robcat2075
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Posts posted by robcat2075
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those legs are the scariest part
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[Would you be able to explain that in greater detail. Say for example I wanted to make the rabbit step to the right, one foot at a time. Could you take me through it step by step please?
Ok, but you have to promise that next time someone asks this, you're going to do the explaining.
[attachmentid=20563]
the project
[attachmentid=20565]
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I always figured the notion of having your body parts replaced with tin ones was just a convenient fantasy invention of L Frank Baum. However...
It turns out that tin prosthetics for people with severe facial injuries was an established practice about that time.
Link to film showing them molding, fitting and painting replacement chins, noses, brows and ears to soldiers injured in WWI:
Tin Facial Prosthetics by Ladd and Wood (low bandwidth clip, link to larger version on same page)
Wild stuff. Another reminder that the dead aren't the only victims of war.
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Some textures to make her look more... insectoid? Not sure what to suggest.
I recall she had lots of slime. Probably hard to do in CG.
You'd probably get more feedback in the WIP forum.
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I think that's just the standard way of demonstrating a renderer's AO ability without other visual details hiding anything.and why are so many of them no gloss white? Maybe... color takes too long?Co-incidentally I was just talking with Martin today about "the renderer".
He said if a qualified 3rd party programmer wanted to try to implement a new rendering scheme they would support it (in the sense that they could extend the SDK if it was necessary) although they couldn't finance it.
Much in the way that they cooperated with the programmer of the 3D Paint program.
So if you really want this to be investigated, a programmer is your first step.
The gallery images look fine. Can someone benchmark some rendering times for equivalent images between Sunflower and A:M?
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That is a fabulous tiger!
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If I animate his right foot to go up lets say between frames oo.oo.oo - oo.oo.15 and I then do his left from 00.00.15 - 00.01.00 they both go up around the same time.
aggravatingly short answer... If you want something to stay in place for a while then move you need 3, not two key frames.
1 when you want it to start being in one place
2 another in the same place when it stops being in one place
3 another when you want it to be at that new place
In other words, objects are always moving between keyframes, so if you want one to appear stationary you have to give it two keyframes that are really in the same place.
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Try this first.... hit "Page Up" a few times.
You might be in low poly mode (looks rougher but plays faster)
Hit "Page Down" to get rough again.
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Thanks for your comments!
I think some of the lip sync could be made stronger
Yes, I spent many hours sliding things around trying to get them to look tighter and when one thing improved it seemed like something next to it got worse. So what you see here is the point where I said "f--- it".
If I ever get my enthusiasm back I think I'll blow away all those keys and redo it from scratch.
Or maybe just have him fall out of the car before he says anything.
No, part of the enrollment agreement was that we not redistribute any of the AnimationMentor materials. Even though it's not the original Maya model there were total hysterics when I told them I had included it in a bug report to Hash.Could he be added to the "Extra's DVD?Oh well, at least now I can say i've gotten a personal phone call from Bobby Beck.
It's more of a "bowing" capability on each bone. It's a way of softening up the lines of a character, especially on something like this that's basically a stick figure.Do the arms have joints midway down the forearm?It was hairy getting that to work on the arms that have to be able to twist and stretch and bow in any arbitrary combination.
Here's a frame showing bowed and unbowed.
[attachmentid=20505]
I overdid it in places. One theory says you're not supposed to do it so much that it is noticed.
I think I read that this is something first done on "the Incredibles", but I could be wrong about that.
spartan it is and spartan it will stay, I'm afraid. The assignment was just about the character so any other elements were pretty basic. I did consider shooting some background video from my car and compositing that in, but getting that to match would be a major project in itself.Are you going to composite the background and interior of the vehicle or is the intention to have it spartan? -
Nice clip.
One thing I might suggest, if you are reworking it - is to have the drop be "more drop shape" as it first emerges from the faucet - then transform into the tank shape as it "hits" the perceived ground.
Yeah, have it bounce off the ground, then spring into it's new shape.
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My first dialog test was about tasteful and restrained acting choices. Not this one.
I did this last year but I'm only now getting around to trying to light it and add a "background". Before you had to pretend it was night and that the car was moving.
The dialog is Frederic March and Myrna Loy in The Best Years of our Lives. The sound effect was taken from The Palm Beach Affair.
[attachmentid=20481]
I never quite got it to look like my "vision" of how it would all work, but I'm pleased with it.
Update: I don't want to leave the impression that I did this in one sitting or one week or entirely on my own. For the very curious, I've compiled all the versions of this assignment that I turned in over the nine weeks that I worked on it along with some explanatory notes between each iteration. You can watch it go from the pathetic larval stage to the all-talking, all-swinging, all-falling stage I posted above.
