sprockets The Snowman is coming! Realistic head model by Dan Skelton Vintage character and mo-cap animation by Joe Williamsen Character animation exercise by Steve Shelton an Animated Puppet Parody by Mark R. Largent Sprite Explosion Effect with PRJ included from johnL3D New Radiosity render of 2004 animation with PRJ. Will Sutton's TAR knocks some heads!
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Hash, Inc. - Animation:Master

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  • Hash Fellow
Posted

I'll post my WIPs here

 

An experiment with making a less flattish tree bark with A:M materials...

 

BarkTestA000.jpg

 

BarkTestC000.jpg

  • ____ 1
  • 4 weeks later...
Posted

It appears your working on a private residence with siding. If it helps your concept, I can offer fairly convincing shingles via two BitMapPlus materials for colour and texture.

shingles.jpg

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Those look great Rodger!

 

I've planned my view so that roof shingles aren't a visible part of the scene, but if I end up expanding my model to include a roof I may take you up on that. Thanks for the offer!

 

btw, I hope we will be seeing a Rodger Reynolds entry in the Image contest!

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Fun fact: the second story windows on my house are 5-15/16" shorter and 1" narrower than the first story windows.

 

HouseTwoStories000.jpg

  • Admin
Posted

Interesting. They must have been trying to do one of those Disney projections that make the house look taller than it actually is. ;)

 

Nice modeling all around Robert!

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Interesting. They must have been trying to do one of those Disney projections that make the house look taller than it actually is. ;)

 

I think that's a good explanation!

Posted

 

Interesting. They must have been trying to do one of those Disney projections that make the house look taller than it actually is. ;)

 

I think that's a good explanation!

 

 

Forced perspective. That's how most (not all) buildings in the Magic Kingdom were built (Town Hall was not built that way because it needed to be full size in order to avoid visitors from seeing the Contemporary resort from Main Street.

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

This is from my Show & Tell at yesterday's Live Answer Time.

 

I've been repainting my house for a while and I noticed that after I scrape off the loose paint...

 

DSC00275sm.jpg

 

 

... it makes patchy shapes somewhat like the noise combiners we use to make wispy cloud cover.

 

This is Fractal Sum, stretched horizontally...

 

FractalSumClouds100.JPG

 

 

However, the Fractal Sum noise is a continuous range of shades from base color to peak color and the scraped paint on wood is either there or not there. ON or OFF.

 

If i crank the "amplitude" of Fractal Sum above 100, more of the noise pattern is forced to clip at the peak color and I get more solid shapes...

 

FractalSum175.JPG

 

 

... but that still leaves lots of gray in the inbetween areas. i really need all or nothing.

 

 

It is possible to use these noise combiners materials for Displacement instead of Color. This is a flat patch with a noise material set to Displacement...

 

Displacement example.JPG

 

 

But how about if I had two layers of patches instead of one?

 

Here is a flat patch with a wood grain material made with the Spherical combiner...

 

Woodgrain.JPG

 

 

Now I've placed another flat patch just behind with a displacement material on it, far enough back so that only the very highest points poke out in front of the wood grained patch. This gets me the all or nothing look I wanted...

 

WoodgrainPlusWhite.JPG

 

 

Here's a two-tone version with two displacement layers behind the wood grain patch with one slightly more forward, to simulate yellow paint on top of white primer.The yellow layer noise is set to slightly lower Amplitude so its peak areas are slightly smaller than the white ones...

 

WoodgrainPlusWhitePlusYellow.JPG

 

 

I can also vary the Scale parameters of the noise materials to make the paint areas larger or longer

 

 

Posted

I really like that noise material set to displacement!

 

Hey Rob--- I went looking for the post for the 'Summer' image contest, it was not where I imagined it to be- which was in the 'Current Contests' forum...

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

 

 

Hey Rob--- I went looking for the post for the 'Summer' image contest, it was not where I imagined it to be- which was in the 'Current Contests' forum...

 

That's true, but it's the first thing that shows up when I do a search on "Summer Image Contest"

 

It's about half way down the page when i click on "View New Content".

 

And there's a link to it in my signature.

 

Let me know if you still can't find it after you click on this direct link

Posted

Thank-You... I tend to avoid the search bar in the forum... I just wanted to check the rules one more time before i SUBMIT MY WINNER!

 

You'll have a tough go against mine!

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Here's an odd problem. I used a bump map to make the thin ridges that run the length of the ladder rail..

LadderTestL000.jpg

But if I copy and flip that left rail to make the rail on the right side the bump map shades inverted on some patches, even though all patches are still facing outward...

 

LadderTestR.PNG

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

That is odd... guess you will need to re-apply that one?

 

Problem #2... re applying the decal doesn't fix it!

  • 3 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Trying to think through some of the major contours involved in the head. This will not be accurate enough to just draw over in A:M and after I start splining I'll find that much of it is mistaken, but it's a starting point.

