Dan's Epic Gamin' stuff

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Dan! Some shifting of his weight and a little head movement would go a long way in selling this further.

[robcat2075]

rough test of bowser sitting in his throne being bored. Couple of frame jumps that I need to repair but otherwise I like it

 

BOWSER_bored.mov

 

I'm afraid that is so dark I can't see anything but the torches.

[Maniac]

Thats some very nice work....if you have the time The light on the wall should flicker with torch did not notice torch till second view of it. Character bit more light hard to see details on him..

[Wildsided]

Thanks for all the comments guys. The torches are on my list of stuff to do. I want to get the sprite emitter to do the flames properly first before I toy with the light flicker though. That's been a real pain the ass so far.

 

I`m diggin`your thinking on the fingers though Rodney and David I`ll deffo add in some shuffling.

 

Right now I`ve been focusing on getting everyone in that scene in place and roughing out the timings. It`s quite funny to watch them all in T-Pose drifting along.

 

And lastly just for robert here`s that clip at a higher res with brighter lights.

 

boredbowser.mov

[Wildsided]

Decided I needed to post something so here's the first 20 seconds (Well 19) of the first episode of season 2.

 

I opted to kick things off outside the castle and then head inside to bowser on the throne.

 

The lava (although you don't see it much in this clip) is MTPeak2's ocean rig with a lava texture and some glow.

 

The rain is made using Robcat's suggestion of using a streak emitter and the castle, mountains etc were made by me. The Ace.co presents text is a place holder for timing and like everything at the moment, is subject to change.

 

first_19_secs.mov

[Wildsided]

Evening all.

 

The Ace.Co entertainment art monkey's are extremely pleased to present "The Egg Carrier". Introduced in Sonic Adventure for the SEGA Dreamcast, the Egg Carrier is Dr. Robotnik's flying fortress and base of operations.

 

I figured if Bowser gets a castle then Dr. R should get a base too. It will likely be seen a lot during Season 1 of EG:A (Oh I didn't mention, when Epic Gamin' returns it will be under the new title of Epic Gamin: Animated to differentiate it from our old review based show) and I have a couple of set pieces in mind that it will feature prominently in.

 

Anyway enough talk, here's the pics. Obviously it's not textured yet.

 

[robcat2075]

They're new to me! I never knew Sonic.

[mouseman]

Looks impressive, but I'm in the same boat as Robcat, never was familiar with Sonic.

[Wildsided]

Hello there. 'tis I the Dan and I bring goodies for ya'll. Coz.....ya know I like you.

 

First is a sexy render of the egg carrier looking all shiny.

 

 

and if that doesn't whet your appetite for the first episode of Epic Gamin': Animated, then maybe this will. I posted a similar shot a while back, but now we have flames that don't appear at random and a couple of elite troopa guards. At Rodney's suggestion I have staggered his finger drumming and took Dave's advice and added a little foot shuffle to add some subtlety.

 

sixseconds_of_bowser.mov

[largento]

Nice! Great atmosphere in that clip!

[robcat2075]

Nice looking shot!

 

two ideas...

 

-I think a little bit more direct light might help show the shapes better. Or possibly if you added a light from above highlighting their top edges to simulate the light from the torches.

 

-If you animated the torch light's intensity to flicker a bit they would seem more fire-like.

[Wildsided]

Hi guys, thanks for the support and suggestions on EG:A Episode 1

 

Just stopping by to share a secret project I've been working on. He's nowhere near done yet coz I have to work on him late at night when I finish my 14 hours a day on EG:A (made some nice titles today and solved a glitchy texture problem). Anyway here he is. i just stuffed a couple of eyes into his head and gave him a bit of rudimentary colour to give a better idea of what he'll look like.

 

 

This is Game. He's a gaming dragon. He'll have wings eventually and miniature game controllers. I decided I didn't want to abandon the review aspect of EG altogether. But I wanted to simplify the format so they'll be quicker to produce. So instead of the studio and skits etc, I'll just have me and Game sat in a chair reviewing a game.

 

He's a small dragon about 8 inches tall so he's gonna have a cute squeaky voice and appearance that will be completely at odds with his sarcastic and irreverent personality. He'll say all those things people are usually too well mannered to say and best of all he'll get away with it coz he's cute and small.

[Wildsided]

Hello again.

