Updated my character...

[entity]

Hi Hasher gang,

I just did a little work on the character I'm working on. Lots of work ahead, just chuggin along. Doing some refining of the rig and poses and adding some new poses-- (Finger bending-spreading/mouth shapes/ facial muscle moves). I'm starting to get tired of looking at him with no clothing on... so I guess I should be working on that soon. I don't know if I want to do full cloth simulation or try to do partial with a unibody structure. Any tips?

 

*edit:

Thanks MAAM user group for the suggestions.

Edited August 28, 2004 by entity

[entity]

And a frame from the walkcycle I'm still working on...

Edited August 28, 2004 by entity

[-TC-]

Wow, that looks great. The head looks very realistic. (In my opinion anyway)

Could you post up the wireframe views ?

[entity]

Wire frames... Frontal-like view...

[entity]

side-like view...

[heyvern]

MATT DAMON!

 

Dagnabit! Ever since I saw this guy I kept trying to think of who it reminded me of. Wracking my brain.

 

He does kind of resemble Matt Damon... after a drunken bar bet... and some hair dye.

 

Vernon "I lost a bet" Zehr

[entity]

Your RIGHT! He does resemble him... he is the lead actor so I thought about adding some neuances from actors that people see all the time, so they feel comfortable with him. After all he is going to have a lot of screen time in my script... Thanks for pointing that out... I almost forgot about that aspect of making characters.

 

*Edit:

I tried to get the intensity of the shape of his eyes and brow... Don't ask me where I'm getting the lips from...

Edited August 28, 2004 by entity

[entity]

Here is an animation of expression tests. The brows (anger/surprise), upper lids (close/wide), Iris (large/small), smile (full/right/left) to frown (full/right/left)... I use the "e" phoneme to part the lips on the smile- ie-"CH*EE*SE".

fnlRendefe2.mov

[entity]

The final render is not complete, but heres a look at what I have so far...

 

*Edit: I've also recently made note of the extreme nature of these expressions... as I created them they are truly too extreme for a realistic character and I plan on using them at 50% or less... anything more and he becomes an OVERactor- almost cartoonish.

fnlRendefe.mov

Edited August 30, 2004 by entity

[entity]

I been working a little on scenery... It will be a set and I just wanted to see what a figure looks like in the set... used a large sun and a skycast light for the model using the sky color... I know he's nude! I'm working on the clothing.

 

*Edit-

Opps!! I posted the TGA file by mistake... sorry... I'll upload the jpg.

Edited September 16, 2004 by entity

[KenH]

Looks great man. I notice in the first animation, there are patches on either side of his nose that look like they are flipped the wrong way. Other than that...great expression in his face! I'm intrigued by the scene. I can only imagine what the story is about. How did you make the ground...darktrees?

[entity]

The ground is a tiled bumpmap of cracked ground just repeated it 100x100 @ 300% (bump) and the lumpy ground is displacement using one of those Mars elevation maps. The geometry of the ground is huge! 1000x1000 grid made with the grid wizard. Takes me about 2 minutes to load that model the first time, but it renders pretty quick... 800x340 about 20 min. I think it was... I did so many tests to optimize it I forgot how long it took on the render...

I just rendered another one exactly the same but at 1200x510; it took about 48 mins to render... but I was bouncing online from site to site so it probably could render faster than that time.

[entity]

Oh Ken,

Those aren't flipped... they render fine in final render... I think it's my card... time for an update? Could be.

[KenH]

Nice! A thought...some mountains in the back? Images even? Actually, apparently AM renders faster if you minimise it and go online. Honestly...it's been documented.

[entity]

Documented????? Where?? hahahahah.

[entity]

Ken,

MOUNTAINS... geometry with displacement... Brian Prince would be proud of me! The render to 30 mins and 24 sec. with just A:M running (image size=1200x510).

[gaetan]

Yep, it's a gorgeous model! That's all I can say.