The mentor comments, positive and negative, were far more substantial than I present here and had a lot to do with this animation having a successful result, but I can't remember them all now.
[attachmentid=20903] (H.264 format)
As I look through these now, I see some touches that got lost in the polishing and I should try to recapture. I also see that my concept of the performance changed quite a bit and I was lucky to have the time to experiment.
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start a project in WIP forum, post screen caps as you go, and ask for suggestions.i want to get better at this. any suggestions?If you're making a model from some reference picture post that too so people will know what you're going for.
I know people will jump in to help.
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If you just did the tut and saved a .prj then the model is probably embedded inthe project.
If you actually went thru the op of saving the model as a separate file then it's not embedded. but then you'd have a .mdl file somewhere on your dirve that you could load independently of the project.
if you "Windows>close all" the windows in A:M and then double click on your model under "objects", what happens?
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If worse came to worse you could always save your project, which we presume to contain the model (unless it's not embedded), and then extract the model portion in a text editor and paste it into a blank model file and reload that.
Not easy to explain, so I'll let someone else try
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So what stupid, silly thing am I not doing?
Try opening up the "project workspace" window (ALT+1) and double click on your model under "objects"
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Is Sorensen Video 3 a better compression than animation for quicktime.
Yes.
I recommended Sorensen 3 because it compresses quite a bit while retaining decent quality. This is important for files that people will be downloading off the web. It's faster to compress and it also doesn't require the large computing power to play back that H.264 does. This will be less of an issue as people migrate to faster CPUs but we still have users here who can't play H.264 file well. H.264 can make smaller files, though.
"Animation" codec's compression is quite poor and makes huge files. It's best use is for footage that you don't want compressed (because you're going to compress it later with some other program), that needs an alpha channel (It's the only QT codec that supports that) and an attached sound track (if one didn't need attached sound, a numbered targa sequence would be a better output choice) and will only be used locally, not posted on the web. Rendering footage that you would later use in a video editing program to make yet another file would be an example of this.
"Animation" may be the default because it's first on the codec list and quicktime just automatically goes there when it's first run.
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Hi Lori,
Looks like you got the motion working!
The black sky is from having "Alpha channels" on in your render settings AND using the "Animation" codec in your quicktime compression settings.
turn them off on this panel and also access quicktime compression settings there
[attachmentid=20351]
and try these settings:
[attachmentid=20349]
Vary the KB/sec setting to something like 100 or 200 to vary quality
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What if these two things could be totally separate? Someone could rig and tweak CPs (subtle very subtle) while someone else could decal.
The two could be merged.
According to Martin, that's what SVN does. No checking out required.
That's how the code for A:M is done too. Everyone is working on different parts and then it gets shuffled together.
Scary, huh?
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Which bones are you using to get the angles to rotate without the bottom of the feet moving like that?
I was using the knee pointers to nudge his legs into different shapes. That was last year's scarecrow. Does the current model not have knee pointers?
I think that's "it".Is that his claim to fame - or is he known for something else? -
Hmm....
does this open up any possibilities for a new type of work flow? Could this be an advantage somehow?
Being able to animate or rig a "finished" model... while... someone else could texture... then combine the two...
that's what the whole SVN thing is about, no?
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my floppy scarecrow test from last year.
[attachmentid=20340]
A lot of floppiness is in "overlap". Somewhat harder to convey since you only show him from the waist down.
On thing I notice about the walk is the hips are gliding thru it without weight; get that going sooner rather than later.
Your overlap poses for floppiness will be dragged out of shape if you move the hips later. Actually in any walk you want to get the hip positions and foot contacts done early.
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Like David Bernal?
(the guy in the orange shirt)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7325141077711090283
and in the Pepsi Samba commercial
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I'm not sure I "see" what you're going for yet. A bow-legged look?
Everything about the way the scarcrow's legs are modeled is so anatomically "normal" that trying to make him appear otherwise...
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as for tracking the wrist, I think your tracker was relating it to the ground, which is why the swings looked flat, but if you relate it to the hips, you'll see the pendelum effect, yes?
That probably isn't the way the audience will experience it but let's look at it that way...
[attachmentid=20305]
The forward swing is somewhat arclike, less so the back swing.
But one thing I notice now is the rather steady speed the wrist travels thru most of the swing. It has the appearance of fighting some sort of resistance.
It does do some ease in and ease out at the extremes but something doesn't feel right.
typical pendulum motion:
[attachmentid=20306]
Did woot lose an eyeblink in this version?
update: which of these pendulums looks like it is swinging freely? and why?
[attachmentid=20307]
Translating objects pivot in the Chor
in New Users
Posted
I think not. Not like you can do in the modeling window.
There may be a way to simulate this with a bone in the model, but offhand... not sure.