 

I'm back and this time I bring you 30 seconds of awesome. You (well Rodney, David and Robert) asked for flickering flames. Dan gave you flickering flames. What's more I give you audio. ambient flame and rain sounds, finger taps, very faint atmospheric background music and of course voices. You're the first people to hear the mighty EG:A King Bowser speak (well think to himself anyway). Hope you enjoy it,

 

30secsofawesome.mov

[Wildsided]

Evening all,

 

Just stopping in to shake the cobwebs out of this thread and post a quick render of the dimensional portal opening above Bowser's castle. I'll be having the Egg Carrier emerge from within, from a few dramatic camera angles but still setting that up. Pretty simple set up, its basically a flat ring with an inner 3d ring. The flat ring generates the streaks around the outside and the inner ring has a particle emitter on its inside edge.

 

portal_opens.mov

[mouseman]

Wow, very dramatic! Nice looking effect.

[robcat2075]

That's very impressive!

[tbenefi33]

Those are some awesome models.

[NancyGormezano]

Pretty simple set up, its basically a flat ring with an inner 3d ring. The flat ring generates the streaks around the outside and the inner ring has a particle emitter on its inside edge.

 

portal_opens.mov

 

Interesting effect!

[Wildsided]

Thanks for all the comments guys and gals. EG:A is coming along nicely Have about 3 to 4 minutes of footage done now, 2 minutes of which is all the same scene, the rest is parts of scenes but it's slowly becoming one cohesive unit.

 

In the meantime I've also been working on my games dragon for the reviews aspect of EG and so I figured I'd post an update for anyone who's interested.

 

 

Pretty much all the 'dragon' aspects are there he just needs some added details and rigging.

[Wildsided]

Holy McMoley I haven't posted anything on here since June .

 

Anyway simple excuse is that I've been busy working on the show and I will post some up to date clips/screenshots etc later, but first a quick question for the more informed among you. Is it possible to make an object transparent without the decal on that object becoming transparent as well. Say you decal something and it doesn't cover all the geometry, can you hide the excess so just the decal shows?

[NancyGormezano]

Is it possible to make an object transparent without the decal on that object becoming transparent as well. Say you decal something and it doesn't cover all the geometry, can you hide the excess so just the decal shows?

 

Yes. Use a transparency map along wiith your color map. The transparency map should be shades of gray (or just black and white) where Black = 100% transparent, and white = 0% transparent (100% opaque)

[Wildsided]

Sweet!

 

Thanks Nancy that'll save a whole bunch of teeth modelling.

[Wildsided]

Alrighty, I said I'd post some updates so here goes. Since I posted last in June I've:

 

1) Done a bunch of animating and scripting for the show

 

 

2) Built the bridge of the Egg Carrier and some Egg Robo badniks to pilot it.

 

 

3) Built a Tardis because I love Dr. Who

 

and lastly but by no means leastly I made a decision regarding myself in E.G.A. The original plan was to continue doing what I'd been doing with the old show and green screen myself in to interact with the characters. There was also going to be a 3D me to throw through windows and get blown up etc known as the StuntDan. I have since decided that while 1 or 2 cg characters in an otherwise real world setting (Like with Gwen and Tech in the old studio) doesn't look too bad. 1 not CG person in an otherwise totally CG world looks awful. So I have promoted the stunt Dan to full time character, It'll be easier to animate the interactions this way, anyway here he is.

 

stuntdan.mov

 

 

and here's Dan and Gwen in one of those classic "You're not dead!" hugs

[mouseman]

Glad to see all the new material! Looking good, can't wait to see more!

[Rodney]

Nice update Dan! It's great to see you at it again.

 

I'm still absorbing the news of not seeing 'the real Dan' but I'm optimistic that it will work well for you.

I can see how the move will streamline the workflow.

 

 

Hopefully it'll be okay if, at least for a moment, I miss the real Dan...

I'm looking forward to the adventures of the new real Dan!

 

Added: One thing I want to suggest is to keep videotaping yourself even though you won't be using that video in the final product. You'll gain a lot from acting your part out and then referring back to that video as you animate your virtual self.

[Wildsided]

Added: One thing I want to suggest is to keep videotaping yourself even though you won't be using that video in the final product. You'll gain a lot from acting your part out and then referring back to that video as you animate your virtual self.

 

Thanks guys and Rodney that it totally the plan, gonna go for a kind of video rotoscope so the movements look more realistic.

 

Bought a kinect and downloaded some free mocap software (can't afford true bones) but I don't have time to set it all up and experiment right now, so just copying what I'm doing from the video will suffice for now.

 

As for the real Dan, he should be appearing in a new series alongside 'Game" the games dragon called Dan and Game's Retro Cave, where we play and review retro games, but Epic Gamin': Animated is gonna be all animated to save time and is currently top priority.

 

In other news I forgot to post the splash screen I've made for Ace.Co Entertainment, I only had it as a 720p massive file so I re-rendered it in a smaller res to keep the file size down.

