Animation exercise

[Parlo]

Sharky - My best reply to you is to send you here. Keith's tutorials have been very useful to me. That and lots of practice.

 

PlJack - Thank you! It's getting there. I've learnt more doing this clip than I have anything else in A:M. The main reason is that I've been strict with myself - I've kept it to one shot. Every time I came across a really difficult bit... I forced myself to solve it by animation alone. I'm not saying that I've been entirely successful.... but I do know that I've learnt from the process.

 

Gazz - I've tried making the eyes slower but my tests have proved that you've pretty much gotta move them in 3 frames or less. Any slower than that, he stops thinking if you know what I mean.

 

As for the whole intro - this is the whole intro.. or atleast as much of the intro as Richard Burton recorded for the album. I actuallly live pretty near Horsell common which was where the martians first landed. I live in fear of their heat ray. What with the recent events on mars... I'm getting pretty scared.

 

Thanks again guys.. I'll post the final version next week.

[Rodney]

Parlo,

 

Watching your work makes me wonder....

Do you animate with the full model for your whole project?

 

What about during real-time preview and during the process of creating your scenes?

 

Just curious.

[Parlo]

Parlo,

 

Watching your work makes me wonder....

Do you animate with the full model for your whole project?

 

What about during real-time preview and during the process of creating your scenes?

 

Just curious.

Interesting question Rodney - For ages I used to animate with a full, heavy patch count model and had to render a test everytime I wanted to check my timing. Obviously that was very time consuming - especially when I cracked open a bottle of wine whilst waiting for the render... By the time I got it.. I didn't really care anymore

 

Anyhow... here's a comparision pic of my final "beauty" model... and the one I do 90% of my animation with... my "Proxy".

 

 

You might notice that the "Beauty" model has black artifacts around it. This is a realtime screengrab. What I've done is go into my ATI graphics card settings and turn the quality vs. performance setting all the way over to performance. It doesn't have to look like a cutting edge first person shooter, it's just got to give me the fastest frame rate possible. With the proxy I get 40fps playback. I can pretty much see every twitch and bubble as I animate.

 

So in short... Proxies rock!

[Rodney]

Parlo,

Good Answer and graphic too!

Really captures my imagination. Some of the fastest animating I've done was with a sphere filling in for my character as 'he' moved around proxy walls and objects made from basic blocks.

 

If you ever find yourself with some free time I'd love to see a comparison shot of the proxy model animated and the final model animated.

 

I find these behind the scenes type of things facinating!

 

I think this is important for people new to Animation:Master to realize too. While you are working on perfecting your character you can be animating with the proxy model! Cool!

[gazzamataz]

I actuallly live pretty near Horsell common

 

Oh no not another Londoner! I thought with a name like Parlo you'd be from Los Angeles or Mexico. Who would have believed…

[Parlo]

Gary - We're pretty darn proud of our sci-fi heritage in these parts... Here's a sculpture that stands guard in Woking town centre.

 

 

Imagine encountering that for the first time at 11:30 on a Friday night? You'd definately lose a grip on your kebab.

[Parlo]

If you ever find yourself with some free time I'd love to see a comparison shot of the proxy model animated and the final model animated.

Rodney - I'll go one better and write a short tutorial on building and using a proxy model. Keep your eyes peeled.

[shaunf]

Wonderful!!

[williamgaylord]

Love how effectively you animated the eyes. It's amazing how much drama can be concentrated in those tiny orbs! Great example for inspiration.

 

When I get back to character animation, I'm going to try out the proxy idea. Too bad my current project doesn't lend itself to proxies (animating trees growing magically along a city street).

 

Great work! Look forward to seeing more.

 

Bill Gaylord

[Parlo]

Shaun - Thanks man! One word with a lot of meaning!

 

Bill - Thank you too. I've done a fair amount of work on the eyes and studied alot of the pros work frame by frame to pick up some techniques. It's such a subtle thing, but really rewarding when you start getting somewhere with it.

 

I've done the majority of a Proxy Models in A:M tutorial. I just need to add a final section about workflow issues. Let me know if there's anything in there that I could make clearer.

[Dalemation]

Thanks for the tutorial Sam. My experience of using proxies so far has only been with using a character without hair for tests and then rendering with hair. Your tutorial was very interesting and useful.

 

I`ve only just found this thread (I`m finding it difficult to keep up these days) and I was amazed by your animation. The lip sync is perfect and all the little gestures and character acting superb. I love his steps towards camera and the dramatic lighting change. Great stuff indeed

 

Btw, the character design is brilliant too!

[ZachBG]

Biggest problem:

 

When you want to write "it is" as a contraction, it's spelled "it's", but when you're speaking of possession, it's "its" without an apostrophe.

 

Other than that, it's brilliant.

[zacktaich]

When you want to write "it is" as a contraction, it's spelled "it's", but when you're speaking of possession, it's "its" without an apostrophe.

 

Grammar....

 

Great job, Sam. I'm gonna use this .

[robcat2075]

The big sweep seems much improved from the last version i saw.

