*A:M User* Shelton Posted February 3, 2014 *A:M User* Posted February 3, 2014 Dan Nancy is right about MuHair. but this past week I have tweak and learned a great deal more than I did before. Some wonderful results can be achieved with MuHair. The main settings are the strength values used. The second was so obvious to me that I overlooked it many times. It is the brightness control inside the Muhair settings. After about giving up on it, I played with this setting to achieve some really nice results. Anyway shoot me a note. Steves@desdyninc.biz Steve Quote
Wildsided Posted February 4, 2014 Author Posted February 4, 2014 Guys and Gals I present to you the mighty skullet....also inadvertant boobs. Bodyf.mov Quote
Wildsided Posted February 4, 2014 Author Posted February 4, 2014 All together now "Damn who's a sexy bitch? A sexy bitch. Damn who's a sexy bitch...DAMN GIRL." Bodyf.mov Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted February 4, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted February 4, 2014 Is that cloth hair or hair hair? Quote
Wildsided Posted February 11, 2014 Author Posted February 11, 2014 Quick question before I potentially waste a bunch of time. Should I be able to get perfectly functioning joints with proper weighting alone. Or will I need to smartskin in places? Coz I don't want to spend ages trying to weight the cps when I'll need to smart skin them anyway. I'd rather get them as close to right as I can and then smartskin if that's what's necessary. But I also don't want to smartskin stuff if I can achieve the same thing through proper weighting. Quote
itsjustme Posted February 11, 2014 Posted February 11, 2014 Quick question before I potentially waste a bunch of time. Should I be able to get perfectly functioning joints with proper weighting alone. Or will I need to smartskin in places? Coz I don't want to spend ages trying to weight the cps when I'll need to smart skin them anyway. I'd rather get them as close to right as I can and then smartskin if that's what's necessary. But I also don't want to smartskin stuff if I can achieve the same thing through proper weighting. I use CP Weighting and fan bones for most of it, then Smartskin for a final polish where necessary. Hope that helps. Quote
Wildsided Posted February 11, 2014 Author Posted February 11, 2014 Thanks David, I spent the morning weighting the model and got some nice results so far. I was asking coz Matthew Krick's tutorial you pointed me to don't mention weighting at all. But the tutorials are pretty old so maybe weighting wasn't an option back then. Quote
Wildsided Posted February 12, 2014 Author Posted February 12, 2014 Finished weighting 'her' today. I really need to come up with a name. Had tangled on in the background while I was working and decided to parody one of my fave shots from the film. Flynn (Eugene) looks very pleased. Can;t imagine why. (Also not this was just a gag to test out the body not a detailed attempt to insert the character perfectly into the scene.) Quote
Wildsided Posted February 16, 2014 Author Posted February 16, 2014 Whoo now she has a skirt and leggings. I've decided to make her a free spirited vibrant character. A girl with her own sense of style and to hell with what everyone else thinks. hair_test_4.mov Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted February 17, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted February 17, 2014 nice skirt! Try increasing the drag on the cloth and that may reduce the jitter. Quote
Wildsided Posted February 18, 2014 Author Posted February 18, 2014 Thanks for the tip Robert. Here's a quick re-render, I still don't know what she's going to be wearing up top so I gave her a white patch vest for now. Also gave her star spangled leggings and a pink tartan skirt. Also that shoe isn't attached yet, coz I'm still working on it. hair_test_4.mov Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted February 18, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted February 18, 2014 Lets see... I recall that increasing the "damping" on the Bend angle and Stretch/Shear may be the more important parameter to making cloth settle down rather than Drag. Try values between 1 and 5 for the Bend Angle. Quote
Wildsided Posted February 26, 2014 Author Posted February 26, 2014 Having reached a point with cloth where I almost put my mouse through my monitor, I decided to change tact. Instead I built a skirt and then rigged the living s**t out of it. I've decided I'd rather manually animate it and fix any poke through than spend any more time trying to get the cloth to simulate how I want it to. So here's a picture Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted February 26, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted February 26, 2014 Is that a pleated skirt? Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted February 26, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted February 26, 2014 That will be tough. Sim cloth needs all surfaces to not be in contact with each other at the start of the simulation. The pleats would need to be unfolded initially, then pulled together. You might nominate that for a future "It Can't be done" Quote
