Sevenar
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Posts posted by Sevenar
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Come to think of it, I have the Ice Fields map as a 3DS file...I might have Blood Gulch lying around somewhere too...
The only problem is that they aren't textured.
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Have you tried just extracting the texture bitmap from the Blood Gulch map file? You'll need a paint program that can read & write DDS format files, but a free Photoshop DDS plugin exists.
You can extract the texture with the HaloMapTools program, available on halomods.com (or is it .org? I forget...)
I'll have to look and see if the base itself is a separate object or if it's part of the BG terrain. Might be able to yank that out as an .OBJ file, then convert to 3DS (to correctly assign UV maps) then import the 3DS file into A:M.
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Well, I tried it. The same Halo MasterChief model that loads in about 40 seconds in the importer took over three hours to import as a prop. Then, when I tried to go to the shaded preview mode, A:M ate all of my virtual memory before throwing up an unhandled exception error and crashing.
The model's not horribly complex, either. A few thousand polys at most. Looks like it's back to the drawing board for a 3DS solution that's acceptable to everyone.
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"looks bad"? It's IDENTICAL to the game model, save for the color, which I intentionally altered for another project.
At any rate, no multi-million polygon model is ever going to play nice with A:M, regardless of how you try to import it. Might as well take a couple of nice renders in 3D Studio and use them as splining rotoscopes instead if the model is that complex.
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I've posted this before, but if you create a new empty model, then right click in the window, pick Wizards/Import/Autodesk 3DS file, it will pull a 3DS file in --as a MODEL, not a prop--and it will be UV mapped to whatever texture files were saved with the 3DS model. It doesn't import bones or materials, just vertices and UV maps. You still have to bone and rig it like you would any other model, but it does work.
I used it to import 3DS conversions of OBJ models from Microsoft's Halo game into A:M, then bone & rig with TSM2. (see MasterChief's helmet in my avatar) No problems.
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Unfortunately, I'm going to have to miss this one since I'm headed up to Toronto this weekend for a last-minute convention...
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What time?
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I think Colin was talking about July 9 instead.
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I just wonder if the user groups forum might be of more widespread use if it were higher up on the main page...?
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How about June 25th? That's the weekend after Father's Day. The location doesn't really matter to me. The previous place is fine, or maybe someplace a bit less busy.
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Isn't it about time we thought of doing this one again?
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Probably. Unless your computer was assigned a certain project file to be downloaded when you join the render pool and all your renders were confined to that one project file until the Director gave final approval for the finished footage, then you'd move onto another project file and render scenes from it until approved, and so on.
That way you wouldn't have to download a huge file but once per project, then just connect and upload your finished tga when the render completes.
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The possible hurdles I see are the size of the encrypted project file, because it would have to include textures that might not compress very well, and the encryption/compression scheme itself.
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Any v12-specific features would require the v12 render engine, though.
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I was just thinking, you know, since we have a direct line to the A:M programming team here, what if some sort of internet-distributed background renderer was added in to v12? Much like the SETI@Home screensaver, or other distributed-computing apps, Hash could have a background app bundled in with a release of v12 that would connect to a central server at Hash, download an encrypted project file, and begin to render one frame (or even a section of a frame), then upload the finished Targa back to the movie server--all without the need for the user to do anything but turn the app on and leave the computer running.
See, this is going to take a lot of CPU horsepower to finish. Especially since (as I said in an earlier thread) animators are incurable showoffs (not that that's a bad thing) and if this is truly going to be a showcase project for Hash, I'm thinking that there's going to be animation that hits every single one of the complex features pretty hard. (SimCloth, hair, particles, radiosity, etc., etc.)
Even if a single frame took the average CPU 24 hours to render, a mere 1500 clients could render an entire minute of high-complexity animation in a day. (assuming 24 fps) And every single Hash user, even those who just cut open the shrinkwrap for the first time, could legitimately say that they had a part in making the film.
Just a thought,
Sev
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Since I can't reply to the movie thread directly, I'll add my current thoughts here.
