Raf Anzovin
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Posts posted by Raf Anzovin
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Wow...looks very intersesting..like a scene from "Princess Bride"
Thanks. Yeah, that was definitely one of the main inspirations for this.
If there's time, I'd love to hear if you all made any discoveries when creating characters that will be rendered flat-shaded, as opposed to 3D...Well, one of them was that you can't get away with the same kind of subtlety of expression with these faces as you can with a more realistic face. These kinds of faces call for big, wide, extreme expressions.
Here's one of the first finished shots from the movie. This isn't a final render--it's missing a background and there are still a few pass-throughs on both characters that will need to be smartskinned out. But it's pretty close.
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We just finished the Duel poster! (Duel, for those of you who weren't following the thread about this over in WIP, is our new short using a flat-rendering look). Here it is.
We're going to have some near-finished shots to post soon too.
--Raf Anzovin
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You mean having the hand target, when set to IK, being parented to the character's shoulders, right? Actually, that's one thing the TSM isn't designed to do. However, there is an easy way around that. Unhide the shoulder geometry bones and constrain the IK targets to them with Translate To and Orient Like (make sure these are actually the shoulder bones and not the upper arms or you'll get a circular constraint). You should then be able to animate them reletive to the shoulders through the constraint offsets.
--Raf
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We've taken a look at this, and it looks like something that often happens when using constraints in A:M, and then animating on top of them. Grabbing the end points of bones in this situation tends to make them go haywire. Thankfully, there's an easy solution to this--just use the position or rotate manipulators instead.
Things are working fine in you're chor, because you haven't added any constraints to the bones you're animating there, and you have in the action.
--Raf
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Huh? I'm 23?
Man, time flies.
--Raf
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but the problem with that is it's always additive. So after you position your fingers independently your fist pose will not work correctly.
Raf did have hand rig where you could make a fist via pose slider no matter what position your fingers were in. I hope this makes sense
We did plan to do the fist close pose for TSM2, but between doing the stretchy limbs and the scripting language and making it a plug-in, it kind of got sidelined. Part of the problem is that it's not something the TSM can do by itself--it requires input by the user to figure out exactly what the fist should look like, and the TSM isn't currently set up to be able to do that in an elegent way. We'll probably be including it in an update at some point.
--Raf
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Hi Steve,
I would like to get the default rig to perform the way the upper arm does in example animation character you provide with the TSM2 in the fk. Upper arm does not move when moving forearm and hand but when moving upper arm it moves forearm and hand.
The default TSM set up does not do this. What do i need to do to get the rig to perform this way?
This all depends on what is being considered an IK chain-- what is "attached to parent." For some reason there is a difference between the sample rig and what the TSM creates, but configuring the arm IK so that it works the way you want is very easy. Just open up the model in bones mode and grab the lower arm control bone. Check make sure it's attached to parent if you want it to influence the arm movement, or unattached to parent if you don't want it to. This can also be changed on the fly while animating by locking joints.
--Raf
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Only one nitpick though. In the first clip the pirate's left hand goes through the cube beside him when he is landing on the ground.
Yeah, that cube's just a proxy. The actual object that's going to be there won't be shaped like that.
Something seems just slightly off about the sword spin. Too fast?, not enough weight?, ease in -ease out?. I can't really pin point it.Oh, depending on the action of the scene and what characters are involved, I also would recommend just a bit more florish, ie perhaps a higher throw, more exaggerated movements, - in short a bit more showmanship.
I'm not completely satisfied with the throw myself....but since there are so many other shots in this movie, in which to show off his personality, I decided not to be too picky with this one (the two shots I chose to do first happen not to contain any characters but him, so what you see in this shot is exactly what it will be). The real tricky stuff will be when he's dueling with the other character, showing off both their fighting styles while maintaining a sense of excitment.
--Raf
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So how long does it usually take to get a serial number? I would've thought it was automated but since it's been close to two days, I guess not. Any help would be appreciated!
Serial numbers are NOT automated--I send out each after checking the order. Usually, serials do not go out over the weekend, and, of course, the TSM2 serials are not yet ready to be released. Pre-ordering customers will get their serials at the same time that we release the link for downloading the software.
Steve
Anzovin Studio
(yes, back at work!)
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These are shots from the film actually, but with a very temporary proxy background.
The flat color rendering technique behaves very well when animated. You do have to be carefull where the light is placed so that the character will pick up a turned edge without any obvious shading, though.
http://www.anzovin.com/swash1.mov
http://www.anzovin.com/swash2.mov
--Raf
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i do have to ask: were you concerned that a thinner neck would make him appear to effeminate?
Hmmm...I don't know, I don't think I was thinking about it at all. Is it that you think the current neck is too thin and therefore effeminate? Or that you think the current neck is too thick and causing problems with his chin as per smudge's comment, and are wondering if I deliberately made it thicker then it needed to be? It's hard to tell from the comment.
In any case, I like the way his jaw line seems to disappear sometimes--it reinforces the "2d-ness" of the image. You never lose his chin entirely, of course, because of the goatee.
I gotta tell ya, the poses are what need to be talked about here. They're SICK man (truly exceptional). I mean, look at images 3 and 6. Talkin' about framing, awesome, and the perspective on image 6 is outstanding. I could talk about all of 'em, but what else could I say? Outstanding.Well, thanks! Strangely, image 3 is actually my least favorite, it doesn't seem quite balanced composition-wise. I prefer image 4 (the one with him crouching with one hand on the ground).
