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!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Im curious now. the torso is kinda confusing. i can't really tell what is going on there. can i see some wires of each part (head, torso, legs, arms) individually. the arms tend to block the rest of the model.

very slick model though. now you just have to animate it fighting godzilla, shooting lazers, and eating a car. all while climbing the empire states building and falling in love with a blonde bombshell. :D :D :D

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Yeah, that area isn't quite right. The concept image I was following was pretty vague about the whole torso thing. Various panelings, hydraulic cylinders, etc cover up what is otherwise a very empty area. In the day or two I had to model, style unfortunately came before substance. :P

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Outstanding modeling, Abroerman.

Would more sketches have helped you define the "missing torso"?

How long have you been using 3D? Where did you learn your 3d skills?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Thanks :)

And yes, more sketches definately would have resolved the torso problem. That and more time--I've got 2 essays to write before Wednesday (1/2 done :o) so that's taken up most of my day :(

I first really got started probably around 4 or 5 years ago with a free program known as anim8or. I haven't used it in a while, but it's still growing. It's hardly the powerhouse that 3dsmax is, but it was a good thing to learn the basics on. I would also say that solid drawing skills have helped me out a lot.

I then found gmax, which is sort of a neutered version of 3ds max. That's where I learned the interface. My freshman year, when I walked into my first Techhounds meeting (I missed the first couple of weeks), I heard "3ds max" spoken somewhere... and here I am now ;)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

well, after VCU, i was really excited about winning the award. and well... i got to animating again... and, well, you can see what happened...



just sorta showin off i guess... :rolleyes:

I have a real animation in the works to be finished in the next few weeks (hopefully). keep the good stuff coming, guys!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Congratulations on the award, I can see they are as shiny as ever (Caustics = win) :)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Wow abroerman!! I wish i could animate like you! You're spectacular! wo ho!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

yeah, caustics are fun little buggers.

and i really like your animation, abroerman. Penguins are tight. very nice.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

If this is still going on ill post some of my stuff later (i should be doing math work). Any suggestions? Im a rather big fan of playing with lighting and reflections. and im thinking i might just do an object movin through a room with a light filtering ceiling. suggestions?

btw, nice work on the mech that looks awesome. kinda makes me wonder, what method did you use to make it? box model/poly/nurbs... ?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

the ceiling thing sounds cool. try something out that you haven't done yet, though. it is a great way to learn things. Last summer, i worked SOOOO much in Max, but i have no final products, i just spent time learning new tricks so that the animation this year would look even better than it usually does.

that said, i would suggest playing with:
-caustics(a personal fave)
-opacity maps
-things with lots of raytraced materials
-volumatric lights.

not lighting related
-reactor (softbody, cloth, ragdoll, toycar are my favorites)
-atmospherics
-aftereffects
-hair and fur

I second the request to know how you made the mech. I would guess box modelling.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I think ill try to figure out caustics... the rest i have some exp in...

my best bet on the mech was several techniques based on the part. looking at the wireframe it looks to be in several components not one mesh. but box modeling is the best bet

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I try to stay away from box modeling as it doesn't seem to give as much freedom as starting from a single poly and working from there. Some of the mesh is an editable poly with meshsmooth applied. Other parts, however (such as the intakes behind the mech's head) did come from box modeling. I've also got some lathed / extruded splines in there as well.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Alright Im working on a remake of the Peanut Butter Jelly Time song (You know the one with the danceing banana) Its taking Longer than expected to lipsync the song (its 2 1/2+ mins) Plus Im putting in an apple to sing along with him cause Im useing a Remix of the song by DJ chip. (If you still have no idea what im talking about take a look at my picture thingy next to my name)

Anyway so I was just testing how well I could animate eyes and came up with this cute blob charater .

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

very nice! i haven't been animating much recently, i got Oblivion and COD2 that are eating all my spare time.

keep it up!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Abroerman's mech:

What renderer are you using? That looks like grainy mr area lights. Overall, I would recommend a Skylight (maybe with light tracer) and a single light for specular. Skylight looks amazing, but it takes forever.

