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[m0dus]

Hey all.

I recently began working on a new project, and I wanted to know if there were any artists/interested peoples who might offer me some perspective on it. I don't want to put up a link yet (my server gets hammered everytime I put anything up here :lol ). It's some early motion test stuff, but the basic character design is finished. Any takers? I'm talking .AVI format here, as well.

EDIT: okay, here's the link. I decided to host it on another server:

Right click and download, don't stream

A quick and dirty animation test, to make sure she was free of distortions or too much collision issues (I realize there is a little bit here and there, but that's negligable. trust me ;p). This is the second such figure of its type I've created, far more complex than previous efforts. Oh, and I lied, it's WMV ;p

be gentle :lol I have to mess with the shadow bias, as it does seem to flicker a bit (again, 'quick and dirty), but I'm trying to play around with different color schemes until I find a suitable one--I have it set to blue for now for easy contrast against the white backdrop.

 

[Cauliflower of Love]

I'm no mogul, but I do some 3d stuff everynow and then. I'll take a look.

aim - muncheese

 

[Particle Physicist]

can i take a look out of curiosity?

i cant help much though.. im pretty new to this whole 3D thang.


http://www.ga-forum.com/showthread.php?t=22731&highlight=giant

 

[Manabanana]

I know a fair amount. Enough to critique at least. Jiggle's gonna be your man, though. Especially with Leguna gone.

 

[nathkenn]

pm me

 

[Cauliflower of Love]

Tease.

 

[3phemeral]

let's have a look-see

 

[m0dus]

okay, here's the link. I decided to host it on another server:

Right click and download, don't stream

A quick and dirty animation test, to make sure she was free of distortions or too much collision issues (I realize there is a little bit here and there, but that's negligable. trust me ;p). This is the second such figure of its type I've created, far more complex than previous efforts. Oh, and I lied, it's WMV ;p

be gentle :lol I have to mess with the shadow bias, as it does seem to flicker a bit (again, 'quick and dirty), but I'm trying to play around with different color schemes until I find a suitable one--I have it set to blue for now for easy contrast against the white backdrop. Oh, and the music is sonic mayhem--cause I didn't have anything else on this computer

 

[axxxj]

Hey thats pretty good the second robot thingy was animated better than the first. The first just seemed to have that problem of being slightly too slow and floaty not enough purpose or weight to what it was doing.. As far as the models go they seem pretty damn good not a lot to crit apart from they look almost too clean, but that might be the style your after.

Hope this helps

 

[m0dus]

Hey thats pretty good the second robot thingy was animated better than the first. The first just seemed to have that problem of being slightly too slow and floaty not enough purpose or weight to what it was doing.. As far as the models go they seem pretty damn good not a lot to crit apart from they look almost too clean, but that might be the style your after.

Hope this helps

Thanks. yeah, I didnt' take teh time to refine the motion capture yet, it's mostly RAW stuff right now.

 

[funkmasterb]

Major Crits

- I'm not sure what the purpose of the excercise is, but if this is for use on your demo - a robot isn't a strong peice. They're easy to model/texture/rig and animate because there is no frame of reference for the viewer to compare with. i.e. You can excuse poor animation or MOCAP as a natural limit to your 'robot's' ability to move.

-Organic characters and movement are much more difficult to do correctly, because the majority of viewers are able to pick up on movements which are unnatural with ease. If you suceed though - a strong peice.

-The camera swings rather wildly in the second half of the animation, and is extremely linear in it's speed. Try for more snappy movements which 'float' and rest briefly at the end of each angle change.

Minor Crits

- I know this is mocap, so you've been limited by your subjects movement, but the torso remains rigid for the majority of the animation. Perhaps keyframing a bit there will loosen it up.

- Speed up the animation, seems a little slow. Especially on the kicks and helicopter movement

- Extend the ground plane much further - very distracting to have a small grey square floating on a white space. Maybe just use a shadow/reflection shader for the plane - so you don't see anything except for the shadows/reflection

- You're getting a large amount of clipping errors with the feet going through the plane - so you might want to correct some of that

-Someone else said it as well - dirty up that robot.

-Render out passes and blur those reflections up - gives the viewer clues on which robot is the reflection

-Raytrace shadows, or a higher shadow map size - a little chunky

Good stuff

-Congratulations on capturing that much MOCAP data. Are you using optical or magnetic systems? I've captured a Kung-fu demostration before (with similar movements) and it was quite challenging to clean it up - so good job on that!

- I like that amount of detail you've put into your model, robot or not

- Good attempts on the camera work - I especially like the shot at .38 seconds where the camera is viewing the head and shaking.

-Lots of work here modelling, shading, rigging, mocap, mocap cleaning, render tests - a good start.

 

[m0dus]

Major Crits

- I'm not sure what the purpose of the excercise is, but if this is for use on your demo - a robot isn't a strong peice. They're easy to model/texture/rig and animate because there is no frame of reference for the viewer to compare with. i.e. You can excuse poor animation or MOCAP as a natural limit to your 'robot's' ability to move.

-Organic characters and movement are much more difficult to do correctly, because the majority of viewers are able to pick up on movements which are unnatural with ease. If you suceed though - a strong peice.

-The camera swings rather wildly in the second half of the animation, and is extremely linear in it's speed. Try for more snappy movements which 'float' and rest briefly at the end of each angle change.

Minor Crits

- I know this is mocap, so you've been limited by your subjects movement, but the torso remains rigid for the majority of the animation. Perhaps keyframing a bit there will loosen it up.

- Speed up the animation, seems a little slow. Especially on the kicks and helicopter movement

- Extend the ground plane much further - very distracting to have a small grey square floating on a white space. Maybe just use a shadow/reflection shader for the plane - so you don't see anything except for the shadows/reflection

- You're getting a large amount of clipping errors with the feet going through the plane - so you might want to correct some of that

-Someone else said it as well - dirty up that robot.

-Render out passes and blur those reflections up - gives the viewer clues on which robot is the reflection

-Raytrace shadows, or a higher shadow map size - a little chunky

Good stuff

-Congratulations on capturing that much MOCAP data. Are you using optical or magnetic systems? I've captured a Kung-fu demostration before (with similar movements) and it was quite challenging to clean it up - so good job on that!

- I like that amount of detail you've put into your model, robot or not

- Good attempts on the camera work - I especially like the shot at .38 seconds where the camera is viewing the head and shaking.

-Lots of work here modelling, shading, rigging, mocap, mocap cleaning, render tests - a good start.

Thanks for the crits--the robot design is for a specific piece I have in mind ( a music video, actually.) I ran those animations together in the space of about 3 hours, just to test out the rigging. None of that animation will have any place in the *actual* piece. it was just more interesting means of testing her movement than having her touch her toes The motion capture data I have for the kata is based upon a single spinal segment for the torso, whereas my dance data (to be used in the actual) makes use of a 3 segmented spine, so the torso WILL be moving much more freely (you may note it was designed with such movement in mind, all segmenty . . ). I actually designed multisegmented joints so there wouldn't be a natural pose she wouldn't be able to achieve--I've been limited a bit in the past, so I wanted to avoid those mistakes. But yeah, as far as the actual scene goes, none of it is by any means anything resembling the final product ^^; None of the background scenery has been modeled yet, so I threw the small plane in there just for a frame of reference. I plan on texturing her over the holiday--as far as 'dirtying it up', I have considered that, though I need to assess what kind of look I want to achieve for the final piece (IE, if I go with something TRON-ish, as opposed to, say, Ghost in the Shell). I'm kind of digging the faded indigo, as a color scheme, though. if anyone has any suggestions, however, I'm open!

Again, thanks for the observations!