Wildsided Posted February 26, 2014 Author Posted February 26, 2014 The skirt is pleated now because I abandoned the cloth. I had a nice cloth skirt made for her at one point at few posts back, but getting it to behave with a cloth shirt proved to be too much of a pain in the ass. One day cloth, one day.... Quote
Wildsided Posted February 28, 2014 Author Posted February 28, 2014 K she now has a top, transparent sleeves `n all. Should be fun to weight... BUt at least she isn`t topless anymore. Quote
Wildsided Posted March 3, 2014 Author Posted March 3, 2014 Lacey looking devious. Yeah she's now called Lacey. I don't know exactly when that happened I just realised yesterday that I'd started calling her Lacey in my head. Quote
Admin Rodney Posted March 3, 2014 Admin Posted March 3, 2014 Hey! She's really shaping up nicely. Quote
Wildsided Posted March 5, 2014 Author Posted March 5, 2014 Thanks for the continued support guys. Quick question, does anyone know how to get normal weights to stay weighted? I set the normal weights to smooth out the face, save and turn off for the day, but when I come back to the project the normal weights have set themselves back to zero. It's not a massive issue at the moment but when I want to Net Render later on if the weights don't stay set then the render won't be as smooth obviously. So just wondering if anyone knows how to permanently set normal weights. Quote
Wildsided Posted March 14, 2014 Author Posted March 14, 2014 Lacey going for a walk 3d.mov Loop it. seriously it's only a second long Quote
NancyGormezano Posted March 15, 2014 Posted March 15, 2014 Loop it. seriously it's only a second long If you want it to loop, open the movie into quicktime pro, choose view/loop (or ctrl+ L) then save the movie under new name and upload that one to forum. Do not know if regular QT player does this. If you want to compress movie: Again in QT pro, do the compression first (File/export and save as), then open the compressed movie and set the loop feature, and then save the compressed, now looping movie. I like her fashion sense! terrific leggings pattern and sparkley sleeves, neat laces! But, to me, the skirt looks too plastic, stiff. It's probably because of the white specular color and size, intensity. Is that what you intended? Try a different spec color (closer to the skirt color) and perhaps smaller spec size and/or intensity, if that's not what you intended. Also could add a simple, subtle texture, to be consistent with rest of outfit? Also I assume you intend to "colorize/texture/decal" her skin at some point (again to be consistent)? But maybe that is just my taste talking? Quote
Wildsided Posted March 15, 2014 Author Posted March 15, 2014 Loop it. seriously it's only a second long If you want it to loop, open the movie into quicktime pro, choose view/loop (or ctrl+ L) then save the movie under new name and upload that one to forum. Do not know if regular QT player does this. If you want to compress movie: Again in QT pro, do the compression first (File/export and save as), then open the compressed movie and set the loop feature, and then save the compressed, now looping movie. I like her fashion sense! terrific leggings pattern and sparkley sleeves, neat laces! But, to me, the skirt looks too plastic, stiff. It's probably because of the white specular color and size, intensity. Is that what you intended? Try a different spec color (closer to the skirt color) and perhaps smaller spec size and/or intensity, if that's not what you intended. Also could add a simple, subtle texture, to be consistent with rest of outfit? Also I assume you intend to "colorize/texture/decal" her skin at some point (again to be consistent)? But maybe that is just my taste talking? I don't have Quicktime Pro Nancy. Sorry if my comment came across as rude, I was just making a joke about how short the render was. i thought loop was a function in the player but it's not there on the web player. I can just re-render it looped a couple of times. I agree on her shirt, she's not finished yet. I just wanted to do some animation with her, my confidence has been rattled since I found all that negative press. Particularly the one that said "He hasn't made a video in over a year and he still hasn't learned how to do a decent walk cycle. That's like animation 101, there's tons of examples on the web," Until then I thought my stuff was at least passable. Not amazing but okay. Anyway that's the story behind the clip. As for texturing her, I've made attempts, followed flattening tutorials and what not but exporting a base to open in photoshop and edit has alluded me thus far. But i'm working on it. Quote
NancyGormezano Posted March 15, 2014 Posted March 15, 2014 Sorry if my comment came across as rude It didn't come off as rude...I just thought you might not be aware of how to upload an automatically looping QT movie without having to make extra loops. Quote