I realize there are no textures, but the shiny gray look could be improved. Either a cool shiny/reflective with a nice color job or an "industrial" type with rust, scratches, etc. Details with textures can add a whole lot, maybe little stickers, warning labels, bolts/rivets, etc. I got too lazy with my game-oriented low-poly mech to put any decent textures on it.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

BuddyB309:

That eye test was great... his expression at the end is classic :P

Mazin:

Are you viewing the correct image? The more recent one has better lighting, bump mapping, and some diffuse mapping (not much though). while it could use some work, I've decided just to move on. It was just a few days' fun project, nothing else :)

I used Vray for the rendering (far superior to scanline and MR). It's an ancient stripped-down version (they used to produce 2 versions: a free basic one and an advanced commercial one). Not sure if they're still giving out demos or not. Still a great renderer that makes MR look relatively weak.

What I've been up to:


(click for wallpaper-sized image)

I've been playing through the second Metroid Prime for the last few days and have only just started to realize how amazing it is. This image (rendered in mental ray) doesn't really represent a specific in-game area, but I was just trying to capture that "metroid-esque" atmosphere. If you've played Prime 1 or 2 you understand :) I didn't quite get it, but it sure makes me wonder about the awesome talents of the Retro Studio people.

A quick little day project involved me trying to figure out how those little compressed-air engines (that the Air Hogs planes use, if you have seen one of those) work. A couple of friends and I were playing with an old one in my basement last night, they're really neat. I made a quick little animation using my model.

View the .gif

View the final animation (YouTube)

Yeah, opacity mapping is huge. Definately get good at this, it saved my life numerous times. For example, every tree and plant in our animation was created through opacity mapping. This allows me to make a tree using 1 face, versus the hundreds of faces that make up max's foliage (those trees really kill rendertimes). Using opacity mapping, I can make happy little trees in a fraction of the time using a fraction of the processing power.

Anyway... keep it up guys :)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

wow you guys are amazing, did you take any classes or learn from any professional 3ds max animators? or is this just time and effort with online tutorials and just "playing" the max?

also, about opacity mapping, can you reccomend anywhere online that gives a description and a few tutorials about it? sounds like a time-saver

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

yeah, there's some great stuff here :) For me, learning max was an individual thing. I didn't start with 3ds max directly, but instead with free easier stuff; that way, I could learn the basics of 3d without being confused and disheartened by max's complex interface :) When I got into max, then, I could focus on the interface and more complex features rather than starting from scratch.

I was just looking for opacity mapping tutorials, but haven't found anything terribly useful. I'll try to explain:


This is an image found in 3ds max's reference files, not mine

On the left you can see 2 different planes; the foremost one being a standard diffuse map and the one behind it being the opacity map.

When that opacity map is dropped into the "opacity" slot found in the standard material, you can see the effect that has on the final output (seen on the right in that image). Basically, max evaluates the opacity map and uses it to determine the transparency of the final material.

Opacity maps are most commonly greyscale images; you can see that pure black makes that area of the material completely transparent, while white represents an opaque area. Any grey area in between creates a semi-transparent material.

For example, the trees in our animation were all created with the following as an opacity map:



All I had to do was stick that material on a 2d plane to get a perfect tree. I'm not the greatest at explaining things, so if you have any more questions just let us know.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Nope, I didn't see the new mech image. Looks nice.

BTW, where did you get the opacity/diffuse maps for the trees? I've taken to baking some of the built-in max trees to single-plane ones, but other than that I haven't used them much. I do remember an old plugin that would automatically make forests of planar trees complete with the lookats for a camera. There was a stripped-down version and a commercial version I believe.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I did a google image search for "tree silhouette" and got dozens of great images, though most require some photoshopping (or in my case, PaintShopPro-ing) before they can be used as opacity maps.

Google = best resource, ever.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I did do some of this video with 3ds max. I took me about 2 weeks to complete. Its a promo video for winnovation.

promo video

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Nice vid. I like the little gear/wrench animation. Looked professionally done ;) We'll probably be doing something along those lines next year, though not quite as long (they will go on our school's video announcements). How are you distributing your promo?

on a completely different note, I've been improving my texturing/material skills. Check out my new death bot (bipedal mechs are lame now :)).



Check out how the highlight only shows up on the white paint remaining on its "head" - where paint has chipped off, it's dull. Nailed that ;) It's still a WIP - I plan on animating it and of course giving it automatic weapons (you can see the gun bays, the 2 closed panels on the lower-front portion of the bot).

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

[quote=abroerman]

on a completely different note, I've been improving my texturing/material skills. Check out my new death bot (bipedal mechs are lame now :)).