 

Gaetan

[modernhorse]

entity -

I'm goin to school on your environment. Nice looking work, although I really wish he had some pants on.

 

Doug

[John Keates]

Amaazing stuff there! The texture maps on his face work really well.

 

One thing that I noticed was that the eyes stand out a little. Are they reflecting? If not then that could help.

 

The nudity kind of suits that landscape somehow but I am sure that he is keen to get some clothes on.

[heyvern]

One question remains.....

 

In this barren landscape, without clothes or... pockets....

 

Where did he find the tools to get that cool haircut?

 

"I am naked in the dessert... man I need a hair cut really bad!"

 

Is this the backlot of a minimall somewhere out west? Did he get drunk and lose a bet? He got the hair cut and didn't have money to pay for it so the hair dresser took his clothes and...

 

All kidding aside beautiful image. Breathtaking. I love the starkness of it. Makes it look "bigger". It forces your mind beyond the edges of the image.

 

p.s. If you look very closely you can see the two by fours holding up the mountain backdrop set.

 

Vernon "Hair envy" Zehr

(can't see anything else to be envious of)

[heyvern]

One teeny tiny itty bitty critique... no not that you 12 year olds....

 

In that position, and I may be wrong, it seems that his stomach/chest transition area is too..smooth.

 

That spot jumps out at me as "unrealistic". Bent over like that I feel his stomach/fat/muscles whatever should be "pushed" out somewhat.

 

Minor crit.

 

Like I said I could be mistaken... you should see MY reference in a full length mirror... no you shouldn't... the nightmares....

 

Vernon "NOW I'm wearing pants" Zehr

[entity]

In that position, I had to bend him till the constraints stopped me... His stomach was out (according to IK it was the best solution) but I pushed the pelvis to point back a litttle... you have good eyes Vern! But if I didn't tilt the pelis back a little, the legs would be in the ground... I guess I could have relaxed the constraints a little on the legs so he could bend farther. Well, that's the reason I'm still building him. I keep finding things that need fixin!

The clothes will come very, very soon. I haven't made up my mind on whether I should use cloth simulation or make more rig bones for his clothes... I may go for modeling clothes and rigging the clothing so it reacts to his moves (usualy looks stiff and unconvincing).

Recently, I tried simulating cloth but I can't seem to get the shirt to work properly (I built the mesh's sleeves first, then modeled the torso part from bottom to top. I think I remember something about having to build for cloth in a particular way---that may be the wrong way!)... the pants performed perfectly. And, honestly, I don't know if I want to have to sit through so many simulations each time I get an action done, but this character demands that realism... so what do you think?

[JHV]

That is so good it's scary! Excellent realism! The poses are terriffic too.

[ypoissant]

Nice composition and lighting. And globally a nice moody image.

 

There is one aspect that bothers me is the absence of aerial perspective. The fact that as objects move at distance, they acquire more bluish hues. I understand that the scene in in desert and that there is dust in the air but if there were that much dust, we wouldn't see the mountain at all. If we can see the mountain, then there should be some aerial perspective.

[entity]

Thanks guys, for the replies... it's nice to recieve that.

Yves,

still working on the cloud sphere... this is an alien planet so the atmosphere has somewhat a different look to show that. I call the planet Twil-- I will explain by saying look at the Gladiators' World trailer I made on A:M films and you will see a ship on fire streeking past the camera... notice the background... that's what the sky will look like when I'm done... The reason is because I lost the actual transparency map I had for that, so I'm still going to use the same effect with a different map... not done painting it yet, but I will show when done.

 

I did some cloth tests:

You will notice that I used "suspension cp's" (Suspension cp's are explained in great detail by Carl Albrecht-Buehler on the siggraph 2003 cds and his site "HERE") to control the cloth, but allow it to react to the environment. I still had some of the underlying mesh penetrate the cloth during the simulation in the wireframe render...

 

You can simply HIDE that part of the mesh when you render it out ( If it's supposed to be under the cloth completly) and that solves it in cases where the cloth isn't penetrated too much.

