The Bright Side

[ljilekor]

Well, euhm, good luck.

[chikega]

Hi Eddie,

It's great to see that you're getting involved with messiah. I believe you'll be able to create a fairly realistic bones/muscle system using metaeffectors/bloat and/or spherize. As far as using studio for the final rendering - you'll run into a few road blocks. studio doesn't yet support subpixel level displacements but the underlying technology is in place - pmG is purportedly "working on it" for the next update. If you wanted to have a SSS effect on the dragon wings and use image maps to vary the translucency, then you may have to wait for the update. I wasn't able to achieve this effect (see SSS thread below). pmG has been pretty quiet for the last four months - so, they should be coming out with the latest and greatest shortly .... hopefully.

The SSS thread:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=115932

A long thread on muscle simulation:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104270

Wings rig by John Riggs - he's supposedly working on a tutorial for this nice wing setup:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=123920

Inherit root - spine or tails by Julez4001:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=103215

Old test renders showing a small rendering glitch with Metanurbed five point (star) intersections - they're working on it:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=101271

You can find a lot of interesting threads - but you have to look beyond the 60 days default setting.

:)

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

I appreciate the leads on info to complete the project. I hope other people get involved and try the challange and post here. :bounce:

[chikega]

My pleasure - sounds like an interesting project. By the way, what app are you going to use to model the dragon creature?

A little inspirational image from the ACS4 site (http://acs.polas.net/acs/) :

http://acs.polas.net/acs/files/images/promo/EntireDragon.jpg http://acs.polas.net/acs/files/images/promo/Dragon_Render_Thumb.jpg

[dobermunk]

i loves dragons. Won't have the time though - and I'm not much of a rigger anyway.
Look forward to seeing what you do!

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

What a great Image !!! Thanks for uploading that. As far as the modeling goes , my shop now uses ZBrush V2. We Beta test for those guys and they are FANTASTIC. My crew and I are still recovering from stuff we did for NAB but now that I am awake I can Start on this. :buttrock:

[AlexK]

Any updates so far Eddie? Looked like a promising thread, but then just died. :(

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

It's not dead. We just got overwhelmed with this show we are doing for PBS. Sorry for the delay but I gotta pay the bills first. I figure by the time we are done v2 of PM will be out. Check back in 2 to 3 weeks.:bounce:

[AlexK]

Great!! :bounce:
Thanks for your quick reply. I'm waiting for it.

[Julez4001]

For the challenge, are you making the dragon available for rig/animate or everyone else have to do everything.
I want to slap my gauntlet down but may not have time to model.

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Well I was thinking about this last night and I guess i'll start by explaining the process a little. It is my intention to do the modeling in wings and detailing it out in Zbrush. Of course the drawings should be done first. Proper ortho's are a must. If you wish I will supply the drawings and the base mesh Before I detail it. But I think If anyone wishes to play along I think they should make their creations unique. Like I said before I'm right in the middle of a gig (so this has to wait a couple of weeks) But I would love to hear from other people, about if you want the mesh or if you just want drawings etc.. As far as the look of my dragon I think I'm going to shoot for a really long neck and hunched shoulders.

I'll be back....

eddie:thumbsup:

[Shredder]

Hey guys.. just jumping in here..
If someone supplies I Dragon model that I can distribute with my training video.. I will do a video on it.

Depending on how in depth I go, it could possibly be a 2 CD set.. one doing a quadraped, and the other doing the dynamic wings, tail, all that sort of thing.

email me or just PM me thru here.. but let me know soon.. I am currently producing a tape and the next tape I do was going to be a quadraped tape.. so this would be a neat way to do it..

Like I said tho.. I would have to be able to give the model away with the CD.

AND as a bonus.. whoever gives me the model I use.. will get a free copy of the CD ;) oooooooooo, special I know :P

-John

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

If you mention us (Pirate Productions) in the tape my studio will supply you with everything you need:thumbsup:

[chikega]

Cool beans!!!:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Shredder]

Originally posted by EDDIEthePIRATE
If you mention us (Pirate Productions) in the tape my studio will supply you with everything you need:thumbsup:
I can do that.. I'll mention it vocally and put the web address on the screen for a short time.. do you allready have a good model?