 

 

Charface017.png

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

My typical starting gambit is to minimally spline the profile off the rotoscope, then stick some eyeballs in.

 

I know that anything I make after this has to be outside the eye balls...

 

 

Headprofile&Eyes.PNG

 

 

 

 

...and i can use the surface of the eyeballs to place the eyelid opening. Easy to do with Snap-to-surface.

 

eyeball opening.PNG

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

I do the simple shapes first, for which I have some confidence about how many CPs they need...

 

eyenoselipsstarted.PNG

 

 

 

then I start extending splines from them to stitch them together...

 

eyenoselipsstiched.PNG

 

 

 

eyenoselipsstichedmore.PNG

 

 

 

 

This first pass is looking disappointingly flattish. I have to keep telling myself that this isn't final. I can modify and respline it later once I have the whole general shape to appraise.

 

flattishface.PNG

 

 

addingscalp.PNG

 

 

Posted
wow, this i think will make an excellent face modeling tutorial.
i really like the first step you did, which was to sketch out the major spline contours...i don't remember seeing this mentioned in other face tutorials, but it's a very useful step i think...
modeling has always been somewhat of a mystery to me, esp. figuring out where the splines ought to go...
thanks for sharing...can't wait to see more.... :)
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Extending out the easier parts like the back of the skull

 

Building Head A.PNG

 

I've tried to make the splines arrive at hole with as many CPs as the ear i will build to attach there

Building Head B.PNG

 

I've noticed Pixar is doing very simple ears, basically a dish with no ear hole. i will try that.

 

ear lathed.PNG

 

Putting the ear right up to the head makes it hard to find the splines to connect...

 

Ear Separate on Head.PNG

 

...so I will temporarily move it to the side and extrude out some extra spline to draw across and match up to CPs on the head...

 

Ear Extruded.PNG

 

 

Ear Splines reaching.PNG

 

Even though both rings had 8 CPs, they don't necessarily match up exactly so some become hooks.

Ear Splines attaching.PNG

 

 

 

 

Once I had the connections made, I deleted the ring that made the hole on the head since it would be superflous after I moved the ear back towards the head.

 

I also resplined the inside of the ear to eliminate the lathed hole.

 

ear attached.PNG

  • Admin
Posted

Robert Holmen is not splining everything from scratch?!??!

Scandalous I tell ya!

 

Where's a news reporter when you need one...

 

:)

 

That is a great model to borrow from and I recall some superb animations being created with him.

My favorite is probably from the animated card where he was stuck in the middle of a snowstorm shivering in the cold.

Makes me cold now just thinking about that. Brrrr,,,,

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...
  • Admin
Posted
I think I produced at least 18 bug reports while working on this one project. :lol:

 

Yikes. That is both good and bad.

 

Bugs or otherwise, what you've got here on display is quite impressive.

Love the economy of spline too!

  • 2 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

As time was running out I decided to try helmet hair instead of particle hair.

 

I started by using "snap to surface" to draw a spline where the part in the hair would go and then extruded that up and across the head one section at a time to make "the big flip." Then I did that again in the other direction to do the small side of the part. I didn't worry about the back too much since that wasn't going to show in my still image.

 

Turns out, I do my hair pretty much the same way our President does his!

 

(click to animate)

hairline.gif

 

Posted

I think I've finally figured out how Trump's hair looks like that. He obviously combs it back on the sides, but the magic trick is that he combs the hair from his part across the top of his head (from his left to right). Then, he has a combover from the back that is combed forward, over the hair on the top of his head at an angle and that hair is feathered the opposite direction and hidden under the part (on his left).

 

I had to go back to younger photos, because his hair is so fine now, that it's hard to define.

 

trumphair.png

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

The T-shirt is a cloth simulation.

 

I started with the most basic mesh I could spline to approximately form it to the character, then I used the SplitPatch plugin to subdivide it for cloth.

 

ShirtSubDiv.PNG

 

There were several cycles of that where I'd run a simulation, decide it was too tight or too lose in places and go back to the low-spline version to make alterations, subdivide and test again.

 

 

Since the shirt was made in a T-pose, the character needs to start out that way, too. I also made a pose slider for the character to squish him so that none of him was touching the cloth on the first frame.

 

This GIF shows the complete simulation starting from the T-pose, expanding the body, and then moving into position for the planned image

 

(click to animate)

ClothSim.gif

 

post-544-0-41818100-1509482634.gif

  • ____ 4
  • 4 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

I didn't get around to painting paint splotches on the clothes but I made some preparations for it.

 

Pants are typically an awkward shape to apply a decal to. On this character the pants are just a series of spline rings, up one leg, across the hips and down the other leg.

I made a pose that unfolds them into a simple cylinder that is easy to decal. It also rotates the whole set so that the seam at the back of the cylinder decal lands on the inseam of the pants, where I least need to paint.

