cosmonaut

Very nice piece of work you guys got there. Looking forward to seeing more....

Wow, I really need to check the showcase forum more often (it's kind of lost in the middle). What a fantastic piece of work Shaun. How did you get away with such short hairs on the little guy? The animation is amazing but I'm almost more in awe of your rendering...keep up the great work! Kevin

Ha, awesome as usual. Happy New Year!

Thanks for the comments guys, I've been working on the lighting more to try and better capture the mood. Lighting is so dang hard but for some reason I like it, might even try to get involved in doing some of the lighting for TWO if I can... thanks Nancy. The painting was a norman rockwell painting of santa i found on the internet ... thought it fit in a weird way. Definately agree about the curtains and the rug, I'm still planning to add those... Yep, i set out to make that Santa, just add a few small changes of my own... Just normal lighting, I've got a bunch of bounce lights (that are too strong currently) and a bunch of additional lights and lights lists. I'll post a of the setup once I'm a little happier with it. Kevin

Here's a little Christmas scene I've been working on in my spare time (when not working on TWO). Not quite finished and I don't think it'll get done before christmas but here's what I've got so far. I'm planning to use it for our christmas cards next year if I can ever finish it...I made the santa last year. The tree was probably the hardest part. Placing all those lights by hand sucked and I'm still not happy with the way they look. If anyone knows of a good way to make realistic looking christmas lights let me know. I used several props off of the hash cd's for the presents (Thom is getting removed because he's too darned distracting). I'm still planning to get rid of the painting above the fireplace and replace it with a wreath. The candle is based on aaver's candle. The fireplace will be redone with geometric bricks. I plan to add some garland to the mantle. Stockings still need to be stuffed with something ... need to add milk and cookies ... ack, still so much to do. Anyway, let me know what you think... Kevin

Wow, that's amazing. Wonderful animation and that hair is FAN-TASTIC! Did you render that with V11 or V12? How long did that take to render with all that hair? For some reason I'm not getting the sound but it hardly matters. Really, really nice. Kevin

Whooa , that is really nice.

Fantastic image, glad to see it made it into the voiting finally!

Fantastic work! Can't wait to see that guy animated. You've got a really great style there. Kevin

Very, very nice.

A few more questions about your approach to compositing (the discussion on rendering in the main forum got me thinking about this). How do you guys handle motion blur with all these different passes? Is each pass rendered with motion blur? Or are only certain passes rendered with motion blur (or do you somehow do your motion blur outside of AM)? Also, do you guys render with the alpha-buffer or do you use multi-pass? Thanks ... Again, fantastic work. Kevin

Awesome work as usual. I take it you guys are using V11 hair now? Looking very nice. Kevin

And here's a closeup. Might need a model with finer hair for the closeup. Can't quite decide. Any closer than this looks terrible. By the way I'm attempting an Osipa style rig for the face and TSM2 for the rest. Should have some sample animation soon. Kevin

Thanks for the comments guys Mike, I'm a little worried about animating him too. I'll have to play around to see what i can do to speed up the rendering. Martin ... interesting idea, I hadn't really considered this guy for the movie, but now that you mention it I may just have an entry for the next contest Thanks Ken. I'll try and address the last bit. Martin is a sneaky one isn't he. Can't really blame him though can we. Mr. Jaqe, I actually didn't change anything besides the toe modeling, I think the dirtier look has more to do with the lighting and pose. xade. Thanks! I'm planning on adding hair to the top of the feet, just haven't gotten around to it yet. DarkLimit, thanks, no problem. agep. thanks. really admire your mechanical modeling. Here you go Rodney...he's attempting a Jack Palance here:

And another pose (still testing out facial expressions)...

Ken, Hmm, I guess that's the problem with reusing parts from my earlier models. I actually meant to change the toes to match and forgot about it. It's really not that noticable though, which is why I forgot (that and I've been working off and on this guy for a while). Darklimit, I've attached the project file with the background setup if anyone wants to use it. It's extremely simple. Just a plane that curves up with a simple repeating texture map. I think I orginally got the idea from JoeW's setup for his hunter image. Doug, thanks, I was planning on doing the Sherpa next, mostly because I've got another old model I'm going to try to use for him. The chicken I'm still trying to decide on a concept for. Thanks everyone else for the comments. Kevin studio.zip

