The New Generation of Skeltoons

[Wildsided]

Saw Frozen the other day. Loved every minute of it (particularly the 'Let it go' sequence). So I decided to play with making something in the Disney style.

 

This is no princess in particular but here's what I have so far.

 

[robcat2075]

What big eyes she has!

[Wildsided]

That's how those Disney girls roll player.......Yeah it doesn't matter how many times I try to sound street it always sounds dumb.

[robcat2075]

Yeah, I'm sure once you get the whole head in place the proportions will work.

 

But I've noticed in the past that people who aren't looking at animation as much as we do are often boggled by the size of the eyes on most characters.

[largento]

I was flabbergasted at the art direction of Frozen. It is an astonishingly good-looking movie. The Disney animation is excellent, too. It looks like they are succeeding in getting the Disney style through cgi. The characters don't look or feel stiff at all. I thought they accomplished this in Tangled, too.

 

I think the big eyes on the Disney princesses started with The Little Mermaid. It's definitely become their style now.

 

Here's a pic of the latest two, Robert...

 

 

I think you're getting the proportions right, Dan, but it looks like you're getting a lot of pinching. Can we see a wireframe?

[Wildsided]

Sure Mark, lol I don't think anyone's ever asked to see one of my mesh's before.

 

 

She's a little further along than she was earlier but not a long way. This is also the first time to my knowledge I've ever posted something WIP that's got so little progress.

 

I have to agree on Frozen, it felt a lot closer to old school Disney (think it was all the singing) and the Ice and snow effects were just mind boggling. I watched a couple of videos where they showed off the snow simulations at Siggraph last year. It's awesome stuff.

[itsjustme]

There are a few places I would add splines and a few I would reduce splines.

 

I think the eye sockets might need a ring or two added, I would find a way to get rid of the spline that comes off the nose and ends in a hook (it's causing some creasing because it is so close to the adjacent splines), I would reduce the number of splines that make up the mouth and my personal preference would be to make the eyeballs like the eyes in the tutorial in my signature.

 

For this kind of character, Matthew Krick's tutorials would probably be helpful.

 

I am presently working on Bertram and thought that some wireframe renders of his head might also be helpful even though he is a different style...here.

 

Hope that helps.

[Wildsided]

Not gonna lie David, I like your mesh layout for Bertram's face a lot better than mine and those tutorials you pointed at certainly gave me a lot of food for thought. I'm almost tempted to start over, but i'll start by seeing if I can modify the current mesh.

 

As for the eyes they're just place holders, I just couldn't take being stared at by empty sockets so I just threw a quick ball + decal in there. I creep myself out enough writing Breckridge without being stared at by an eyeless Disney princess. (There's some nightmare fuel for you guys, picture your favorite Disney princess and remove her eyes )

[Wildsided]

Okay took some time to adjust the splinage, got the ears attached and the head all closed up.

 

 

[robcat2075]

That's looking much better. If you're going to make something like in the pic Mark posted you're going to need smile line, a spline that can make the dimple to the side of the mouth when the corner is pulled back in a smile.

 

This came up on someone else's face model a while back...

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=379801

[largento]

Looking better!

 

Robert's suggestion is a good one.

[Wildsided]

K so I wasn't gonna do anything with this model today. Today was gonna be all about writing Breckridge chapter 8. Then Robert mentioned smiling and well writing went out the window.

 

So I screwed about and added in a smile line, added some eye lashes and then went into a new pose to make a quick smile pic. But when I apply the pose to the model in the choreography window, something weird happens.

 

Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees a discrepancy between these pictures. The one on the left looks to me like she's smiling. The one on the right looks like she wants to eat my my first born son.

 

 

But it's the exact same pose on the exact same model in roughly the exact same position. But it's like the choreography one has taken what I did in the pose window to the extreme.

[robcat2075]

It looks like the pose is being applied twice, creating twice the displacement of the CPs.

 

Make sure it is truly OFF or zeroed in the model.

[Wildsided]

fixed it, somehow (and I say that because I know I didn't change it) the enforcement of the pose was set to 200%.

[Rodney]

She's really starting to shape up.

