New Project
 

OK then,

with my final year looming its ugly head, I need to make a start on my animation project. When I say make a start on it I mean get all of the pre-production stuff out of the way, mainly story and character design.

I have the basis of a story in my head and, without saying too much, it revolves around a main character and a balloon so while I consider where the tale goes I've made a start on a balloon.

This is my first attempt so it's far from perfect but I thought I'd share it anyway.

This thread will be around for a while, I'll not be sharing the story with you for some time (at least unil my tutors hear it) but I will post what I can in the mean time.

Enjoy what you see, if you have any comments (good or bad), I'll be glad to hear and will definately consider them.

CLICK THIS to see the balloon move.

Cheers,

Mat.

can't watch the movie just yet as i'm at work, but the still shot of the balloon is looking pretty nice so far. that's a knot at the bottom right?

looking forward to seeing what comes next... :beer:

Hey Mat

Looks good mate! How did you go about animating the baloon? I would have either gone using a hair system attached to the curve for the string and a rigid body witha - gravity system constrained to the string.

Its got a real nice feel to it, something seems a little off but thats possibly the straight on camera angle not letting you see if its making subtle backwards and forwards movements.

Your making some headway into your project so far mate, hope that it get's approved by the lecturers.

Drop me an e-mail if you want to chat about your final year project, as I went through mine last year, athought it mighe be different what with different unis/courses etc.

Cheers guys,

arran, yeah it's the bit you blow the balloon up with.

Steve, I did use hair for the string... well the string is a poly mesh with a joint chain running through it and I used the hair to make the joint chain dynamic. In actual fact there are 2 joint chains in the string, one running upwards and one running down from the grip point. The balloon is parent constrained to the top most joint in the upwards chain, I had to tinker with many of the dynamic settings for each chain to get them to act as they do, which for a first attempt I'm pretty proud of but as I said there is much left to do!! I already have a couple more ideas on how to make the balloon work that I'd like to try before I properly decide on which to use.

I made a tutorial for my Hair and Fur site about dynamic joint chains.... Click This To See It ... if you're interested.

Unfortunately my desktop has acquired a nasty bug and, after spending the last 36 hours trying to fix it, I'm having to resort to completley wiping the hard disk and re-installing my OS and software which along with making emergency back ups of my work will probably take the best part of the weekend, yawn!

I will probably be in touch with you at some point while I'm making this project Steve, cheers.

Take it easy,

Mat.

I hate computers with a vengeance. Unless they work of course.

Would you like crits (the good, the bad and the uggly) throughout the project and on the work you post here or will you recieve that from class mates and tutors? I'm sure there will be lots of encouragement too from the enthustiastic community here :)

I have never in my life had to reinstall Windows. If there's a problem, you fix it, not reinstall Windows.

Think youve been lucky DJ sometimes the OS gets corrupeted no matter how careful you are

Alpha: Crit all the way through is good, cheers. I will of course be getting plenty of it from my tutors and other students but the more I get the better I can make it!!

DJ: I know what you mean, I would normally fix things too, but really this was doing my nut in. There was something somewhere that kept on dialling my internet and I kept on getting messages from norton about some virus beginning with V, can't remember it's name though. I tried everything I could think of and a few other things but the upshot of it is that none of it worked and I decided to start over. My kids use the computer to play on sometimes and I wasn't willing to risk any dodgy pop up adverts appearing when they were on it.

I'll have everything sorted in the next day or so, a clean machine that will be nice and fast again!!

Later,

Mat.

Is there any way you'd go about making the balloon a little transparent (or transluscent? I dunno...)? Because It would be a little more realistic to me if it had that balloon see-through touch to it. I like the anim and the tut is great too! KUTGW!!

Sparticus

Cheers sparticus,

the balloon does have a degree of transparency to it, a facing ratio controlled ramp plugged into the transparency node, and a slight fresnel effect but the lighting is very poor so it is difficult to appreciate, I will post images illustrating this better when I have my desktop computer back in action. The shader is my first attempt at a balloon shader so I will be playing with it as I progress.

Cheers,

Mat.

My 2 cents
 

Hey Mat.. You is a clever bugger! :p

Are you planning to disguise the leading point on the string (like with a hand for example)? Because atm the join of the top and bottom sections seems a little sharp (if that makes sence?)