QUOTE]

I envy you. How do you get that good. What are your techniques and what do you look for when creating models.

I understand what any tutorials about modleing can teach me on the intrernet but I dont have the technique down to create a professional looking model. What are you doing thats different than what im doing? Are you useing spline modeling, box modeling, or vertex? How do you get good textures? How many hours are you spending into each model you make?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Thanks :) I'd say the most helpful thing is having a reference image. I drew this one up a few weeks ago (I get bored at school just like everyone else :)) You can see how much I changed it in the final version, but it's still nice to have some direction. Sitting down in max and arbitrarily modeling something is pretty difficult for me to do.

Once that's done, the modeling is pretty simple. It looks complex, but when you break it down, it's easy. The legs are all extruded splines and the "eyes" are lathed splines. The head covering started as a sphere, then using edit poly I cut out what I didn't want (using quickslice mostly). I could have spent more time cleaning up the mesh, but it works.


I also made heavy use of the "shell" modifier. You can see how thin and worthless the above mesh looks- I used Shell to give it depth.

For little details, such as the hydraulic lines and the little wire "collar" assembly the bot has, I used splines. You can tell max to take an otherwise infinitely-thin spline and give it a radial thickness. Later on, if I animate the legs, I can animate the spline's control vertices to give the hydraulic lines convincing movement. (if you have questions over any of this I can go over it in more detail).

Textures are easily the most important, and sometimes most difficult, part of the scene. I like to use Mayang's free texture library (aside from google of course). None of the textures tile seamlessly that I'm aware of, but the photos are great starting points, with all sorts of rusted-up steel, cracked paint, etc. Making your object look dirty and weathered is harder than leaving it spotless, but as I've learned, the results look much better.

You can see how light reflects more off of the painted areas vs. the rusted areas; this adds huge realism yet is extremely easy to do. This is achieved though glossiness mapping-any area on the glossiness map that appears white will have a highlight, while darker areas on the map will appear dull.

While there is a lot that went into that model, I'm sure that you're familiar with nearly all of the techniques that I used for it. It just takes practice and patience - take your time and concentrate on each individual element, one thing at a time. Unfortunately, that sort of mentality disappears during build season due to the rather demanding deadlines, but it's a good thing to strive for I guess.

One last piece of advice - look out!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I animated the quad 'bot a couple weeks ago but never posted it; just a simple walk cycle. Forgive poor .gif quality:

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Good but I want to give a few pointers about it.

When animating a character I try to visualize how the character weight is going to be distributed. Your robot picks up two legs at a time one directly opposite of another leaving the other two to support the robot. If this robot did this in real life there would be nothing to stop the robot from falling to one side. (am I explaining this alright?)

Plus your robot's body is swaying side to side. This means that its throwing its weight to its side as it walks. In real life this would cause the robot to topple over since there is no foot there to stop the robots weight from going that way.

Its a good start and a little head bob when the feet lands would also make it a little more convincing. fiddle around with it and look at the way some animals use their four legs when that walk. (not trotting though they have to walk)

I have a animation of two little robots comming soon. There not that great of character modeling in the robots but I think I make it up with there animation. :D

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Yeah, the physics aspect of the bot is pretty terrible, but haven't really cared to fix it. The real point of this was to practice rigging\texturing more than anything else.

I'm kind of abandoning this project (I lose steam pretty quickly if I don't care about something ;)) in favor of a paper model of Serenity, if anyone is familiar with the movie by that name or the show "firefly". I found one on the internet, but it is of pretty low quality, and lacks the detail I want. so I've set out in max to create one of my own. If you aren't familiar with papermodeling, it involves printing out templates onto card stock that you cut out, fold, glue, etc. The fact that the medium is a heavy paper means the mesh can't be all that detailed, you can see I'm keeping it pretty low-poly:



Right now I've only got the "head" and half of the "neck", it's going pretty slowly (with AP tests and all the make-up work from championships ;))
I'll hang the model in my room when I'm done, it will probably be about 2' long. It will be sweet ;)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

well, i am gonna say that i envy your sk1llz. Your robot really rocks. I made a cheapo knockoff robot of my own (about 1/30 quality compared to yours) to play with in compositing. I now have a pic of him sitting on my desk, will post pic later.

