chris
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Posts posted by chris
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Thanks for all the encouraging responses!
To respond to the leg comment that Ken made. The bear was actually modeled after a real stuffed teddy bear that my wife and I just bought for our baby that will be born in mid April. So the legs are actually almost exactly what the real teddy bears legs look like. I realise the bear doesn't look as natural standing as it does sitting, it's actually designed to be in a seated position. I will be boning and rigging him later so I can put him in a few still scenes that I will make prints of and hang in the babies room. Maybe the adventures and things the bear has done or something like that, we'll see.
His render times are actually not that bad either... on my 1.6GHz PC with 1 Gig RAM is rendering in under 15min at VGA resolution. That will increase a lot when I start doing print resolution but I'm ok with that. Render time isn't a priority, but realism is, besides I have four and a half months to make these pictures look their best!
... the baby better not come early. 
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Well I posted in Animation:Master area because some of the problems I was having in the Choreography window on render and was asked to post some pics of my model so far. So since the pics are already posted in the forum I thought I might as well post them here as well.
The mouth still needs to be added but here it is so far...
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Actually Mike, that is the problem... it crashes on render-to-file in the choreography. However since I am able to render-to-file in the modeling window I will post a couple pics there of that. this is my first real experiment with the new hair material and I think Hash did a fantastic job!!!
Any feedback on the model would be cool too. I am still planning to add a mouth to him but have kind of pushed that to the side after this whole render problem cropped up. Any thoughts on the subject would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
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Rodney,
That had crossed my mind and would have worked for the old way hairs materials functioned. Old hair and shag materials assigned a certain number of hairs to each patch based on the material's density setting, meaning a big patch had the same number of hairs as a really small patch. This was a problem because if you wanted an even hair distribution then you mesh had to be the same density all over from head to arms to body etc (A lot of unnecessary density or a pile of different density hair materials). The new hair distributes the material evenly over surface area rather than per patch which greatly increases the usibility of hair. So using that strategy might give you a rough estimate but would be far from accurate. If all else fails I may do that just to guestimate the number though... thanks Rodney.
Is there a way to find the surface area of a model?
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Well I tried a few things out last night. It is definetely the shadow pass that is causing A:M to quit. I tried raytraced shadows and a few versions of z-buffer shadows. I could get a 256x256 shadow map resolution to render-to-screen but render-to-file still shut down A:M. It also rendered fine with shadows turned off.
Shadows are a big part of my final scene so it is very important that I find a solution to this before I continue. Is 1Gig of RAM not enough?
Any thoughts.... anyone???
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No actual "need" per say. I'm just interested in knowing. You know how like in the special features in Lord of the Ring's they told you how many sprite particles were used to simulate the Balrog character. Same kind of useless information I want to know for my model.
..and too when someone asks me about my model I can impress them with all the useless information I know aout it. -
Hash crew or anyone else who might know. Is there a way to find out how many individual hairs are being rendered on your model when using a hair material? I'm just curious if there is a way to have A:M calculate it or by using your hair material's density settings and somehow finding out the surface area of your model and calculating it out yourself. Any suggestions?
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I've created an extremely realistic teddy bear model that uses a very dense hair material for it's fur in A:M 11t. The model renders in a reasonable amount of time in the modeling window (10-12min) on a 1.6GHz P4 with a Gig of RAM. My problems lies in the Choreography window using the default lighting setup. I'm not concerned with render time as I am using this model to try and create a few realistic still scenes that I can make prints from for decorate my babies room for when he or she is born.
I was doing some tests last night in the choreography and I keep having A:M throw me to the desktop on render to file after about 10min on a 1920x1080 TGA. I'm using the default light setup and when rendering the shadow pass from the rim light (progress bar still showing 0%) A:M quites on me. The Rim Light is a Kleig with a 512x512 z-buffer shadow. It's acting as though A:M is running out of memory and crashing as a result but I have 1GB of RAM so I didn't think that would be a problem. If there another type of shadow, perhaps retraced, that I should try? Again render time is not an issue... I just want these pictures to look incredible.
P.S. I would prefer not to change the hair material I've made (ie thinning it out) as it looks SO good in the modeling window when rendered. Can anyone help shed some light on this?
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Fabrice,
Over all very good! nice job with the lighting and environment! Good job on the character modeling as well.
But this is an animation contest so I will comment a little on that. I think her movements are quite realistic (As far as our knowledge goes on scorpion women).
You did a very convincing job with her though. 
How do find the TMS2 rig handles with characters as complex as her? As for your hero, I find his movements a little less convincing. they seem seem less fluid, however his feet seem a little to fluid as they seem to be sliding a fair bit when he walks. Although you seem to have locked his feet alright on the stairs.A couple other quick thoughts. I agree with Thierry I was a little disappointed that the fight didn't last a little longer. I was just getting into it.
Something that crossed my mind was, I notice he pulls his sword at the top of the stairs (I assume because he sees her), it might add a little suspense if he doesn't see her at first (maybe he pulls his sword because he senses the danger) and as he walks down the stairs she stays hidden in the shadows for a bit. If she stayed still a little longer before stepping into the light it might help deepen the sense of suspense because he would be closer to her before she appears. Which would be a much more threatening scenario. Also it seems like the camera travels through one of the pillars instead of behind it. I found this a little distracting.Very good, nice job. I hope you do well in the contest!
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Something like sparks from a grinder would be a good use of streaks. I have also used them to simulated both fire and a waterfall.
