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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

"Daughters" WIP Thread


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  • Hash Fellow
Sat down and finished the dragon model. I'm not quite satisfied with the legs, it feels like they're missing SOMEthing. Just can't put my finger on it.

A back claw?

 

I'll also be making a saddle for him, but I'll probably get him rigged up first.

 

edit: annnnd just noticed that after I re-found the normals, it flipped his hair patches around so I have to re-do all that. oops.

 

You can select any group and RMB>flip normals

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Thanks all!

Ding! that's it! Back claw.

 

Yeah, already flipped the normals back. It was weird, everything was facing the correct direction... except those four patches emitting hair. Fortunately, the right side was still ok - but the left side got reset. So I only had to re-do one side.

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  • 5 months later...

All right, it's been a while. Had another project come up that I just finished, now I'm getting back on track with this. Overhauling a few things, I'll post some updates in the next week or two.

 

Quick question, are cookie cutter maps generally unreliable? I had a badge that I wanted on the character as a c-c but kept getting transparency artifacts. Updated to the latest version, and it helped... but there are still some glitches. Just went ahead and modeled the badge, but for future reference is there a way around this? Tried both .png with transparency and .tga with an alpha channel.

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  • Hash Fellow
Quick question, are cookie cutter maps generally unreliable?

 

It seems to depend on if a part of a patch is not within the rectangular bounds of the decal. Just my guess.

 

 

Try separate color and transparancy decals and make sure they completely cover the patches they contact (meaning hide any patches that dont' have the decal image on them)

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  • 9 months later...

Alright, after a few down months of not having much time to work on stuff due to moving, I've had some time to get back to work. This is the main character of the project and the model is pretty detailed, I've trimmed it down to 15768 patches (which is still pretty damn heavy). Granted, it's been a WiP for a long time now and a bit of a learning journey. Other character for this project will be far lighter, and won't require their models to be quite as heroic.

inv_test.png

 

No model is ever done, but I'm finally getting to the point on this one where I'm about ready to put it aside and start picking up work on the other parts of the project I've started over the course of the last few months. Please point out any flaws or offer any constructive criticism on my work thus far, I'm here to learn after all!

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz013.jpgAnimation_MasterScreenSnapz014.jpg

 

Finally, here's a quick speech test I animated this morning to try out some lip sync for the actress who will be voicing her.

http://modenstudios.com/daughters/speech_test.mov

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Great looking model, David! The voice of the actress fits the character too.

 

The only thing that I could find that might be something I could critique is a possible dead-end spline...it might just be the angle I'm seeing it at though.

 

Good luck on the project!

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz014_crit.png

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Thanks! Interesting catch, went back and looked at it (because I didn't remember modeling something like that), turns out it's just a funky angle. It's just two splines, the left-right one and the up-down one, but the top one looks like it angles back unnaturally at the lower resolution in real time.

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Having some problems getting a robe to work properly. It seems no matter what I do, the legs start going through and getting stuck. By the end of the simulation, I've got something like this:

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz021.jpg

Is the mesh just not dense enough?

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz023.jpgAnimation_MasterScreenSnapz024.jpg

Right now I've got the collision distance set to 0.2. If I put it to 0.3 or higher, the cloth disappears after a few frames (presumably too close; too many collisions).

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Here's a couple movies quick. It's not as bad as it was before now that I've added a few new splines to the legs, but the feet area in particular are still kinda questionable.

That being said, this IS a test animation I had created for a different character - so I didn't really animate with a robe in mind at all. Do I just need to be a little more careful animating?

http://www.modenstudios.com/clothF.mov

http://www.modenstudios.com/clothB.mov

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  • 2 weeks later...

Came back to this after watching the cloth Tech Talk:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26015

The video was invaluable!! However, to anyone else having cloth issues - it's the tail end of the video you want. Most of the video goes over the basics of cloth; deflectors, modeling and animating with collision distances, etc. But around the 40 minute mark, just when you think it's "basics" video, there's the really good bits - explaining how to use subdivisions and to start and stop the simulation to work around tough spots. d ^_^ b

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  • Hash Fellow

Cloth gets angry when it gets caught between deflectors such as in an armpit or inside an elbow. I've had success by deleting geometry on those interior areas.

