sprockets Learn to keyframe animate chains of bones. Gerald's 2024 Advent Calendar! The Snowman is coming! Realistic head model by Dan Skelton Vintage character and mo-cap animation by Joe Williamsen Character animation exercise by Steve Shelton an Animated Puppet Parody by Mark R. Largent Sprite Explosion Effect with PRJ included from johnL3D
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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

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Posted

Hi all,

 

Here's something I've been working on in my spare time. I'm trying to go a little more realistic to see what I can do with the v11 hair. It's a pretty boring hairstyle at the moment, but I hope to give it some shape eventually.

 

Jim

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Posted

There is often an austerity in your work which I find most admirable.

 

The hair has a wonderfull soft translucency to it which is quite hard to capture in any medium I find.

 

Are you making the hair transparent all along its length?

Posted

So far, it's looking good, a little aliased, but I assume you will be rendering a higher quality later :).

Posted

Thanks for the comments. I do have to confess, that I did a tint and bloom tweak in Photoshop, using the Dreamy Photo plugin from Auto FX. I think some of the transluceny of the hair is from that process. And some of it may be the face decal having hair painted on it that blends into the particle hair.

 

 

Yes, the hair is pretty coarse, but unfortunately it's at it's smallest size right now. The decimal places in A:M will only allow 0.01" as the smallest size. Hmm, maybe I should try centimeters instead. Or just create large characters.

 

And some of the aliasing was caused by me copying the character using the alpha channel and pasting her on a painted bg layer in Photoshop.

 

Jim

Posted

Here's an update with some changes to the hair length, color and coarseness. A lot of the earlier coarseness was from my sloppy post work. There is still some roughness in the hair which will be taken care of by multipass.

 

Jim

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Posted

Hey Jim, can we see a non-post version of the pic? I like it, but would like to see what it looks like straight out of A:M. Please...:)

Posted

Jim - This is fantastic stuff, this model does look alot more real than the others u did.... I just think her nostrils are a little big.... Maybe this is the look u want but it's just something I noticed.......

 

very inspiring thanks for sharing....

Posted

Amazing work as usual.

 

She reminds me of Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek : The Next Generation.

Posted

Vong - now you've said that, I won't be able to look at her without thinking that :)

 

Jim - Great work. If somebody I knew wanted to see what A:M is capable of, I'd show them your renders as they are sublime.

 

Steve.

Posted
Hey Jim, can we see a non-post version of the pic?  I like it, but would like to see what it looks like straight out of A:M.  Please...:)

Here's the raw render. The hair looks good right from the render, but I just prefer using the Dreamy Photo filter for the skin tones. It sort of mimics the SSS effects to a minor extent.

 

I agree about the nostrils. Thanks!

 

I would increase the head size and the density if my system could handle the load better. As it is now, trying to style the hair can be a slow process, waiting for the screen to redraw. I don't want it to get any slower.

 

Thanks for the kind words and suggestions!

 

Jim

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Posted

Hey, don't be sorry. And your correct, the head is too big. I've taken an older model and tweaked it substantially, but I'm only focusing on the head at the moment, so I haven't tweaked the body to match the head yet.

 

Jim

Posted

Hey Jim,

 

I know what you mean about that dreamy look.. I do the exact same thing with my stuff. I do it differently.. I duplicate the channel in photoshop 2 times.. the second layer is set to screen at 50 to seventy percent.. and guassian blurred to make it soft. How much depends on the size and brightness of the image.. The 3rd layer I set to overlay to bring back the "pop" that the screen took out... Its blurred the same amount and set at 20 to 30 percent.

 

I use this technique for brightening photgraphs and images as well. Not much if any image resulotion of tonality is lost in the process and it usually brings the color gamut more inline with a real world look.

 

I'm very excited about the new image formats in version 12 just for that reason.

 

The image looks great.. I would make the same comment about the nose though.. it seems turned up or the nostrils flaired a bit. If you want finer hair.. just scale your model up and increase hair density. That will make the hair thinner by the amount you scale up. You want hair thats half as thin.. just double the model size and increase the density.

 

C

Posted

Colin,

 

Yes, I think that is very similar to what the dreamy photo does. The presicion of computer generated images can be too raw and cold looking, especially with skin, so I'm also looking forward to the ability to tweak renders in A:M. It will alleviate the required "post work" footnote that I sometimes forget to add.

 

I'm trying to avoid the long nose look that I tend to give most of my characters, but maybe I went too far the other way here. I'll tweak the nose some more.

 

Thanks,

Jim

Posted

I can see how this girl is going to have great hair. I usually don't use photoshop with my images, except to shrink them and paint maps, unless it's something not to do with the Image Contest. Since that's all I seem to do anymore -- damn you Colin, and your challange! -- I never use it *sigh*.

 

Vong - I was thinking that same thing, but decided not to say anything :).

Posted

Looks really good - the 2nd version is better - the 1st had that "hair plugs" look but you added the little peak which really helps. I'd push that just a bit more, but awesome.

Posted

Nice work Jim- she has a real 'highschool yearbook-photo' feel. There's something about a girl with red hair and green blue eyes...bewitching!

 

The eyes may be a little too colorful...or bright...I dunnoh...

 

Her hair also reminds me of just about every Catholic Schoolgirl I've ever seen...and I've seen a few... I hope you continue to style it...maybe something 'up and over'... or maybe give her some bangs...

 

Great STUFF!

Posted

Jim,

 

I also want to say that it looks great. I also am very happy that you and Colin explained about using a paint program after to soften the look of the model. It never occured to me before, and it was like a light going on in my head.

 

It's so nice to have Masters around for us apprentices to learn from.

 

Mal

Posted

Beautiful work!

 

I think the final touch would be to give her skin pores. Something to break up the specular highlights. Has anyone built a procedural material to adequately simulate this texture?

 

The decimal places in A:M will only allow 0.01" as the smallest size. Hmm, maybe I should try centimeters instead. Or just create large characters.

 

Why does Hash think that two decimal place is sufficient? Although I guess things have improved. I remember times way past when all values were displayed as integers! I had to model everything 20X too large just to be able to get 0.05" in modeling resolution.

Posted
Why does Hash think that two decimal place is sufficient? Although I guess things have improved. I remember times way past when all values were displayed as integers! I had to model everything 20X too large just to be able to get 0.05" in modeling resolution.

 

HAHA! :D you sound like my dad when he tells stories from his youth :P

Posted (edited)

Jim,

Here is a tip on keyframing the hair thickness: Keyframe the thickness to 0 at 0% of length and then to the full thickness you desire at about 10%. Key it again at that thickness at 50% and then back to 0 at 100% (You would have to alter the percentages,based on how long the overall length of the hair is, but you get the idea...)

I find that this helps get a natural looking "hairline" at the leading edge of the hair, that wont look like hair-plugs, that combines well with the painted hairline too.

For me this gives a better and faster rendering result than keyframing the hair transparency along the length, which is what I tried first.

The model looks very nice!!!

Edited by zandoriastudios
Posted

Thanks, William. I did try that but the input number would always switch back to 0.01 once I hit enter. I could never get it to stay at 0. Maybe it's a Mac bug. I'll keep trying.

 

Thanks all,

 

Jim

Posted

I found that if I tweak the bias handles of the cp's on the timeline spline at an angle, I can get the thickness to be zero. I did that for the eyelashes that I added in this render. I did a few other little tweaks, too.

 

Jim

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