I hid the penetrations for the final render pass.

Below is the front view

FinalC_front.mov

[entity]

Here is the back view... now back to work.

FinalC_back.mov

[entity]

There is one aspect that bothers me is the absence of aerial perspective. ... I understand that the scene in in desert and that there is dust in the air but if there were that much dust, we wouldn't see the mountain at all. If we can see the mountain, then there should be some aerial perspective.

 

Another render WITH clouds sphere... I changed the fog settings to begin before the man and end after the clouds sphere. I also lightened the color of the fog... I think I should make the fog a little more darker.

[KenH]

The view alone could carry it's own thread. Love it and I'd love it to be on the next CD.

[scrawntor]

......Fantabulous.

Very cool, nice stuff.

excellent texturing.

Keep it coming.

[starwarsguy]

so, how did you do those mountains and the mist it fades in to? I'm wokrin gon my fanfilm and i just need an environment but i can't get mountains right

[entity]

Mountains are made with the grid wizard and magnet mode... you create your grid and then look at the grid from a high angle and just pick cp's adjust your magnet size to make different sizes as you go and pull them up. I also have a displacement map on them using a terrain elevation map for small bumps and craters and a bump map of a cracked earth tiled on it. For some reason I can't get the displacement map to work all the time when I render. So I may have to use terrain wizard to create the surface. It may be a bug... so I'll have to try and see if I can generate a report for Hash... It has to do with combining several of these maps on one suface so large and patch heavy... investigation is needed and it could just be a memory thing but I'm going to pursue this further.

 

Thanks all of you for your very positive feedback. About putting it on the cd... the image maps are very large and detailed. I don't think it would be economical abroad for people to use render-wise either. But I could make a low rez version complete with camera settings-- without the character. Is that feesable?

[mtpeak2]

Hi Rich

 

That sounds like a good idea. Having a set to work with would be great. I wish would could have more sets, space scene, landscapes, indoor sets to name a few.

 

Mark

[ypoissant]

I was refering to the way far off objects takes on a hue depending on the dispersion color in the athmosphere. Clouds have little to do with that. Although in your last render, clouds add more texture and mood, they don't contribute to aerial perspective. Aerial perspective would apply to any planet.

 

What is aerial perspective?

 

First why is the sky color blue and the sun color yellow?

 

When the sun light enters the athmosphere, the shorter wavelength gets dispersed in the athmosphere. Blue is the shortest wavelength of the light spectrum. Since blue gets dispersed in the athmosphere, the sky becomes blue. And the blue color which is dispersed is, in consequence, subtracted from the sun color which gives it the yellow solor. As the athmosphere thickens, more of the shortest wavelength gets dispersed. This is why, at dawn or at sunset, the sun looks orange because not only blue gets dispersed but also green.

 

It is this dispersion of blue which contributes to the aerial perspective. The air around us is filled with blue light so to speak. The more air thickness your vision have to cross before reaching an object, the more of this blue light coming from the air will be present in the image of the object. That is why far away mountains take a bluish hue. This is called areial perspective. The fact that, as objects are further away, they take more and more this bluish hue.

 

This would also happen on another planet with athmosphere. We could assume that a different athmosphere would disperse different wavelengths and thus aerial perspective would take a different hue, but there would still be aerial perspective nonetheless.

[KenH]

Um...maybe the alien sun gives off black light? So, how would you do that in AM? Fake it or does the fog feature allow you to do that?

[ypoissant]

Fake it

[entity]

Okay Yves,

For the sake of ART... lets not get so... TECHNICAL. This is a surreal scene. I edged the gray sky to very dull yellow/ green and the grounds color is a dull dark redish color to tie in the flesh color to the ground and seperate the sky and atmousphere from the ground. I wanted to make the background colors dull so the character "pops" forward a little... evrything I did is based on color/tones

... if the sky coloring is all wrong-

[entity]

After "flying off the handle" I reread your post... so it is possible this planet could have heavier particles in the atmosphere with the moisture in the air could produce a different hue for aerial perspective? I chose to make it that dull yellow--- maybe the violet is being dispersed?