Now, where can aspiring artists, like me, find info on all the fundamentals and principles you showed here. I think we get a little lost in the technical side of things, and tend to overlook something just as important, and that is the basic principles of design and composition, that've been laid for us through out the centuries. I don't wanna get to philosophical here (believe me, I'm scaring myself here)... anyway could you enlighten us. Maybe tell us a little bet about your thinking process in doing this character. What determines the poses? Ya know, stuff like that. Give us the goods, man!!!Well--unfortunately I may not be able to help you that much. I'm not really thinking too much about basic principals of design and composition--it's more a question of pulling the character around until I find something that feels correctly dynamic. An intuitive, rather then cerebral, method. But I guess there are a few rules of thumb.
1) I always use a wide-angle lens. The default focal length in A:M is 70, which is even more telephoto--more "zoomed in"--then a human eye, which is more like 50. But I like using a focal length of 25-30 most of the time. 50 at most, rarely above that. A focal length above 50 will flatten out the image, a focal length below 50 will deepen the perspective much more then is seen by the human eye, making foreground objects pop out at you. If you look at image 2 you can really see this in action, his foreground hand is much bigger then the sword in the background. This makes poses a lot more dynamic.
2) There's something called "Contraposto," a term that comes from the Italian Renaissance, but the concept is much older since the Greeks knew about it. Basically, it means that you should never have the weight of a character evenly distributed. Twist the pelvis so that one leg takes more weight then the other, then twist the shoulders in the opposite direction to compensate.
3) Disney animators used to draw a "line of action" through the character to make sure that the pose read cleanly. You can see that in image 6. Imagine the line is drawn from the tip of the toe that's close to the camera out through the top of his head.
4) And then there is of course the character's silhouette. With this particular character, that really does mean his literal silhouette, since he's so detail-less that you have to keep his limbs out from in front of his body. His ponytail is also always flying out in different directions so as not to occlude or be occluded by his limbs and body. In a character with more shading, keeping a perfect silhouette isn't as necessary. However, even when a hand is crossing over the body, it's very important to maintain--and I don't really have a good way to explain this—a pleasing hand shape. Hands are so very important to the way a character is perceived, just as important as the face. But a lot of people give hands short shrift in their zeal to add facial detail. To take an example from these images, look at image 4 where his hand is on the ground. I’ve separated out the pinky and pointer and pushed the middle finger and ring finger together. This gives a much more pleasing shape then if the fingers were all equidistant or separated into Spock-hands (you know, the “live long and prosper” shape). You can see that, more subtly, in images 2 and 3 as well. Also in image 2, I pulled the pinky out from the hand he’s holding the sword with. This was in deliberate imitation of Bugs Bunny (that’s how he always holds the carrot in Chuck Jones cartoons) and it tends to give the character a similar sense of unflappability.
As far as composition is concerned, though, I really don’t have any rules of thumb. I don’t follow the “rule of thirds” and similar composition rules except, I guess, unconsciously. Mainly, I take advantage of one of the things CG can do better then any other medium, which is to be able to pull the camera around in real time until the right composition is reached. That’s how I posed number 6. I pulled him into a rough pose, then found the right vantage point, then finished the pose so that he’d read well from the camera I’d chosen. Once I actually get a few shots of the movie finished it will probably be more evident what kind of effect this has.
I hope that helps!
--Raf
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Thanks for your well-wishes, everyone! Steve's operation is done, and he's currently recovering. This was an intestinal operation, not a cardiac one, so it was less potentially life-threatening then the last time he was in. It will take him a couple of weeks to fully recover, though.
Again, thanks for all your notes!
--Raf
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Hey, I just wanted to let everyone here who may have ordered an Anzovin product recently know that my Dad, Steve Anzovin, is back in the hospital. It looks like he'll be OK. It will take us longer then normal to process orders, though.
Thanks for your patience.
--Raf
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Huh, I posted that last post from my Dad's machine, and I realize it logged me on as him! So pretend that last post was from Raf Anzovin, not Steve Anzovin.
--Raf
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Testing out a new render look...this is toon rendered, but without the outlines. It gives it a nice, clean, cut-paper like look with slightly turned edges, which doesn't try to mimic the look of hand-drawn animation.
The character is from a new short I'm working on. I've finally had a chance to actually sit down and start it.
http://www.anzovin.com/swashbuckler
--Raf
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Hey, sorry it took me a while to get back to you about this. The TSM doesn't require you to have your character in a T pose, that's just kind of traditional.
--Raf
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I assume that you're refering to the ability to shrug the shoulders while in IK mode, right? I just investigated this, and indeed it does not work. This seems to be due to a bug in A:M that prevents poses from being additive with keyframed motion. I'll contact Hash about it.
--Raf
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Just locking the arm bones, or using the rotate manipulator, is how you're intended to do that. Since Hash's FK can either be manipulated as IK (so all the bones effect each other) or traditional FK (in which you rotate each bone separately) we simply make use of both of Hash's already-existing methods. If you really wanted it to default to standard FK, though, you could go into the model and unlink the control bones so that they do not form an IK chain. This wouldn't effect the Setup Machine rig but it would lock your model into using standard FK all the time.
--Raf Anzovin
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It's not a big deal to set this up--you just need two extra bones. Instead of attaching the points of your model directly to the TSM prerigged skeleton, make two bones more or less as you would do in your own skeletons, and just constrain them to the prerigged skeleton with Orient Likes. Then use Euler Limmit constraints to limmit their motion to just the axes that you want. Once you apply the TSM's rig, it will move the prerigged bones, which will in turn move your bones correctly.
Duel poster
in Showcase
Posted
Huh. You know, I never even thought about that. My avatar is me, but the Man in Red isn't supposed to be my alter ego--the Man in Black is! The Man in Red was invented by David Whitehead.
The fact that the Man in Red kind of looks kind of like an older version of me is pure coincidence as far as I know.
--Raf