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Posted

Well it looks like I won't be able to view it on me Intel Mac cos the codec don't work on Intel Macs… That'll teach me to get the latest and greatest!

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Posted

Cory, it's only 9 seconds. You should be able to get it small with the new 264 quicktime codec. Or if not that, sorenson3. You can reduce the quality abit or the resolution if they don't get them small enough.

 

Everyone should be able to see this!

Posted

Cory,

 

I agree with Ken, That should show in the HASH booth!

 

It looks great! I like the musculature/tendons showing at the joints (though they look a bit tubular rather than sinewy especially at the fingers)!

 

Sound would be "more greater!" I'm thinking something high pitched rather than low growl... Something like fingernails on a chalkboard; a screeching (makes you shiver) kind of sound... everybody hates that noise, and it sends chills to most folks where a sinister lion's growl-like sound is overused.

 

Man, I hope I can do as well when I start work on my monsters.

 

good GREAT stuff, keep it up!

Thanks,

 

Who has to see it to get it in the Hash booth? Maybe a little compendium of Slap Happy, the mouth creature and this guy would look good.

 

The joints and feet are not finished yet, So much to do so little time.

 

Go ahead, add some sound and show me what it looks like, er, sounds like.

 

Cory

 

Cory, it's only 9 seconds. You should be able to get it small with the new 264 quicktime codec. Or if not that, sorenson3. You can reduce the quality abit or the resolution if they don't get them small enough.

 

Everyone should be able to see this!

 

I'll do some experimenting this weekend and see what I can come up with... I have one with Sorenson 3, but I had to drop the frame rate to 15, resize it to 480X360 and turn the quality way down to get it undr 5 megs. It loses some lustre after all that. I'll try just submitting it to the A:M Films site as a short work in progress maybe?

 

Cory

Posted

[

 

I'll do some experimenting this weekend and see what I can come up with... I have one with Sorenson 3, but I had to drop the frame rate to 15, resize it to 480X360 and turn the quality way down to get it undr 5 megs. It loses some lustre after all that. I'll try just submitting it to the A:M Films site as a short work in progress maybe?

 

Cory

 

Okay, it's not as big and smooth, but it's pretty good...

 

http://home.alltel.net/collinsfamily04/meatbugmapped4.mov

 

Cory

Posted

Hey that is really really impressive.

that's the most realistic creature/animation I've seen here in a long time.

 

I would love to see the shaded wireframe of the animtion, just to get a sense of how great the

final renders can look coming from A:M!

 

good work!

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

Posted

At nucking fast! I get to see the beastie - and now I wish I hadn't...

 

:o:o:o

 

It's a bit too realistic and very scary! Excellent work m8, thanks for getting the QT version done. One thing I would suggest though, is the lack of specular in the mouth it looks a bit too lamberty if you know what I mean. I also am inclined to agree with what others have said by adding some dribble/saliva too.

 

One teeny other thing is the lack of eyes. I am not sure if this is a good thing since it makes the creature more disconcerting, or that it needs something to draw the observer in to make the beast look more compelling and scary by drawing you into it clutches if you know what I mean.

 

Pretty gripping stuff ;)

Posted

That thing is freeking amazing! i just love it! where can i get one of those :D id ride it to school every morning lol.

 

your doing a fantastic job congrats!

Posted

 

One teeny other thing is the lack of eyes. I am not sure if this is a good thing since it makes the creature more disconcerting, or that it needs something to draw the observer in to make the beast look more compelling and scary by drawing you into it clutches if you know what I mean.

 

Pretty gripping stuff ;)

 

A lot of my creature designs have no eyes. It's a little bit scarier if the thing can find you no matter wether it's day or night, because it's tracking you even with no apparant visual abilities. They say you can see the soul in the eyes, and this thing has none....oooh scary....

 

Cory

 

Hey that is really really impressive.

that's the most realistic creature/animation I've seen here in a long time.

