williamgaylord
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Posts posted by williamgaylord
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Look forward to learning about special effects on this project. Lot's of potential for interesting sight gags! Any suggestions, recommendations, pointers, tutorials for special effects applications will be much appreciated.
Bill Gaylord
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Yet another project to keep me from getting enough sleep...but lot's of fun nonetheless. This idea for a series was one I suggested as a project for the Atlanta AM User's Group. The idea was to use marshmallows as the characters and have all sorts of horrible and hilariously funny things happen to them "by accident". We would call the series the "Marshmallow Safety Films". Being such vulnerable creations, accidents are pretty easy to come by.
Colin Freeman took a first crack at modeling one of the characters while I developed several story boards. Shortly thereafter Colin had to focus the Egyptian project he was doing at IBM, and we have not gotten the group together since then.That was quite a while ago. I have just resurrected this little project, with a view to maybe getting two or three episodes done in time for a local film festival next year. I've changed the model somewhat to simplify it.
Integrating the mouth into a cylindical head is a bit of a challenge. May need some help there, especially. My goal is to get a good bit of expressiveness out of just the eyes and mouth, plus gestures and body language, while keeping the model design as simple as possible.
I have several storyboards worked out for the series:
"Smoking can be Hazardous to Your Health."
"Campfire Safety"
"Hot Cocoa"
"A Day at the Beach"
"Home Appliances"
and a horror film tribute
"The Blob Invades Sugarville"
Bill Gaylord
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I love this character! Good job on the expressions!
I noticed just a tiny flaw you might have already noticed: the lower left eyelid passes through the eyeball surface briefly during the "embarrassed" and "angry" expressions.
Wonderfull expressiveness!
Bill Gaylord
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Yes, indeed the Euler constraint works! Here is a simple, unrefined animation of the elbow and wrist joints in action:
Now I'll just have to get down to business figuring out the rest.
Thanks again, Luckbat.
Bill Gaylord
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Euler, Euler, he's our man! Yes! Euler constraints do exactly what I wanted. Thanks, Luckbat.
Are there some simple techniques for precision alignment of bones? Similar to using the "scale" function to align control points along a plane by setting the scale perpendicular to the plane to zero percent? Can you set the rotation of a bone in both global and local coordinates? Guess I should do a bit of homework and experimantation.
Bill Gaylord
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OK. Now it's time to rig up these guys for animation...
The way I limit how my mechanical devices move is to use pose sliders.Have you tried this with a mix of more traditional manipulation? Oddly enough, I don't want mechanical looking (linear) motion so much as just a limitation of joint movement. I want to be able to pose these guys for the most part like I would characters of a more organic ilk. I'll experiment with this technique, though. It might do the trick.
Otherwise, does anybody know how to restrict the rotation of one bone relative to another to a single local axis without using a pose slider? Especially in the case of arms, I would like the freedom to manipulate them using both forward and reverse kinematics, without "breaking" the hinge nature of the joints.
Thanks,
Bill Gaylord
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You have probably already done this, but I find editing the actual motion curves in the time window is easier when trying to tweak things (at least until you start getting a mass of "spaghetti"...).
About the stride, you might keep the toe planted longer and roll the foot more off the ball of the foot before it leaves the ground and then come down on the heal at a slightly higher angle. That will also allow the knees to bend a bit more.
Overall looking good. Just some relatively minor tweaks and you'll have a first class walk cycle.
Bill Gaylord
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OK...made the little guy a bit more "anatomically correct". He is a dog after all and will be doing typically doggy things during the script.
Bill Gaylord
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I was wondering if the two projects were related in some way.
Actually the tree animation project the brownstone comes from is a separate project. It was just a handy backdrop to use for a more interesting context.
Looks great, I like the way you handled the ears.Yah, I think having the patches render with the mesh lines actually looks better than having just a mesh would have looked.
Now I have to figure out how best to rig these guys so I can get them moving around! Especially the little guy!
I plan to make the Robochihuahua somewhat "anatomically correct", as he will be doing distinctly "doggy" things according to the script. I'll try to keep things somewhat subtle so as not to spoil his cuteness.
Bill Gaylord
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Here is a picture of the two characters together:
Have more refinements to do to the Robochihuahua.
Bill Gaylord
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Modified the Robochihuahua to look more like a Chihuahua. Reduced the chest size, made his snout smaller, head larger, and eyes smaller, lower and more spread apart to get a more accurate Chihuahua look. Let me know what you think.
Bill Gaylord
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Something about him doesn't look chihauha to me, maybe the head is too small in proportion to the body?
I'm not sure either. I think the legs might need to be shorter and a tad thicker, and the chest may be a bit large. The head might need to be a little larger compared to the body. Another thing might be the eyes. Chihuahuas tend to have round somewhat bulging eyes. But he is a robochihuahua after all--that involves some compromises. Some tweaks will improve the look, though.
