williamgaylord

Here is a new sample of things to come. This is a rendering with one of the new branches and a brownstone apartment in the background. The lighting was done using ArtBox Animation's SkyCast. I must say I am very pleased with the results. The stems of the leaves are now just splines rendered as lines. Saved a load of patches to render! Let me know what you think of it. I may render an animation of the branch growing in this light. Stay tuned! Bill Gaylord

Interesting hair growth animation. You should try a wolfman with this! Bill Gaylord

Hit a snag with patch count and limited computer resources. Experimented a bit with V11.0 and hair, but it's not quite ready for what I'm after. I have reworked a branch of my model to reduce patch count and increase leaf coverage at the same time. Here is an old branch with 2772 patches and 168 leaves: Here is the new branch with 1104 patches and 240 leaves: I basically reduced the patch count by replacing the leaf cluster stems with rendered lines. I further reduced the count by reducing the lathe cross section of the branch forms to 4. Thats a 60% reduction in patch count with a %43 increase in the number of leaves. I think I will make the trees smaller with fewer branches, too. My workhorse computer became terminally ill recently. Took this as an excuse to build a new one: AMD Athlon64 3400 with 1G of RAM and 240G of hard disk space. Maybe that will help some, too. Wish me luck getting the project done! Bill Gaylord

Nice work. It's experiments like this that can lead can lead to some really innovative art. I certainly appreciate work like this which pushes the bounds. If you haven't seen it you should check out Stephen Bruce's aloe vera plant animation for some inspiration! Aloe Vera I think what you are doing will lead to more efficient ways to do a whole flower bed. Thanks for the help so far in developing the use of "hair" for leaves, too. Keep up the good work! Bill Gaylord

Here is a zipped copy of the "Tube Monster" project so you can see how the model works. It's not very sophisticated and its range of motion is very limited in terms of bending (it can't curl around something like a tentacle), but even its limited motion can be used effectively in the right context. TubeMonster project file Still not as cool as the other monsters posted in this thread though. Nice work folks! How about some Frankenstein's monster like parts? Bill Gaylord

This is cool! A "Build-a-Monster" kit! Here's a monster that is about as simple as they get: a tube! Give it some teeth an a victim and you have yourself a monster movie (albeit a short one). I can share a project of the model and rig. Tube of Death I want to redo this one from the pilot's viewpoint later. Bill Gaylord

Nice work, John! Looks like a fun project. Cozy looking little prefabs! I think your client will be very pleased with these illustrations. My only suggestions (very minor): 1) Give the pool water at least a slight ripple. Looks a bit too much like (hard) glass. 2) I agree with Yves about needing just a touch of warmer light (not that I'm an expert by any stretch of the imagination!). Great work! I hope I can make the brownstones in my tree animation look half as good. Great job of landscaping too...love the trees and plants! Bill Gaylord

These are great!! Love the cloth tree! Great example of "things aren't quite what you expect". Very interesting adaptations of hair. I think we need a new contest category like, maybe, "The most unusually inventive things done with Animation Master". Or "Pushing the Bounds"... Very interesting work, John and Mark. Bill Gaylord

Cool! Great looking toon trees! Nice to see that V11 has what we need for making windblown trees. Much better progress than I've made today. I've managed to crash V11b a number of times just during renders. Not sure what is happening. Did discover that the "leaf stretching" problem wasn't a problem when rendering in the Choreography. Then I tweaked the lighting setup and things started crashing. Wish me luck! Bill Gaylord

Mark, Don't know if you read my latest post in the Animation Master discussions "Creating leaves with hair?", but I ran into a problem when using hair with my "growing stick" rig. The leaves follow the group if I rotate or move the stick, but if I use the pose slider that lengthens the stick the leaves don't follow. They simply stretch (even when rendered). Have you noticed any similar behavior? Got any ideas about how to avoid this or fix it? I have sent the project files to the Hash support folks, so I expect they will figure it out soon. Thanks! Bill Gaylord

These are great! I think we are headed for some really fantastic animated plants. The next step would be adding dynamics to some of the outer branches to complete the wind effect. Very encouraging! Bill Gaylord

That is very encouraging. I think there is a lot of potential here! How fast does in render? Bill Gaylord

Just what I'm looking for! I'll have to learn how to do that. Nice work! Bill Gaylord

Woweeee! !!! That must be a load of patches total, but looks fantastic! Let us know the patch count. My humble brownstone appartments are about 38,000 patches each (could likely be trimmed quite a bit as I put a lot of detail into things like the railings). But a whole city block! Wow! Love the "Metropolis" feel to it. Bill Gaylord

