phatso
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Posts posted by phatso
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How did you get the president of Martin's old bank to pose?
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Hi Vince,
I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to use a part of this picture in my upcoming Minnie-Movie Contest. Is that alright?
no worries at all, let me know if you need some other view, more detail, higher resolution
other pose... ops... no skeletal yet
... Vince
Dhar - I didn't know you were making a movie about an alien named Minnie.
Speculation I've heard from evolutionary biologists is that symmetry started out when a 1-cell animal divided but failed to separate, and the variation proved beneficial. Why do we have two boobs? Two nostrils? I can answer the first question - because it's twice as much fun!
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Hmm. I have the same problem, but other things I mirror and paste aren't anywhere near x=0. Maybe others are as confused about this as I am?
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Hmm. I wish there were an emoticon colored green. (You know, envy.)
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Jirard is really good with smooth surfaces... (sigh) <_>
This bears repeating: 1) The smoothest work results from 4-point patches with splines intersecting at right angles. 2) 5-point patches are next best, but try to avoid a 5-pointer where one point is pulled way out of plane. 3) 3-point patches "work," but they crease like mad. Avoid them. 4) Hooks don't have bias handles to tweak, so if a hook creases you can't fix it. Therefore, hooks are best placed across patches that are nearly plane. 5) You can get away with many sins if you arrange your splines so problem areas are banished to places you can't see - under hair, for example.
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Everybody is going to get sick of me saying this, but creases are normal, you just have to work the control points and bias handles until at some point they're smooth enough that the remaining creases aren't worth the effort to fix.
I find that the process goes much faster if you have the model open in two windows. In one, you have a shaded view. In the other, shaded with wireframe, with the option to go wireframe alone when needed. You can set the two views to different angles: set the shaded one at whatever angle the creases show up worst, then rotate the wireframe view as needed to move the CPs and bias handles as needed to eliminate the creases.
Coupla other hints: 1) Stretching a bias handle, so as to make its associated curve more gradual, often eliminates a crease. 2) If you're used to using polygon programs, this will seem counterintuitive: you can often make things smoother by building your model with less detail. If you're really struggling with a crease, save the model and then experiment with eliminating the offending spline altogether.
I spose, since it's a puppet, you won't be texturing the surface much. Too bad, texturing & decals hide creases like magic. On the other hand, since it's a puppet, you'd expect it to be hand carved out of wood. Maybe a few minor creases are appropriate.
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I like the guy with the big nose and chin. All he needs now is a pair of horns and a pitchfork.
I've been having great luck starting out with one of the models on the extras CD, and squenching it around until it's barely recognizable. The hard part is getting the surfaces really smooth (I'm modelling a young kid) and that takes a lot of pushing and pulling CPs and bias handles.
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That's what my first attempts looked like.
Something I found useful: take the 32-patch sphere from the library and pull it around until it's shaped about like an egg, with modifications to make it human. Sort of like the featureless model heads stores use to display hats. Change the surface to some garish color. Then model a new head over it, pushing and pulling on the control points until they almost sink thru the egg shape but not quite. The garish color tells you when you've gone too far.
From there, you just need to even out surfaces a bit. At this point, bias handles are magic.
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There are those of us who need to get on with animating, or we can't afford to be doing this at all. I'd be perfectly happy to cheat, on the assumption that I'll learn to model as I go along.
In fact, I've decided to cheat in a different way: taking one of the models on the Extras dvd and squenching it around to make it look completely different.
(If we can claim "squetch" as a word, I can claim "squench."
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NOW, SEE HERE, BOY, WASN'T HE - I SAY, WASN'T HE A WARNER BROTHERS CHARACTER??
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Hmm. Does it start out with nurbs? And regarding the tri polygons, could one just go thru and delete lines until everything is quadded? But it would still be polygons, not splines? Dang.
Or did you say tri patches? Is it really in patches? Or polygons?
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Woo! That looks like a hot program. How well does it interface with A:M? When you get done, do you have a splined model you can rig and put pose sliders on, and all that?
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Isn't there a moment like that on every model?
Nice transmutation, a bit of work on the eye is needed. Raise the brow a bit, open the eye a bit. The 2D version looks a bit smug, the 3D version doesn't.
I often run into the problem where, if the pupils are placed where they should be in a straight-on pose, they disappear in a side pose. I guess that's just a fact of life. In my "door's stuck" exercise I had the eye target placed way different than you'd think it should be, just so you could see the pupil at all. It seemed to work.
This effort may come to nothing, and the next... but one of these days one of your clients is going to say "Hey, let's do a whole animated ad campaign!" I think A:M's natural environment is in advertising. The ad biz just doesn't know it yet.
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xero - A:M won't run without an actual CD in the drive. This protects Hash from lost revenue due to unauthorized copies. It also protects users in that the write-protected program can't be corrupted, virussed (is that a real word?) or accidentally screwed up by the user.
Clean your house, do the laundry, sort paperwork, write a letter to your mother, do the things you've been putting off. Once you get it in your hands you won't be able to pull yourself away from the screen long enough to do anything else.
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There's another way to quickly delete off-grid keyframes without going thru the extra step of snapping to grid. Just draw a group rectangle around them and hit delete.
Usually, the way off-grid keyframes happen for me is when I group a bunch and then stretch/shrink them. I usually don't bother to fix them but maybe I should. I wonder if they screw up render times or anything?
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Spine sticks out too much at the top; she looks like she's got osteoporosis.
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Hee hee... I wish you had seen the community theater production of "Chicago" done in Minneapolis about 20 years ago. Best Mama Morton ever, better than Latifah. The actress' father was the porn king in town. (He later went to jail.) She...um...let's say she...had studied her dad's merchandise. Knew all the moves.
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Danke. Actually, the lip sync works nicely on my computer but compresses/uploads funny. For the original characters I'm going to animate, I'm coming up with a whole new set of lip poses. Just fits with the character.
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'Scuse me, I been a musician all my life, I thot he wanted to record a sound track. Duh.
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I think this is okay, other than the fact that audio is only in the left channel. I dunno where to find the control for that.
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This gag has been done to death, but...
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Just one hint - don't get a mad hair and go out and buy one of those cheapies from Walmart. Strings way too high off the board, really hard to play, etc. Check out pawn shops, bands are breaking up all the time and it isn't unusual to find a really good ax for cheap. (And they'll usually deal on price.)
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Cartoon scales needn't be realistic. Ever look closely at the proportions of some manga characters?
People pick up very strong ideas of character from physical forms - in real life, much stronger than is justified. If the look of the arms and neck helps cue the viewer to the model's character (only Jirard would know at this point) then they are right.
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I keep seeing Queen Latifah...
Spaceman needs a name
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
I'm animating a character tentatively named Ray Tracing, so you can't have that one. (Now I'll probably find out someone's using it, so I can't have it either.) But "Ray" always works for a hi-tech hero.