jpappas
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Posts posted by jpappas
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Nat,
You did a nice job on this! The way the arms and hands sway and follow-through are great! I didn't catch the shoulder thing until it was mentioned, but dropping the shoulders into a relaxed state and maybe getting them involved in leading the front and back motion of the arms would make it look even better.
This character has a large belly and I'm not sure how difficult it would be to add some up/down jiggle (is there a belly bone for that?) but it would finish it off perfectly.
-Jim
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Al,
I reread your post and can't quite tell if you mention this, but the most important thing about when you replace blank.tga with the new larger one, is that the aspect ratio remain the same. To make this even easier in your workflow just double or quadruple the size, don't go to a new arbritrary size. So if your blank.tga was 800x400, replace that with 1600x800, or 2400x1200. Or work backwards, if you know ahead of time you want the final decal to be 2000x1000, then start with a blank.tga that's 1000x500, or 500x250.
Yardie,
I see where you are coming from, but, I don't think this is that complicated a method, after all, I've been using it for a year now and I'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch.
The cylindrical method is easier to apply at first since you don't have to flatten and prepare the stamps, but harder in the end if you need to quickly add specific details to the decal in specific areas, and you want to do this by hand in a paint program with predictable results.-Jim
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Michel,
That wasn't obvious to me, thanks for sharing this tip!
-Jim
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Hi Nancy,
A thought occurred to me, it might be helpful. The Specular setting fakes the glint of a bright light, so if we stopped using the Specular setting on Tinman for the sake of good metal reflections, shouldn't the same look be achievable by actually putting an appropriately colored light in close enough proximity and intensity to Tinman so the Reflections show that glint the same way as the Specular faked it?
And if this works, then Tinman might have one or two Lights for this purpose always constrained to him, and in a Light List so it only shines on him, his own personal lighting that travels with him.
Just food for thought.
-Jim
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Hi,
I've done some work this morning on these Magic Glue scenes, adding the prop where needed, and fixing continuity errors in how Woot finds it. I've commited these to SVN.
Even though the KuKlip scene and set are undergoing change, my changes were just Woot animations and constraining the Magic Glue prop to his hands, so even if Woot is moved, these should still be helpful and at least establish a linear continuity of how he gets the glue.
Jason posted the "before" a few posts back, and here is the "after":
-Jim
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Hey guys,
I'm applying Rob's comments for this refinement shot, giving Tinman a C curve pose to start and ending him in a reverse C curve, making his hips lift and come back down as he takes a step forward, and changing the camera angle so he's not directly looking at us. I tried to make that crossed arms pose work but it wasn't quite feeling right. So I removed the crossed arms pose and instead have him slightly putting his hands on his hips.
I can see the timing of this needs adjustment, he should hold his initial pose a little more before jumping to the next, but I have to run for now. I'll try to adjust that for tomorrow and post a follow-up.
-Jim
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Hey guys,
Thanks for the comments. His arm movements are definately too linear, good catch. I changed it so the holding poses are held longer and the arm transitions happen quicker. It's subtle, but when I compare it to before it does look better.
Dhar,
I tried to rotate his hand to give it some lag but in the render it's not showing up very well if at all, I think I need to go back and exaggerate it.
-Jim
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Hi,
Looking at this even as I post it, I think Woot's follow through is too springy, I'll go back and smooth that. But basically in the original scene Woot was in a basic T pose, not animated at all, so I gave him a pose, put the Magic Glue in his hands, and I'm just having him glance at it, curious to what it is.
-Jim
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How do you use PS Action?
Hey Dhar,
Unzip that file and there's an HTML file that describes how to use it. It's real easy, you just have to put it in the right place so PS can find it, then open the action window, load it in, then run it on any picture.
-Jim
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Jim, I grant you that "power." Now go forth and correct the sins of this continuity.
I'm off and running!
-Jim
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Hi,
As you can in this small video that woot never grabs the glue.Actually, in 2_07_074 he does. Your cut contains this shot and shows that. The glue prop is not really there, but Woot is grabbing something and hiding it behind himself, that can only be the magic glue (I would assume the prop wasn't ready and just needs to be added in his hands later). In this whole scenario, it's the only thing Woot snatches from the desk -- so I figured that had to be it. If we're suggesting he's grabbing two things from the desk in succession... wouldn't that be confusing? It's just the glue I thought.
