Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I stay well away from bipeds, They are not as comtumizable as creating your own rigs from bones, (I know Gasp!). To me its not that hard because I have riged so many characters. It is similar to the biped but scince it is with bone i can slap on some IK parameters and that makes animation a whole lot easier. (You just have to make sure that the movement flows in archs instead of strait lines, newbies tend to not pay attention to that and then the characters movements look very unatural.) Then i Link just about everything to dummies and shapes so i can easily select them. The little red guy there (AKA bert) was a little awkward to rig, his legs are really short and his feet are really big. I had a couple of problems but solved it with Joint angle deformer and bulge deformer gizmo in the skin mod. But since the little guy has no knees, i had to develop a way for him to walk. He kinda wadles.

Anyway, on to your question about the Eyebrows animation. That is done with the morph modifier. I wouldn't recomend doing Eye brows with bones. It could lead into trouble and morpher mod is much easier. I do all my facial animation with the morph mod (except eyelids, those are half spheres) The only problem with the morph is that if you make a change in the characters verticies after you set up the facial rig, you would have to redo the whole facial rig. (but thats only happens as a result of poor planing right?;) )

Then i set up a kind of control board for all the facial movements and then animate from there. Here are some pictures of what the character rigg looks like.



As you can tell it is very complex, the rabbit character (AKA Narf) has about about 60 point to animate to get him to move. It seems a little excessive but this character rig can dish out any type of action you can think of.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Wow, that is pretty complicated. Seems effective, though. I personally don't have much experience with animation, especially ones involving characters. Heck, I hardly make anything organic anyways. This does seem like a good way to approach it. I really like the idea of a control board. I will have to keep this in mind for future endeavors... :)

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I usually just make charictors... my animation skills are so so... is it against the rules to make the charictors and scene for the animation in the summer? I just won't have time to do it during next season, as I animate slowly and everyone is becoming a "builder".

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Go for it man, I have this really cool idea of a danceing ted Bordman for the end credits in the animation next year. The only problem you might run into is that the character might not fit the theme next year. But there is always ways to incorporate a character into a story.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

All right! I have our project done and uploaded into the contest! check it out here Make sure to vote for May 1st - July!!

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Sweeeeeet! You did an awesome job on that. How long did it tak you to make it? And just out of curiosity, how easy is it to use 3D Max? I'm hoping to learn it over this summer.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

if you used a 3d program before then it should be pretty easy. If this is the first time working with 3D animation, get ready for some headaches. Its very intimidating at first but then i gets really fun. Try to get someone on your team to teach you and get you through the basics. Then its all fun and games from there.

That little segment took me four months to complete. The character animation took at least a month and i worked my but off durring that period.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Don't worry, I'm used to intimidating stuff. How else would I get caught up with school after being gone for a semester?

Yes, I will be expecting it to be intimidating, but hey, that makes it all the more fun. Thanks for the info.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

It's been great working with you on the scenery Peter. The animation turned out really well. Once I get myself off of garry's mod, and back onto full track 3ds max (yeah, I started playing recently, lol), Imma make really nice sceneries for everyone to use like eye candy ;)

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

nice animation and very funny. Not what I thought it wasgoing to be but really good. how did you match up the mouths and the sound?

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Hey,

Wow, this still just plainly amazes me every time I watch it to the extent that my eyes are like this :eek:
Just...wow...
I can't wait to see any of your future projects. I also watched all of your rig tests etc. on youtube. You are my hero...even though I use blender :D

Also, here is my character rig test!

Please let me know where I can improve :D

-Chris Folea(pronounced Fowliuh)
"If you're not living on the EDGE, then you're taking up too much space..."

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

8 am to midnight everyday durring spring break and a couple of weekends after that. Its just a tedious process and you just match the mouth to the sound.


I see a number of things.

In the upper part of the arm there is a little of pinching. You might want to fix that with a morph deformer or gizmo if there is one in blender. Otherwise your going to have to mess with the wieghts of each verticie.

Another thing. The character is obviously picking up something very very heavy. So the character has to get his wieght a close to the object as possible before attemping to lift. If i lifted something like that, it would likely throw out my back.

Also the movmets are very very robotic like. Your forgetting your character has weight to shift around. Try having some side movment of the hips so when he picks up the foot. Some of the steps he takes are a little to fast. And when someone has a very heavy load on them thier steps become quick and cover a very short distance. Yours are quick, be cover a large distance. It makes it look unatural.

(looks through footage)

He goes down on his knee way way to fast. IF that was cement hes kneeing on, he would seriously hurt his knee caps. Hes also not shifting his wieght before he goes to his knee. I acted out going to my knees from standing position and noticed that i take a short step forward, then drop to my knee with the opposite leg. Also having him focus on the object while he drops to his knees would make more sense. I dont know why he looks towards the sky. Perhaps you didnt key the head?

(looks at footage)

I dont see any wrist movment. Are there separate joints for them? Writs on the arm tend to lag behind the movement of the arm. Such as the end of a rope does went you swing it.

(looks at footage)

The feet slide as he picks up the box to his knee. Is this on purpose? If my feet slid while i was picking up something heavy it would probably throw me off balance. Normally people make sure they have solid footing before they pick up anything heavy. Thats why you tend to shift your wieght alot when your going to lift something you know is very heavy.

(looks at footage)

I see that you reversed the arch in his back just before the lift. Good going but i would like to see it a little more exagerated. Maybe it doesnt look at good cause the character isnt as close to the box as he should be.

(looks)

Have him put an arm under the box. I think something that heavy and smooth would slip out of the hands. Also that whip when he finally gets his wieght under the boxs looks painful. I think anyone lifting anything would serioulsy hurt themselves if they tried that. I know what your going for but the back needs to reverse its arch before that happens. That way it looks like the muscles kick in and then the back starts to move. Hip also has to go down a little bit when he gets the box in its full lifted position. That kind of lift people are throwing the object and then catching it, hence the hip moving down so the person can get there wieght under the object.

(yay grading is over)

Sorry to pick apart your animation like this. But it really helps people learn. I think you can see some of your mistakes and hopfully make it look more fluid. If you could show me a screen shot of the character rig i would be able to help you out more.

On another note, i still dont know how you did that fork thing. That was just weird. I still have that fork, it poked me in my pocket the rest of the day.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP!!! You have no clue how much I appreciate this :D

I'm working on re-animating it right now...

-Chris Folea(pronounce Fowliuh)
"Don't make fun of someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes...that way you're a mile ahead of them AND you have their shoes!"

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Buddy good work on your animation. If I were to rank it I would give it a 7 out of 10. The animation was very well done but there was something off about it. Maybe if the script was changed up a bit It could have made it amazing. But over all very good. I did watch a few other animations and and I think you definitely placed top 3 in your category. Another thing is i did not see to many animations above 2 minuets im wondering if some poor animation is going to get some prize money.
P.S. I gave you 5 star.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Dark and scary alien space craft! OH NO!




I dont have the thing textured yet but this is what its going to look when all the lights are working. The tractor beam in the front isnt on this picture. Its pretty scary huh?