Wow guys, thanks for the comments. I think you guys nailed all three of the four major influences: Bumble, Sully, and the Ratzenberger Yeti. Anyone want to guess the fourth? Tom, I'm seriously thinking of entering him in the next mini contest. I'm almost done with the rigging and I'm kicking around a few ideas. Ken, I did reuse a few parts from Chewie, but I think it was limited to the nose, eyes, and feet (although the feet have been reshaped quite a bit). I also based the hands off of one of the sample models that came with TSM2. Everything else was built from scratch. The background is simply a plane that curves up in the back and mapped with a "dirty" image. I also use the oren-nayar shader for it. It makes for a nice test render setup. I know the stubble looks odd, I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do it. Originally I had what you suggested but it actually looked worse. I agree about the toes, I'll round them out. Thanks again, lots of good comments. Paul, I know what you mean about the feet, I'm working to improve them (though I'm not having much luck). I might add some hair to them as well but I'll run into the "stubble" problem there too. Anyway, thanks for the comments. David, not sure about a chewie vs. yeti movie, 5 passes of multi-pass took 25 minutes for this guy alone. Not sure what it would be with 2 really hairy characters. Plus chewie would kick this guys butt, he's a bit of a sissy (despite the agressive pose). Vern (and Garçon and Robert). The short groomed hair is actually a stylistic choice. The Yeti (aka Little Mac) is actually a bit of a metro-sexual. He was actually raised in the pacific northwest by a famliy of sasquatch. And as we all know, sasquatch are very well groomed and really into pink polo shirts and manicures. He only recently moved back to the Himalayas since he realized that as a software developer he can work anywhere and decided to reconnect with his roots. Along the way he meets a porn addicted chicken named CD, and an ornery sherpa named Sherp (or something like that). Anyway, I'm still working out the details of the story but I have all the characters personailities. Glad the stubble doesn't bother you too much but I'm still looking to improve it. The feet, hmmmm, the feet. If I make them much better he's going to be really hard to animate. But ... he is a Yeti so we're talking at least size 50 ... I'll have to see what I can do. Thanks Rodney, I'll have to enter him in this years mascot contest. And Robert, here is the wireframe (sans hair):

I've been working to update the "Yeti" model from my sci-fi scene trying to get him up to snuff. I'm going to use him in a short I'm planning to get around to (some year). I'm currently working on the facial rig but I want to get some feedback on the overall model. Anyway, let me know what you think. Thanks. Kevin

Awesome image Jim. Didn't that head have hair before though (besides the texture)? Kevin

Thanks guys. It was a lot of work . Zach did an awesome job adapting that .bvh file to the 2001 rig. It was cool to see how easy it was to reuse on the wookie... Vern, I'm not so sure I'm ready to get sued. Then again George Lucas taking all my money away wouldn't be that much different ... I may as well just redirect my paycheck directly to his account...stupid star wars rererereleases/prequals/video games/lunch boxes... Ed, I don't have a larger render of it yet, this little 320x240 version with 5 passes took long enough. If I get around to fixing up the problems I'll render out a bigger version. Definately agree with you on mocap, but it was just too tempting to try out. starwarsguy ... I had no idea it was actually wookiee. I've been mispelling that for years ... John Bigboote - if I get around to enlarging it I'll try to fix the lighting. One thing that seemed to help with the hair was rendering it with a fairly large bulb and multipass, that seemed to soften things up a bit. In the past I've ended up wth some fairly strange results when rendering hair and animation (large black shimmers). Anyway, thanks again all for the comments. Kevin

Wookie Dance This just uses the same .bvh mocap ZachBG posted in the resuable motion forum. Since it worked with 2001 skeletons I just had to try it out on the wookie. It's not perfect (the arm passes through his face/body a couple times) but this is about the best I've been able to get hair to render in an animation. Plus a wookie dancing to some MJ is just plain funny. Kevin

Ha! Very cool. You guys do such amazing things with AM! That guy on the right kind of reminds me of a muppet. Awesome work as usual. Kevin

One more vote for the z-buffered shadows. I've also found the raytraced shadows are too harsh and produce too many jaggies on the hair. You can always play with the resolution and the softness. Like everyone else said the hair on the man is fantastic and that frizzy hair is great. Any chance we could see a wireframe? You've got some of the best looking hair I've seen yet. And where's Sir Nigel? I'm waiting to see him show up here with a long flowing mane...

Thanks for the replies. The modeling was mostly based off a small figure I got recently (and his arms really are that long). I do plan to animate him, though he needs some more work first. I've got the TSM2 rig in him now and I should be able to slap on a simple osipa style facial rig since there's not much to him. Vern is right, those beady eyes are frightening. The lighting isn't very good (I was experimenting), which is why there's so much blue on his suit. I also need to rework the material on his suit. I was going for a velvet look but it isn't quite working. Oh, and I'll be sure to add the fat/skinny slider...that really couldn't be very healthy for the ole guy. Kevin

I've been working on this off and on for a couple weeks. I'm still working on the hands, beard, toy bag, and I still need to get some folds in his coat but he's getting pretty close. He's heavily based on the santa from the classic rudolph tv show. I've got Yves' skin shader on him but it's hard to tell in this pic. Anyway, crits and comments welcome. Kevin