 

I'd exaggerate the upper line over the eye more to really capture the Disney eye look.

By this I mean thicker and black. Over do it and then (if necessary) you can always scale it back.

You captured that thickness rather nicely in your anime thread here.

 

That extra thickness is present in almost all Disney characters regardless of gender, age, species, style...

[Wildsided]

Update. Gave her some eye brows and a fringe just to see how it'd look.

 

[robcat2075]

I think we need a less severe edge to that dimple.

[Rodney]

I think we need a less severe edge to that dimple.

 

Yes, much can (and probably should) be suggested by texture.

[Rodney]

I don't want to steer you in another direction needlessly but I sure do think you could take advantage of A:M's spline tech to create that hair and especially eyelashes.

There are two approaches I would consider before particle hair. The first being splined hair and the second a patch image (or decal) based on that splined hair (or alternatively based on a render of particle hair).

 

I've attached a project file hinting at the methodology.

The model is pretty straightforward.

 

In color image all eyelashes are the same image.

The color of the eyelash is driven by the patch color (in particular the ambiance color and ambiance intensity.

The patch images are applied to a patch with dangling splines (the dangling splines are just there to deform and shape the eyelash.

 

Because the image is black and white the white lets the color through while the black cuts the image out when applied to the patch with the Transparency setting.

 

While particle hair is useful in many situations it carries with it an enormous drag on productivity and should be planned for use in final rendering (but what then to do during short term rendering?)

Using geometry in place of particle hair until that stage will save many a brain cell and alleviate frustration.

Ultimately, if you can achieve the same look or even better with geometry then I recommend it.

Then at all instances possible supplement that with particle hair.

SinglePatchEyelash.zip

[Wildsided]

Thanks for the suggestion Rodney. I have no problem going in different directions, figuring out what works and what doesn't is half the fun

 

Was just playing with the idea of using cloth for hair

 

hair_test_2.mov

[Wildsided]

Same thing with a hair texture applied

 

hair_test_3.mov

[Rodney]

Nice tests Dan!

 

figuring out what works and what doesn't is half the fun

 

Keeping the fun factor high is important.

I just want to point folks to methodologies that will keep them from pulling their own real hair out.

Particles hair can work and it can work really well but mostly it keeps projects (in any software) from ever being finished.

And if particle hair will keep success from happening I'm more than happy to suggest reasonable alternatives to that.

 

If you apply a transparency map to that I'm thinking that will almost BE hair.

[Rodney]

I won't suggest this as a style for you to shoot for but I thought it was an interesting result.

It almost looks painterly in a way.

 

The only image applied was a flat gray image used to slightly increase the size of the geometry via displacement.

The second image is the shaded wireframe view.

The third image is an example of one of the single strand that was duplicated.

(To make the strands I duplicated a bunch of single splines and then used Sweeper to sweep a five CP circle along their all of the spline paths. The idea being that you could lay individual splines down from a head as guides and then use Sweeper to actually create the hair. After the hair is in place either remove the guides or leave them there... some of the guides could even be 'rendered as lines' to indicate stray hairs)

[Rodney]

This one didn't turn out as good but demonstrates the potential...

[Wildsided]

My biggest concern at the moment is movement, unless it's super short, hair moves. All my characters have had static hair, be it helmet or particle and I've always hated it. I've tried setting particle hair to dynamic on many occasions and spent hours tweaking settings but it has this tendency of doing some crazy stuff on random frames. Like 6 or so strands will suddenly shoot off in a random direction for a couple of frames.

 

Did some more tests with cloth hair and it just takes forever to settle down even when her head is totally still. Long way to go though, maybe I'll work on building her a body for now and tackle hair later.

[Rodney]

My biggest concern at the moment is movement, unless it's super short, hair moves.

 

A problem with chasing realistic hair is that real hair doesn't always move as we want it to either.

The folks at Disney and other companies have spent enormous amounts of money to get where they are now and their latest efforts haven't been in creating realistic hair but rather hair that can be artistically directed.

