arkaos

Character fly-by with Attitude! I thought a little character motion would spice things up a bit. Intro_Flyby05.mov

Ambience color defaults to the diffuse color. So set that and don't really worry about that parameter.

Well. Here begins the actual intro clip. This first installment is a basic render testing the camera angles for a "flyby". Let me know what you think. I'm still new at the chor stuff, so any tips highly appreciated. Here are some questions for the community: 1) I have applied an on/off pose for my characters dynamic constraints (for his antennae). They move dynamically while scrubbing through the chor, but their motion is not rendered in the movie. Does anybody know what I did wrong? I am guessing that it's because my character has no skeletal motion or keyframes, even though he is on a moving platform. 2) The platform my character is standing on is basic, yet the model is not fully designed. The prongs sticking out at each quarter are electrodes. I am planning to have a "ring" of electricity crossing each one during the final animation. Anybody know how I might achieve this effect? 3) A short cape will be added to my character. It will be a cloth flapping in the breeze. My question: Should I create a front and back surface for the cape? I've heard before that is necessary for the cloth to cast shadows, but I'm not entirely sure. Intro_cfb02.mov

Now THAT'S a CUTE little devil!

Awesome animation, as usual, Smudge.

LMAO....Silly me!

Awesome sketches and killer model! Can't wait to see her singing.

Very well done, Kamikaze! I especially love the shot from the ground viewing the tail. Nice banking turn and AWESOME jetstreams. Can't wait to see the landing now.

Well, I added a little bit to my saucer. A hood scoop (Rad, man) and a few lights and a spinning light on the bottom (which you cannot see in the movie) and some very subtle secondary motion in the rocket flames. Not much, but it's there. My next task will be to add some decals and more small details. Saucer_test4.mov

I think it would be better to use some decal-style texturizing for the inner portions of you legs. That would allow you to use fairly simple cylindrical geometry and dramatically reduce the cp count (which seems to be killing your computer). It may be a little work at first to generate the different decals for color, texture (whichever method), specularity, etc. But you can achieve some fairly realistic results with a bit of tweaking. If you don't want to do that, use a proxy model for setting up the animations and place the real-deal in for the final rendering. By the way, that is one AWESOME spider, dude! You did a fantastic job designing this one. Another option would be to leave the leg in a separate model and add 8 shortcuts to the leg in your chor. Then constrain the legs to the spider-body model and animate from there.

Hi Dhar. Excellent suggestions. I did try a streak emitter this weekend, however. My results were pretty lacking. I got the particles looking really good, but when the saucer would bob and roll the particles delayed too much and looked like they weren't even coming from the rockets during some frames. So I went back and simply added a glow to the flames. I kind of like the look they give, not too realistic and somewhat cartoony. I will try adding some bones with dynamics, like you suggested. For now, here is what I got. I toned down the rolling at the end because it was a tad extreme before. Saucer_test3.mov

I was thinking about adding some particle effect trailing off the back of the rocket expulsion to make it look like diffusing/dissipating gas. I will try a streak emitter and see what I get. Anybody have any suggestions for that, I'm open to ideas.

Here is another version of my saucer test clip with some background elements. I also changed the color of the main saucer body. The old blue color didn't offer enough contrast against a black space background. saucer_test2.mov

Featured here is my progress for the creation of my intro movie. So far, I've got the Space Captain character 90% done. Also shown is a preliminary flight test for the flying saucer / fighter my alien will be flying. The clip shows the saucer experiencing a little engine and stability problems while flying through a gravitational distortion of some kind. This test is just to give me a feel of how to animate the saucer. saucer_test.mov

WHOA! Now THAT'S just NUTS! Yes, yes, project file, PROJECT FILE!

Kewl! Uuuuum....what IS it?

Thanks, Dark. He is probably my best character yet, I think. Better design, lower density, better rigging, etc. It was fun and I learned so much doing him. He still has a few clothing accessories in process (blaster, holster, changing the belt buckle, adding a short goofy cape, utilities for his belt) so those probably won't be shown until I create the set for my goofy intro movie clip. He is the first of 2 characters I need for that, plus one vehicle. I may start a new post for the work-in-process for the intro movie....stay tuned!

WOO HOO! Finally found a chance to finish up my character, for the most part. Rigging and skinning complete. Feels good, since I've been too busy to work in A:M for a while.

That's pretty bad-ass. Did u used displacement maps for that detailing? Awesome. Let me know if you are willing to share that one!!!!! I know I could use it. WOW!

I love the way you used a screenshot from your A:M project of the office for the computer screen OF YOUR OFFICE. Brilliant!

You mean you don't got one? LMAO....Hang in there, maybe NEXT update

I really like the logo on the web page. You've done a nice job.

That's frickin' cool! What did u use? A rig with dynamic constraints? Do share!

I like it a lot, gre. Very good modelling (even with sharp edges).

Looks great! Maybe you should add the depth effects from the 2d drawing to the 3d version. Specifically, the "Sky" and "S" in brothers appear to have their 'flat' front surfaces bulging out and the 'Brother' have an embossed kinda rim around the letters. Either way, I think it looks pretty awesome.