Stalled Trek

[Darkwing]

Personally, I think the arms are fine

[williamgaylord]

OK, I tweaked the ear a bit more to improve it's shape. Pulled the recesses a bit deeper and so on. Then I made you an ear for Mr. Spott. Both will still need plenty of more tweaking of gamas, etc., plus some porcelain material to smooth them out a bit. You'll need to adjust them to suit your characters and your taste. Here they are for anybody who wants them:

 

Ears

 

A bit of (somewhat gruesome) trivia: Porcelain derives its name from the fact that it was made with pork bone ash mixed into the clay. The really gruesome part was scraping the rotting flesh from the large piles of bones collected from slaughter houses.

[largento]

OK, I tweaked the ear a bit more to improve it's shape. Pulled the recesses a bit deeper and so on. Then I made you an ear for Mr. Spott. Both will still need plenty of more tweaking of gamas, etc., plus some porcelain material to smooth them out a bit. You'll need to adjust them to suit your characters and your taste. Here they are for anybody who wants them:

 

Ears

 

A bit of (somewhat gruesome) trivia: Porcelain derives its name from the fact that it was made with pork bone ash mixed into the clay. The really gruesome part was scraping the rotting flesh from the large piles of bones collected from slaughter houses.

 

Thanks, Bill! I really appreciate it and I look forward to messing with them.

 

And that is *very* gruesome. :-)

[Darkwing]

A bit of (somewhat gruesome) trivia: Porcelain derives its name from the fact that it was made with pork bone ash mixed into the clay. The really gruesome part was scraping the rotting flesh from the large piles of bones collected from slaughter houses.

 

Well, after that, somehow pork doesn't sound so appetizing for supper tonight!

[largento]

 

Mr. Spott is coming together! (Although I don't think Captain Krok likes the idea of giving up the limelight.) :-)

[LeeAnderson]

Man, this is gonna be great!

 

I love the way the characters look--you got "Spott"s body type down great! Is he going to hunch a little and move really awkwardly like Spock did in the show?

 

I don't know how final your textures are, but have you considered adding a little roughness and/or gradient edge threshold to the character's shirts? It might make it a little more authentic, but I think it's great as it is!

 

You're flying through these models! Keep it up! Just out of curiosity, how are you planning on doing the voice acting? (enter 100 people saying: "You know, I do a pretty mean Bill Shatner")

 

Good luck!

 

Lee

[Logrus]

I do a pretty good James Doohan (Scotty) impression.

[largento]

Man, this is gonna be great!

 

I love the way the characters look--you got "Spott"s body type down great! Is he going to hunch a little and move really awkwardly like Spock did in the show?

 

Thanks! Yeah, Spott has that hunched over, knees slightly bent posture that I alwas associate with Jack Davis' illustrations in Mad. You remind me of something that I used to always get a laugh at. I'll have to re-watch it when I reach the point of animating and see if I can capture some of it. In the episode "Balance of Terror," there's a scene where Spock has to turn around and run back down a hall to rescue a bigoted officer. Nimoy trying to run in those heeled boots is really awkward. :-)

 

I don't know how final your textures are, but have you considered adding a little roughness and/or gradient edge threshold to the character's shirts? It might make it a little more authentic, but I think it's great as it is!

 

Not very final at all. I do have a little bit of roughness on the shirts to try to capture that velour look, but probably not as much as I should. I don't even know what "gradient edge" is. :-)

 

You're flying through these models! Keep it up! Just out of curiosity, how are you planning on doing the voice acting? (enter 100 people saying: "You know, I do a pretty mean Bill Shatner")

 

Good luck!

 

Lee

 

Once I got to the body, it went pretty fast, but that's mostly due to being able to Frankenstein the arm and leg from the Krok model. I was happy to find that worked as well as it did. Now I'm not feeling so bad about having to create some background characters.

 

I haven't made any decisions about the voices yet. There are six speaking characters. Half of those are female, so I don't think I'll be able to do them all myself. A year or so ago, I used a small recording studio out here in Dallas to do some voice-over work for a project I did at work. The guy we used was an actor and taught voice-over classes for other actors. I had thought briefly that I might explore that avenue. He could do a professional recording session and would have a base of voice actors.

 

I don't know. That still seems like a pretty long ways away right now. :-)

 

I do a pretty good James Doohan (Scotty) impression.

