Gerry

This is an unbelievable step forward in rendering! Really fantastic work on all counts.

I'll put it on my calendar, but as you know my attentions are elsewhere these days. thanks for the heads up though!

Stian, all this is beautiful work! My two cents: I'd like to see some camera moves on the models that you are showing as stills. Doesn't need much, just a touch to show them off a bit and make the viewing experience a little more dynamic. Also, the QT version has a lot of jaggies. Hopefully your final render will be more slick. And the robot rolling off his pedestal was just the right touch! Good luck with this, it's great stuff. Gerry

Well, let me be the first to say we all had a great time.Thanks Mike! Gerry

Looks like I'll be there! Of course it's still early (10:18 am Friday) and things could change but I doubt it. Gerry

Hiya Luckbat - I can make it if we don't get swamped with work at my new job. I'll let you know later in the week for sure, but I definitely want to be there and it's a pretty easy trip in for me from Westchester. Gerry

Dennis, congrats on this release. this is pretty exciting and I think it will generate a lot of interest here in the Hash community and from there, the whole world I guess! Best of luck and I'm looking forward to working on Nightcrawlers! Gerry

Yeah, this is really great stuff John! It's great to see it develop over the various stages. Gerry

Yeah, really nice, but...what's a normal map? Or are you gonna make me go running for a book?

David - Nice touches all around! The shattered parts, the smoke and even the gouge in the turf. Nice sense of detail. Only comment is that it all happens a little fast. Will this be presented in realtime speed like this, or slo-mo for clarity? In any event, nicely done.

Dang, I've got to upgrade!

the logo on your web page, that blue shape seems to be complicating it visually. The problems with the earlier versions, against the cloudy sky, mostly suffered from a lack of color contrast between foreground and background, i.e., all coolish colors. Then for the web page, you've lightened the lettering (and I really like the metallic texture you've done). I think the lighter tonality would work well against the purplish cloudy sky. As for the robot, not sure it's working yet. I would say solve the color issues with the 3D logo, then figure out where the robot goes, body language, contrast. In general, contrast is the main thing. Get the lettering to come out in front of the background, whatever it is. warmer/lighter for the foreground, cooler/darker for the background.

Yeah, if only...! When will Hash add a "Create environment" button??

Well. a mere 5ive months later, I have a bit more to show on this project. I've been building and texturing the set mainly as a way to avoid rigging the character! I want to get a good deal more detail into the subway station environment, and been studying the "Basic Bones and Relationships" cd. I know there are pre-made skeletons and rigs but I'd sure like to actually do one myself from start to finish. The track bed is actually a pencil sketch, although after doing this I remembered that subway tracks are laid somewhat differently from regular train tracks, so I'm going to work some more on that. The concrete platform is created directly in Photoshop. I'm doing the subway station strictly from memory as I now live in N Carolina. I may use some photo reference at some point but so far so good. Comments welcome!

I know I've seen this discussed here before, but what is the cause of the light leak in this render? It didn't happen in the still render above. The chor is exactly the same, just swapped out the models. At first I thought the model wasn't sitting right on the ground, but I've checked that and it's okay. [attachmentid=10130]

John - So these renders are in AM with the imported Maya models? Pretty nice! I'm also not sure I understand what you say about rendering. Did you mean the renders just take a minute? You must be working with a farm, right? Surely these stills aren't rendering in a minute on one cpu. Looking forward to additional posts. Gerry

Chris, that's an excellent question! It was way more complicated than it needed to be. Of course the AM part was easy. I've learned a ton about animated decals and that's how this was done. We started by shooting video of the actual game screens, setting up a video camera on a tripod and just playing the games. Because of the technology we use it's difficult to set up a game demo machine, or "fake" game play on a computer screen. We had to have the real game, in a real cabinet, etc etc. Don't ask me for details, I'm the lone artist in a small company made up mostly of engineers, programmers and salesmen! The unnecessarily complicated part was converting the video into a usable QuickTime movie, which I then used for the animated decal. I was doing this on a PC and though I'm a Mac guy at home I don't know if this would have been easier on a Mac. I've never had to do this sort of conversion before. The messy step was that I could export it as a .wmv, and though there's a pc app called (I think) Movie Maker, it does NOT work with Windows 2000, only Windows XP. Windows Media Player has no export or save as function like QT Pro. So I had to stumble through a series of conversion steps that, honestly, are a blur now. I assembled one long QT movie containing all the various games playing, then in the choreography I assigned the appropriate frame sequence for each machine. In theory this simplified the modeling tasks, as I had only one model for each machine design. However it was a fairly long movie and calculating exact frames involved a good bit of trial and error, since one thing that QT is not designed to do is count frames. I also had separate movies for the glass art (wher the logos and pay tables appear at the top and bottom of each machine) and these were static frames, so I just had to make sure the right frame on each machine stayed put for the duration of the whole animation. I'm currently using the models for a series of stills for our website. I'm able to spend a little more time on lighting and texturing, and I'm pretty happy with the way they're coming out. Here's one example. Gerry [attachmentid=10107]

Yves makes a good point, but this is still an awesome test, especially for a quickie.

Yes, and nice fix on the body proportions. Definitely consider a bit of detail in the feet. It will be cool to see this shaded and textured.

Heath - this is hilarious! I don't know why it's funny but it is. More!

Dan - that's a really awesome model! Only comment is the floor pattern and shadows are a little busy, and the similar tonality of the floor and piano seem to fight each other a little.

This is a nice little piece. Toon render looks great (that weird texture on top of his head even works somehow) and as a bonus, if you play it backwards it's a perfect sneeze!

I've renamed this file for consistency on my website, and added a link from my 3D page. It's now at http://www.mooneyart.com/three_d/movies/isdgames.mov And if you want to see some of my other 3D work it's at http://www.mooneyart.com/three_d/three_d.html

DC - I'm not sure about Mrs. White's body language. Hands on hips and feet apart make her look like a guy in drag. Something more ladylike but steely would be better, maybe standing at a slight angle to the camera, with head tilted and peering, narrow eyes. Think of Barbara Bush. She would never stand with hands on hips, but you also know you won't get away with any crap around her! You're starting with a pretty ambitious project! Let us see how it progresses.

Motion blur is an option when you're doing a final-quality render. I believe it's set for a default of 20% which should be sufficient. You don't want more; you may want a little less. Also keep in mind that once you turn on motion blur it affects the entire movie, even where you may not intend it!