1) Voice Acting and Casting: I've had some experience with this, purely on an amateur level of course, but it is absolutely vital that the right voices get cast in the right roles. Even though stereotypes suck, it's what people are used to hearing, and great deviations from audience expectations will lose you viewers in a hurry. (i.e., no street-smart, hip-hoppin' Tin Woodsman) I know a handful of talented amateurs and a couple of professional voice actors, so if I can be of assistance on this, please feel free to contact me.
2) Animated style--I agree that copying or rotoscoping over footage from the MGM Wizard of Oz movie is a bad idea. The Scarecrow has no bones, so his limbs shouldn't be constrained as if he had them. I wouldn't go so far as to suggest treating his arms as tentacles, but the concept comes closer. You can film with normal elbows and knees for the most part, but if there's an action scene where he gets tossed around, his limbs should ripple and flail as if he were a rag doll. The Tin Man is easier to plan around. You could make him less human by having him "do the robot" (i.e. no synchronized joint movements) but give him a little greater degree of freedom than See-Threepio in Star Wars.
3) Scriptwriting: I'm going to bow out of this one. I think there'd be too many creative differences. But if you need a script editor, I'll critique any draft that comes along. I don't promise to be polite, but I do promise to be fair.
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You know, it doesn't take a state-of-the-art PC to run TSM2. If you really wanted it, you could probably find a Pentium 3 machine on eBay for under a hundred bucks.
Just a thought.
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Yves: I'm not trying to crack the whip over anyone about wrylies or formatting. A wryly or two in a screenplay isn't a deal breaker for anyone. I'm simply trying to tell why they're considered bad form, so novices don't waste a lot of time on them.
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Even though it's meant to be humorous, there's a commercial running now on US television for Star Wars downloadable mobile phone content. They've got Chewbacca in a voice recording studio doing his growl to use as a ringtone. There's a director giving him instructions after every growl--even though it's the EXACT same sound each time:
"Now you're sad...GRRROWL...Now try one without the accent...GRRROWL...I love it! Now make me hate it!...GRRROWL...That's an interesting choice..."
And so on. At the end, they show a waiting room full of Star Wars characters waiting their turn in the voice booth, while C-3PO says "My goodness! What is taking so long?"
A joke, to be sure, but close enough to what actually happens in voice acting to be illustrative. The actor and director are going to ignore the wrylies anyway, so you might as well not waste your time writing any. Make the dialogue push the character the way you want him or her to go, and the actor will have little choice but to do it as close to your intent as possible.
And there's always the possibility that the actor will do it a completely different way than you wrote--and you'll like their way better than your own. It's happened to me before.
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Yves: Anything worth doing is worth learning how to do properly from the start--saves an awful lot of un-learning bad habits in the future.
I mean, I realize I don't know all that much about the math behind 3D, so I defer to your expertise. I don't know all the ins and outs of the features of A:M, so I ask here, and listen.
This just happens to be something I know a little more about this time.
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Dearmad: Glad to see we're on the same page, no pun intended...
I'll take a swing at rewriting a scene or two myself.
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Dearmad: Good work. Exposition is always a cast-iron bitch to write without boring the audience, but you do it quite well.
Nice job,
Sev
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The best example would be to compare the screenplay of The Wizard of Oz to Baum's book and see how the screenwriters handled it way back when.
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Dearmad's on the right track. Although a friendly word of advice is in order--lose the embedded directions. They're referred to as "wrylies" in the screenwriting world, and they should be used as little as possible. Actors hate them, directors hate them. They don't want to be told their jobs by the writer.
Write concisely, in Baum's style, but don't parrot his overly-wordy dialogue.
Halo Master Chief
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
The Halo 2 MC was a lot cleaner model than the Halo 1 MC.
Now, if you want to see my version of the H1MC in action, go to www.sponsorsvsfreeloaders.com and download Episode 7. The final scene has the animated MC model in it...plus a surprise or two.
Big thanks to Roughy and Pia for their trailblazing efforts in bringing the Halo stuff to A:M!!!
My current project is rigging the Halo 2 Flood Combat Form model--kind of tricky since the extra appendages are on the left arm! I have to start TSM2 with 2 arm pairs, then delete the right arm #2 after running TSM FLipper.