 

I would love to see the shaded wireframe of the animtion, just to get a sense of how great the

final renders can look coming from A:M!

 

good work!

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

 

I'll post one soon, thanks for all the compliments from everyone.

 

Cory

Posted

Pretty close... on the voice... I don't have my editing software yet...

but I'm looking for a sound... Curtis, your's sounds like a (prey)bird call with machinegun fire clicks...

Posted

The voice is a layered hawk and pig squeal combo. The "machine gun fire" is bat echo location; I thought since he didn't have eyes. . . . There's also some snorts, but they don't come through the foot stomps, which are layered bone clacking & multiple hoof stomps which all got muddied by the thump.

 

Curtis

Posted

Well, i got part of it right! whooda thunk a pig squeal? Bat echo location.. cool, something else I wooden a thunk of! You did a lot of work on that SFX...

Posted

Are the links dead? I get a page cannot be found...

 

OKay, well, it was the links early in the thread (the 1st movie, and the sketch) that did not work. But the one for the mapped version did...

 

Wow...pretty scary.

 

Unless it's the size of a dust mite.

 

Nice work Cory!

 

(can we see the sketches? I like to see how people go from the idea to the workign piece)

 

 

Greg

Posted

The bug gets a voice -- one possibility anyway.

 

AVI bug voice (3.8MB)

MOV bug voice (7.1MB)

 

Curtis

Curtis,

 

I like it so far, but I picked up on the pig squeal too much. Maybe tone the pig squeal down some, and add some more low end sound. More bass or something. This thing is about the size of a large doberman or pit bull, if that helps any. Keep going :)

 

Cory

 

Are the links dead? I get a page cannot be found...

 

OKay, well, it was the links early in the thread (the 1st movie, and the sketch) that did not work. But the one for the mapped version did...

 

Wow...pretty scary.

 

Unless it's the size of a dust mite.

 

Nice work Cory!

 

(can we see the sketches? I like to see how people go from the idea to the workign piece)

 

 

Greg

 

I deleted the earlier versions due to lack of server space. I'll see If I can attach the sketches here... It's a combination of these sketches...[attachmentid=16766][attachmentid=16767][attachmentid=16768]

 

Cory

post-8444-1147747009_thumb.jpg

post-8444-1147747055_thumb.jpg

post-8444-1147747183_thumb.jpg

Posted

Cory, what can I say? This is great work and I'm looking forward to further work from you.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

Cory

Posted

well i'm still working on a design but its suppose to look alittle like squid with a big brain at the top of the head and it goes kinda into the back of the head too and it has two arms with three fingers but with no suction cups and a kind of a fleshy beak for a mouth and six tentacles that it uses to walk on

Posted

well i'm still working on a design but its suppose to look alittle like squid with a big brain at the top of the head and it goes kinda into the back of the head too and it has two arms with three fingers but with no suction cups and a kind of a fleshy beak for a mouth and six tentacles that it uses to walk on

Well, it might not be what you had in mind, but it fits the aforementioned criteria...[attachmentid=16845]...okay let's get to throwing down splines. :D

 

 

Cory

 

Cory, this new one is crazy-cool. Disturbingly good :).

 

Thank you. I'm rendering one at DV resolution to submit to Hash. See if they want to use it in the booth. May do a little monster demo if they want.