jakerupert Posted March 16, 2014 Posted March 16, 2014 Not working on i pad. Maybe use another codec format? Quote
Wildsided Posted March 17, 2014 Author Posted March 17, 2014 K now she walks in a circle and has more texturing. Aside from her face. new_cover.mov Quote
Wildsided Posted March 25, 2014 Author Posted March 25, 2014 I've renamed this thread so I can put more characters in it, also Lacey started out as an experiment and is now a full on member of the Skeltoons team. A new generation of characters, better made than the last generation and entirely my own. In the spirit of this new generational thinking I've started redoing my old characters so they'll match the quality of the newer ones. Starting with everyone's favourite talking purple anthropomorphic dog Mr. Tech Nology. Here's some dev pics. Quote
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 25, 2014 Hash Fellow Posted March 25, 2014 K now she walks in a circle and has more texturing. Aside from her face. new_cover.mov I like the character! There's probably some keyframing that would fix the sliding walk. Quote
Wildsided Posted March 25, 2014 Author Posted March 25, 2014 K now she walks in a circle and has more texturing. Aside from her face. new_cover.mov I like the character! There's probably some keyframing that would fix the sliding walk. Thanks Robert Yeah the ease wasn't quite right and I didn't set up stride length, just wanted to see her moving. Looking forward to using her for something in the future though. Quote
Admin Rodney Posted April 1, 2014 Admin Posted April 1, 2014 I was thinking about your topic when I ran across this photo/drawing by legendary Disney animator Milt Kahl. In it he attempts to distill how to translate the character Alice from the photo reference of the child actress, Kathryn Beaumont who also supplied the voice of the title character. Milt Kahl draws over photo stats. For close ups: Keep the size of the head and shrink the body. For long shots: Keep the size of the body and enlarge the head. Source: http://andreasdeja.blogspot.com Now, there are several things that are interesting about this drawing/photo. The first is that many people don't think Milt Kahl used photo reference. But there is an interesting dilemma to resolve with regard to CG animation for a stylistic approach like this. How does one shrink and enlarge the body or the head at will? Is it better to have multiple models and then use them where needed? Should the rig be created to scale the parts up and down as necessary? And how does one animate on the fly if/when the character moves in and out of the space delineated between close up and long shots? Some interesting question derive from such a simple image. In the case of CG the whole line of consideration (that of proportion)isn't as valid at the end (but moreso at the beginning) because the model can stay (relatively) the same size once it is created unless specifically needing to be changed. It isn't under the same constraints of an artist's constantly shifting perspective and sense of scale. Perhaps this is why some don't like to use reference? Milt is cluing us in a little bit here by illustrating how to distill the essence of his source material and adjust wherever necessary. Quote
Wildsided Posted April 1, 2014 Author Posted April 1, 2014 That's interesting stuff Rodney. I've long been an advocate of using photo references, after all why imagine what a character would look like in a certain position when you can have a picture in front of you of exactly how it would look? It's up to us as artists to then apply creative license and stylizing to the pose to achieve the look we want. I don't think it would take a lot of work to set up a % pose that scales the head/body up and down and as for going from a close up to a long shot in one continuous shot, I think the brain would interpret the shift in scale as an artefact of the character moving away from the camera. I think an experiment is in order. Lacey!!!!! Quote
Wildsided Posted April 26, 2014 Author Posted April 26, 2014 Work on the new Gen of Ace.Co's Skeltoons continues. Lacey is finished and Tech is coming along nicely. Quote
Wildsided Posted May 5, 2014 Author Posted May 5, 2014 Thanks for your kind words guys, here's a pic of the finished Tech and Lacey together. Quote
Admin Rodney Posted May 5, 2014 Admin Posted May 5, 2014 Looking very good Dan. My first instinct was to think... Tech is looking a bit girly (in the torso) and Lacy is looking a bit masculine (in the face). A lot of this may be due to the angle (more of a straight on shot toward the camera/viewer). How can I best demonstrate this beyond a draw over of your render? Hmmm... not sure. Don't throw things at me... that was just my first impression! That aside here's something else that came to mind: It seems to me that Tech's head is a bit small. That or Lacey's is too large? I'm leaning toward the former. All of this is not to say that the image (as is) isn't working. In fact that look may be preferred. Keep up the great work Dan! Quote
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