 

Ace.co_splash_screen.mov

[Rodney]

Hehe. I like it! Nicely done.

 

(can't afford true bones)

 

I hope you downloaded that free 2000 BVH pack that truebones converted.

They were initially released by Carnegie Mellon University and the new modifications streamline and simplify the BVH data which should make using them even easier.

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=43273

 

For a moment I was going to start a new topic wherein I would begin to convert each of those BVH motions to Actions for use with A:M Characters but then I came to my senses. I figure we could have them all done in a few hundred years.

[Wildsided]

Hi guys, just dropping in to let you know that I just posted a new show over on blip.tv. Check it out

 

http://blip.tv/EpicGamin/tech-vlog-episode...l-alive-6407606

[Rodney]

Nicely done Dan! You've been busy!

[Wildsided]

Hey guys it's been a while. Been busy making stuff and re-branding a bunch of stuff. Anyway I figured I'd post a couple of bits I've been working on for this years Christmas special.

 

Check out Santa, my tree and the updated Gaming retreat.

 

[robcat2075]

I like those! Especially the Santa!

[Wildsided]

Thanks Robert and hello again to all. 2 posts in 2 days it must Christmas lol.

 

This probably isn't new or exciting for the more experienced forum members but I like how this turned out so I figured I'd share it. You might remember I asked a while back about making a decal visible while making the geometry invisible and thanks to Nancy I learned about transparency maps.

 

Anyway the reason I asked was because I wanted to test an idea to make some simple trees for this years Christmas special. There's gonna be a fly-through of a wooded area on the way to the cabin and I didn't want to make a bunch of geometry heavy trees that would take ages to render.

 

Instead I made a series of rectangles that over lapped as seen in the screen grab below. Each rectangle had the same tree decal applied consisting of a colour, bump and transparency map.

 

 

When these render they make a nice looking tree that's not flat from any angle.

 

 

It's obviously not a replacement for a fully 3d tree but they render quickly and I think the effect is pretty solid

[NancyGormezano]

Great looking trees!

 

They look terrific the way they are.

 

Do you have any plans for building different versions (for more variation in the forest), or perhaps that's not needed for the look you are going after?

[Wildsided]

Great looking trees!

 

They look terrific the way they are.

 

Do you have any plans for building different versions (for more variation in the forest), or perhaps that's not needed for the look you are going after?

 

Thanks Nancy!

 

I'd like to make a couple of different ones for variation like you suggested. It's all a matter of time really, Last years Christmas special didn't get posted until Christmas Eve (Which is about as close as you can cut it) and I had to make a ton of sacrifices with the story. I'm hoping this years effort will be a lot more solid and get people pumped up for the new year.

[Wildsided]

Hey guys,

 

just wanted to show you the first rendered 7 seconds of the Christmas special. No background music or ambient sound yet but just thought you might like to see it. Oh and there'll be a backdrop outside I'm rendering that separately.

 

It's rendered out at a lower bitrate and half res to keep the file size down for the forum.

 

in_flew_game.mov

[Wildsided]

Guys I need some advice.

 

I've got 2395 frames that need rendering by the end of 2morro. They're taking between 6 and 12 minutes to render per frame and that works out to roughly 5 days.

 

I wanna know if there's a way I could make the process faster. If for instance I stop the render re-open the project and bake the particles will that speed things up enough to get this done and will the baking take forever.

 

Any thoughts on how I could get this done would be greatly appreciated. I don't wanna disappoint any fans I have by not having a Christmas episode and I know I could get it done for christmas eve if I could get the rendering finished by Sunday morning

[Rodney]

As 6 minutes per frame is not very long in rendering time this can be hard to judge.

Add in the many variables there are with regard to your specific project and we've got a recipe for extending the render time even more.

 

The bottom line would be to turn off everything you don't need and render to an acceptable resolution that still meets your requirements.

 

*After turning off anything you don't require...

 

Reserve the sequences you think can do without for the very last rendering.

Any time left over you can rerender other sequences if necessary.

 

How many of those frames can be rendered to a lower resolution? Set up a Chor with those frames (say seq 0-500, 1500-2000 and the last 500 frames) then launch a Netrender (I assume you've been using Netrender here)

.

How many must be rendered to the higher quality? Try to focus on those with regard to unnecessary settings (Can you render to 4x4 multipass rather that a higher setting)? Render these out separately 100-500 frames at a time.

 

This is a subject I am very interested in by I don't want to waste your time here. I'll continue to post some thoughts but ignore them for now except those that work for you.

 

There are too many variables at this point so any information you can provide will help.

Are you using AO?

Are you rendering with Netrender?