[KenH]

possible this planet could have heavier particles in the atmosphere with the moisture in the air

But then he'd need an oxygen mask.

[entity]

Have you ever been to L.A. on a HOT day... It almost does look like that sky...

[heyvern]

My doctor says everything looks blue because of the Viagra.....

 

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[ypoissant]

Rich,

 

I'm not being technical for the sake of being technical. I wanted to try to explain what is aerial perspective because from your first reply, I had the impression that you did not understand my first comment. That's all.

 

Aerial perspective is called that way because it adds perspective or depth to outdoor scenes. It's been understood by painters since renaissance. I think you already have a very well done piece compositionwise and a very nice model. I was only pointing to the fact that I, personally, missed this depth that is normally conveyed by aerial perspective. That's just my personal preference.

 

Aerial perspective is also called atmospheric perspective or color perspective. Some aerial perspective related links:

Aerial Perspective Color Palette Matching Pigments

A little demo of different types of perspectives

From aerial photography POV

Musgrave on perspective (technical)

En encarta definition with a nice example

More definition and examples.

 

In a landscape painting, atmospheric or aerial perspective is even more important for mountains. Otherwise, it just doesn't look far enough or huge enough.

[John Keates]

The following is for anyone who likes the techical stuff (I think that it can only add to ones appreciation of looking at stuff).

 

As I remember it...

 

Arial perspective was first played with by Leonardo (of course).

 

The fact that shorter wavelengths get scattered more is due to 'Raleigh scattering' (Don't know if I spelt that right - if you want the real name then I could find it). It is a quantum effect and therefore only happens on particles that are small. It is a result of the inditermanency principle - if you know the position then you don't know the direction. The smaller the particle, the more defined the position and the more random the angle so you get more scattering. This is a universal law of course.

 

For this reason, you would expect a blue sky for any alien planet with small (air) particles in it. I remember seeing photos of mars with a blue sky - aprarently NASA 'reds' it up to make it look more alien - can't vouch for the truth of this but it is a good story. I guess that a planet with low gravity might have a redder sky as dust particles will tend to float about more. Mars is earths twin though and has about the same mass.

 

When you have larger particles then they do not do the Raleigh scattering - they just influence colour in the normal way (they subtract from it). This will tend to cause a redder colour as blue stuff isn't common. This is why smoggy sky looks like a browny red. However, over jungles and such, there is chloraphyl from all the plants and bacteria and so the air looks green.

 

In deserts, the colour of the arial effect is dependant on rain - when it rains, the dust gets knocked out of the air and the sky is blue. Maybe this is why we find blue sky attractive? This would be an important thing to cosider in the scene depicted. The red atmosphere gives the impression of dryness - like it hasn't rained recently. Depending on what you do with the clouds, you could get a nice 'storm brewing' feel.

 

There are a whole load of other effects that can happen giving any colour that you can imagine but you are basically looking at blue for the sky unless there is stuff in the air or the sun is low.

 

I had a friend once who was colour-blind. He saw green sunsets. Pretty cool.

 

This stuff is actually very relevent to art ( I think). If you spend a lot of time out-doors then you will find that you become very attuned to the changes in light. It would have been very important for our ancestors' survival to know if it was going to rain, or get dark or whatever. The weather can have a very powerfull effect on mood. This stuff runs deep into us and we have a natural fascination with it.

 

I am guessing that we have more of a sub-consciouse awareness of the physical facts behind lighting conditions than most people know. It is by doing research about stuff with the rational part of our brains that we can learn to wobble the deeper recesses of our imaginations in a way that is contrived to be relevent to our message.

 

I have a fantastic book on the subject... let me see...

 

Heres the link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search...9231027-7049211

 

If it doesn't work then just type "colour in nature" into amazon.co.uk

 

By the looks of it, there is another book there which is more relevant to the subject at hand. I really can't imagine there being all that much to know that one could make a whole book on it!

