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Old Man Character


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EDIT: This thread has been continued and expanded in the topic "The Mountain"

 

Just thought I'd post a "thus-far" image of this old man I'm working on. Been really pouring myself into this one; waiting for my best friend's funeral today. All the same, this is something I'm getting pretty proud of. He is part of a short animated film I'm working on with my boyfriend tentatively titled "The Mountain"; it's a metaphor for the end of the journey of life, which he wrote. It includes evil bunnies as the symbol of earthly trials and desires (my idea). Man I hate bunnies. They are so evil. =)

 

Anyhow, here he is...

OldMan.jpg

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Great start so far. Especially for only 800 patches.

 

Thanks; I like to keep my models as light-weight as possible, since I can't afford to rebuild my computer right now. I'd rather spend the render time on soft-reflections, particle systems, shaders, and such-like. Besides, why use more geometry than neccessary?!

 

I started in 3-D with software I wrote in BASIC, and then POV-RAY, so A:M is a walk in the park ever since like version 4! (anyone remember .SEG files?!) Wow...nostalgia...

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I lost two of my friends through the years. Both because of drunk drivers. It sucks.

 

Just returned from the funeral. Wow, that was HORRIBLE. I feel sick. I also made a scene; I burst into tears and ran from the room in front of the everyone, as I was first in line to "pay my last respects" to the bloated, poorly embalmed, puffy thing in a coffin they claimed was my best friend.

 

LIFE SUCKS.

 

I'm sorry I wish I could say something uplifting but I can't. It just bites.

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I agree Life does "Suck" Its so shittty loosing anyone you truely care for....I even hate it that as time passes so does some of the pain (some) I feel as if I should go on feeling like crap......I lost my brother who shot himself because he could not get any real help for his mental illness....that was just over a year ago, he was at one time ,my best friend...........as you can tell, Im not the one to be uplifting......sorry !.......I do wish you a non guilty (as possiable) gradual easing of your pain..............

 

I do love you old man character and look forward to your animation.

 

 

Michael

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as you can tell, Im not the one to be uplifting......sorry !.......I do wish you a non guilty (as possiable) gradual easing of your pain..............

I do love you old man character and look forward to your animation.

Michael

 

Put together a video montage of old photos and stuff, appreciate the comments and stuff from all of you!

Also, got a star named after my late friend, yeah I know it's cheezy but he would have loved it...

 

In a hideous program crash I lost my old man's ears, but re-built them ok...

now I gotta build his body..

Terrifyingly, since the treatment my hideously over-confident-in-my-abilities boyfriend (love ya babe) wrote is quite specific, I now have to hope and pray that the SimCloth portion of A:M is robust enough to handle the old man's oversized coat. =) Oh well it will be a good distraction...can't wait to rig the evil bunnies, as they are so important to the story/metaphor...

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[Also, got a star named after my late friend, yeah I know it's cheezy but he would have loved it...

 

Not cheesy at all - It's a very beautiful gesture, it links his memory to the infinite. I'm very sorry for your loss.

 

I like your old man character too & am intrigued by the bunnies. Very scheming & conniving, masquerading in fluff. The worst kind of evil.

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I like your old man character too & am intrigued by the bunnies. Very scheming & conniving, masquerading in fluff. The worst kind of evil.

Why yes, yes they are! Here, appease your bunny curiosity with this preliminary "Flesh-Bunny" render. (Remember, they symbolize the Earthly Desires of The Flesh, or somethign like that..)

flesh_bunny.jpg

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Have you shown the bunny yet? and just where and how did you get a star named for your friend (to tired to google) sounds like a place I need to visit..

The name-a-star thing i just googled...don't recall the site, but i will keep you posted as to whether or not it was a worth-while effort, at which point i will post the site and stuff on my currently-all-memorial-to-rudy-page (http://2xj.net)

 

Oh &...THE BUNNY HAS NOW...BEEN SHOWN. (see above post) Hopefully it will quell anyone's bunny-lust for now...

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I now have to hope and pray that the SimCloth portion of A:M is robust enough to handle the old man's oversized coat. =)

Did a test with some simple sleeves on the old man's body-in-progress...SimCloth IS going to be able to handle the otherwise annoying task of putting the old man in an over-coat. =)

I'm very happy for that!

cloth_test.mov

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Good work!

 

I agree with dan that the shadows are wierd and he does look like he is floating.

Awesome, awesome, awesome character! he has so much personality.

Another thing is his right shoulder looks a bit wierd.

Also his socks and his leg look like they are connected.

 

Other than that. That is one Rockin Character. :D

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Well, guess why he looked like he was floating? Any guesses? No?

 

He WAS floating! (That and the shadow bias was wayyyy out of wack for the scale of the scene.)

 

Not like it totally matters at this point it was just a test render.

 

Thanks for all the feedback everyone, you all have been very helpful, thus far. :lol:

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Been working on him on and off lately; work gets in the way. =)

 

His name is now officially "Duddles". Of course, this is fairly irrelevant to the film, but it helps to give him a name, history, etc. for animation/personality.

 

I did a bit more texturing, and fixed his floating condition. Poor Duddles, he was so very floaty! The new green pills his doc prescribed helped immensely with his anti-gravity-itis.

 

I have also been rigging up his face so he can *emote*. Since he has no speaking role his expressions must be so very expressive.

 

I also fixed up his cloak. Now it doesn't do funny-shoulder-business. Much more controllable, now that I added non-rendering "thread"-splines to rein-in the cloth simulation...

 

Whee. I am such a control-freak. That's probably why I love 3-D; my god-complex is rearing its silly head again...

