robcat2075
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Posts posted by robcat2075
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Great book on why people have so many bad drawings in them, and how to reduce that number. It's all about properly interpreting what you see and not replacing it with symbolic placeholders.
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards
That would go along way towards making things that look like what you want.
Having said that, I agree with Rodney, practice is essential. Being aware of what you're really doing while you're practicing is what makes the practice valuable.
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I'll put away my train wreck helmet and say I'm proud to have been a small part of it. It was very flattering to be asked to join in, particularly since I had not demonstrated the ability to do more than four or five seconds of animation in a week. Perhaps Zach was just desperate. None-the-less it fulfilled a long-time goal of mine that I might some day good enough to be asked to work on someone else's project.
I can't help but think that if we had roped in even just one more animator we would have made the 48 hour mark. It was exciting trying. Fence-sitters: you missed out.
I'm sure some people will sniff at this because it's not ultra detailed and textured 3D. Screw them.
I'm very impressed by the script Zach et al. produced in no time at all. I know people who are actually employed as writers who couldn't crank out a genre parody with all the elements in two months, never mind two hours.
And I am most envious that Zach has such a creative entourage of friends that can contribute to his projects. My friends think they're being creative if they replace their avocado refrigerator with a stainless steel one.
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That looks like a lot of good detail work and will probably really come to life with some aged textures on it.
I'm not sure what is holding the barrel up, though, is there some part still to be modeled or am i just not interpreting the picture right?
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This weeks four-hour animation topic was "Swim." Any old swim. I was still frazzled from ZachBG's animation fire drill last weekend, so I made this as relaxing as possible.
See it on my Showdown Page.
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Didn't see the clip. but I have read in the past that Dick Van Dyke is an enthusiastic 3D hobbyist, and uses the L app. Probably a pastime he picked up after he stopped drinking.
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Thanks, all, for the positive feedback!
Actually four hours is a good time frame for me, I have a hard time staying focused after that. But the thing that is killing me on these is getting the overlapping motions to look right.must be dificult working in such a short time frame.
Shamed confession: it's really a dynamic constraint simulation. But it's free animation and I'll take it! It does help glide through the awkward pauses. Many thanks to the Hash programmer who devised that doodad!what really stands out is the head attenna movement.
If there were any real workMust be great practice so when the real work needs to be done... ... I'm think it's just going to be a hobby. But i would encourage anyone interested in character animation to do the animation showdown at digitalrendering.com. They're really the same sort of exercises you'd get in an animation class and much of the same feedback, usually blistering.
I imagined it, then practiced it on a milk crate to test out where everything would have to be flung for it to work. (That one took an extra three hours to completely animate the boxes falling and bouncing on the ground.) One of the criticisms on the Showdown forum was that it looked too much like a circus performer.I especially liked "getdown30"... Did you see a circus performer do that, or does it come from your imagination?
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I dimly recall that when they came out with "expressions" one example of usefulness they cited was that you might write an expression to scale toonlines in relation to the distance of the model from the camera.
Not sure if that expression could apply to a whole model or if you'd need to do that expression for every toon-invoking material you applied to the model.
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Actually the Showdown topic was "Injured Walk" but my 3D thesaurus says that's lame.
See it on my Showdown Page.
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I believe ( I don't have A:M up to check) this has something to do with "ease"
Add your first action, then set the "ease" in the properties for the path constraint to 0% at the beginning and 100% at the end
Then when you add your second action, the first one's duration on the path won't get changed.
I think...
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thanks, guys!
It was a stuntfish.You forgot to say no goldfish were harmed in this animation.
Yeah, this is a case where reference footage would be really helpful to study. Couldn't get the dog to balance the fishbowl for me, though. The cat said he'd try but I think he had another agenda.The fishbowl looks like its being pushed from side to side by his nose rather than the subject of a tricky balancing act.
I hear there's a pill for that now, but the ads say animation lasting more than four hours requires prompt medical attention.My problem is I either can't last 4 hours or else I need much much more time....
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I think the thing you most need to improve is... the compression!
Seriously, 4 megs for a 4 second clip is way, way huge.
