williamgaylord

Not sure I'd want to swallow one of these. Are these suicide capsules? A lot of character in such a simple design. Look forward to seeing these guys develop. Bill Gaylord

I've decided I'd like to animate two children--a little boy and little girl--to plant the trees in this animation. This is pro bono work for a non-profit organization, so there is no money involved. Any decent royalty free models out there I might at least start from? I need to minimize the time I spend assembling them, so I don't want to build them from scratch. Blue jeans and shirt for both of them is fine, to minimize the need for dynamics (a dress would be somewhat problematic, relatively speaking). Some closeups involved, so nicely crafted faces would be appreciated. Thanks, Bill Gaylord

Fine looking work, William. Now I really, really want to see it animated! Bill Gaylord

Truly inspiring work, William. Can hardly wait to see it in action! Swinosaurus vs. the Balrog...or maybe feature it in one of the "Marshmallow" shorts we talked of long ago. Which Wacom tablet do you use. I'm thinking of upgrading to an Intuos2 tablet and adding an "airbush" stylus to my toolkit. I've been using an ArtZII 12"x12" tablet with my workstation and a small Graphire 2 with my laptop (which I love for modeling work in AM). Thanks for sharing so much with the AM community! Bill Gaylord

Here's another lighting test, which was also a render speed test as well. Each brownstone apartment has 13249 patches, so I had my doubts whether or not even my new whiz-bang computer could handle it. The long shot helps, but it did just fine! There is hope that I'll finish this project! Later I will alter the brownstone model so that I can easily vary the window treatments for variety. The longest shot will take in all nine apartments. I'd like to animate a small boy and a small girl planting trees along this row, with the planted trees growing up behind them as they work their way down the street. Yes, there is a lot more detail in the models than will show up in this long shot, but there will also be other angles, and plenty of close-ups. The main purpose is for me to learn as much as I can in general and in some cases push the limits of things that can be done with AM. Bill Gaylord

I've thought of a way around the patch count problem. I'll just do one tree for every two apartments. Then I can render each pair of apartments separately. This results in animated "tiles" I can stitch together into a single very wide shot. It still would look good from a landscaping standpoint and has the benefit of fewer trees to animate! I could probably use the same tree and just rotate and tweak it a bit. I can add relatively stationary characters, change the widow dressings, and add different props to make each tile look more unique. Wow! I may actually get this project done! I could even add conventional characters if I keep them inside each tile, or composite them later, being careful to keep them outside of the tree shadows (or simulate the shadows--a good bit more work). Thanks for the conversations, folks! It really stimulates some good ideas. Bill Gaylord

Thanks, folks, for the suggestions and encouragement! I agree. It's more like an overcast day. I do have a key light I can turn up to fix this. (This was a quick test without much tweaking.) I also need to make sure the leave's reflect specular light better, perhaps. There are just too many leaves on a tree to do much more than scaling, but I certainly could stager the timing so they don't look like they are growing in unison. The angle is more of a challenge. I leave "store roll" on so the leaf clusters stay facing upward without me having to adjust ever one of them when I rotate the whole branch. It's definitely a compromise. Actually my rigging is that complicated. But the final animation controls are quite simple. Every spline ring has a separate control slide to scale it. I adjust the scale of each ring and the "ease" of each ring along the guide spline in an action so I have as much control as possible as I animate the growth of each basic "sub-branch". This boils the controls down to a single slider to control the "growth". The key is building a hierarchy of relationships. I then animate the whole branch from these "sub-branches" controls in yet another action window and animate them to sprout and grow in the right sequence. This leaves me with one slider to work with which allows me to control the timing of the branche's growth, even stretching out some parts of the sequence in time. Each branch is then used as a separate "character". (I tried to import the branches into an action to assemble a tree, but this did not work. There were a tremendous number of conflicts.) I assemble the tree in a choreography using the set of branches and the trunk as sort of an erector set for trees. Still labor intensive, but well within the possible. I'm hoping we can take the basic assembly technique and automate it with a plug-in or utility. That would allow a whole tree or other plant to be assembled as a single model and reduce the controls to a small number of controls. Any volunteers? My brownstone apartment is just a front, not a box, so it was easier to avoid internal patches. You do have to be careful about the number and placement of control points in the figure you plan to extrude. I would create a box by hand with open ends that already avoids inside patches and then extend that. The grid for my building has a patch for each window so I can make those patches invisible. Probably could have done the same thing more efficiently with decals and alpha channels. My brownstone has a fairly high patch count, mainly because of all the fine details like the moldings and (especially) the fence. Yep. May have to recruit a render farm. Again, thanks for the comments and encouragement! Bill Gaylord

It might make the animation look a little better, but it would be a good bit more complicated, or a lot less accurate. (I'm doing this for some tree experts.) Aside from the fact that the actual growth would be seasonal, this model simulates the way a tree actually grows. A tree grows at the tips of branches and at buds. The shape of the previous growth stays the same except for thickening as new layers (what makes the rings of the cross-section) are added each season. The locations of newly sprouted branches and leaves stay fixed rather than migrating along as the branch lengthens. So my model (being a magical tree that "catches up" to the current growth season, doesn't sprout any leaves until the branches reach the end point of "last season's" growth. Then it sprouts the new leaves and branch tips. If the leaves started growing at the half-way point, they would have to travel as the branch lengthens, which is more like scaling a branch than the way a branch actually grows. My model isn't entirely accurate in the way the branch growth happens. I don't grow it from the end, as you can see by following the bark texture. A real branch would only grow at the tips, with the bark texture behind the growth staying in the same position and only becoming thicker and more coarse. To make the model manageable, I stretch tube forms along a spline path to simulate growth from the ends, but a close inspection of bark texture gives the "trick" away.... Actually, describing it to you has made be think of a refinement to the model that might actually work very well. Instead of keeping the spline ring bones evenly spaced as the tube stretches along the spline, I could keep the rings near the growing end "collapsed" together and only expand one segment at a time--like "telescoping". Then the stretching would only be visible near the growing end and the texture along the rest of the branch would stay put like it should! Cool!....and @#$%, I'll need to modify the branch growth actions again! Might be worth it though. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I could probably stagger the sprouting of leaves a bit so they don't look quite so much like they are growing in unison. How do you like the SkyCast lighting? Thanks! Bill Gaylord

Here's the movie! To save on rendering time I cut the duration in half compared to what I would have prefered and set the frame rate at 15 frames per second. I noticed that the longitudinal splines of the branches did not render quite right--they should be smoothly curved. (This is an occasional glitch I've noticed now and then--usually goes away when I restart AM. Just didn't have the time to start over.) Overall, I am very pleased with the results! Lighting Test Much thanks to the folks at ArtBox for the wonderful SkyCast! Bravo!!! Any comments, suggestions, etc., are very welcome. Bear in mind that this is a "quick" test, with much tweaking. Bill Gaylord

Each leaf has 4 patches. That's just enough to give it a simple, but natural shape, including a slight cupping. The stems are now just splines rendered as lines. This project definitely involves a large amount of overkill, but it has a lot of potential for spin-offs. By the time I finish this, character animation will seem like a breeze! A movie of the branch growing in the SkyCast light is only about an hour away. Stay tuned! Bill Gaylord

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