Fun post-season animation
 

So on our team a few of the vets are gonna work on some short animations sort of as a last fling before the season ends.

I tried earlier to start a informal film fest, but it barely got any attention, so here i am proposing something like it again:

How about people spend a few days to two weeks putting together something tight to show off. It can be anything. If you wanted to make something explode, and it never worked, go for it this time. Hair, lens effects, reactor, whatever you always wanted to try out, go for it.
it dosn't have to be long, anywhere from 3 to 30 seconds, you decide.

Use this as a chance to show off your skills or to learn something new. Find some cute shiney in max and use it to make something fun and showy.

if people want to make this a friendly competition, so be it. If not, then consider this an animation "jam session."

This is my last year with first, unless i can somehow telementor, so i want to do one last bit to make this even more memorable.

anyone else in?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

ya, i likely will be in, as long as homework, and other things don't get in the way too much. I think it is a good idea. Isn't there other teams thinking the same thing? oh well, i will do w/e.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Yes Team 1625 in, were working on Peanut butter jelly time kind of deal. check out the official unofficial robotics film contest too.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

It might be fun to some work with still frames, because I for one do not have the computing power to render anything sexy and animated in a week or two :D

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

sounds good. I don't intend on putting any kind of restrictions on this so far, so go for whatever. Stills are cool. animations are cool. do several if you want. and don't let this interfere with school. keep this chill, don't let it get in the way.I'm excited to see what we can pull together without any time/subject/content requirements.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

where are we posting it and when is the due date?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Do you want a due date? I guess if people want a date, we can say by march 1st. you can email me the file if it is under 10 megs and i will host it or find someone to host it, if not, host it yourself on putfile or anywhere else and provide a link to it here.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Sounds fun :)

At first I was scared of getting near max after that crazy animation deadline, but after working on the robot (and all the physical limitations that implies) it's nice to sit down and do something in max where nothing has to be accurate or physically possible :P I might as well be the first one to post a WIP - here's what I started earlier today:



I started with the head in the shape of a greyhound (and that was the intended motif) but I strayed pretty badly from that as I progressed. I'll probably work on compositing it into a photo tomorrow, possibly adding some textures. Comments/crits welcome.

If anyone has anything they're working on, let us see! Good luck ;)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I can't give a really good critique of the finer points of the model, the pictures seem a little blurry. Overall effect is REALLY nice. I would like to see a few wireframes of it. I am impressed.

How did you go about making that? I have tried to make mechs before, but i always get to where i make it up as i go along and they end up looking really stupid. do you plan out each part individually or what?

I'll put up pics of my stuff later, if i can find my flashdrive to transfer file with.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Well, I tried to follow this image (all credits there go to Josh Been, not drawn by me) but like I said the final version isn't quite like what I had hoped.

Wireframe

There's what I have so far. I'll probably make the legs longer and fix those little things later. Forgive the terrible quality, Paint doesn't export to JPG well and I don't currently have access to Paint Shop Pro. I'll post a better one later.

I'd say the best plan is to draw it out on paper first, to get the layout and shapes down. That's the hardest part. Because I essentially copied someone else's drawing for this one, the tough part was pretty much done allowing me to finish modeling in about a day.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

NICE. I like.
yeah, i probably should draw stuff out before i start modeling, but i'm just so lazy and impatient. one of my faults.

can't wait to see how it turns out.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

That looks awesome.

Yeah, I'm going to try to model an X-29 jet plane. If you guys have any suggestions, I'll be open to them. Wish me luck!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Awesome :) I've always had trouble modeling planes for some reason. Using blueprints for something that has so many curves is nearly impossible for me. All I can say is good luck - and use plenty of reference material :P

Here's a more final version of my "mechhound"- bump map, texture maps, etc


You can see more wires here.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

WOW!!! that is amazing!! I wish i could do something as good as that lol. (some day, but don't have time to work on it yet lol)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

:ahh: Now, that's a lot of polygons!