Purchased SkyCast recently. Here is a test render using my brownstone apartment model. I'm realy pleased with the results. Look forward to seeing the trees in this light! Thanks to all who've helped so far! Bill Gaylord

That is a very odd, but fascinating result. Reminds me of how molten glass behaves. A "failure" that could lead to something far more interesting! Bill Gaylord

Here is an update. I'm now assembling in earnest. Building the trees along the street. This is about 40 minutes work, though I expect I'll be able to assemble each tree in about an hour a piece by the time I get to the other end of the street. In hindsight I would have put more leaves on each branch, but it was hard to judge early on in the development. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to render 9 trees and 9 brownstone appartments. I put a lot of detail into the appartment model. This is not an excercise in work flow efficiency. It is certainly "breaking new ground" (pun very much intended ). Although it looks complicated, the tree model is actually rather surprisingly simple in terms of its basic elements. Its just that there are so many of them. It should be fairly straightforward to automate. (Hint, hint, Marcel...or anyone else who might be interested.) Wish me luck! And any suggestions are very welcome. Sincerely, Bill Gaylord

Love how effectively you animated the eyes. It's amazing how much drama can be concentrated in those tiny orbs! Great example for inspiration. When I get back to character animation, I'm going to try out the proxy idea. Too bad my current project doesn't lend itself to proxies (animating trees growing magically along a city street). Great work! Look forward to seeing more. Bill Gaylord

These are not award winning items to showcase, but they are interesting examples of how Animation Master allows you to do some none traditional "character" animation: Bill's Experiments These originated with "The Mother of All Blobbies", my first experiment animating a character whose "limbs" were more like the pseudopods of an ameoba than arms and legs. This was done by manipulating CPs with the various tools of AM. I then created a "pseudopod" test model basically made of a tube with each spline ring along its length assigned a bone. The bones were then constrained to each other in a hierarchy so that I could stretch or squash the "tenticle" simply by manipulating a bone at the very end. "Pseudopod" was the result. The next experiment was "Roundhouse Slap", an application of the model inspired by Paul Hogan's detective character from his variety show. I then changed the model slightly so I could scale each spline ring separately, while using a single control bone to stretch and bend the "pseudopod". I gave it teeth and created "Pseudopod 2". I was then inspired to create a similar model to animate a tree growing magically from a sprout to a full grown tree. In this modeling technique I constrain the bones of the tube to a guiding spline which determines the shape of the branch. I can construct a complete tree with such branches. I am now creating an short film for a non-profit organization based on the tree model that "grew" from these experiments. "Toobs" is a simple experiment showing how tubes can be guided by splines. I call them my "flying cheese doodles". Although Animation Master is designed for more traditional character animation, it is also amazingly adaptible for much less traditional "characters". Hope these inspire some of you to try even more interesting character innovations. Many thanks to the folks who helped me in these explorations. AM ROCKS!!! Bill Gaylord

Just posted the multipass render. It takes longer, but man I love the results! Added bark texture to the tree and adjusted the lighting. The tree is only partially constructed--just enough for a test. The final tree will be much fuller. Bill Gaylord

New animation test posted with both tree and rowhouse ( Bill's Experiments). Tree has bark texture added (Symbiont material). Have a multipass render cooking. Will post that later. Bill Gaylord

Love the curves and contours! Great sense of proportion and style! Looks like it would be very interesting to animate as well. The first picture reminds me of an armature for a stop-motion animation puppet. Great work! Bill Gaylord

Continued progress...Here is a test view of a row of the rowhouses. Need to add a few more details, like the fences at street level. Haven't decided whether or not I'll vary the color of each house or keep them identical (except for variation in the curtains perhaps). Any suggestions on how to make them look more natural in terms of texture and lighting will be much appreciated. Bear in mind that the shot will be a very wide one, so I prefer not to get too carried away on texturing. I mainly want the lighting to look natural. Should be able to complete the house model tomorrow, so I can get back to the trees themselves. Thanks! Bill Gaylord

Here's an update on the rowhouse. Just need to add a fence and gate at ground level and pictures to simulate blinds/curtains behind the windows and then I can replicate a whole street's worth of rowhouses. Any suggestions for texturing, etc., will be much appreciated. Thanks! Bill Gaylord

Wow! Great job of modeling and lighting. Would like to learn more about how you set up the lighting and multipass. Some day I'd like to make a similar model of a trilobite and animate it--sort of like roach like, but with a lot more legs. (I collect fossils.) My wife shudders at the thought of trilobites skittering across her bare feet. Can hardly wait to see the roaches animated! Will you roaches talk, as in "Joe's Appartment"? Bill Gaylord