 

Anyway, lecture over. I just remembered that I have a life lying around here somwhere waiting for me...

[entity]

I'm sorry Yves,

I get soooo caught up in it sometimes I don't notice these things... I'm just glad that someone is here to point out what is "missing" or what I haven't shown... I have to remember that - if I want people to appreciate the work I've done there are certain points of view I have not thought of... You always bring a deep insight with your critiques and it is appreciated, but sometimes you can be "cryptic" and you should understand I don't have the ability at this time to reach where you are now... I'm way behind you, artisticly speaking. So I'm glad that you submitt your imput to me... it means I must be headed in the right direction.

[ypoissant]

Rich,

 

I think you are well on the way for a very good piece.

 

Yes, I can be cryptic sometime. That's because I don't, a priori know what you (or anyone else) know and don't know. So I trow something and if it's not understood, I try again with a different approach.

 

No hard feelings. Really.

 

Keep up the good work

[ypoissant]

Removed the duplicate post

Edited September 21, 2004 by ypoissant

[robcat2075]

The aerial perspective in L.A. sure looked brown to me. I presumed this was a hitchhiker trying to get to the White Party in Palm Springs.

 

I recall films a few years back where they shot with a half filter over the lens to un-blue the sky and horizon. For mood. "Night of the Comet" comes to mind.

[entity]

This version I changed a few things... trying to SEE the differences. I think the Brownish sky gives you the feeling it's about to rain or storm and you get the feeling there is a heavy overcast... going back to what John Keates (Thanks for the additional info) was explaining. Which is the way I saw it in my dream.-- Yes the set is from a dream I had years ago and the colors are the same in my dream-- yes sometimes I think I'm dreaming in color. Actually, inside the little movie trailer I made (Glatiators' World -on A:M films), I drew this whole story and the places I saw from when I was having some really inspiring dreams. The scene with the ship diving with fire and smoke billowing out was actually very close to how I saw it in my dream.

(Robcat- I used to live in the high desert-- Bartow... then moved to Victorville. I went to L.A. a few times during that time in my life... years ago- 1990-1997.)

Edited September 21, 2004 by entity

[KenH]

Wow well faked! One crit if I may....the fog seems too clean/smooth/regular. (If it's a windless planet, I'll shut my gob ) Otherwise, you nailed it.

[ypoissant]

Looking better and better.

 

The sky bothers me a little. It is rather dark in the upper portion. Sky do indeed go from pale blue (almost white) on the horizon to dark deep blue at zenith during the day, but given your camera focal length, the zenith would be way above the upper border of the image. So at the top border, the blue should not be that dark.

 

Something I did for my skylight is use one of the sky found on 1000skies.com. Since I didn't need high resolution because I wanted to use it as sky light filter, I picked one on the site, masked out the watermarks and added a lower half part then spherical mapped it on a hemisphere. This way, I get nice believable sky gradient and perspective no mather the camera focal length and angle.

 

I would force the atmospheric perspective between the different layers of mountains. In particular, I would make the farthest mountain (so it seems to me anyway) at the right of the character, even paler, almost disapearing within the sky.

 

The whole mood is very cool if not cold. That is probably the mood you are looking for though. Nevertheless, I would add some warmth to the light by turning it yellowish. This would make the character pop out a little more with the help of chromatic contrast.

 

Rather than go into detailed technical explanation, I quick modified your image to show what I have in mind.

[entity]

WOW!!! Great... I see what you mean now... it's clearer to me what you were talking about. I guess I take aerial perspective for granted... After looking at the aerial perspective palette page you refereded me to, I think I will add layers (with an alpha to near the ground so I dont get that hard clipping where the layer meets the ground) and manually "force" the perspective between the mountains. I will use a different color for my base sky color and shift the color as they go back in perspective. I truly want the sky to be like there is a storm about to happen. So my palette will change... I'll be using that brownish color.

Thanks again.