 

Scotty isn't in this episode, Logrus. Unless I get ambitious and change things, the only speaking roles are: Captain Krok (Kirk), Mr. Spott (Spock), Dr. McGruff (McCoy), Nurse Temple (Chapel), T'Poodle (T'Pau) and T'Pomeranian (T'Pring).

 

I do have a scene with a red shirt and a monster in the comic (a conceit, since there was no such scene in the episode, but you gotta' kill off a red shirt if you beam down somewhere!) :-) He doesn't have any lines though... except maybe a quick scream when he gets killed. :-)

[LeeAnderson]

In the episode "Balance of Terror," there's a scene where Spock has to turn around and run back down a hall to rescue a bigoted officer. Nimoy trying to run in those heeled boots is really awkward. :-)

 

Haha! That's EXACTLY what I was thinking of. He kind of hunches over like some kind of football player...almost like Han Solo running from the Stormtroopers in Star Wars but really really funny looking.

 

Not very final at all. I do have a little bit of roughness on the shirts to try to capture that velour look, but probably not as much as I should. I don't even know what "gradient edge" is. :-)

 

It's an option on the material gradient combiners: attribute one controls your basic color and attribute two controls the edge, almost like a velvet material. It's on page 22 of the tech reference. You may or may not like the way it looks

 

Lee

[largento]

 

I spent a little time messing with the materials per your suggestions, Lee. Spott's tunic came out great! The color is right and it looks like velour. Krok's tunic... not so much. I'll have to work on it.

 

But on both, the decal for the insignia is alterred by the material. Is there a way to keep that from happening?

[LeeAnderson]

Oh yeah! Spott's tunic looks really nice!

 

As far as keeping the decal seperate, there's no way to do it that I know of...aside from modeling it seperately. That woud be a pain after all the work that you've done though.

 

Not sure what's happening with Krok's shirt either...just from the picture, it looks like the material isn't showing at all, come on material, get your head in the game!

 

Looking good!

 

Lee

[largento]

Decided to work on another prop before I rigged Spott... didn't know I was going to stay up all night working on it, though... I'm going to hate myself tomorrow. :-)

 

Made a Communicator!

 

Here's a JPEG and a quick turnaround and showing the flipping open action.

 

 

commturn.mov

[youngman]

This is great Mark,

I love the caricatures you've made so far.I'm really looking forward to seeing this unfold.

 

Jay

[largento]

Thanks, Jay!

 

Had a little fun with the Communicator prop...

 

 

I think I may have Krok's tunic's material working out right, Lee. It does look a little faded, but I think it does look soft like velour.

 

As I get in close, I'm seeing some weirdness with the rig. I don't think the forearm isn't twisting with the wrist like it should... and there's some issues with the fingers, too. Maybe I'll figure out what I did wrong while I'm rigging Spott.

[LeeAnderson]

Shoot Mark! This is awesome! It looks like the start of an internet phenomenon to me. I'm really excited to see the animation but it almost looks as though you could get away with a 3D comic strip in between animating.

 

Great stuff (Krok's tunic looks great too)!

 

Lee

[largento]

Thanks, Lee. I'm fairly certain I am lacking too much coolness to be part of an "internet phenomenon." :-)

 

I've been sidetracked this week and haven't gotten much done. I started rigging Spott, but have been thinking that I might ditch the custom rig and use the Squetch rig after doing the "rig along with me" stuff.

 

I did play around today with making a teaser card for it. I just got my Creative Suite 3 upgrades from Adobe and wanted to play with the new software. After putting the title together in Illustrator, I brought it into A:M to convert it to 3D. Ended up being more work than I thought, since some of the letters were pinching in places. Of course, with my luck the one letter that I used the most (there are 5 of them), the "T" was one of the letters that was messed up.

 

Still, when all was said and done, I thought it came out pretty cool. I wanted to test Photoshop Extended's ability to bring in 3D files as layers. It's not so great. It does allow you to move it around, which could be helpful if you are not sure how you are going to use something, but that's about it. You still get a much better result from rendering it with an alpha channel and then bringing that image in. Which is what I'll do the next time I do something with the logo. Oh well. :-)

 

I think it's a law that all computer animated films have to put out an image of one of the characters leaning up against the title, so I decided not to risk being jailed and did that. :-) Basically aped the James Bond pose with Krok. The tagline was something I used back in '96, when I did this as a web comic. I guess some younger folks won't recognize the reference. (For those who are too young, the Ridley Scott movie "Alien" had the tag line "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.")