 

Cory

post-8444-1148042844_thumb.jpg

Posted

Bug Voice -- take 2:

 

QT (3.4MB)

AVI (3.8MB)

 

Curtis

 

Curtis,

 

Good,good, good! Now, modulate the second scream to muffle a little more when the mouth closes. Excellent, I love the clicking sound. Uhhh...One more little thing, hope you don't get mad. The first version I posted is actually 110 frames playing at 15 fps. When I went back to do a final render I stretched the timeline to not quite double, and made some adjustments to the curves on the hip for the lunges. Can you make adjustments to fit ? Or will you have to start over? Sorry... :(

 

Cory

Posted

Curtis,

 

Good,good, good! Now, modulate the second scream to muffle a little more when the mouth closes. Excellent, I love the clicking sound. Uhhh...One more little thing, hope you don't get mad. The first version I posted is actually 110 frames playing at 15 fps. When I went back to do a final render I stretched the timeline to not quite double, and made some adjustments to the curves on the hip for the lunges. Can you make adjustments to fit ? Or will you have to start over? Sorry... :(

 

Cory

I should be able to adjust the time without effecting the pitch for ratios between 75% and 115%. Beyond this range, you'll start to hear artifacts such as echoes, flanging, or drop-outs. Since this isn't exactly a musical voice, some artifacts might be "enhancements" -- We'd have to try it. The footsteps are discreet and can be moved with no problem. Actually, now that I think about it, most of the component samples of the screams have already been time compressed. If the finished version is 200% I can probably re-use the original samples; and I have the EQ parameters I used to squash everything together, so it *shouldn't* be a problem.

 

Curtis

Posted

I think that the bugs echoeing yell does not go wit the light tip tap of its steps.

that yell needs thumping steps, not tap dancing steps!!!!

 

Just my opinion, and the above is not taking anything away from your great work on this!!!

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

Posted

I think that the bugs echoeing yell does not go wit the light tip tap of its steps.

that yell needs thumping steps, not tap dancing steps!!!!

 

Just my opinion, and the above is not taking anything away from your great work on this!!!

 

Mike Fitz

www.3dartz.com

 

Yep, you are right. Hmmm....I'll see what I can do.

 

Cory

Posted

Excellent work you two ... And yes - it passed the cat freak test - she was absolutely & totally intrigued - she didn't know which to go after - the screen or the speakers - obviously sounded & looked like a very tasty morsel to her

Posted

Bug Voice: take 3

 

AVI 3.8MB

QT 3.6MB

 

Cory,

 

I re-synced the second scream, added thuds to footsteps (not dog scale), mapped footsteps to left and right channels.

 

Curtis

 

Edit: smoothed out voice a little; corrected channels

Posted

Bug Voice: take 3

 

AVI 3.8MB

QT 3.6MB

 

Cory,

 

I re-synced the second scream, added thuds to footsteps (not dog scale), mapped footsteps to left and right channels.

 

Curtis

 

Edit: smoothed out voice a little; corrected channels

Curtis,

 

You are doing a great job. I would still like to see a little more muffling on the second screech. It's like a double take, two quick yelps. You can see the mouth closing in between. Sorry if I'm being to picky, it really does sound great. Give me a coupla days before you do anything else though, and I'll send you a new copy of the animation with the correct frame length and rate. Then we'll submit it to Hash and see if they want to use it.

 

Cory

Posted

Cory,

 

I agree about the second screech; it does need to be modulated and the base track needs to be blended in more.

 

I hesitate to make any suggestions concerning your animation, but I had this idea: As I watched the clip I was itching to add a little camera shake in my video editor. I thought about adding a crash when the creature smashes its tail into the ground. But, it might be just too much racket in an 8 second clip, and it wasn't entirely clear that the tail did hit the ground. I didn't want the viewer to think a gaffer had knocked over a light stand.

 

But, it might be worth a try. If you think this would be worth experimenting with, I could just add a couple more footstep thumps and amp them up a little for now. Adding a little camera shake to go with the bigger tail thumps would be easy to do in the NLE. If the experiment looks good, the actual clip should probably have the tail more visible when it hits the ground the first time so the viewer will know what's causing the crash. After the first crash, the tail smash can be obscured as long as the viewer can see the tail rising up and starting down.

 

Just some thoughts,

Curtis

 

Late night edit: What if he actually knocks over the camera at the end?

Posted

Cory,

 

I agree about the second screech; it does need to be modulated and the base track needs to be blended in more.

