Aminator
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Posts posted by Aminator
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For the purposes of this simple script, you can use a small standalone DOS Perl interpreter. I have a copy here:
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Jack didn't mention that he never slept during those 10 days.
Mostly while rendering
Some more time-saving tricks I used:
- the coral pieces were just cookie-cut decals on very simple, mostly-flat models.
- the sea grass was a hair material on a single patch under the sea floor (which is why their bases move around a bit instead of staying rooted in one place, oh well). A couple of width keys and color keys kept the appearance from being too boring. The waving was done by setting a few keys on the four corner hair guides.
- depth-of-field effects were done during compositing in Premiere
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I've gotten a request for my script to split muscle poses into left and right sub-poses, as suggested by Jason Osipa in his "Stop Staring" book. The script was previously mentioned in these threads:
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=7595
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=4436
You'll need a Perl interpreter to run this. Basic instructions are attached, let me know if you have any problems.
I've tested it with versions 10.5 and 11.1, on a PC. In theory it should work with Mac Perl as well.
[i could swear I attached the zip file the first time... anyway, here it is]
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Awesome. Nice camera placement/composition as well.
I'm intrigued by the two patches on the wall. Is that where they got hit by window tax?That's where the paintings were stolen from, right?
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The fish models and textures look great.
Thanks. I had a simple cartoon fish model (the one I used for the winning Q2 '03 Hash animation contest entry) and used Phil Leavens clever 3D rotoscope idea
http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12790
to rework that over the 3ds polygon models I received. Then I found hi-res textures on the net, and made good use of the UV editing feature to line those up.
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your client must also be very "hands off"
He said I had "full creative control", although he did vote for the realistic approach (if I had more time, I would have sold him on a second fish lip-syncing the narration).
I knew as soon as it started that the fishies would die at the end..At one point I had them turning around swimming back to safe water, but it didn't fit the narration. Also thought about having an "angel" swim away from the lifeless body. In the end I just added a little fade away to soften the effect. I may try animating specularity on the eye as they die too.
where/how/when will it be shown?The project is for the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center. Don't know when it opens, probably early April.
Did you use caustics or did you fake it somehow?I cheated. There are only 3 lights: a backlight sun, a seafloor bouncelight sun, and a primary klieg. The primary is the only one casting shadows. I rendered a grayscale noise material, applied it as a transparency decal on a square patch, and animated the patch moving around between the light and the scene. For the freshwater scene, there are two instances of this "caustic gobo" moving around to make the caustics more active and random.
Another neat trick was to use "orient like" with lag to animate the flapping tails and fins - I only had to animate one bone to get a nice whip action on the fins. And I used a repeated action for the longer swimming sections, with the background rendered in a separate layer.
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Stunning!
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I just completed a job to produce two one-minute animations about water salinity, osmosis, and fish, for a museum kiosk. I was given the soundtrack, 3ds models of a fresh and saltwater fish, and 10 days to design, model, animate, render (at 1024x768), add close-caption text, and composite the animations. I'm satisfied with the results (the client is thrilled), considering the time limitation (with one person, one computer). I used just about everything in A:M's box of tricks to pull it off.
Low-res renders can be seen here (4MB Sor3 QT):
http://www.digins.com/jack/s2f_small.mov
http://www.digins.com/jack/f2s_small.mov
Here is one of the 2D animatics I threw together very quickly to plan out the animation (with some more amusing ideas that were discarded for more realism):
http://www.digins.com/jack/salt2fresh_2d.mov
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And his splines...
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And now the chicken's friend:
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the legs and wings don't have the same texture as the body
Yeah, I'll probably change that. Anyone have tips on "feathery" textures? (I tried a few short-hair experiments, nothing looking very good yet...)
Also, it might help to make the legs connected to the bodyI'll probably skip that for this guy, unless it gives me grief animating.
I've been looking for a cartoon chicken model for quite a while. Any chance I could swipe it from you?Sure thing - I'll contact you privately.
first thing I noticed was the eyes and most of my attention was focused on themYou're right. I copy/pasted them from a different model, and they don't quite fit in yet. I'm not sure if I want to try and integrate them into the head better or what.
Thanks, folks.
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Here's the "chicken-wire" spline mesh.
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Hi, everyone.
I'd really like critiques on this new model for my next short. I'm looking for a somewhat cartoony and simple look suitable for some loose, squashy-stretchy animation. Comments about improving appeal or style would be especially appreciated. I'll probably do some texturing and surface tweaking, but not a whole lot.
Yeah, I know... wireframe. Comin' up next.
Thanks!
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It's a Post effect, right? Create in the Post PWS section and drop onto the camera.
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Thanks for all the support!
I don't have a version on-line at the moment, I'll have to put one back up. The final version is about the same as what I posted here (wow, all the way back in July?) except higher-res. It was also included in the Portland Indy Animation Festival, but didn't get nominated for any awards there.
I had to just add Nicktoons to my DirectTV service so I can watch it (and the competition).
Okay, here it is (let's see if, for once, I can get the URL right on the first try...):
http://www.digins.com/jack/crktsmall.mpg (8MB MPEG-1)
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I just got word that my A:M short "Playing Cricket" was accepted for the Nicktoons Film Festival, and will air on Dec. 26!
I'm not sure if they're saving the best for last, or scraping the bottom of the barrell...
Sorry, Zach, but that $10K prize would pay for quite a few years of A:M subscriptions
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Cant bones be connected in a "Y" configuration?
Yes, but "connect to parent" mainly refers to the IK chain, which can't be branched.
Just put the second arm bone staring at the same spot and it will behave the way you want. Actually, you probably *don't* want the first arm to be IK-chained to the torso anyway.
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In your action or chor, expand the model shortcut user properties line. You should see your pose slider properties there. Select one and it should appear in both the PWS window timeline and the TimeLine window timeline.
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This sounds like a job for expressions, setting rotation (roll would be easiest) of each part in a conditional expression based on the rotation of the overall joint.
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Hmm... Then I would have to make spherical constraints too to keep it from rotating on the y and z axis though, and to do that I would have to make bones
Use "aim ROLL at" and orient the bone vertically in your tree with the roll handle sticking out of the plane.
Sprites also always face the camera, if you want to setup a static sprite.
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Did you check your model ambiance and chor settings?
From the manual:
The glow is the color of the base attribute of the model, and the intensity of the glow is controlled by the Ambiance value, and the radius of the glow is a property of the Choreography. -
The last time I tried this, it appeared that the near/far settings in the *render settings* dialog are the ones that matter, and they don't track the camera's settings. So you have to adjust the camera settings to get the bars where you want, then manually copy the values to the render options dialog before rendering.
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is there a way to set my render settings so hair is not displayed at all
Sure, "draw hair/particles" is a render setting, right? Shift-8 toggles it on and off easily. (Just be sure to toggle it back on before starting a final render, I hate when I forget that...)
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Hmm, reply timed out, trying again...
Make sure your compositor knows the targa files have a *premultiplied* alpha.
Thom gets some exercise
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Nice experiment. If you want to take it further, here are some ideas:
On the first step:
- anticipate, at least a little, e.g. bending the knees a bit
- the upper body shouldn't be frozen - e.g. the arms might swing to our left by momentum; the hips, torso, and head should lean to adjust balance
On the one-leg balance:
- tilt the neck/head to keep it balanced over the foot (heads are heavy!)
For most of the second half, the body is doing a slow, steady droop. It's called "floating" - unrealistic, computery-perfect motion and something we have to constantly watch for and fix.