Do this next time
-render to targas
-right click their icon in the PWS
-choose Save Animation As...
-choose to save it as a Quicktime movie
-click "compression"
-choose Sorenson 3
-set quality to high
-Keyframe every 120 frames
-limit data rate to 80KB/second (that's a very high setting)
Those settings got your clip down to a tenth of it's original size; it could be slimmed much more.
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I've not tried really good eyes yet; there seem to be many different tactics. But the A:M matrix has some things that might get you started
http://www.lowrestv.com/arm/search3.asp?So...esc&keyword=eye
You should also do a search in some other 3D software's forums, since the techniques will probably be applicable.
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This weeks opus for the four-hour animation showdown. The topic was "juggling."
I've re-rendered it here for motion blur and an extra bounce at the end. And mood music.
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Ok, my first short short character short.
circa 1997
It has a beginning and an end. A middle too. And it fit on a flip book.
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To encourage the potentially-interested-but-cautious animators out there to get on board...
Although there's no shortage of collaborative projects that have been proposed around here, this one appealed to me because:
- It has a definite beginning and end. My commitment can't possibly drag on past that one day.
- It's low risk. If it turns out great... Great! If it's a train wreck, I doubt anyone's career would be damaged.
- The organizer has previous success. He has both (A) completed good, winning animations in the past (he understands the process) and (B ) completed an entry for this 48-hour contest before (he understands the challenging timeline involved). These are promising indicators.
It's fun to collaborate with people when the above are in place. Most animation is a solitary pursuit, this is a chance to work with people.
If you have a block of time free on Sat, May 8 write zach@brewstergeisz.cjb.net and tell him you're interested!
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The biggest problem with a state of the system is it leaves you with no excuses.
Sounds like a great system. I know you'll enjoy the faster response over what you're using now.
I think "new computer smell" is one of my favorites.
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Did the last suggestion in this thread not solve it?
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are they four 2-point splines? If that's what you joined, then they all merged into one (4-point) spline (in the mind of the software) when you connected them end-to-end. To render, a patch must be made from more than one spline.
In the extrusion example you cite, it looks similar, but the software understands that the new splines it is creating are not supposed to be merged. Thus you have more than one spline, and a legal patch.
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An essential bit of info is missing... Are you trying to do IK arms or FK arms in this instance? If you're grabbing a forearm ("radius" in TSM) that suggests you have TSM set for FK arms because the radius isn't supposed to be visible in IK mode.Does anyone know how to go about limiting the elbow joint?However, if you have TSM set to FK arms, grabbing the radius to move it as if it were an IK bone isn't something you should be doing. FK bones (someone correct me if I'm wrong) are meant to only be positioned by the XYZ rotate manipulators at their base.
So if you're starting out with the T pose, all you need to do to move the arm without the elbow bending is choose the humerus bone, hit R, then use the red, green , blue or yellow circles that appear to move the arm into position. That's if you're really in FK mode.
I don't want it to bend backwards.By that do you mean that you don't want it to do the normal bend where the elbow is pointing to the back?
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The big sweep seems much improved from the last version i saw.
So how many hours on this clip so far?
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I think that's a cool "graphic" title sequence spider. I hope the thespians love it. The quick drop doesn't bother me at all. Don't change it.
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No, don't confuse Zach with me... his was much better!
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Walking a "Tightrope" was the topic this week. But my guy ended up looking more like he's waiting for some clown on a trapeze to take him out.
See it on my showdown page (QT 95K Sorenson3)
My "plan" was to break up the walking action with these "unbalanced" poses, but I never got them to work together and in hindsight, that was too much of a "make animation" solution and not enough of a "character animation" solution.
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I really admire that piece. Quite Snappy!
-What part of the production process is "imposing"?
-I think you might have saved on rendering time by not doing fields. (I always felt field rendering detracted from a film-like look.)
-Here in the USA the client would probably come back and say "less bottle... more phone number!" Or they'd be afraid someone might sue them after trying to use a bottle of water to make an emergency phone call.
Great work!
I can't model for &)%$%. Should I learn to draw?
in (2003-2004)
Posted · Edited by robcat2075
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