I wont be ready for another week or so

[Shredder]

Originally posted by chikega
Cool beans!!!:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

beans arn't all that cool

they make you fart ;)

[chikega]

Beano!!! :thumbsup:

[dobermunk]

If someone supplies I Dragon model that I can distribute with my training video.. I will do a video on it.
-John

I've got an old dragon I'd love to tweak up-to-date, maybe with Zbrush texturing. (This is a painted test.)

http://www.stickman.de/content/temp/dg_test030427_a.jpg

http://www.stickman.de/content/temp/dg_test030421.jpg

If you're interested, let me know.

[The-G-Man]

Originally posted by EDDIEthePIRATE

...

THE CHALLENGE: A DRAGON IN FLIGHT AND IN BATTLE.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Duration: 10 - 15 seconds




You made the whole thing in 15 seconds? WOW! ;)

[chikega]

I think he meant the animation is of 10-15 second duration. :)

[dobermunk]

Hi chikega, I think MouseJockey meant...

oh, never mind. :D

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Your dragon is really cute. Love the head design! The bones in the wings need to be adjusted their proportions are too large. The spine and ribcage could never support them. Remember that even fantasy creatures must obey the law of physics and anatomy some what or the audience will not believe they are real.
:beer:

[chikega]

Originally posted by Shredder
I can do that.. I'll mention it vocally and put the web address on the screen for a short time.. do you allready have a good model?

Yeah, you might want to check out the model first ... or you could end up rigging a dragon version of Barney - hehe. ;)

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Hey Barney made someone money. It's a good model it just needs refinement. A good reference is :

Digital Character Design and Painting by Don Seegmiller
published by Charles River Media.

Just remember there is no such thing as natural artistic ability. It's the patient, open-minded person who succeeds in this or any other field. :thumbsup:

[dobermunk]

Yeah, that's what I meant by tweaking. I wanted a big boned kinda look, as it should be a hatchling. But you're right - he'd have to grow a year or two with those wings ;-)

[chikega]

Originally posted by EDDIEthePIRATE
It's a good model it just needs refinement.

Do you have any screen shots? :)

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

We were talking about the dragon thats posted on page 2.:beer:

[chikega]

You said that you could contribute a dragon to John Riggs for his tutorial video. I was referring to that one.

But Dobermunks is nice too.:)

[Shredder]

Nice model :)
I think it looks a little more like a two legged character tho.. looks like it would walk around on its hind legs. I need one that is modelled on all fours.

[Shredder]

Lets get this going.. I might be starting on it in a couple days!

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

You guys go ahead. As I said before I'm in the middle of about 200 effects shot.:beer:http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/TechHelp/Uploadimages/uploadFairey.jpg

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

I finished some of my contracts and am Currently looking through the V2 docs. I also started on some orthographic drawings and will be posting them soon.

EDDIE

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/pics/N_J_SHOT_007A.jpg

Okay so here I am swamped in work with incredibly tight deadlines. So the worst thing I could do is implement a new package into my pipeline. But then my instincts say do it any way. When in these situations I all ways follow my instincts. Life is more interesting that way. So all though I originally wanted to do a dragon contest on this post I think I will walk through two actual production contracts first. The name of the two prodjects are "Home Court Advantage" and "Teaching Zowzoo how to play". Home court is a 30 second spot for Mind Altering Creations. It was shot on 16MM film and transfered with a Telecine to a computer. A CG rabbit must interact with a group of children. The second job "Zowzoo" consists of almost 200 shots. All the actors are in 3 full CG environments and Zowzoo is CG and actively acts as one of the leads. We will deal with the "Homecourt" spot first. I have less then two weeks to do the job.


Obviously The nature of the job was discussed way before the shoot date. It is VERY VERY important that you write out a contract. A director might be imagining somthing very different then you are. Your best defense is to write it down and have all parties sign. You should be writing down a plan on how you intend to do each shot. PREPARE PREPARE PREPARE !!

