opus' one and only animated special, "A Wish For Wings That Work", on VHS; I think that's what the animation is from. I hope to get close to that look!

Ack! Thptht! Maybe the Meadow Party isn't dead... Thanks for the compliments and crits. I'll update this post with progress. I hope to have him finished and rigged within the next 2 weeks, just depends on my free time. Thanks for looking!

Looks like the sports drink commercials - a drop of the liquid falls and turns into an athlete thats moving as they pop up. PowerAde or something like that... Anyway, cool effect as usual, John!

That looks great! I'd love to see it animated, too.

Here's a quick turnaround (wire): opus6.mov

And a wire:

Here's a shot of the right half by itself:

Seeing Johnl3D's Opus inspired me to start working on mine again. I'm still bothered by creases, but I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm getting the hang of splining. Still don't have the mouth done, but I've made some progress. Here are some pics. This is kind of a fake; I'm only doing half and will CFA when it's closer to being done. I just put two instances of the model in the chor and scaled one of them -100 on the x axis.

Try doing a multipass render set to 16 passes. That will help smooth out the image. Awesome model!

Well done, Chris! Congratulations on your placing. Artoo looks fantastic. Looking at the turnaround, there seems to be more specularity on the blue rectangles on the head already; could you fill us in on the texturing process you used?

Looks good! Bloom County is my all-time favorite comic strip. I hear they are going to produce a CG Opus movie, too. I started modeling an Opus a couple months ago and never finished. I had trouble with creases. Figured I would finish it when I get better. I still need to work out how I'm going to do the pupils, eyelids and mouth. Here's a pic.

According to Google: They are of agreement with you, I would better have made to animate the television camera by hand.

They're not dead, they're just sleeping...right? Right?!?! Seriously, though...wow! I am amazed at this being pulled off in 10 days. You need to write a book on the subject!

Thanks, guys! I made the mouth/teeth initially with a decal, but I wanted him to be able to talk. I made two toruses (torii?) for the horizontal lines or lips, and thin cylinders for the vertical lines, or teeth. I made pose sliders for the mouth shapes as best I could. I used the phoneme shapes from the TAOA:M book. I really dislike the arm rigs as I can only use IK with them (wow-I really thought FK was too hard!); they wind up looking like Muppet arms I made the tradeoff to be able to get the bendy, rubber hose look to Bender's arms/legs. I may revisit the rig in the future to see if I can clean it up some.

Here's the zipped .prj files if anyone is interested in looking at it. I think everything is embedded properly. bite_my.zip

I modeled this Bender about 6 months ago. It's what got me back into A:M! bite1.mov

Let's see it!

Do you still have it?