Andy Gibbons Alien character

[markeh]

In the first clip called water.mov, you'll notice black speckles on the trees. I've narrowed this down to doing a final render with at least 4 passes and with "soften" on and of course having hair with targa files and a alpha channel. Most likely I could render this with A-buffer rendering without black speckles, but then the precedural bump on the water doesn't show. That would mean no water flow.

 

The second clip has two segments. On the first segment, you'll see rippling in the water. That was done with an animated decal and setting the first and last frame in the choreography. Unfortunately, after saving the project and opening it back up again, the key frames for the animated decal start at 0 where I key framed it, but then scrubbing through the time line indicates that all other points on the line are something like 47898 when it should be 0 through 50. It won't let me fix it as well.

 

On the second segment, sprites look pretty cool, but I think blobbies would look more cool. If you set the bobbiness to 0, it renders quite fast but you can set properties like refraction and reflectivity etc. and would get a much more realistic water drop. Unfortunately, in a final render, blobbies that would ordinarily behave well in a shaded render, now fly everywhere. You'll also see I had to drop the animated decals because of the problem I mentioned above.

 

I'll be submitting a report but I was curious to know if anyone else was having these issues.

water.mov

run.mov

[johnl3d]

great work on the run...love the sounds effect and the water

[NancyGormezano]

excellent, terrific run - and have to add my ditto for great sound effects.

 

What vers are you using ?

[markeh]

Thankyou. Oops version 13.0c.

[Dhar]

Good to see you again Markeh. That looked sweet.

[robcat2075]

Those all look very promising! It makes me want to be a naked grey alien running thru a stream.

 

The subdued color palette is very effective too.

 

Keep it up!

[Stuart Rogers]

That's a nice running-in-water action. The ripples and water droplets look good - hopefully you'll be able to get them together, along with lots of much smaller ripples for the drops that hit the surface.

 

I think you have too rapid variability in the mist at the bottom of the waterfall, though.

[markeh]

Here's a little different perspective on water.

droplet.mov

[steve392]

Theye are very good ,that last one is fantastic ,looks very real

[NancyGormezano]

Fabulous, again - YOU are a master at this! I am amazed at how well you do water effects - I guess living in Las Vegas - you're kinda preoccupied with it? (kidding). Running thru Grand Canyon?

 

The only thing that bothers me is the darkening of the screen before the drippy lens effect (which is excellent) - I 'm guessing that you're wanting to show the camera momentarily going under the water? - but somehow it's distracting & confusing - not sure why - wondering if maybe a half dark image (like in half under water) with skewed, and shaken camera angles might show better - really don't know.

 

I love what you're doing.

[Zaryin]

I think the underwater part should be a frameor two longer. It's too sharp right now. I also didn't see any water ripple in this one. That is simply fantastic work. Love this new one

[markeh]

I guess living in Las Vegas - you're kinda preoccupied with it?

I'm beginning to notice this about myself and yet looking at me, I don't look watery.

 

The only thing that bothers me is the darkening of the screen before the drippy lens effect (which is excellent) - I 'm guessing that you're wanting to show the camera momentarily going under the water?

 

I have a patch placed in front of the camera with translate and orient constraints. It's transparency is 100% with refraction of 1.33. There's also a procedural bump on the patch to get the water effect. I tweaked the translation and amplitude over time of the procedural bump. As the lens went under water, I momentarily upped the density on the patch. A strange thing happens with this patch being placed in front of the camera and that is the water surface (the river which is also a procedural bump) becomes transparent except for reflectivity and probably specularity. I sort of fudged the part where the camera goes under making it quick because I agree there's something fishy going on there (other than the feet don't actually touch the ground).

 

I also didn't see any water ripple in this one.

 

There are several reasons. With the lens patch having refraction, everything is a bit magnified so it's almost overshooting the ripples. Also there are only five animated decals strategically placed for the effect. By the time the lens dries, the decals have run their course. I'm thinking about having a material effector follow the runner with a procedural bump applied to it. I'm pretty sure that will work. It just has to be very thin so that it doesn't affect the alien. Also, sprites won't show up on the other side of this crazy patch that I have.