So the next thing you do is make sure that you are on set if at all possible. You want to make sure that the source footage is acceptable and that nothing is done that would radically increase the cost of the job. If the director wants to make radical changes it is your job to make him/her aware that this will increase the cost of the job. Also you want to make them aware that additional work means additional time to complete the job. While your on the set take lots of reference photoes.

The next step of the process is to make sure that you are present during the Telecine transfer. Again you are trying to help the client by getting the best plates possible for the job. You are looking for dirt, damaged frames, and I would encourage you to recommend that they do NOT do a lot of color modifications to the footage. Some modifcation to the color was done on this job. A storm is supposed to be brewing in the spot and on the day of the shooting the light kept radically changing due to cloud cover.

After you recieve the footage set up a simple webpage for your client. This allows them to see your progress and they may ask for changes. But hey if it's not in the contract then your web page may have made you a little extra money. Also some clients have never done an FX job before and they get real nervouse when they realize some one else is in charge of making their "BABY" a reality. The web page helps soothe them and allows you to focus on the job at hand instead of sitting on the phone calming down their fears.

Here is the web page:

http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/Home_Court.html

So we have artificial rain to make, a stuffed rabbit in a summer dress, and fur that has to react to movement and NOT pentrate through the dress. STEP ONE BUY LOTS OF COFFEE !!

Well the fur is the deciding factor. The only cg hair worth using right now is Sasquatch. Trust me when I say this. We own EVERY hair package made and have researched this for months nothing comes even close. So that has made the decision for us. We have to render in Lightwave. ( I hope these guys make a stand alone renderer or a Messiah plug-in ).

Well the next thing to think about is how to get the character animation from Messiah to lightwave. After looking at Messiah's communication plug-in I decided against it. I don't want 2 packages open at render time eating ram. And I want a simple render that can be run from Butterfly. One of my night crew will be running the renders at night and I all ways try to make their job as easy as possible. The solution is "Point Oven" This is a great plug-in and it allows you to easily port betwenn Messiah and Lightwave.

So now I know the basic pipeline and I can focus on getting the rabbit and the dress rigged properly.

Now I am going to do Grain/Noise removal on all the plates. and will post again real soon

Eddie

[Julez4001]

Very imformative, Eddie.

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Okay so I cleaned all the plates. Telecine has its own video noise and of course the 16MM stock had grain. The left image is the original plate and the right is cleaned. Of course this image has been compressed so I could post it. Now it will be easier to add effects.

Next the Bunney.http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/pics/NOISEEXAMPLE.jpg

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Well it's time I update my posts. Sorry for the delays we have been swamped over here. So the plan is to use Messiah's excellent bone tool to quickly rigg the bunny for this spot.


http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/pics/cloth_fur.jpg


Well here is the bunny.


The texturing isn't finished but that isn't needed to rigg the little guy. I have decided to bone (instead of cloth or soft bodies) the shirt for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that the shirt has no actual thickness and it doesn't seem that most dynamics simulations like this. The second reason is that the shirt has a surface with 2 MATERIAL NODES. Messiah's soft body effect is supposed to use the SURFACE NODE but it doesn't. I have only gotten it to work with when I point the effect to a MATERIAL NODE. Also it only works with one MATERIAL NODE. If I add additional Soft Body Effects to the other MATERIAL NODES it doesn't work. I had the same problem when I was setting up the jello tutorial I duplicated the jello object and the soft body effect only worked on the original jello cube none of the duplicates worked.

For you ex Maya guys/gals out there A SURFACE NODE is the same as a SHADING GROUP in Maya. And a MATERIAL NODE is the same as choosing a Phong, Blinn, Lambert ETC... in Maya.

You can go to the web page mentioned in my previouse post to see other files for the job.

See ya soon.:bounce:

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Here is a lighting test with film grain added.


http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/pics/new_lights.jpg

[EDDIEthePIRATE]

Here it is close to FINAL



http://www.pirateproductionsstudios.com/nick_justin/pics/Orangeeyes.jpg



It now has a Messiah rig and the textures and lighting are close to final.

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