Also the balloon seems to float up a little fast maybe. However, if this was your intension then its all good!

Dave.

Good luck with your final animation project Mat, I'm in the scripting stage of mine as well :)
What process are you going for? I'm looking at finishing the scripting and moving onto storyboarding first and then getting basic timing in by sketching key frames out in Plastic Animation Paper (an animation tool, the basic one is free http://www.plasticanimationpaper.dk/). Then it'll be the long slog to get it all together for January ;)

I've just been going through your tutorials and they are all quite good in showing different ways to do things. The dynamic joint chain is nice (is that one your voice?), the only thing I got stumped with was that its real easy to accidentally attach the IK spline handle to the original curve and not the hair. I think if you get the chance then it'd be nice to mention that as it might stump some people.

The balloon is looking good but the return from the swing looks a little strange, maybe a little tight or something as if the balloon would have a shorter string or something. Unless you've already done it I'd suggest getting a balloon and film yourself making similar movements. If you could film it from 3 angles and move it forward, back and side to side then it'd be good reference vid for the future ;)

Si

Okey-Dokey,

My computer is up and running again so I can get on with my work, phew!

Dave: You have it in one, a hand will be disguising the lead point. I have a few ideas on improving the balloon, this is like a first draft if you like, plenty more to come!!

Si: I have an idea to get the pre-production and technical stuff done before September when I go back to school, modelling rigging (at least the main characters and scenes), sort out dynamics, lighting, rendering style and storyboard etc. If I can get it all sorted then I have a good few months to get the animation the way I imagine it should be.

The voice on the joint chain tutorial is my good self. I know what you mean about the IK Spline, I've taken to hiding the master curve (select and ctrl+h) before I make the IK Spline, it makes things much easier!!

I'll take a look at the PAP software, I generally use Sketchbook Pro for drawing stuff. It's not an animation package but it uses layers and works amazingly well with a tablet.

Anyway, best get on with it eh!! Cheers for your thoughts so far, I should have an update in the next day or two. In the mean time, I've attached a close up of the balloon to show that it has got transparency, still plenty of work to do on the shader too!

By the way, good luck with your final year thing too Si.

Take it easy,

Mat.

good luck with your project too mat, looking forward to seeing progress :)

Si

Hello again,

I've made a bit of progress with the balloon.....

CLICK THIS to see a little video update (2Meg-ish).

Take it easy,

Mat.

Its looking a lot better in the movement now mat :)
Thats a nice and handy little controller switch you've made there too.
Million dollar question - howd you do that then? ;)

Si

Cheers Si,

it's not as difficult or hi-tech as you might think. The switch is made with 2 models rigged differently and controlled by the same controller, I use SDK to toggle the visibility between the two.

Now about the million dollars... could you send it via paypal?

Take it easy,

Mat.

lol, its on its way but I think the cheque may well bounce ;)

I thought you might have one crazy rig allowing you to do all that instead of two. Nice to know that the simpler options can work so effectively :)

Si

Yeah,

it can be easy to forget that it is possible to keep it simple when you're using an application like Maya.

Later,

Mat.

I've been having a bit of a play around with what I'd like the main character to look like.

I apologise for the quality of the drawing, I'm no 2d artist!! Hopefully you will get the idea though.

cheers,

Mat.

mat,

since you redid your whole system ..i assume you went ahead and used ghost ...it is a program by symantec ..it will copy your system to a dvd ....that way if it goes out again you can just use a special boot floppy and will reload yoru system with all your settingsa nd programs back in ten mins ..I assume you have done this ...i talked to you before about doing that a year ago lol ..has it been that long ...well let me know shoot me an email . i have done a special boot floppy that read its and reinstalls and you do nothing but put the disc in

the best thing to use is the floppy disc ..

also good luck on your animation

check your mail mat ..

Hey Mat

You character looks promising, kind of reminds me of a tim burton esque illustration!

yeah - i like your drawing. as gster said, very tim burton. this looks like it's going to be an interesting project.

Cheers fellas,

I as going for that sort of Tim Burton feel, hopefully I'll be able to get it right (with my own twist of course!).

I've spent a couple of days modelling the main character, the little girl whose balloon I have already made. I've still got a bunch of work to do with her but I feel as though she's progressing nicely.

