robcat2075

[quote]Here are the maps[/quote] Very impressive results. The map reminds me of the face on the Shroud of Turin. Gee, you don't suppose...

Clever process. I'm surprised it yields effective bump maps, but obviously it does.

Very impressive. How much of the drapery is mapping and how much is geometry? Either way looks challenging.

Fine looking models. Which one plays the violin?

ok, here's something that bothers me... ;) his hand strikes the table, and although it dips with the table for one frame, after that it hangs frozen above the surface, while the table continues to vibrate. A temporary "translate to" constraint with an offset would make an easy fix.

What a lot of wonderful looking assets you have created for your project! They look fabulous! They really do. And i love the idea that it's about Ravel! To me, the bits of animations you have up look too... "over smooth"? Perhaps the poses aren't extreme enough? perhaps they aren't held long enough? perhaps they have too many inbetweens? perhaps there isn't enough "anticipation" to the moves? I'm not sure. But when he closes the briefcase, it's a very slight move and the case closes without any feeling that it stopped because the two halves have met each other. Ok, this is Ravel, he's a dreamy "impressionist" , but i think a lot of CG floats in the "dreamy" mode a bit too long. On the other hand, I've only seen a few seconds. You may very well intend to balance out this with different animation in other parts of the film. I'm looking forward to seeing more!

even with subtitles it's hard to judge, but perhaps he's moving a bit too mercurially for a weak, old man? Or is that "irony"? it's an interesting look, it's got that east european stop-motion look going on. The modeling of only four fingers per hand on such a human character bothers me but that's outside the lipsynch issue.

I found the presentation informative to watch. Thanks! :D Where i work we do a lot of training camtasias (nothing this interesting) that we put into products we sell. If I had to hold you to the standards we need here, I'd make the following comments... 1- resize your screen and redo the capture at 800x600. the current capture (1024x768?) requires me to resize my screen to 1280x1024 in order to access the quicktime control buttons. Many monitors, including mine, can only do that resolution at 60Hz, which is flickery and tiresome to watch. Careful placement of your toolbars and windows should make 800x600 a feasible area to do the presentation. I think Anzovin does their videos at that size. 2 - practice your presentation so you can do it without any verbal mis-steps. you might be able to cut a minute out of the running time that way, which would be good for your end user who's downloading it. Don't read it from a script, however. 2b - I do like it when you explicitly identify a keyboard shortcut you are using ("press h to hide..."). Always do that. 3 - the audio is echoey. My home office is a bare plaster wall room which sounds awful to record in. On the occassions when I've had to lend my voice to something, I throw a comforter over my my desk, my PC, the microphone and myself... instant recording studio! Not perfect, but a substantial audio improvement. 4 - since this tut is about the general concept of flattening and not about flattening this specific model, if you have some editing capability (FinalCut, Premiere, AfterEffects...) you might consider time-condensing (fast-forwarding) the sections where you are repositioning CPs around the lips and chin. You've already explained the reason and method while doing the nose, and since the other two areas don't present any complications that weren't present in the nose, they could be sped up without the viewer missing anything. If your editing software won't let you speed things up, a dissolve from initial state to completed state for the two areas might work also. I've seen Anzovin do this on their videos. This would also cut down your ultimate file size. [b]Thanks again for doing this![/b] :) I think these video tuts are a big advance over still screen captures in HTML. Maybe a hassle for some people to download because of their size, but i have DSL.

I always thought this one was a bit self-indulgent. Fine production values but it sure is a long way to go for the one gag at the end.

Remember that awful model search contest program Lorenzo Lamas was a judge on? He'd get his laser pointer out and harp about women who had too much space between their thighs. :o Third-tier celebrities are reknown for their expertise on the female form. :D

I like the character. The proportions remind me somewhat of Gerry Anderson's "Supermarionation" characters (minus the strings, a 60's thing). What would ultimately be necessary to eliminate the aliasing of the hair strands? Would scaling down a larger render do it? Also, the geometry on the very top of the head looks unusual (lots of apparently three point patches). Are we really looking at two layers of geometry there; something to do with generating the hair?

i love that grimace that sharks always seem to have. I hope you'll add some gills. I suppose they could be an image map but modeling them would look cooler. I realize splicing them in will invite more spline problems but it's a learning opportunity anyway, right?

What a charming, charming idea! Just to second and third previous comments, a cartoony thing like this would benefit from more snap. Longer holds at the main poses and fewer inbetweens getting from one pose to the next. Monkeys are pretty snappy creatures anyway right? But what I'm really curious about is why your video source was at 29fps? 29.97fps I could understand, but how did you obtain something running at 29?

No, for all it's excesses, Nortel never had a 20 piece swing band on staff.

IDL stood for Interactive Distance Learning. This is an opening I made to start off training broadcasts we used to do back when Nortel was somewhat richer than it is today. It was meant to represent the Distance Learning concept of people from various locations gathering "virtually" (a real happening word at the time) to hear from a remote instructor. I did everything except the video montage near the end. I think I was using A:M v5 at the time for the 3D, Strata MediaPaint for the fireballs and Adobe After Effects to tie it all together. The music is from a library we licensed. Links you can right-click on to download in QT or WMV appear on: http://www.brilliantisland.com/demoreels/demoreels.htm (under "IDL Open")

The cross-eyed appearance, even when they are looking straight ahead, contributes to their "cute" factor, but i think it's going to give you trouble when you have to animate them in a glance to either side. The pupil on the outside eye is going to disappear. Yes you can always swing the full head to point at whatever... but such nice characters should have subtler options available to them.

What an interesting look and feel to this work! I do very much admire it. I'm uneasy about the voices, however. This is obviously a story in a fantasy setting. Great "suspension of disbelief" is required of the audience to buy into it all and the everyday, middle-america quality of the voices is working against that goal. I'm wishing for voices with more "character". No, they don't all have to have old english accents or adopt speech impediments... but something extra is needed from the voices to fuse them with the characters we are seeing. I remember Ralph Bakshi did something called "Wizzards" a long time ago (the 70's), with very flat , expressionless voices. Maybe it was a reaction to all the highly exaggerated voices that populated cartoons at the time, but when i watch it today, it adds an element of tedium to an already iffy film.