If this is the case, I'm assuming I'll finish my 2_07_076 to be continuous with that, Woot has already looked at the desk and snatched the glue and I'll make it so he's got it and is still hiding it behind his back or maybe just looking at it as he holds it in his hand.
Finally that still leaves the next shot, 2_07_077 as a break in continuity, because that shows Woot returning to the desk again. My offer is to change this too, just let me know. But for now I'll make sure 2_07_076 gets done.
thanks everyone!
-Jim
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Yves,
This is a free Photoshop Action which takes any picture and copies it to a new picture and overlays the Golden Mean as gold lines. It can serve as an easy, one step process to check the layout and composition of any picture.
It also contains an Action for the Rule of Thirds too. I must say after reading your explanation of this I feel you articulated what I've been thinking about it. That is, often a picture that clearly follows the Rule of Thirds can seem too obvious to me, especially in the placement of the horizon line.
I checked the copyright and this Action is free to distribute as long as you distribute the whole action intact, which I am.
-Jim
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Hi Rob,
I have two tasks this week, both are from 2_07, I have 2_07_076 and 2_07_086. The description is definately referring to the KuKlip scenes, they're both refinements on my own first take passes in fact. I haven't started them though, I was touching up 1_05_024 today. Are these assignments a mistake? I'll hold off working on them until I hear more.
Here's the 2_07_076 email:
Project: TWO Movie
Task: 2_07_076
Start Date: 27/11/2006 11:00 am
Finish Date: 05/12/2006 12:00 pm
URL: http://www.hash.com/dotproject/index.php?m...amp;task_id=792
Description:
KuKlip sadly talks about Nimmie Amee's departure. Woot stand on his toes, reaching for something on the workbench.KuKlip: "All that she left was a bottle of Magic Glue™..."
Creator:
Rhett Jackson, mordredc@mac.com
Owner:
Martin Hash, martin@hash.com
Once Woot is animated in this scene, Jim, I might approve it as a \"Take2\". I renewed the due date.Martin
-Jim
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I needed to do one more tweak that was bugging me. The chest went from floaty to poppy on the last update, so I smoothed that out here.
-Jim
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Hey Rodney,
Thanks! Using the upper eyelid controllers works fine, just had to remember to make them negative 100%.
I added the eye blinks and removed some of the floatiness of his chest. (spell checker is saying floatiness is not a word but I bet the spell checker never had to refine f-curves).
This is the scene I'm on the hot seat for this week. How does it look now? Anyone? Bueller?
-Jim
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Hi,
This week, Martin asked me to animate Woot in 2_7_76. Woot is standing behind KuKlip as KuKlip gives a line. I watched the clips from before and after this scene and there's a continuity problem.
According to the script, in 2_7_76 Woot is about to look at the table, which is how I would have normally animated him for this task. Next in 2_07_77 he actually searches the table -- and someone has animated that for 2_7_77, so far so good. But here it's a little cloudy, because presumably he grabs the magic glue at some point -- although the script doesn't say exactly when (see script below).
But the continuity problem is that before any of these scenes happen, back on 2_07_73, Woot has been animated for when he's about to search the desk, and he actually snatches the glue back on 2_07_74! So it doesn't make sense for him to start searching the desk again!
Proposed solution:
After watching these clips in order a few times, I really like how he was animated in 73 and 74 where he searches the desk and grabs the glue, and I prefer we keep that.
Then for my scene I'll have him hiding it behind his back and doing one of those "I'm just looking at the scenery-I didn't take anything!" poses.
Then to fix the continuity error, scene 2_7_77 needs to be redone (which I'm happy to do if that's OK with whomever did it the first time). Because right now, in 2_7_77 Woot is asking "what's magic glue?" but in the scene he's searching the desk for it again (even though he already has it). I think he should still be holding the glue behind his back to match 2_7_77, and he can ask his question directly, then glance like he's looking behind him a bit because he's holding it there. How does this sound? I don't want to work on this until an animation director or at least a majority of responders agree.
Script:
2_07_075
TIN WOODMAN
121 Do you know their names? The people she went away with?
2_07_076
KU-KLIP shrugs his shoulders.
KU-KLIP
122 All that she left was a bottle of Magic Glue…
2_07_077
WOOT is searches the top of a workbench.
KU-KLIP (OS) Taken from the Witch.