How many different jobs are in the cue? Can you stop one or two and refine those?

 

At a guess I'd say keep Netrender running as it is now and launch another render (via A:M) that renders that later frames to a lower quality.

Render to another folder and add all of them together.

[Rodney]

I'm about to head off to work but... perhaps some of us can render some frames for you as well.

(I'll be starting another topic to collect general rendering advice not necessarily related to your topic/deadline)

[robcat2075]

Hard to know without seeing it.

 

I could look at it if you want but you'd have to zip up EVERY asset it needs.

[robcat2075]

I looked at the last sample clip. Is it all like that?

 

If you have any ray traced lights change them to z-buffered. If there are complex Materials on the models baking them might help.

[Wildsided]

thanks for the help guys. It's the hair that's killing me. The frames render pretty quickly without it. I'm already rendering everything at half resolution (640 x 360) to save time.

[Rodney]

Does the entire 2395 frame sequence have/require particle hair?

 

I would say you could isolate those frames that have it and render out everything else separately.

When in doubt duplicate your Project/Chor and then tweak the copy.

 

While those other frames are rendering focus on optimizing those remaining that have hair.

[Wildsided]

Oh and while I'm thinking, does anyone know why 64bit netrender doesn't give me the option to choose an image format? where the drop down menu should say Targa, PNG, Jpeg etc. It's just blank. Everything else is there, range resolution etc. But there're no format options so It won't work

[robcat2075]

Oh and while I'm thinking, does anyone know why 64bit netrender doesn't give me the option to choose an image format? where the drop down menu should say Targa, PNG, Jpeg etc. It's just blank. Everything else is there, range resolution etc. But there're no format options so It won't work

 

they ought to be there but you could save a render Preset from the A:M render panel and use that in Netrender.

[Wildsided]

Oh and while I'm thinking, does anyone know why 64bit netrender doesn't give me the option to choose an image format? where the drop down menu should say Targa, PNG, Jpeg etc. It's just blank. Everything else is there, range resolution etc. But there're no format options so It won't work

 

they ought to be there but you could save a render Preset from the A:M render panel and use that in Netrender.

 

tried that Robert. It loaded the entire preset except the image format. 32bit works fine, I think it's an issue with my PC and the 64bit netrender because no version of 64bit netrender has worked on this machine (same no format option glitch)

 

c'est la vi

[MMZ_TimeLord]

I can offer to use my six core machine to render some frames if you like... it should speed things up with six netrender nodes working full tilt boogie. Keep in mind the upload and download times for the data.

 

You can send me an email, PM or answer in this thread!

[Wildsided]

Thanks man, but I think the transfer times would be too huge. But seriously thanks for the offer and thanks to everyone who's thrown in their help. I think this time I'm just gonna have to take it on the chin and start working on the Christmas episode earlier next year. Lol although I thought mid-October would be plenty of time. Next year - August

[robcat2075]

tried that Robert. It loaded the entire preset except the image format. 32bit works fine, I think it's an issue with my PC and the 64bit netrender because no version of 64bit netrender has worked on this machine (same no format option glitch)

 

You might try a reset all settings in A:M then relaunch Netrender. Is that the latest v17d?

[Fuchur]

tried that Robert. It loaded the entire preset except the image format. 32bit works fine, I think it's an issue with my PC and the 64bit netrender because no version of 64bit netrender has worked on this machine (same no format option glitch)

 

You might try a reset all settings in A:M then relaunch Netrender. Is that the latest v17d?

 

I would be willing to help too.

Have 10 cores here. So if u can share the projectfiles we can try it. Make sure to bake the particles before sharing and snd the par and pai files with them (rendering with netrenderer should always be done with baked particles.

 

See u

*Fuchur*

[Rodney]

Oh and while I'm thinking, does anyone know why 64bit netrender doesn't give me the option to choose an image format? where the drop down menu should say Targa, PNG, Jpeg etc. It's just blank. Everything else is there, range resolution etc. But there're no format options so It won't work

 

If Netrender works like A:M itself you should be able to skip the selection of the image format by typing in the extension.

For instance, if you want to render to TGA in A:M you can type "image000.tga" and A:M automatically knows you want TGA images.

Need EXR format? Type "image00000.exr" and A:M will render out to EXR format.

The only thing this cannot do (as far as I know) is set specific settings within the file format.

 

Aside: It'd be cool if we can pass A:M parameters ... but I don't know that we can do that. (Example: "Image0.mov -compression")

I half suspect that A:M uses such parameters to talk to it's renderer. The render has to get its instruction from somewhere.

In a perfect world perhaps "image000.tga complete.mov" would render the sequence to both tga and mov sequences.