Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Hey dudes, ive been working hard (I havent seen the outdoors in two weeks, even though i hear there is gorgeous weather out side) here is an update of me and david's project.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Well since we are all posting our stuff...
lemme post my character... I think I wanna do a really good professional quality animation this summer.

Here is the robot character... I use him in my sig, and for my website (hence the block letter names)



What do you guys think?

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

you owe me a new keyboard. I went to your website and looked at your gallery and instantly began drooling all over.

You're modeling supreme. Now lets se your characters live.;) Make em dance!

Flowers YAY!
Makeing and putting in flowers into the scene

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed the stuff.
I have wanted to make an animation for the LONGEST time... FIRST animations just don't cut it because I'm very involved with other parts of the team -- so I never have time to do a decent animation, in addition to the fact that there are only 30 seconds to animate with. Animation is one of those things you really need to read a book on -- it's very technical -- and I just don't have time during the season.

But hopefully I'll be able to post a short clip up this summer!

If you guys want inspiration check out cgtalk.com
(you'll probably need to get ANOTHER keyboard after seeing this lol)
but seeing some of the works on there just humbles and inspires any artist

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Well... animation, modeling... anything wise for me, all I ever got my creativity and techniques forom was a couple of tutorials on specific topics, and my mind. That's it. I don't use books or anything like that. Shocking, no? lol. Any idea I come up with in my head that I want to do in 3ds max comes with the idea I have in mind, and with work, if I run into somethnig, I try to research on the web, and I find a solution to a problem. That's how I learn everything, and with each proect, big or small, I learn new things. :)

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

It's true you can do a lot using online tutorials and such...(in fact that's where I've learned everything so far). I'd say it's mind blowing how revolutionary the internet has been in making info available ... Pepole can learn how to do almost anything online (I learned how to code in PHP just this week through tutorials and such). However the stuff I learned online is more of a mish-mash of techniques and ideas instead of a real education!

the fact is to create studio quality animation you need to invest significant amounts of time and effort into learning new techniques. Just look at stuff at CGTalk... that is the quality i'm trying to attain, in order to do that it takes alot more than a few tutorials. it takes years of experience, education and books lol

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Ah, techniques and tricks of doings to doing things, i found that is one thing that tutorials wont teach you. For example, how to get lights and materials to syncronise into harmony so you get that really good look. Or how to make your project move more efficiantly and smoothly. Many Tutorials wil teach you how to skin a character and get him ready for animation and then leave it at that.

Speaking of which.

how did you get your robot to look really really good? where are you lights posistioned? and what material and renderer are you useing?

The prodject ive been working on so hard is now in the rendering phase. Since being free from the contraints of autodesk im rendering my project out in layers and putting it together in after effect for some fine tweaking.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I still don't understand how you got the pupil on your guy's eye... I tried on my aliens (that were facing away from you) but to no success. In adition (to Testament-Doom) how did you relacate all of the flowers in the right places???

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

The flowers I actually didn't do (the new ones), BuddyB309 did them and he did them manually. He has a link on youtube that shows exactly how he does it. The grass that's on there however (yes, there are some things you haven't seen yet ;)) which is along the path of the flowers I did, and I used a certain technique to do it, which was I took the whole line of the edge of the sidewalk, made a spline, and used the spacing tool, then with a script, I randomly rotate the grass.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

*32 being such a small team, I did not have time to make a contest entry. I do have other projects that I have worked on, however. To see them go to my deviant art site:
http://frenotx.deviantart.com/
Any comments and suggestions (especially on the tank on the front page) will be gladly appreciated.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

cool design. Can i see the original concept drawings? Now all you have to do is texture it and make a short animation with it. Maybe some shots fired, throw in some particles for some smoke, heck, why not throw in some fracture reactor and some models with ragdoll contraints;) . Then you can make a building collaspe and have water spewing out of the broken pipes pipes;) (just kidding)

I would really like to see it textured though I think it could look really cool.


Ah the good old fashion eye with the dialateing publi! I cant tell you the number of hours I spent figureing this one out! Lets start with the very basic

Sphere + eye texuture and a look at contraint to a point.

simple enough for most things that are in AVA entries now lets say you want a cartoonish eye with a black pubil and white conea, no iris.

same as above but insted of an eye texture you need a gradint ramp with solid change from white to black. Then set up a silder and wire parameter the slider to control the flag on the gradient ramp.

K, that is good for some things. but what if you want really really good eyes. you have to know how a eye functions. The irirs is actually concave and the pubil is a hole. So make a shere with a section on it that is concave like an eye. You dont need to cut a hole in the sphere, just make sure that the material that is for the pubil doesnt reflect any light. Then there is this clear thing that goes over your iris and pubil. I dont know what its funcion is or whats is called, but the main thing it does in max is create a specular. You always want a specular on the eye otherwise it doesnt look good. So set up the specualar.

Now scince this this has different parts to it take full advantage of the Multi sub material. And to make the pubil dialate set up a morph mod and set your refference with a smaller pubil (am i explaning this right?).

Pm me if you have any questions.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Hey firebelly your modelling is very clean and detailed! I am impressed.

Props

-Salik

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

WEEEEE HEE HEEE!!!!! almost done!!!

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Thanks! That is a great complement to hear. And BuddyB309, I can't wait to see the finished version!

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I'm really no good at charictor animation and I only know what I tought myself, but how did you get your charictor's bipeds? plus the apparent eyebrow motion in the last pic.?