WOOT
123 What’s Magic Glue?
2_07_078
KU-KLIP
124 Oh! It’s a preparation with which to mend people when they cut themselves.
-Jim
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Hi folks,
I need to animate Woot in 2_7_76, in KuKlip's workshop. This set must have changed quite a bit since I last loaded 2_7_76, I had to go hunting for almost every prop and set model, but then it wanted an Action file, I think it was called kklip_workshop_inside.act or something like that, and I just can't find that anywhere!
Anyone know where to find this so I can continue loading this scene?
EDIT: I skipped loading the workshop action file, which finishes loading the scene and allows me to work on animating Woot and KuKlip. The workshop isn't quite there but... I'm assuming that's because whoever is assembling these with the action files must be changing them.
-Jim
PS. I wasn't sure where to put this call for help, here or in the TWO Sets forum. Wouldn't it be great if TWO had a "I need HELP" forum, where we can ask any blocking question like this and all people can see it. Then if answered, we can change the topic title to show RESOLVED. Just a thought.
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Will,
Thank you! I wanted to go back and fix that continuity problem but couldn't find time to revisit the shot.
BTW, this is an 85 Mb download! Is it uncompressed?
-Jim
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This is a refinement shot. One thing that has be stuck and I hope someone can help, when I have Tinman do his first blink his eyes never open again after that! So I left the blinks out for now so his eyes can be open. Has anyone run into this?
-Jim
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Yves,
That was a great post! It reminds me of what I've been reading from Keith Lango's blog too, if anyone wants to explore further and see example pictures and explanations of bad composition from popular CG movies:
http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=311
and for some good examples:
http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=372
-Jim
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Mike,
After using this for a few landscapes, I really like the shapes it generates but the thing that strikes me as being the biggest challenge is the high patch density (I don't mind that it's not a built in plugin at all, it's an easy to use tool and generates an A:M model, no problem there).
In the landscape picture I showed above, it's a great mountain range but the patch count was very high throughout, even on flatter areas. I found it didn't need to be, especially on the flatter areas but also on the mountain shapes too. I could go in by hand and delete quite a number of in-between splines and still maintain the same basic shape.
But doing that by hand is too tedious, so I stopped using it for awhile. I'd like to find that sweet spot of a good looking landscape model but with a reasonable patch count so I'm always interested in where this tool can go.
I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this.
thx!
-Jim
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George,
The poses look fine so far and the shooing motion is great. The one thing that bothers me about this is really just the camera view -- which I would suggest you might want to tweak before animating further. Rather than having Tinman right in the dead center of the frame, I would think he should be offset to the left so we can see more of where he is heading (the porch). But there's still the geese to get into the shot so it might take some trial and error to find a pleasing alternative. If you do a camera change, I'm assuming it will directly affect how you animate him and the geese which is why it might be good to consider it at this early stage.
PS. nice to see you still going strong even over the holidays! This was my first week I fell behind so I need to pick up steam and catch up.
-Jim
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hi,
There's a great follow along tutorial by Shaun Freeman on how to do a magnifying glass, I didn't find it in the Useful Links section of the Tutorials forum so I've attached it here (Rodney, can we add a link there for this?). After you unZip it, just click on the .html file to watch it. I think you'll need Macromedia Flash (free download) to watch it.
The Image Contests are for fun and to improve your skills, and there's also cool prizes for the winner, runner-ups, and another set of prizes for all who enter. These have included training tutorial DVDs, A:M books, etc... Here are the contests coming up:
Topic: "x-mas"
Deadline: December 1st
Topic: "heroes"
Deadline: January 1st.
Topic: "architectural"
Deadline: February 1st.
Topic: "hairy"
Deadline: March 1st.
If you want to enter, send your image via e-mail to Steve Sappington (steve@hash.com), and specify which contest it is for. He will send you an e-mail confirmation that he received it. The rules are that all the major work must be done using Animation:Master, but paint programs can be used for Texture map creation, and slight adjustments to the image.
-Jim
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George,
I'm still trying to get my head around why this scene was cut in two with an overlap, that is odd isn't it?!
But you matched it perfectly. It's helpful that the render size changes at the overlap, I was able to scrub it back and forth in Quicktime, and again, it looks totally smooth.
-Jim
What's the best way to deal with Ik on off popping?
in TWO Animating
Posted
George,
That was my original scene, and since you are assigned to polish it, you can obviously choose to just blow away and redo the whole thing.
But this situation makes me wonder why the heck I devoted a weekend of my free time on it in the first place. On my original post, Dhar and Ken made a few nice comments on it and suggested some polishing, but I didn't get the idea it would be destroyed in total.
-Jim