I see you were in Atlanta recently. Do you work there or were you just traveling? (I work in Atlanta).Also, do you use the TSM with v 11?. I bought it for v 10 but haven't tried it on v 11.I live in Stone Mountain, GA and work in Atlanta.
I have not obtained TSM 2 to use with AM version 11.0 yet, but plan to soon.
Bill Gaylord
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Yes. His waist and neck are "accordioned", like in the sketch. Tonight I may put him in a better context for showing him off.
Adding control points to the ear mesh will likely work. It's likely to be very labor intensive though, involving tweaking a lot of gammas to get the curves right. I may just skip trying to make it a mesh...you wouldn't use a mesh anyway if his ears are acoustic. Oh...maybe I could just break some of the intersections? That might work, and might not involve as much tweaking. Even if that works I may not use it, since the render-as-lines seems to look more like ribbon than wire.
I think the Robochihuahua will be lots of fun to animate. He'll be the source of most of the action. (I plan to make him "anatomically" correct, so he can do things you would expect the average dog to do...
). It's part of the script I have worked out so far for these two.Bill Gaylord
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Thanks for the info! I'll try that shortly. Here is the RoboChihuahua as he stands so far. A few refinements left to go, but this is his essential form. Any suggestions for improvements will be appreciated.
Bill Gaylord
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There is only one obvious color setting when you activate "render-as-line"--at least that I've been able to find. There has got to be a way to do this, though!
May have to just add some extra control points as Biotron2000 suggested.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Bill Gaylord
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Does anyone know how to make a mesh render as only lines, with no patches showing? Below are the ears of the robochihuahua, which I want to appear as though they were wire mesh screens. Anybody know how to fix this? (I've changed the color and contrast to make the details show up better.)
Bill Gaylord
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I built him from scratch. I use the DarkSim Simbiont plugin for AM to get the corroded copper look. It is a free plugin you can download from the DarkSim Web site: http://www.darksim.com/ . There are a number of free "darktrees" you can download from the site as well, including a number of metalic textures. These textures are procedural and are calculated in volume space and mapped onto the model surface as it intersects the space...they are a bit computationally intensive, but they result in some very interesting textures. They also sometimes have aliasing issues on long views, but for relatively close-up scenes they are fabulous! Pretty clever folks at Darkling Simulations!
Bill Gaylord
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Just tried it. Works like a champ! Thanks!
Bill Gaylord
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Thanks! Sounds like a simple solution.
Bill Gaylord
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I have projects in both AM v10.5 and v11.0. Some of the v10.5 projects I plan to migrate to v11.0, but since Simbiont is only associated with v10.5 currently, I lose the darktree textures. Is it possible to install Simbiont on both versions? Or is there another trick to migrating such projects without having to re-apply the textures?
Bill Gaylord
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Dang it! I misspelled GeezerBot on the title. (That's interesting...the spell checker didn't catch that one!
) Oh, well.Here is a quick doodle I did during a break from working the Dragon Con art show in Atlanta. This is an idea I had for the GeezerBot's companion, which I plan to model soon.
He's basically a robochihuahua.
Bill Gaylord
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I'm dusting off a project I've neglected for over a year. I want to rig him up for animation, but need a somewhat simplefied or restricted motion given how he is constructed. His knee and elbow joints need to rotate about a single local axis as they are simple hinge joints. Anybody know how to restrict the movement accordingly? Same goes for the "toe" joints on his feet and most of the finger joints. Oh, yah...he also only swivels around one axis at his waist as well. All the other joints are ball and socket joints, so they can have a very wide freedom of movement accordingly.
This "poses" (pardon the pun) a challenge if you want to use a labor saver like The Setup Machine. There is no spine to speak of, which is the main challenge. This may be an opportunity to learn more about such rigs.
I do want to be able to smoothly vary between forward and reverse kinematics in the arms and I want the typical null targets that make animating the legs easier, too. Any suggestions? I have Raf Anzovin's "Dem Bones" tutorials, which are very helpful, but take a bit of time to digest. I have used both the Anzovin TSM rig and the AM 2001 rig. Any updated tutorials on constraint setups for such rigs?
Bill Gaylord
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Thanks. In its current form it is awkward to manipulate. I guess it will take a bit of practice. I think I'll send some suggestions to the Hash crew.
Bill Gaylord
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I'm used to being able to see the Project Work Space, Properties, and Pose Sliders simultaneously. This makes keeping track of what belongs to what much easier. Now I can't do this without undocking the panels! Anybody know how to dock them such that all of them are tiled along the side? Also I prefer to having the timeline window stay visible when I click on something else. How do I get it to stay put?
Marshmallow Safety Film
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Sounds like a good way to get an example posted...might try that.
Bill Gaylord