 

I'd also suggest increasing the "damping" values on your cloth to reduce the constant fluttering.

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Awesome Rob, thanks! I'll check out damping, it's set at the default of 0.1 right now.

 

Spent an hour or two on a dragon skull, meant for the top of a staff:

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz025.jpgAnimation_MasterScreenSnapz026.jpg

 

Concept of said staff, and the character I'm working on atm:

atra_color.jpeg

Kinda dreading the sleeves; the robe bottom has given me enough of a headache. I'll probably make them less baggy, or just do away with them altogether.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Alright, been making another dragon over the last couple days. Currently working on the rig, and oh my god am I in love with Matt right now. I used the basic concept behind his pterosaur rig and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I had started rigging the other dragon some time back, but kinda threw my hands up in the air and started working on another character after I got to the wings.

 

Matt's rig not only makes the wings fold beautifully, but I've also added a midsection to the wing surface so it can move up and down with the air current as the wings flap.

 

Drake_Wingtest.mov

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz003.jpg

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ty!

 

Forgot to post the actual setup.

 

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz004.jpg

There's no smartskinning involved. Just a little CP weighting at the base of the "fingers."

 

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz005.jpg

Pretty straightforward hierarchy. Matt's rig also has some additional bones that attach the wing surface to the body. Great for if your model doesn't connect at the elbow like this one.

 

Animation_MasterScreenSnapz006.jpg

The relationships are actually controlled by two separate poses. Most of it is simply turned on in the "setup" pose. To make an adjustable slider for the middle parts, I keyed the "orient like" relationships at 0 in the "wing wind" pose and then simply adjusted their Y offset at 100 and -100 to make the bones rotate and the wing surface raise and lower.

 

Coolest part is it's ridiculously easy to set up. Almost all of those relationships are simply default settings, with the exception being "scale to reach" turned on for the kinematic.

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  • 1 month later...

Been working on various other character and environment models; came back to the dragon this afternoon to do some animating. I'm pretty happy with the result!

 

peekaboo.jpg(5.5MB .mov file)

 

edit: The claws digging into the ledge is intentional; I rotated the hand targets and fingers over time. However, after watching it again, I think I overdid it and they look like they're sinking into it some.

 

edit 2: in the screenshot, you can see the highlight and bump on the parts where the wing is supposed to be transparent (opacity maps). how do I fix that?

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  • Hash Fellow

Hey that's looking pretty cool!

 

edit 2: in the screenshot, you can see the highlight and bump on the parts where the wing is supposed to be transparent (opacity maps). how do I fix that?

 

Make the image flat in those areas? (no detail)

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  • Hash Fellow
edit 2: in the screenshot, you can see the highlight and bump on the parts where the wing is supposed to be transparent (opacity maps). how do I fix that?

 

I didn't completely see the problem you were pointing to. I see the phantom portions now.

 

Is there bump detail in those areas? Get rid of that. Make it flat 128 grey in those parts. Possibly the renderer is trying to highlight those bumps just like it would do bumps on transparent glass that were catching the light somehow.

 

Alternatively you may need to add an alpha channel to the bump map to limit its presence to yoru actual wing surface. Your opacity map could probably be copy and pasted for that.

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  • Hash Fellow
The bumps are coming from a material that's applied globally. Would it be better to use cookie-cut maps? I imagine the highlight will still show up, even without the bump.

 

Use a bump map instead of a material, and put your transparency map in its alpha channel.

 

Test the concept out with just a simple painted bump pattern.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 months later...
  • Hash Fellow
Alright, with the help of Mark and David, got the rig and dynamics in my orc guy flipped and functioning! A few keyframes later and here's a quick test of the motion of his armor:

 

Untitled.mov

 

He'll be performing Swan Lake in no time!

 

That's working well!

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