 

Oh well, I better get back to doing something that'll actually give me a chance of finishing it in 2008... But at least I've got a spiffy new desktop picture. :-)

 

[Darkwing]

Awesome

[largento]

Thanks, Darkwing!

 

Wow, been awhile since I've had anything new to show. I'm feeling better with rigging. The posable install for the Squetch rig is a really amazing thing!

 

I've started modeling Dr. McGruff. He's actually been kind of hard to do. Here's the sort of first version. Not really ready for Prime Time, but a start...

 

[Tacku]

Actually largento, McGruff looks nice. And I love the communicator too. May I inquire how the USS Secondprize is going to look?

[largento]

Thanks, Tacku.

 

I think the Secondprize will look pretty much like the Enterprise, but a little cartoonier... and it's also going to have strings holding it up... so that it looks like it's a model and that the special effects aren't so great. :-)

 

It's something I look forward to making, but it will probably be one of the last things I model. Partly because it will only be needed for a few insert shots, but mostly because I want it to come out great, so I figure I'll be pretty experienced at modeling by then.

 

Whew... everytime I think "look how far I've gotten," I realize how much further there is to go! :-)

[largento]

 

Well, I think I've gotten most of the tweaking done to Dr. McGruff's head. He's looking a whole lot like my drawings now.

 

Most noticeable things are probably changing the eye decals, changing the nose shape and lowering the mouth. The rest of the tweaking was mostly just getting everything to look smoother and simpler.

 

It's funny to me that it takes so much work to make it look more simple.

 

I played with AO with this render and really love how it makes their "velour" tunics look. I probably should've lowered the intensity, though. (Live and learn.)

 

Onto making the body. McGruff is the only character with a wardrobe change, but I'm going to see if I can make that change to a copy of the finished, rigged version. (On the ship, McGruff is wearing a short-sleeved shirt.)

 

I put a decal on Krok's face, but it ended up just being eye make-up. (I'll do the same for Spott and McGruff later.)

 

After McGruff, it's onto modeling the three main female characters.

[goodguy20k]

Oh my gosh! That's awesome! (Though... The skin looks too perfect for my tastes. Very good for a comic book frame, not sure how it would look animated.) I too love the "velour" look! Awesome job!

 

Just curious, Mark, can McGruff's shirt just get "shorter"? Then you could create a pose slider for "wardrobe select", and scrub along until you find the one you want. Rigging, I think, can be modified on the pose (don't quote me). Where's David? He probably knows.

[largento]

Thanks, Daniel! The lighting and rendering does make a big difference, doesn't it? Yet another huge subject I'm going to have to learn about before this is all said and done! :-)

 

Of course, I didn't have the settings optimized (since I don't really know what I'm doing), but it took 5 hours to render that image. That would mean it would take over SIX YEARS for my computer to render a 6 minute film, so I'm not seeing this render-style animating, either. :-)

 

I did experiment a little bit with texturing the skin, but I didn't like how it was coming out. SSS interests me, but my limited experimenting with it hasn't been so great. I've been aiming for a sort of plastic, action figure look. (Even if Lee did lead me astray with the suggestion of how to do the velour for the tunics.) :-)

 

You've made me curious about the pose-slider solution to the wardrobe change. It's a completely different shirt (different collar, different material). Would it work?

[LeeAnderson]

My gosh Mark! That looks awesome! I'm shocked when I see stuff this cool come out of A:M. Personally, I like the "too perfect" look for this. The looks your coming up with are great. McGruff looks soooo good, if Deforest were around, I'm pretty sure that he'd think he was looking into a mirror (well, maybe a funhouse mirror )

 

I've been aiming for a sort of plastic, action figure look. (Even if Lee did lead me astray with the suggestion of how to do the velour for the tunics.) :-)

 

Hey now, what kind of thanks is that?! lol...last time I help you

 

Keep if up, and I might consider speaking to you again

 

Lee

[largento]

Haha, you've got me wrong, Lee! :-)

 

The velour looks great and really adds a bunch to it! Heck, the Star Trek action figures I had as a kid *did* have cloth uniforms. :-)

 

But seriously, thanks for the encouragement ..and the tips!