Let me know what you rekon.

Cheers,

Mat.

Hey Mat, looking good.


I like the wire frame renserthat youve done, care to share?

Cheers Steve,

it's not a wire frame render really....... I rendered a clay then took a screengrab of the render area. In Photoshop I put the screengrab over the render and set the layer style to darken. I then made an alpha channel from a black to white gradient, turned it into a selection and deleted the selection fom the screengrab layer to make the wire fade (most visible on the hand).

It sounds long winded but it only took about the same amount of time as it takes to read this.

Take it easy,

Mat.

nice work mat - i just feel that she's looking a little 'generic sci fi alien' at the moment, if you know what I mean - perhaps with her hair and other stuff, she will soften up a bit. sure you have a ton more to do so please don't take my badly worded crit too seriously. ;)

I know exactly what you mean arran,

with the default shader attached the alien likeness is even more uncanny!

I'm pretty certain that once I get her hair sorted out, some proper eyes and some colour in her cheeks she'll look fine.

Cheers,

Mat.

Hello again,

here's a bit of an update on my girl character. I've spent quite a while tweaking the mesh, fairly tedious but very engrossing, and have also modelled her hair. Don't panic about her crazy sticky out plaits, once she's rigged they'll have the same dynamic joint chain as the balloon string in them so they'll be fine!

The current colours are just for me to distinguish various parts and will change once I have her mapped and textured.

Cheers for your thoughts,

Mat.

hehe, looks a bit like Christina Ricci in Addams Family.

nice going Mat, looking forward to how this comes out. Ar eyou going to use clothe fore her dress? Or are you thinking of something a bit like the joints chains with some constriants etc??

Lookin well good Mat. :bow:

More updates if you please!

Dave.

Thanks for the comments,

DJ: I guess she does a bit!

Steve: I know that I'm not going to use cloth for her dress, that's about as far as I've got past modelling. I have an idea or two (using joints) which I'll try out and probably adapt before I settle on exactly how I'm going to deal with it.

Dave: Here you go!

I've made some glasses for her, UV mapped and textured her head and dress, made a texture for her eyes, given her some eyelashes and have been doing general tidying up, pushing verts around etc.

I'd like to have her rigged by the end of next week but we'll see how that goes!!

Take it easy,

Mat.

edit: I've not finished with the head texture yet!!

:beer:

Lookin at her now I think she could do with some freckles..

What you rekin Mat?

Definately Dave,

I'll sort them for the next update.

Cheers,

Mat.

Looking aewsome so far mat. Cannot wait to see the fininshed animation. Keep up the great work.

Leon

she's pulling together quite nicely now mat :)

Are you going to thicken the hair up like in the concept or keep the pigtails really thin?

Si

Hello again and cheers for the comments,

keep 'em coming!

Leon: cheers, it'll be finished in March/April next year.

Si: I think that the angle of the picture made the pigtails look thinner than they actually were, I've made them a bit fatter now anyway to get them more like the concept.

I've been making some headway, over the past couple of days, on the rig for my character. I've got the skeleton made (I haven't hidden any attributes yet which is why you can still see clusters and locators) and have spent today making the GUI to control the head functions (see main picture).

I got the concept for the GUI from the Zukafa model in the 'Art of Rigging Vol.1', unfortunately there are no instructions on how to make it so I spent the best part of the day working it out for myself. It's done now so all I have to do is make the blendshapes and attach them, joy!

I'll post another update when the blendshapes are done.

Later,

Mat.

woah! Complicated lookin rig m8. I guess putting in the hard work now makes the animation that much erz...

(Please do not read into my previous comment that I, in any way, shape or form; believe animation to be an easy process. I fully understand that successful animation is a collaboration of skill, technique, patience and an abundance of coffee)

:beer:
Dave.

Hey there dave,

it's not really that complicated to use, hopefully it'll make animating her more convenient when it's finished.

I've been sorting SDK's for the finger controls and automated foot roll today, I also attached the jaw, the eyelids and tongue to the GUI, painted a few weights and generally used more brain power than I'm used to using in one day!

For all that work, there's nothing to show really, I don't think that there'll be any more images until I have the rig finished and can post a video of it working.

Take it easy,

Mat.