I want to make a little vid of him crawling around on my desk, so can you recommend a tutorial that you used for rigging the legs? I tried a few things, but they were ghetto and didn't work how i wanted. thanks.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

thanks... I'm surprised myself how it came out (model/render wise). Turns out this time I actually managed to trick max into doing something I wanted... you can probably relate.

Regarding your robots legs, it really depends on how it is set up. I don't know of any tutorials that explain what you're looking for, but I'll try to help as much as I can :cool:

Basically, the rigging process involved using the "select and link" tool to link the robot in the following (highly simplified) hierarchy:

[parent - Robot Center]
--[leg base]
----[rest of leg]

Movement is passed down the hierarchy, but not up. For example, rotating the leg bases of my bot rotated the entire leg, but not the 'Robot Center'.

Or maybe you completely understand hierarchies, sorry if that's the case. Let us see how your bot is set up, maybe we can help more. good luck with it:)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I started something yesterday inspired by abroerman's death bot. I love the legs yet I hate the body. I have talked to a few people and the largest suggestion is to reconstruct the head completely, yet I have no ideas of what to replace it with at this point. Any ideas?
PS I love the legs so much! (it has toothed treads on its legs because it looks cool)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

The legs look great. I can't really tell how they work, but they look cool (a problem that plagues most of my work in max :D). Reminds me of Erector set... good times.

The body portion isn't bad by any means, but it doesn't fit with the strictly mechanical theme you started with the legs. Cut the sphere up a little and show some "guts" - you can see in my bot I've got panels that cover up most of the insides, but still show some of the gritty mechanical stuff. I would also replace the little arms with something that looks more like the legs of your bot.

Another thing that really helps make my quad look convincing is the rust/paint chipping. If it truly is a "death bot" (if that's what we're going to call them), it's most likely been through a lot. Some bullet holes and burn marks on mine would have made it better, in my opinion.

As a side note, I printed out & assembled a test model for the cockpit of my Serenity model:



Hopefully it will look 5x better with the textures on it. :o

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Well I mean this will definitely be a story to tell. Think of when it is finished. People will see this giant paper machine and go dang you built that. You can turn to them and go yes, I designed it as well. Then go on to explain to them that you modeled it bit by bit and printed it out and put it together. As their mouth begins to gape.

Oh and thank you for your crits. I will try and test them out and post tonight if not tommorow.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

This is the render of the bot on my desk. kinda fun.

anyway, the robot's legs, if you cannot see in the picture, are mechanically similar to abroerman's bot's legs. just very, very simplified. It's about 5000 polys, so i can't have much detail. (actually i can probably get it below 4500 if i redo the eyes and some other bits.) textures are cheap too, i didn't bother doing all the prettyies yet.

thanks for the tips, but i already knew all that. that's actually how i animated the arms on the sub for my team animation. but i wanted to know if there was a better way to do it.

P.S. i'm looking for some stock footage of someone having a lightsaber duels. for a little fun experiment with glow efects and stuff. :D anyone wanna provide me with some? I can't get video from my camera to my computer. :(

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I made a robot thing that looks very similar to yours. I do have a video animated but I have to wait till I can get to a friends house who has high speed internet.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Did a few updates, is there a way to get high or med res maps to fit well on a very low res model? I tried and tried several times on its new arms yet got so sick of it I gave up.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Looks pretty good so far. Not sure what you're asking... did you try any texture mapping?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

By that do you mean UVW mapping? or something else? Beyond whats under the materials window and UVW mapping I havent truely explored mapping.
Not reluctant to learn, yet there is no one able to teach me atm. Might try and figure it out using the User Reference, that is pretty much how I learned everything else. Then again that’s not true, while most of it came from experimentation using the User Resources some of it came from our teams lessons using the 3dsm bible.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Why not try emailing Ted for some help? That what I did when I tried to get the rainbow of colors to shine through a CD when you stick it in the light. Just tell him who you are and you met in nationals. Then send him the file asking if there is any tips he can give you.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

i guess i don't get what you mean by high res maps on a low res object.

if you mean the pattern is too big for the model and you want it to appear smaller, then what you have is a tiling issue. open up the material editor and click on the diffuse map button. near the top of the rollout it'll have a few options like Offset, tiling, mirror, blahblah. make the tiling value higher. this will increase the number of times the texture will repeat itself over a surface, making the texture appear smaller in comparison to the model.

if that aint it, can you elaborate on the issue?