 

I'm having a blast with this. There's so much to do and so many more things to learn, but I've wanted to do this as an animated short for 11 years! Kinda' makes a year and a half (or however long it takes to do all of this) not seem like so much time at all. :-)

[largento]

Well, I figure one of the plusses to having so much work left to do is that I can jump around some. :-)

 

Seeing the new video stuff that Photoshop can do now made me realize it would be pretty easy to create the transporter effect. It was really easy. I'm sure I'll be able to improve on it down the road, but I think it's a good start. I've attached the quick 5 second video as a zip since the m4v quicktime file is so much smaller and the quality is so much better.

 

transport_test3.zip

 

Here's a screengrab of the file open in Photoshop:

 

 

You can add video as layers and treat them basically like normal layers in Photoshop. In this case, I created a sparkly image which I brought into A:M as a png file and mapped to a cylinder as a cookie-cut decal. Then I made a cho and animated it rotating 180 degrees. That gave movement to the sparkles and since you could see through to the back of the cylinder, you've got sparkles moving in two directions. I duplicated the frames a few times to give me 6 seconds of video.

 

 

I brought the quicktime movie I made from the animation in as a layer, and resized it so that it filled the area where Spott would be standing and set the layer style to screen.

 

I used the mask created by the alpha channel from my render of Spott to mask off the effect and then animated the opacity of both in the timeline.

 

The background was just an image I'd grabbed off of the web awhile back.

[mtpeak2]

That looks great Mark. I love the characters so far, though Spotts ears look a little thick around the top.

[largento]

That looks great Mark. I love the characters so far, though Spotts ears look a little thick around the top.

 

Thanks, Mark!

 

You're right about Spott's eartips. How's this?

 

 

I'm still working on rigging him. I used your posable install for the Squetch Rig and have most of the body CP's weighted. (I felt like a dope when I found out there was an easy way to edit the weights... I was trying to do it with the "Has Falloff" properties... d'oh!)

 

I've been using David's Squetchy Sam as my go-by to see how things are set up. It's been slow-going, but I'm sure that it'll be faster once I've gone through rigging a couple of characters.

 

I think the Squetch Rig is really going to up the quality of the characters. You guys have done an amazing job!

[mtpeak2]

That looks better, but I think this whole area needs to be thinner. (see image)

[largento]

I'll have to think about that, Mark. The way they are now looks like my drawings. I may change my mind, though and play with them. So you can say "I told you so" then. :-)

 

I'm uploading a 2nd transporter test. I think this one works better. I was getting a "matte" line on the other one, so I used openEXR frames this time and got a better alpha channel. I also adjusted the timing of the beam a little... and I thought having him remaining frozen at the end detracted from getting the full effect, so I animated Spott a little after he materializes.

 

I haven't really done any animation before, so be kind while ripping it to pieces. :-) The movement is only 20 frames long, so there's not a whole lot of it. My thinking was just that I wanted to create a contrast to the freeze frame of the transporter effect. It at least succeeds in that regard. Since it's the first time I've ever made one of my characters move, I'm pretty excited about it. :-)

 

For some reason the frames rendered with a black spot on Spott's tunic. It's not shown up before, so I think it's just a fluke.

 

betterbeam_glo2.zip

 

*EDIT*

 

I've replaced this one with yet another version. I'm probably putting too much thought into this, but I do want it to look good. This new one is basically the same as it was, except that I've given the sparkles a glow and then duplicated the sparkle layer and offset it by one frame, which fills out the space a little more. I also adjusted the brightness on the "frozen" frame so that there's a more dramatic switch at the end of the effect. I may have gone too far, but I think it's okay to make it look a little better than the original, as long as it still "feels" the same.

[largento]

I'm still jumping around. I've been working on creating the Vulcanine Set. This is the centerpiece of it. The set is circular with some pillars encircling one half and two entranceways with a stone wall in between them on the other half. It's funny, they clearly didn't build the stone wall between the two entrances for the show. There isn't a single shot going in that direction. So, I'm just guessing that it's a stone wall. :-)

 

 

Of course, since this is VulCANINE, there's a lot of dog stuff. The symbol that's repeated around the coal pit is the chinese character for dog. :-)

 

I couldn't find any blueprints or plans for this set (although I thought one of the books I did had a rough overview of it), so I'm just having to guess.