 

I hesitate to make any suggestions concerning your animation, but I had this idea: As I watched the clip I was itching to add a little camera shake in my video editor. I thought about adding a crash when the creature smashes its tail into the ground. But, it might be just too much racket in an 8 second clip, and it wasn't entirely clear that the tail did hit the ground. I didn't want the viewer to think a gaffer had knocked over a light stand.

 

But, it might be worth a try. If you think this would be worth experimenting with, I could just add a couple more footstep thumps and amp them up a little for now. Adding a little camera shake to go with the bigger tail thumps would be easy to do in the NLE. If the experiment looks good, the actual clip should probably have the tail more visible when it hits the ground the first time so the viewer will know what's causing the crash. After the first crash, the tail smash can be obscured as long as the viewer can see the tail rising up and starting down.

 

Just some thoughts,

Curtis

 

Late night edit: What if he actually knocks over the camera at the end?

 

Please don't hesitate. Give it try with nle, I'm having some slight hardware problems at the moment. Knocking the camera over would be great! Just for the record, this whole little clip was just a mesh stretching exercise to start with. I just said "let me try this...see what it loks like moving " I liked the motion, so I added alittle more dramatic camera angle. It's kinda blossomed from there.

When I actually get a day off from work, I'll experiment some with the camera and tail.

 

edit: I'd actually like the camera to run away from the bug, and have the bug run after, then knock it down ending with static and snow...:)

 

thanks

Cory

Posted

Cory,

 

OK, one more idea. . . well, a couple more.

AVI (8.9MB)

QT (9.3MB)

 

This is just a rough cut test. All the previous effects are unchanged. Waddaya think?

 

[ ] Well, not too bad (considering)

 

[ ] Nope, nope, nope -- not now, not ever

 

[ ] Stop bothering me

 

BTW, all the audio & video stuff is royalty free so you can show it or post it anywhere.

 

Curtis

Posted

Cory,

 

OK, one more idea. . . well, a couple more.

AVI (8.9MB)

QT (9.3MB)

 

This is just a rough cut test. All the previous effects are unchanged. Waddaya think?

 

[X] Well, not too bad (considering)

 

[ ] Nope, nope, nope -- not now, not ever

 

[ ] Stop bothering me

 

BTW, all the audio & video stuff is royalty free so you can show it or post it anywhere.

 

Curtis

 

Well, it'd be alright except you spelled my name wrong :rolleyes:

 

I have some ideas but I'm afraid we may be running out of time. I don't know when siggraph is, but if my goal is to get it to Hash to show there, as has been suggested, I suspect I'd better keep it simple. Like I said earlier, I'm dead in the water without my laptop working :( I hope to get that resolved by the weekend though. When is Siggraph? June or July?

 

Cory

Posted

Cory,

 

Oops, fixed the spelling of your name and re-posted to the same file.

 

The Boston SIGGRAPH conference is 30 July to 3 August, the exhibition is 1 to 3 August.

 

Curtis

Posted

Cory,

 

This is the tail slap and camera shake experiment. It was obvious to me that the tail caused the crashes even though it was obscured when it hit the ground. But I was expecting it; I'm not sure that it would be obvious to a viewer watching for the first time and probably focusing on the head.

 

QuickTime H.264 (2.8MB)

 

This is the x,y position chart of the image within the frame that I used for the camera shake. If you like the camera shake, it would be better to add it in A:M. I have to enlarge the image slightly to keep the edges of the moving image outside the frame when I do it in post. But if you're pressed for time on the final version, I can do it in post. Anyway, if you like it, this might serve as a starting point. I just used x,y; I didn't use any rotation. I moved the x and y coordinates in opposite directions for each key frame just to make it easier to see what I was doing on the graph.

[attachmentid=16993]

 

Stuff like the lightning effect was relatively easy to do in post and much faster than setting up lights in A:M (at least for me.)