The flame from your rocket might also be a good use for streaks, depends on the look you are going for.Just play around with them a bit on a flat patch and get used to them and then apply them to your model. You'll quickly realize their possibilities!!!
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When animating it, I found the lens flare quite distracting when it'd appear for just a few frames before it was covered again. Would something like this annoy you too?
No, to be honest those other things didn't really "annoy" me, and I honestly hadn't spent any time thinking about the lens flare. I do want to tell you I really quite like the animation as a whole. It REALLY fits the music and flows rather nicely throughout.
I was just making those few comments because it was posted in the WIP section so I assumed you might be looking for some constructive critisism. Your comment seemed as though you might have been a little annoyed at me for making those comments, I hope that is not the case, as it was not my intention to do so in any way.
I'm glad you explained the snapping reflections, I thought it might have been a rendering error of some kind.
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I like your animation the camera movement suits the msuic very well.
A couple of very small things. First I noticed a reflection in the first shot seems to suddenly snap on near the end of the clip. Do you know what causes it, it's a little abrupt and distracts from the animation a little. Secondly, and this is so minor I didn't see it untill the third time I watched it. As the camera comes to a final stop in the last shot it seems to come out of a subtle dutch tilt a little right at the end but could be eased out a little more to smoothen it a bit.
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Your tubes and rooms idea reminds me a little of these... I used to have a few of them for my pet hamster.
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Just a quick note... you have some funny patch shimmering going on there... I assume it has to do with the splinage mess that occurs when importing a 3DS file into A:M but thought I'd mention it. It will probably become more noticable when textures are added as patches will pop out through the textured mesh when animating a messy imported model like this. You may have to do more cleanup after all. :S
You did do a remarkable job importing it though... I usually choose to remodel it than try and work through all that strangeness.
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Well done! Looks great! Though the illusion is broken a little when a few of the houses and things he tromps on don't turn to rubble under the weight of the mighty muppet but really well done none the less!
I have had my eye on SynthEyes for some time now. Hmm maybe I should be looking for a project that will justify me buying it.
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OK Yves, I'll try that again when I get home tonight, though that IS the first thing I remember trying when the shader wouldn't work for me.Well, I'll see tonight I guess!
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Thanks Yves for the Skin Shader!
Small problem I am having though... I have had success when rendering from the modeling window and applying it through the Render to File Settings/Option Tab to the whole scene, however when I apply it to just a Group or Model's properties, it won't render!?!
Is there a setting somewhere that turns this feature on/off or overrides it to default render settings? I have read the manual concerning Render Shaders however I haven't found a solution to this issue as of yet. Any ideas?
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William, I know this question gets asked every so often and indeed does vary greatly on the skills and speed of the artist, however...
...how much time do YOU spend on modeling a character this detailed. Predrawings, Modeling, Texturing, Boning/Rigging, Testing etc. (If you have a rough idea, a break down like that would be interesting.)
Also, if you have the time, what are your tools of choice for everything from A:M plugins through to texturing, tools etc. (If this becomes too popular a topic I'll take it to a new thread, but I wanted to ask it here first.)
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Plasticine is going to be a difficult material to nail down. Plasticine has a lot of similar properties to human skin and to get an athentic look it may require the use of a SSS (Sub Surface Scattering) trick of some kind to pull off the look.
Have a look at these links for more info:
Skin Shading Renders 6-9 all have a plasticine look to them... similar to this actual pasticine head model.
You may want to give ypoissant a buzz too and ask him if he's had time to work on his Gradient Shader for faking SSS at all, it sounded like a promising idea. I think he got busy with other work before he finished it.
Sorry I can't give you a more absolute answer, but I hope these references help you.
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Well, Mike was asking about a wireframe image, so here they are.
Oh, and Philip, actually I did make a "sucker" version but it nearly tripled the patch count on my model to only have suckers going half down each tenticle (I was going to bumpmap the rest in). I think I may still try a version with suckers but I'm gonna have to come up with a less spline heavy version that I'm happy with, each sucker had 16 patches, I could do with a 12 patch version perhaps but that still really adds up. (12 patches x 42 suckers x 10 tenticles = 5040 patches!!!)
My Model is currently below 3000 patches.
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Thanks Paul!
Thanks for the idea to enter it into the A:M image contest, ya it is to bad it ended August 1st. Oh well, eventually I'll figure out how to been deadlines.
I appreciate the supportive words though. Congratulations on your win. Nicely modeled.
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Well I thought I would post a few screen renders of the squid I made for the TSM contest (I had the modelling complete but did not enter because I hadn't textured it.)
Here are some pics of the untextured model.
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Well I'll admit I was a little disappointed that I couldn't get my model done it time for the contest. I didn't have it textured (Though I see neither did William)... DRAT!
Congratulations to the winners! Great modeling jobs folks.Here is a link to my attempts on the WIP section of the forum My Squid Model
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Just did a quick search on google and found this Free and Low-Cost CFD Software, I didn't look very long at the website but thought I'd point it out to you if you hadn't seen it already. Sorry I couldn't do a more thorough search but I didn't have the time today.
Teddy Bear
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Wow, thanks Jack! Glad you like the idea.
Actually Ken, these renders where made in the modeling window. I am having trouble with the choreography crashing when rendering the shadow pass with the default light setup. I've had a few suggestions to try and alleviate this issue so I'll experiment next chance I get. And yes the hair does have a sheen to it of about 15% specularity with size at 80%. The bear I'm modeling it after has a similar sheen to it as well.