[largento]

 

Still working on my Vulcanine set. It's coming along pretty well. I cheated some of the set to make it a little more impressive (the actual set was kind of cramped.) I'm fairly certain they used forced perspective on the far end of the set. I want to interact with that area, so I kept it full-sized. Most of what I have left is either background stuff or little details that need to be added. Over half of the film takes place on this set, so it's worth putting in all the effort (plus, it's fun.)

[LeeAnderson]

Wow! That's looking awesome Mark! I love the level of detail that you're putting into this!

 

Are you going to be using a matte painting in the background? I think that would add a lot. Maybe even just some stylized clouds...

 

Keep it up, this is so cool!

 

Lee

[largento]

Thanks, Lee. Yeah, I'm thinking some kind of backdrop for the far off background. It's a circular set, so I'm thinking of doing a cylinder. There weren't any clouds in the TV show, but they did have some smoke rising up behind the set. I've thought about doing that. I've still got a ton more detail to put into it. The most of my time has been spent trying to figure out how to get the rocky texture and work out the colors on the decals. I think I'm committed to this version of them.

 

There's some funny stuff I've noticed by watching and re-watching the footage from Amok Time. One is that during some of the fight scenes, the actors are wearing fake boots that kind of look like socks. :-)

 

Another is this:

 

Here the landing party begins to approach the ceremonial arena:

 

 

Now they enter it...

 

 

And the camera angle turns around and suddenly there's this brick wall behind them! :-)

 

 

I've been mulling over the idea of doing some kind of gag about this in my film. Might be too obscure, though. I've seen this episode a bunch of times over the years, but it wasn't until I started going through it frame-by-frame to try to see the details of the set that I noticed it.

[Darkwing]

Here, have a look at this. It's from the remastered series if it helps any. Amok time remastered

[largento]

I'm pretty much ignoring the remastered version. I did look at their idea of what a long shot would be and it's neat that they tried to tie it in to the animated series and Star Trek III, but it doesn't match any of the shots from the episode (which are still in the remastered version.)

 

Call me a purist, but I love the original... warts and all.

[Darkwing]

I understand, I love them too, I just like the idea of how it would look today. Who knows, maybe in 60 years with new sfx tech, they'll be remaking the effects to popular shos today like battlestar galactica and such.

[largento]

Has it been a year yet?

 

Life got in the way the last week and a half and slowed me down, but I'm trying to get back into the groove. Spent some time today playing around with creating a walk cycle for Mr. Spott. It needs some work, but considering it's the first one I've done, it's not terrible. :-)

 

I stuck him into the current version of the Vulcanine set to let him walk some laps and thought I would share. I looped it a bunch of times and sent it over to my AppleTV at 720 and got a kick seeing it on my HDTV. It's gonna' be really cool to have actual scenes to watch.

 

The music over this is something I'm playing with. It's actually what I thought the Spock music was when I was a little kid. I had a little guitar and I would pluck out this over and over. Kinda' cool that now I'm going to have an excuse to use it. If I'd gotten it right back then, I wouldn't be able to! :-)

 

I rendered this out in three pieces. The centerpiece by itself, Spott's walk around, and then the rest. That way I only had to render one frame of the background (and the centerpiece.) I missed something, though and because I went for this really wide angle, there's a part of the set that should be in front of Spott (over on the left), but isn't and his hand goes in front of it before he gets in front of it. Oops. I think I'm going to have to limit the camera moves I do, since this set takes awhile to render.

 

walkinthedog.mov

[goodguy20k]

Not bad for a first cycle! Watch the hips. Seems to me that they float. They should move forward and to the side of whichever foot he's transferring weight to, and come back to center halfway before he goes back to the other foot. Also, look for the step up motion. (This is where you can really cartoonize your character, I've found.) When he's got all his weight on one foot, that leg should be (almost) fully extended when he's directly over it. You can fudge this, make it happen early, make it very slight, of over do it, etc. For me, that's what really sells a character's walk style. Also, when the leg is fully extended, the hips should move slightly toward the foot the weight is on.