 

I modulated the second screech quickly and not very effectively (volume in the nle) but it's now buried by the tail smash. The thuds of the footsteps are still there when I turn off the music track, but they must be the same pitch as the music, interestingly the higher pitched footstep clicks, which are lower volume, come though fine.

 

I guess that's it for this version, unless you have some suggestions, or until you make changes.

 

Curtis

post-6539-1148544197_thumb.jpg

Posted

Yes to bug shaken (not stirred)!

 

Still wish the screeches were higher pitched, bot otherwise sound/music is good.

 

One little crit.. you can't tell after the flashes if the bug has moved or not, but the first bug with screeching shows a bit of mo blur... and I would expect the bug to be still at that point.

Posted

Cory,

 

This is the tail slap and camera shake experiment. It was obvious to me that the tail caused the crashes even though it was obscured when it hit the ground. But I was expecting it; I'm not sure that it would be obvious to a viewer watching for the first time and probably focusing on the head.

 

Windows Media (2.1MB)

QuickTime H.263 (8MB)

 

This is the x,y position chart of the image within the frame that I used for the camera shake. If you like the camera shake, it would be better to add it in A:M. I have to enlarge the image slightly to keep the edges of the moving image outside the frame when I do it in post. But if you're pressed for time on the final version, I can do it in post. Anyway, if you like it, this might serve as a starting point. I just used x,y; I didn't use any rotation. I moved the x and y coordinates in opposite directions for each key frame just to make it easier to see what I was doing on the graph.

[attachmentid=16993]

 

Stuff like the lightning effect was relatively easy to do in post and much faster than setting up lights in A:M (at least for me.)

 

I modulated the second screech quickly and not very effectively (volume in the nle) but it's now buried by the tail smash. The thuds of the footsteps are still there when I turn off the music track, but they must be the same pitch as the music, interestingly the higher pitched footstep clicks, which are lower volume, come though fine.

 

I guess that's it for this version, unless you have some suggestions, or until you make changes.

 

Curtis

 

Curtis,

 

Yeah, sounds good. Let me get this laptop going again so I can catch up. Thanks,

 

Cory

Posted

Cory,

 

I didn't know if this previz clip of the creature knocking over the camera and closing the shot with static would be helpful or not. It's a somewhat crude 2D modification of your existing 3D footage. I can't really drop the camera to the ground, but, I guess the main thing I got from it was that it might be useful to have the bug hit the camera more than once before the camera shuts down (maybe a close-up leg kicking it in the process of marching toward the operator and over the camera as it lies on the ground.)

Bug & Static (Windows Media 3.2MB) (Compression really messes up the video noise.)

 

I also did a flashlight thing with a film-look nighttime filter and mask. Again, a crude 2D simulation. The previz doesn't get the shadows right--which would be the main point of low angle, eerie lighting. The thing I learned here is that the herky-jerky flashlight has to always delay and then lag behind the head movement (I didn't get it right towards the end, but left it in.) I think shaking the light as it dims during an EverReady moment lets the viewer know it's just a flashlight, the guy holding it is ill-equipped, he's been caught by surprise, and things are not going well.

Bug Light (Windows Media 2.9MB)

 

I'm just having fun with this stuff; I realize it may not match your concept--or be possible in the time you have left--offered strictly for what it's worth.

 

Curtis

Posted

Curtis,

 

I love the first of these two latest! You are having fun! And making it fun to view...

 

What's your editing program?

Posted

Curtis,

 

I love the first of these two latest! You are having fun! And making it fun to view...

 

What's your editing program?

I use Avid Liquid for video editing and some simple audio mixing and editing; Sound Forge for audio editing and FX; and, in this case, Acid Pro for music loops and mixing. I sometimes use SonicFire Pro for music.

 

Curtis

Posted

Curtis, with your knowledge of sound editing, you are one rare resource in this forum :D

 

Glad to have you helping out.

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