 

So how many hours on this clip so far?

[gazzamataz]

You'd definately lose a grip on your kebab.

 

LOL a man after my own heart! What a traditional English evening dish - a Doner Kebab

[Parlo]

I've added a second page to the tutorial - there's just one more thing left to cover.

 

Robo - How long? I'll have to add it up but I know one thing. Too long! However, after the initial spurt of activity it's mainly just been dipping in for an hour or so. Looking back, and having learnt from it what I have, I know that I could do it now in far less time. It's over 40 seconds of character animation though, so I'm pretty pleased that I stuck with it. If I was to do it again I probably wouldn't go for such a long clip. Maintaining the energy and enthusiam for it has been hard work.

 

Zach - Its' a good thing you noticed my grammatical error's. 'Ive always been a bit fast and loose with the key:board.!

 

Gazz - Have you ever had one of those things sober though? You feel so dirty.

 

Dale - Thanks! It's good to know that people are finding the Proxy stuff interesting, and it's encouraged me to elaborate on it too. This is a really good way to do a tutorial - It not only encourages you as you are writing it, but also allows for people to point out bits which need to be clearer.

 

[Ross Smith]

Aye, Parlo, the proxy tut is great! I'll start using it right away with my merman model, which is way too patch-heavy for real-time work right now. Thanks!

[gazzamataz]

Gazz - Have you ever had one of those things sober though? You feel so dirty.

 

Greasy more like! I do eat them sober too... always feel I've eaten a tub of lard afterwards...

 

Have you slipped a slightly newer version in since I last looked? This one has the changes in I was gonna suggest It's a lovely peice of work, thing is you could do variations to it like a space picture in the background, a martian watching etc... and it could go on.

 

Funny that you have that spaceship in woking, we have a painting of one in Bromley High Street where Jules Vern was born - I'll photograph it next time I'm there

 

I must admit watching your piece several times has inspired me to get me finger out on me own project. I just realised that you didn't sneak a newer version in 'J' was the latest - I must have eaten too many kebabs - 'BURP' - or was it something I drank…

[Rodney]

Parlo,

 

I'm trying to wrap my brain around just what you are saying in the constraints part of you tutorial. I think I understand what you are saying but since I often use another method my brain has a hard time with the words...

 

There is one issue switching between models in a choreograpy and it concerns constraints:

 

If you have another object constrained to the Proxy, the constraint will no longer work when you switch to the Beauty (or vice versa). The constraint will refer specifically to the Proxy even when you switch. In order to keep the constraints valid with either model you need to rename the shortcut to the Proxy in the choreogaphy. This means that when you switch between Proxy and Beauty, the Model's name will remain the same. Any constraints applied in the choreography are applied only after the shortcut has been renamed, so they refer to the model's new name and not "Shortcut to PARLO-PROXY" for example.

 

There is a way I like to do this that is somewhat "slight of hand/under the table" so to speak. Note: This works only with projects that DO NOT have embedded models.

 

Instead of renaming the shortcut (which sometimes I do by the way) you can just swap the models at the location the shortcut points to.

 

One Example:

 

C:\AMModels\proxymodel.mdl

C:\AMModels\beautymodel.mdl

C:\AMModels\character.mdl

 

Note: The third model (character.mdl) is the one that the shortcut points to. To begin with it is probably just a copy of proxymodel.mdl renamed to character.mdl.

 

What you do is:

A ) Copy the desired model over the top of the character.mdl file.

or

B ) Create a batchfile or program that will exchange the files for you automatically*

 

*The second option obviously requires some programming knowledge even if it is only MS DOS batch language.

 

An additional plus of this method is that upon going final on a model design you can lock your beauty and proxy models down (read only) and still use them in your production without worry of overwriting, altering or changing the models while you work with them.

 

Sorry if I'm straying a bit from the subject...

Love your tutorial!

[Parlo]

Rodney - I don't think that I've made myself clear in that last section - I need to go back and rework it.

 

The gist is of it is, that it's best (in any circumstance) to rename the in "Shortcut to Proxy" when you put it into a choreography. Now, the rename option is only available if the model is embedded. So if your Proxy is not embedded, what you have to do is:

 

1 - embed it

2 - rename the shortcut - in my case just to "Parlo"

3 - unembed it

 

Now, when you constrain another object to the model - for example if you want to have the model hold a sword - the constraint will refer to "Parlo" and not "Shortcut ot Proxy". This means that when you switch between the Proxy and the Beauty models, the constraint will be uneffected.

 

Hope that this makes more sense. I'll be finishing off the tutorial later today (rewriting my lunatic ramblings in the last section).

 

Gazz - I'm more of a Large Shish with extra curry sauce man myself. Once in a while, when my brother is around and we're feeling the need, I go for the mixed grill kebab with a bit of everything and digestive half-life of 3 years!

 

I probably will give it a stronger ending at some point. As for a background, I'm going to need to add some texture in there so that the camera move is more obvious. I'm not quite sure what to use though.

 

I'll be posting a FFN (fine for now) final render in the showcase forum later on today.