 

When you've read all that and realize I'm crazy and no not of what I speak, give yourself a round of applause and then forget it all. After that, visit this site:

http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walks.shtml

 

It's got some cool stuff on walk cycles.

 

Cool stuff, Mark! Can't wait to see more!

[largento]

Haha, very valid points all of them, Daniel... and stuff that I was completely oblivious to.

 

I don't think you're crazy (I have no proof that you aren't, mind you, but I don't think you are.)

 

And thanks for the great link. I will soak all of this up when I get home tonight.

 

I'm still taking baby steps with this, but I feel like I'm on the verge of getting to the beginning. :-)

[goodguy20k]

Well, glad it made some sense.

 

I DREADED the walk cycle. Then one day I decided I was just going to learn it. Grab my animation book, and hit the road... Still learning, but even that first one surprised me with how cool it was!

[largento]

Wow, somehow I made it through the whole month of July without updating. I got distracted working on the rooster character and I was also avoiding the inevitable...

 

I realized at the time when I was starting to model these characters, that I would likely have to go back and remodel them once I had a better idea of what I was doing, but I kept putting it off. I've reached the point now, where I really want to move forward and this is a necessary step.

 

It's been slow-going, but I began remodeling Krok about a week or so ago. I'm still playing with the head right now, but here's the foundation of it:

 

 

I've scaled back some of the look and am trying to find a balance that I like. Last time out, I wasn't able to do the nose or ears very well. They're coming out much better this time. I really don't want to have to remodel him again down the line, so I'm taking my time and trying to get everything "right" this time.

 

I ran into lots of issues while rigging the last version, so a big motivation behind doing this is to make a mesh that will animate better.

[Zaryin]

He's looking great! He looks a little like Earnest Borgnigne(sp?) now -- which I actually like.

[largento]

From Conan O'Brien to Ernie Borgnine... maybe I'm not making as much progress as I thought. :-)

 

I guess there's no fighting it... after a round of "de-borgnification," I'm gonna' have to accept my fate and start doing some "shatnerfying." :-)

 

That's an extremely helpful observation, though! Thanks!

[DanCBradbury]

so why did you make Spock look like he's got horns? shouldn't the ears be pointing strait up?

 

the eyebrows are a great caricature, but in some shots they're distracting and sorta makes it look like he's wearing a bowlers cap.

[largento]

That came out of trying to make the front view look like the way I'd drawn him. I always did the hair with gaps in it, but lack-of-ability had me just settle at the time for the hair being solid. The gaps in the hair should break the hat rim illusion. At this point, he'll most likely end up looking less stylized in the remodel.

 

The only pic I have with me at work is from the 2001 version. I went even more crazy with his ears in subsequent versions. The 1996 version wasn't nearly as wild and I'm thinking that I'm going to look back to that version for part of the remodel...

 

[Zaryin]

I was being serious with my comment. I like the way he looks, although I like the way he looked before . If you do decide to change him again, I'm pretty sure I'll like that verion as well, ha.

[largento]

Thanks, Jeff!

 

I'm still messing with it. I realized when I went back and looked at it that I wasn't doing a good job of dimensionalizing the face. It was too flat. I spent some more time working on it and trying to rectify that. Still not quite there...

 

[LeeAnderson]

Great work Mark! I think you should keep on honing your skills (although they're already great). Modeling wise, this one is more accurate than the old one. However, I think that the sculpt and personality of the other model is more Shatteresque.

 

Hope that helps, otherwise keep it up! You da man!

 

Lee

[largento]

Thanks, Lee! When you say "other model" are you meaning the one I modeled 6 months ago, or the earlier version of this 3rd one (the Ernest Borgnine one)?

 

There are definite elements that I liked about the one from 6 months ago (I'm calling it the v2 one), but he looked weird from most angles and the splines were not working very well for animation. In the end, I just wasn't satisfied with it. I knew I could do it better this time, so it just made sense to start with a fresh model.

 

I'm working on the honing. :-) I've got the luxury of no deadline on this project, so I'm realizing that I don't have to settle and that part of getting better at this is just doing it, so I've been pushing and pulling CPs on this, trying to make it better.

 

My guess is that at a certain point I'll get that spark of the character, then I'll pull it back a little to keep it cartoony. I haven't yet found that point, but I know I'm going to get there!

 

...eventually. :-)

 

Here's another signpost on the trip: