MiddleKid

Because rules are made to be broken. I'm creating creases on purpose! There are several other places where I've done similar things... the knees, ankles, shoulders... Basically anywhere there's a bone-to-muscle joint that's visible through the skin. I tried some creases on the face but it just wasn't convicing. I suppose since muscles in the face primarily connect to the skin. 3 or 4 years sounds about right. Clay here has existed in various forms since 1999 and I originally wrote the story some time in 2000. At that time, I thought it would only take me a year or so to finish it. HA! Boy was I stupid! Just for fun, I've attached one of the old teaser posters I made. Anyway, the story has evolved a ton since then and so have my skills. So I'm hoping to have a trailer out early next year and the final film out in mid 2005.

By golly I think you did! And I'm STILL working on the same short film we talked about back then. Zpider that's just freakin' brilliant! I downloaded your project file and I think this may be exactly what I'm looking for! You Da Man! I'm toying with a couple of different ideas for the eyes and now you've gone and added a third option - Looks like I've got some serious work to do tonight. Thanks!

I'm debating that now. The old version didn't have normal eyelids like people do. Well, he did have eyelids but they weren't a separate surface... Hmm, it's kinda hard to explain. Just look at a cat or dog's eyes, that's the way his worked. No noticable "lid" surface, the skin just kinda slides over the eyeball. What made that system workable was that his "eyeballs" were essentially flat planes with the pupils attached via surface constraints. However, the surface constraints kept causing problems, so I decided to go with the more conventional, spherical eyeball. Now the challenge is getting those funky eyelids to work over a sphere. The previous lid motion was just up/down since they were covering a flat plane. Getting them to move over a sphere will require a bit more trickery.

You're making great progress Zach! If you'll post an orthographic front & side view I think I'd be able to help you a lot... Especially with the lips. Hey! I just noticed that your in San Francisco. Cool place to be into CG. I'm hoping to move there next summer. Later

I tried to keep a bit of the square look to his head... I guess it's just too subtle. I did like the square-head look too, I'll do some tweaking tonight. Hey! You're right! He does need room for a brain, doesn't he? The demo reel that's on my web site has the old version of Clay introducing my animations. The mesh is actually a bit lighter than this one and it held up pretty well in all but the most extreme expressions. This new mesh was designed to fix some of those problems. Clay is the star of my short film and there's no dialogue... his expressive face is everything. Oh - I forgot to upload the full body shot of the new Clay. I'm going to add some more detail to the lower torso/upper thigh area but after that, I'll be done.

oops - hit 'post' by accident.

And a couple of orthographic views.

The mesh.

I'm rebuilding my favorite character, Clay... "we have the technology, we can rebuild him" For those who've never seen Clay, you can check out the old version at my web site. I'm pretty happy with the mesh and the more life-like appearance he's got now, but I can't help feeling that he looks kinda generic. Of course, textures will help with that but IMO, I think a good model should look great before texturing. So, if any of you kick-butt character designers have any suggestions on improving my beloved Clay, I'd love to hear about it! Thanks!

Just gets better and better! Two things I noticed: 1. The eyes are a little hazy, like she's going blind or something... If they're set to 100% transparent (or close to 100%) then make sure you don't have a diffuse color and check you lighting setup. That might clear up the problem. 2. Curl the edge of the headpiece down to give the illusion of a thick piece of fabric. Right now it looks like a super-thin scarf hovering about a half inch from her head. Keep up the great work man! It's nice to see some photo-real models again... Anybody remember the Mike Tyson model? Mmmm. Good stuff.

fjalar - Yes, this was mainly a test to sort of "kick the tires" on the new radiosity renderer. For still images it works great, but for animation the render times are prohbitive. I've used skylights for quite a while and 99% of the time they work great. Usually I setup a standard lighting scheme and then throw in a skylight rig for that added touch. I would love to see something similar to final gathering in A:M, especially if it would cut down on rendering times - but I have a feeling that Yves will keep working on radiosity for the time being.

blcrawf: Yes, the eyes are a bit flat... I struggled with them for most of the day trying to get them to look right. Guess I'm still off a bit. I think it's because of the non-spherical eyeball thingy... Um... The iris gets squashed along with the rest of the eyeball so when it gets close to the edge, it starts to look really strange. I'm not sure what to do about it other than avoid extreme angles. ------- Joe Jacks: The short answer: Because there's lots of math involved. The long answer: http://www.ypoart.com/tutorials/Photon-Mapping.htm I have a Ti-4200 video card... but that doesn't have anything to do with the final render.

for those that are interested - here's my settings

I had some issues with the project file for this guy but it looks like everything is okay now. I played the radiosity a bit last night and finally decided to let the thing render overnight... about eight hours later I had this image at 1024x768.