OldMan2.jpg

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one thing though, i dont think the patches around his crotch are built correctly, or at least it looks that way. Can you post a wire frame of him? you should use four 5-point patches to construct the area.

 

Checked into that, it was a bone-assignment error I made whilst rigging. Now he bends properly. Good catch!

 

For the curious, I've included a shaded-wire shot anyhow. Yes, I know his arms look like glued-on noodles. For the most part, they just function as collision objects for his cloak's cloth sim. Most of them are hidden before the final render. (Why bother rendering what you can't see?)

OldMan_wire.jpg

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one thing though, i dont think the patches around his crotch are built correctly, or at least it looks that way. Can you post a wire frame of him? you should use four 5-point patches to construct the area.

 

Checked into that, it was a bone-assignment error I made whilst rigging. Now he bends properly. Good catch!

 

For the curious, I've included a shaded-wire shot anyhow. Yes, I know his arms look like glued-on noodles. For the most part, they just function as collision objects for his cloak's cloth sim. Most of them are hidden before the final render. (Why bother rendering what you can't see?)

ok, the crotch area indeed is malconstructed. You need to get rid of the spline that curves to the tip of the leg spline or raise it and make the areas 5-point patches. I've included 2 picutres of how you can fix this problem, but i think the first pic, where the very curved spline is removed, will give you the best results and be much cleaner and without creases.

post-8217-1135903416_thumb.jpg

post-8217-1135903433_thumb.jpg

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First, I would like to express my condolences at your loss. Good friends are hard to come by, best friends are even more rare. Cherish every friendship you have for every moment you have them. *HUGS*

 

Remember, no man(or woman) is a failure who has friends. (Quote from "It's a wonderful life.")

 

 

You have a wonderful talent for modeling. I especially like the use of cloth for his coat. Nicely done.

 

Now I gotta go play with cloth in my copious amounts of spare time... :blink:

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i think the first pic, where the very curved spline is removed, will give you the best results and be much cleaner and without creases.

Took your advice from the first diagram, thanks! (Well, I changed it slightly, but the 5-pointers did the trick.)

 

That's what happens when one re-uses model parts that one built from before there even were 5-point patches supported in the software. (Yep, waaayyyy back.)

 

Happy New Year Everyone!

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First, I would like to express my condolences at your loss. You have a wonderful talent for modeling. I especially like the use of cloth for his coat. Nicely done.

Now I gotta go play with cloth in my copious amounts of spare time...

 

Thanks, the coat was hellish interesting to model. I found that it flowed more naturally if constructed as just nice evenly sized patches rather than built like a real cloak would be; in sections. I had guessed that putting it together tailor-style would be better, but oddly, it didn't work out like that. If you play with cloth, be prepared to tweak, tweak, TWEAK those lovely cloth-sim settings. I am still playing with them. Also, I had to create a denser-leg model exclusively for the cloth-sim. (The original model kept "catching" the coat in the middle of his leg. Yuck.) Additionally, for some reason my latest attempts keep crashign the program to the desktop, so I am once again tweaking those settings. Yay!

Oh, and your condolences are appreciated; thanks. It has been hard, although, slowly, gradually, life is becoming more bearable. (Quitting smoking and joining a health club are odd side-effects of this grief process thus far.)

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his walk sees like he's slippin around on ice kinda. oh and you can fully edit a post to add stuff to them if you forget something.

 

Yep, the walk was just that : a quick test. the main thing was getting his cloth to work. His feet do kinda look like they are doing some demented "mashed-potato" dance step. I knew I could count on you to notice it. And yeah my edit post was being squirrelly so I just gave up and did a 2nd. My internet connection is very unreliable.

 

:P

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am sorry to see the loss of a good friend, but it looks like you have found a good way to distract yourself. This looks great and I enjoy seeing the progress. Old Man...thumbs up. Evil bunnies...scarrrrrry. Looking forward to more.

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Thanks a bunch!

 

Spent the last week working on the animatic for the film with my friend, who designed a wonderful woman/angel for the "death" sequence...more to come.

 

We're both very excited about where this is going...hopefully the first of many wonderful collaborations between us...the old man is done...now we have been building sets and the final design for the evil bunnies.

 

(They ended up half bunny, half demon, thanks to observing real bunny photos and sending them thru the twisted filter that is my weird mind...)

 

Now I'm off to begin final animation work for the film. Wish us luck!!!

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Interesting angle shot. It will be interesting to watch how this one develops. Are you going to continue with these type of angle shots? It could prove to be a very different type of short in the end.

 

Yes, the angles will probably continue since the whole short takes place climbing up a mountain. (See image below.) If the ground looks level at any point it will be because the camera is tilted.

 

And it is going to be a very different sort of short.

oldmantest2.jpg

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Did you use the displacement foot print plug-in for v13 Alpha to do the foot prints?

 

No, all hand-modelled geometry, and my own process. =P perhaps I WILL check out this displacement thingy...I AM lazy after all. (although I know better than to change versions mid-production, that is asking for trouble, 12q is nice and stable for me.)

 

Cheers & Happy Chinese New Years

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Your guy has an amazing sense of balance, or a very low center of gravity. Anyway, what i'm trying to say is when one walks up a hill or a % grade their body is strait up. Your guy looks sort of wierd walking perpendicular to the dirt. still looks pretty good. :)

 

Ha ha his balance is INCREDIBLE. Yeah I know I know, at 3 am it looked fine for my purposes. His final walk will not be cycled either; he needs to struggle and lurch up the mountain, with pauses and to catch his breath. My next posts will be likely much more production, much less test bits...

 

Thanks for the "heads up"

 

NOTE:

All posts from now on will be under the topic "The Mountain", as they will no longer be just the Old Man...

 

click here to go there

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