 

To me this boils down to returning to the basics of animation where we have a starting point... our origin (key) and an ending point... goal or target (key) and the means of getting from A to B... the path or performance (breakdown). These three key poses are then inbetween rather mechanically because to do anything else would be to end up with results exactly as you are seeing with the simulation... unintended results on random frames. What this means is that our inbetweener (the computer) is dictating those inbetweens for us when (in most cases) we haven't given it the required information (two extreme drawings and a breakdown).

 

Can we get there with particle hair? Yes, I think so but at this stage I know I'm not ready for it because I don't know enough about animating hair the mechanical way to begin to understand what the computer is doing with the information.

 

I have a few (untested) theories but only time will prove whether they are worth anything.

 

With mesh hair the easiest way to animate it is to create those key poses (where does the hair shape begin... where does it end... how does it travel from the beginning point to the end) and then make sure the computer is properly inbetweening them. If ideally set most hair movement should only take about five or six keyframes (initial position, anticipation, primary action...overlapping action... secondary action, followthrough, settling).

 

If I were to suggest that we can control long (mesh-based) hair by manipulating the CPs on a three or four CPs control spline... would you believe me?

[Wildsided]

My biggest concern at the moment is movement, unless it's super short, hair moves.

 

A problem with chasing realistic hair is that real hair doesn't always move as we want it to either.

The folks at Disney and other companies have spent enormous amounts of money to get where they are now and their latest efforts haven't been in creating realistic hair but rather hair that can be artistically directed.

 

If I were to suggest that we can control long (mesh-based) hair by manipulating the CPs on a three or four CPs control spline... would you believe me?

 

I know what you're saying about Disney in particular spending a fortune on developing new technology for hair. I watched a couple of very cool videos recently about the development of Rapunzel's hair in tangled.

 

I'm guessing you mean rigging chunks of mesh based hair and then constraining the bones to a control spline? That sounds like a cool concept.

 

Also am I missing a setting somewhere that lets you adjust the weight of cloth?

[Rodney]

I'm guessing you mean rigging chunks of mesh based hair and then constraining the bones to a control spline? That sounds like a cool concept.

 

Yes, indeed. I think it's cool. Although I'm sure there are other ways as well.

If the mesh is also simcloth... hmmm, that might be even cooler.

 

Also am I missing a setting somewhere that lets you adjust the weight of cloth?

 

It's been awhile since I did anything serious with cloth but my memory recalls using the friction setting a lot to control the flow of the cloth mesh.

There are also force, and bending(?) angle settings that I found I had to adjust to get decent (and controlled) movement.

[Wildsided]

More hair testing, this time rigged mesh hair with dynamic constraints

 

hair_test_4.mov

[Shelton]

Hi Dan

 

I feel your pain when it comes to hair and the controls. I have read and watched many tuts on hair and I come away with the feeling "I wish I knew more of how to control the hair that I have created". For our coffee shop short I have created static particle hair on the characters. I hope someday to break through the barrier and be able to use the features of AM and feel confident in the results. But for now I am still learning and exploring.

 

Steve

[Wildsided]

We'll get there Steve. Just gotta keep pluggin' away.

 

Speaking of plugging away I've been working on this girls hair for the past few days. Had to abandon Cloth hair coz the number of collisions became astronomical and my PC started to cry and asked me to stop torturing it.

 

Sooo I've gone back to particle hair, trying a few things and made some more progress. Here's a video of her hair at the moment. Far from finished but it's given me a few ideas of what to try next. Like I said experimenting is half the fun.

 

hair_test_4.mov

[robcat2075]

That's a pretty good hair effect!

[largento]

It's got some nice secondary movement, but I do think it's distracting how it is interacting with the scalp.

[Rodney]

Nice. I'm liking the direction you are taking this in.

[Wildsided]

That's a pretty good hair effect!

 

Thanks Robert, it's getting there.

 

It's got some nice secondary movement, but I do think it's distracting how it is interacting with the scalp.

 

I totally agree Mark, needs a bunch of tweaking, possibly a complete overhaul. But it's a foundation I can build off of.

 

Nice. I'm liking the direction you are taking this in.

 

Thanks Rodney, finding a direction that didn't take forever to render a 'quick' test was a massive step forward.