I like the new arms, they match the legs better. I kinda think the eyes and body are a little too round or curvy compared to the legs and arms. like it's a cute kinda robot with claws that look like it's about to kill you. doesn't really match. the modelling is very clean though, it's nice.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I have an animation of two robots. Eventually they are going to duke it out against each other and destroy one another. I made this in school when I was really bored one day.

Those are camera lenses poking out of the robots if anybody asks.

Rollbots

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Very nice, yet there were a few things I didn't like, I am very picky and notice these tiny little things.

One
The legs of the first robot go through the chassis of the robot a few times
Two
Over use of the premade chrome texture, I know its easy and it looks decent, yet its the outstanding animations that people talk about over biscuits. (Like team 75's animation they made last year, came up several times)
Three
When the second robot hits the other robot with its "camera lens" it flies back unrealistically, it would maybe slide back, OO YEAH, make it slide back and have sparks. I have a great template for sparks if you want.

I see the resemblance of my bot to yours, and I challenge your robots sir to a duel! *Puts white glove in the claws of my bot.*

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Fixed it and changed the lighting a little bit. I working on adding sound effects and then I'll upload it when I get the chance to get to a friends house.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I have a character with flat eyeballs and I'm trying to get the eyes to look at something. A simple look at constraint and a point wont do because the eyeballs are shaped like discs and will pop out of the head if they turn. Does anyone know how to make the pupils slide along the surface of the eye but still align itself with the "focus point"?

If I make the pupils move then my character will look like he is looking at something.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

The 3ds max reference specifically addresses this, though I don't recall the exact details. Essentially, it's a WSM or something that affects the eyeball after you put a lookat on it, and it has its own orientation instead of being linked to the eyeball.
Of course, this would be a oblong eyeball, not a flat one.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

What I have been working on/updating.

http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/5339/face4cw.jpg
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6365/drops3tl.jpg
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/7...dfloors1de.jpg
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8...floors26ty.jpg
http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/7606/turtle8zg.jpg
http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/9...ighting0tf.jpg

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Morgan, how long did it take you to upload those images..seeing as how you have dialup and all :rolleyes:

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

i have dial up too and images those sizes would probably at least a minute each.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I animated a Trex model that I have please critique

Trex

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Very nice modeling, I see you've got the teeth on it. I think the head shakes a bit too much in proportion with the rest of its body when he's walking. Either slow that down or see if you can make the whole body move (then it would just look like he's running).

And if I can just comment, that couch is HUGE!!! :yikes: ha ha!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

The model is very nice, love the detail, I know the arms on a trex were small but these while detailed resemble deflated balloons. As for the animation, great movement, no strange joints all perfect. Yet the movie for me stops at 4 seconds. Is this an error on my machine or what?
One thing I would add for a pinch more realism is a slight shake to the camera when a foot hits the ground, a t-rex is a big animal.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I think the head is fine.

I also hate to admit this but..................Its not my model. (ouch) I got it off of turbosquid :( . But I did have to do major cleanup in rigging the model up for animation.

I also have this in the workings. I'm currently getting all the lip sync done and the character rig i created for the banana is causing me major problems.

Its Peanut Butter Jelly Time!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

The movie stops for me at 4 seconds as well, so it's not your computer.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Started, supposedly finished, fixed errors, fixed really small errors, fixed tiny tiny tiny error, and finished all tonight.

I hope you can guess what this is.




This is the beginning of a project I plan to do for summer LEGO camp.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

looks sweet.

Have you heard of Ldraw? It's a huge online library of all the LEGO parts in CAD form. It's a huge hassle to get them exported to max, but would definately save time if you're going to continue w/ the lego stuff.

www.ldraw.org

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Only problem with that is I plan to animate the models with the pieces and either I am going to get super high res or crap low res. High res is OK until I get to piece #634. Yet Ill try it out anyway, hopefully I will get pieces that fall somewhat in between.

Thank you for the compliment and the link.

I might end up just making them myself, makes me feel like I did something more noteworthy rather than use pre modeled parts. Plus that site has too much stuff, I just want a converter and specific parts... :S I will keep looking

Also did you see the serial number on the RCX?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

nice model. can we see a wireframe?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Sure, this is a pic of the wire of the rcx and a bunch of parts, and then there is a normal render.

Yes that is the wire of the dreaded large gear, the poly count! THE POLY COUNT!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

So, Morgan, what is the poly count for that last image?