With this one decal on the whole shape it is easy to take the image back to a paint program and add my paint splotches. The temporary checkerboard pattern makes it easy to see which part of the 2D decal ends up on which part of the 3D shape.

 

(click to animate)

PantsPoseB.gif

 

  • ____ 1
  • 3 months later...
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

After I got the house front and the ladder done I rendered a wire frame and took that into Photoshop to experiment with colors and placing the character.

 

MockupinPS.jpg

  • ____ 1
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

PaintFallWindowsMP_032.jpg

 

The reflections in the windows are photographs I took in my front yard and placed on some low-density grids that I positioned in back of the camera

 

ChorCardsBirdseye.PNG

 

 

  • ____ 1
  • Admin
Posted
he reflections in the windows are photographs I took in my front yard and placed on some low-density grids that I positioned in back of the camera

 

 

I really like the simplicity in that.

The hints to the scene being part of a much larger world makes us believers that there really is a larger world there.

  • ____ 1
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

 

he reflections in the windows are photographs I took in my front yard and placed on some low-density grids that I positioned in back of the camera

 

 

I really like the simplicity in that.

The hints to the scene being part of a much larger world makes us believers that there really is a larger world there.

 

 

My first thought was to use a dome with a 360° panorama on it but it's quite difficult to create such an image of high enough resolution so that you don't see pixels when you peer at just a small portion of it in the window reflections.

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Initially, I put just numbers on the cards so it would be easier to be sure which one I was seeing in each window. Then I swapped in the proper images and fine tuned the placement.

Numbercards.JPG

 

NumberReflect.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

  • Hash Fellow
Posted

Because I don't like to paint in the Sun I envisioned this as a shady-side-of-the-house scene using Ambient Occlusion instead of directional lights.

This is what the AO defaults do with Ambient Illumination and Occlusion set to 100%

 

GI Sample K032 Default AO.jpg

 

AO casts light from all directions but the Ground Plane is so large that it blocks all the light from below the horizon.

 

DefaultGroundPlane.JPG

 

 

 

That works well for most purposes but for something viewed from below it makes for some very dark surfaces facing the camera. In real life there is substantial light bounced up from the ground.

To experiment, I progressively reduced the size of the Ground, to allow more light from below to reach the objects.

 

SmallGroundPlane.JPG

 

 

You have to reduce it quite a bit to get a noticeable change. This is with 50% of the original dimensions...

GI Sample N 50 ground032.jpg

 

20%

GI Sample K 20 Ground032.jpg

 

 

10%...

GI Sample L 10 ground032.jpg

 

 

No Ground Plane at all...

GI Sample M 0 ground032.jpg



The 20% version was about right for illumination levels but I began to get unhappy with the uniform grayness of it all.

 

That led me to experimenting with Global Illumination, which I will show some tests of in the next post.

 

 

  • ____ 1
  • Admin
Posted

Enjoying your breakdown of how you put your entry together.

Excellent breakdown of AO and how the size of ground plane effects the scene. I can see I need to experiment with reflected AO like that.

Posted

You know, now that it no longer has to be a summer memory, it seems kind of appropriate to make it autumn ...the Fall. :-)

 

 

thefall.png

  • ____ 1
  • 2 weeks later...
  • Hash Fellow
Posted

In my AO experiments I decided i didn't like the grayness of it.

It is possible it is possible to set the "Ambiance Color" to something other than white for a bluish skylight or reddish sunset coloration....

 

GI Sample E BlueAO032.jpg

 

GI Sample E OrangeAO032.jpg

 

 

 

 

However, I still wanted something less the-same-all-over. If we set Global Ambiance Type to "Image Based Lighting" we can use a bitmap to make the light different colors from different directions.

Image based lighting has a "Mapping Type" setting. The simplest is "Latitude-Longitude" which basically stretches and wraps an image 360° onto an imaginary sphere around your universe. You don't see it in the background of your render, it just colors the global light.

What follows are experiments with different images (seen on the left) and the lighting result (seen on the right)

 

This uses a photo taken in my front yard facing away from the house...
GI Sample C032.jpg


Similar but curves adjusted in Photoshop to make it lighter...

GI Sample A032.jpg

 

Added sky at top and painted in some "dirt" color for the ground

GI Sample B032.jpg

 

 

The previous one was i the ball park but too green and still too dark so i reduced the saturation in Photoshop, painted out some of the green and did another curve adjustment to overall brighten it. I regarded this as satisfactory.

GI Sample E032.jpg

 

 

The Image Based Lighting doesn't make a dramatically different result on the flat surfaces of the house but I like how the slight variations on the round shapes of the character create a Subsurface Scattering appearance even though the skin is just a default A:M surface.


These IBL renders were done with no Ground plane. The light or lack of it from below was controlled by painting black at the bottom of the IBL image.





 

 

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