[Wildsided]

Mmmmm the progress continues

 

hair_test_5.mov

[NancyGormezano]

Mmmmm the progress continues

 

hair_test_5.mov

 

Nice style. However, you may run into collision problems when you give her a body. Unless you plan on restyling, the hair will run into the shoulders, etc. I have found that collision detection is a bitch to work with, altho John Bigboote uses it.

 

And....I wonder why the hair is twitching a bit at the scalp area?...if I were to guess, I would say that you are using the default setting for face Camera = 100% - If so, I suggest using 0%. That usually helps.

 

It might look better at the scalp if you change the thickness/shape of the emitter to be tapered more (like you did at the ends)? And if you decal/color the scalp some, that will also help perhaps.

 

Nice job!

[Wildsided]

Yeah I'll need to do more testing once she has a body, but I appreciate the advice Nancy.

 

Speaking of a body though. Don't worry lads I hear she's 'armless.

 

 

These aren't the final proportions of the body, I need to disneyfy it all. But I just wanted a base to start from. 2morro I'll make her some arms.

[TheSpleen]

Very nice work!

[Rodney]

You have always been a good modeler but now I can see that you are gettng really good at this splining thing!

[Wildsided]

Okay, those hands were an absolute arse pain to get done. but now she has a full body I can strap on her head and start tweaking and experimenting.

 

[largento]

One little tweak suggestion for the hands.

 

It's not something we pay attention to, but on women's hands, their index fingers are either equal to or (in most cases) longer than their ring finger.

 

It's the opposite with men's hands, where the ring finger is longer than the index finger.

[NancyGormezano]

Well done modeling!

 

I am curious: the shadows/ghosting surrounding her thighs/calves/legs look very odd. Is that coming from some light source? or is it from SSAO? what version A:M?

[Wildsided]

That's the shadow cast from the light directly in front of her Nancy. I was just dicking about with lights.

[NancyGormezano]

That's the shadow cast from the light directly in front of her Nancy. I was just dicking about with lights.

 

But it looks weird, and wrong unless there is a wall behind her? - the shadow should be projected on the ground if there isn't a wall, no? This looks like the shadow computation might be wrong.

 

EDIT: never mind - I can see how that might occur with a certain camera angle - just confused my widdle brain

Edited February 3, 2014 by NancyGormezano

[Wildsided]

K Nancy I know it exists and i've seen it lots of times before, but where is the "always facing camera" option for the hair I've looked all over and can't see it.

[NancyGormezano]

K Nancy I know it exists and i've seen it lots of times before, but where is the "always facing camera" option for the hair I've looked all over and can't see it.

 

In the properties for the hair EMITTER (2nd to last property) - change Face camera to 0%

[Wildsided]

K Nancy I know it exists and i've seen it lots of times before, but where is the "always facing camera" option for the hair I've looked all over and can't see it.

 

In the properties for the hair EMITTER (2nd to last property) - change Face camera to 0%

 

Lol that's where I thought it was supposed to be. but for some reason it's not there on her hair material. Strangely if I make a new hair material it's available. But not on this one. Weird, but not something that can't be worked around.

 

[NancyGormezano]

Lol that's where I thought it was supposed to be. but for some reason it's not there on her hair material. Strangely if I make a new hair material it's available. But not on this one. Weird, but not something that can't be worked around.

 

 

I suspect you don't see the "face camera" property because you are using muhhair in the surface render shaders properties of the emitter?

 

Muhhair is usually used for "realish shiny skinny" hair and is hard to control the look. For a stylized hair look, with a flat wide emitter, with flat coloring, it's not necessary, nor maybe desireable.

 

I have always found I can get shiny hair, more controllable with changing the spec size, spec intensity, spec color on the surface properties for the emitter and usually giving the emitter some "bow" percentage - 75%

 

HOWEVER I am just noticing that the bow property for emitter is not showing up in ver 18a for a new hair material...but it does show up in 16b. ugh. (perhaps a bug?EDIT: it eventually did show up in 18a - had to restart A:M)

Edited February 3, 2014 by NancyGormezano

[Wildsided]

You are correct Nancy, thanks for that