These are awesome, I can't wait to see the final animation(s). I'm looking forward to them. :)

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

The Poly Count for the entire scene is 18,573. (Poly count=number of polygons in a scene) (None of these models used any kind of mesh smooth/turbo smooth)
The large gear unreduced is 4270, when reduced it is 2120.
I can't wait to see the final animation either, I have animators block and I don't know what type of robot to make.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

darn that animators block, i have it too

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Perhaps we should create some kind of message board/thread where animators post ideas they have for an animation but don't have the time/skill to complete them. Great solvent for any animator with animators block to pop in sign up for an idea, work alone/collaborate with others, and fix that brain clog!

What do you think?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Sounds like a good idea for a new thread on CD. A good candidate for a sticky.

or just go to google and do a image search for "3d (insert something)" and let others' work inspire you away!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Hello.. Rendershare. did everyone forget this already?

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I believe they're talking about something different.

RE: Mercury's RCX, the studs look a little big to me, but it's probably just me and not your fault. You should add the tiny little LEGO logo on each stud as a bump map - that'd be cool.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Hello. I noticed nobody has put up work here in a while, so i wanted to throw out a few pics to jumpstart the creative impulses of the Young Animators Of First.

Here is a picture i made for a kinda wierd desktop. The shattered glass doesn't look right, and there were supposed to be caustics, but oh well. It took about an hour and a half to model and about 1 minute to render.


I saw somthing like this on google, and decided to try it out on my own. its supposed to be a flame of water... wierd. model about 2-3 hours. render 2 minutes.


I was bored and modeled my roommate's glasses. woot. model, 1-2 hours. render 1 min.


Well, i hope everyone enjoys, please leave feedback. Now, Get modelling, practice makes you a pimp. I love seeing what other people can do.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

This is what happens when I procrastinate and don't do my homework. It's really simple cause I just threw it together.

Ball kicking Ball

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

light cycles

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LASER CANNON!!!

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I have been playing around with caustics a bit.
Low res / low detail

High res / high detail

If you click that link view the image full size. It is rather large.

I want to get speed modeling sessions back up.

For clarity it is a wine glass with glass beads. I have been told to make them pearls. I am working on that right now.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Not sure what prompted this - it's been a while since I've done anything in max.
Click the image for a wallpaper-sized version.



Took me about 2 hours total, including Paint Shop Pro work. Most of my time went into perfecting the lighting/rendering setup (Rendered in Mental Ray with area lights).

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

Morgan and I are working on this one together. Hopefully when done i will do camera matching and tracking to composite this into footage.

war of the worlds parody

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

^^ looking nice. it looks great even without textures, though I'm assuming you're going to spiff it up even more?

Our team has been putting together a promotional video, and my teammates vetoed this:



as a potential transition sequence. It wouldn't have ever looked right in the video, but it's neat how easily After Effects takes the raw footage (from max, a model of our mechanum wheels by the way) and turns it into something so neat.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

heres a couple things i made:

This one i was when i was bored during a worksession at school
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...oanimation.flv

This one i was when i was bored at home
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...mirrorcube.flv

These next ones are me messing around with fluids
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...erintocone.flv
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...terintocup.flv
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...terintocup.flv

This one i was messing around with lights
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v5...withlights.flv

The Quality on some are very horrible be cause of photobucket. If you have a good video hosting site please let me know.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

needs lighting work on it, I can hardly see anything. Nice models of the logo though.

needs lighting work also.

OMG!!!! HOW DID YOU GET THAT!!!! ITS AMAZING!!!!

Try a projector map and other colored lights.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

try this one, Two objects splitting like a lava lamp.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsQWC-xKSkc

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

That's a neat one. some of your others on Youtube are good too. Love the TV and grass on "FIRST You Came Through" You could probably teach me a bit in 3DSM.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

it finally happened, i spent so much time animating my models finally popped out of the computer and were running around. This little guy was a pain to catch.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

you may want to learn how to do reflection on real world objects

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

take a closer look at the table, its reflecting the dino.

it moves now
moving trex

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

I've made some more things and started using HDRI.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_30QTD_BRE
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...y/blahblah.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...munky/blah.png
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...ky/HIblock.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...etorusknot.jpg

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

good lighting and nice use of reflections and refractions

I textured the tripod and there are a few things that I need to clean up on it. I also need to make a specular map for it.

Re: Fun post-season animation
 

This is a frame for the composite that im doing.