CGTalk - Animation: Snow soldier

Tob

08-16-2002, 04:13 PM

haha! rofl det vore nåt.

hursomhelst, ville bara säga att d e kul att sånt här görs i svea rike

jobba på, gubbar!

Tack. Man försöker ju så gott det går men, som vanligt, man skulle behöva mer tid, och pengar, och folk, och...... Ja, du vet. :hmm:
Jag är mest förvånad att vi har lyckats komma undan med det så här långt. Förhoppningsvis så kanske man nu i alla fall kan övertyga fler om att det är värt att göra sånt här.

just one question, how did you make the rocks/mountains? they look so real

Polygon shapes made out of elevation maps. Then a slope based procedual shader with a maze of procedual textures (can't remember which ones offhand; If you want more detailed description, let me know and I'll look into it). The mountains were a bastard to render. Some background layers averaged on 60-70 minutes. :scream:

Register a free virtual disk and put your video.

Ok. Sure thing. Could anyone hint me towards a good one (that doesn't include a 15 page registration procedure)?

031:an Tob

AJE

08-16-2002, 08:43 PM

Why isn't this file zipped?

CHRiTTeR

08-16-2002, 09:00 PM

Hehehe, me lucky one.
I live in Belgium and I'm DLing it at 400 kb/sec. :thumbsup:

Believe me, this is good!

:airguitar

iC4

08-16-2002, 10:05 PM

Originally posted by Tob

Polygon shapes made out of elevation maps. Then a slope based procedual shader with a maze of procedual textures (can't remember which ones offhand; If you want more detailed description, let me know and I'll look into it). The mountains were a bastard to render. Some background layers averaged on 60-70 minutes. :scream:

if it's not too much work, it would be great cause I'm working on a little animation at the moment and my environment looks...not so good :)

roromx

08-17-2002, 12:03 AM

after 8 hours...

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks great!!:buttrock: :bowdown: :airguitar

what computer you used?

Tob

08-17-2002, 12:18 AM

[if it's not too much work, it would be great cause I'm working on a little animation at the moment and my environment looks...not so good :)

Hmm. I began a short tutorial here, but I realized that I (a) need to get hold of the original scene file (I'm not @ work) and (b)I'm a bit to tipsy to make a coherent explanation. :beer: I'll give it another shot on monday, ok?

Tob

iC4

08-17-2002, 12:27 AM

whenever you have time, thx :)

Tob

08-17-2002, 12:28 AM

Originally posted by roromx
after 8 hours...

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Looks great!!:buttrock: :bowdown: :airguitar

what computer you used?

Thanks man :)

A dual 1ghz PIII that has made it it's life goal to make my life miserable. The Rendering was made on a rendering farm made out of RenderDrives as well as custom buildt PC's (and a few Sgi's just for the hell of it; slow but nice looking :thumbsup: ). Man, I can't wait to switch to Linux, or X (if they get their prices right).

slime

08-17-2002, 12:48 AM

Tob, great work there!! :buttrock:

You should be proud of it.

The things a liked most were the backgrounds (snowy mountains, tees) and the rythm of the movie. It was very good mounted/composited. The only part I felt it was a little slow is when the description pops up (when the object is showed as wireframe). I would had shortened the time.
I also think that the animation and textures of the human could be better and also some textures and lightning of the vehicle models. The atmospherics were great and the cameras were very good.

About the tutorial about the mountains; I'm sure would be very appreciated by everyone!

Regards!

Tob

08-17-2002, 01:22 AM

Originally posted by slime
Tob, great work there!! :buttrock:

You should be proud of it.

The things a liked most were the backgrounds (snowy mountains, tees) and the rythm of the movie. It was very good mounted/composited. The only part I felt it was a little slow is when the description pops up (when the object is showed as wireframe). I would had shortened the time.
I also think that the animation and textures of the human could be better and also some textures and lightning of the vehicle models. The atmospherics were great and the cameras were very good.

About the tutorial about the mountains; I'm sure would be very appreciated by everyone!

Regards!

Again: thanks. It means a lot. I've been staring myself blind on this bugger; all I see is faults.

Credits to Xchun for the mountains; he wore Maya down to the bone to make it produce what we wanted.
Glad you mention the rythm and the camera work. :applause: I spent a lot of time in the storyboard phase and the on the previsualisation movie to get the camera work right. If there's one thing I loathe about CGI made films, then it's when the camera moves around like a frantic ghost on speed (it can have its advantages; Psyops is brilliant example). My main goal (with a few exceptions) was to make it feel as if there was a camera man present all the time.
As far as the product info goes: it was a necesary evil. In my opinion, you'll make a much better case with as few key selling points as possible. It's better the viewer remembers one, rather then just getting a glimpse of several. Still, I prefer this to a pack shot every 30 seconds :p

hanzo

08-17-2002, 07:17 AM

:eek: Tob

that was :bounce:, and refreshing ,hehe animation, and for those who can't wach
it (slow download) your realy missing a good job..haha heheheee!

hanzo

Seven

08-17-2002, 09:12 AM

That is very very good.. excellent.

I to would lov a tutorial on the mountains please. It would be very helpful

Tob

08-17-2002, 01:16 PM

Originally posted by HellRender
that was simply orgasmic :thumbsup:
one thing though, who is that modeled, weighted, and rigged the characters? :curious: because, I would like to speak to them hehe :D

Thanks.
Guess I'm the guilty one there. Start talking :)

I to would lov a tutorial on the mountains please. It would be very helpful

Hmm. I guess I can't weasel my way out of it now, can I? :scream: I'll try to post something on monday.

kr3ml

08-17-2002, 02:13 PM

Hur många svenskar finns d på forumet? ( svara inte )

Har inte laddat ner din animation än , går i 10 kb secunden... :hmm:

Survivor_2k

08-17-2002, 02:47 PM

Own..good work..is very realistic! :applause:

psil

08-17-2002, 05:38 PM

Inspirational stuff! :applause: :applause: I hope client was delighted.
(just under 2 hrs d/l, btw)

Looking fwd to mountain tut...

wille

08-17-2002, 11:39 PM

very nice^_^
stilllbilden som visades i början på threaden, gjorde inte videon rättvisa. men jag förstår inte riktigt vad det här är för?ska ericsson börja göra krigsleksaker?
väldigt schysst och bra driv i actionscenerna, modelering och texturering var väldigt imponerande med tanke på deadlinen, hade ni modeler redan färdiga eller är allt gjort från scratch inom tidsramen?
jobbar mest med realtidsmodelering själv men det är alltid kul att det finns fler cg studios i sverige än man kan tro:)

bigB

08-17-2002, 11:50 PM

WILLE why aren't you talking english....so everybody can understand what youre saying....

I see this more...and I don't like it I don't know if I am the only one but the meaning of this form is to learn from eachother and share knowledge and art......this isn't possible if everyone is talking there mother language.......:shrug:

TOB: sorry for mentioning this in your post, it has nothing to do with this post....

wille

08-18-2002, 12:06 AM

bigb, sorry man wont happen again;)
wasnt anything important anyway

Dr-spline

08-18-2002, 03:21 AM

that animation was just beond impressive but one thing i could say to work on is the gloves they look too much like a rubber.

Very nice work in such a short period with so few people how many hours a day did you work on it?

Why did you choose maya over other software.(and no i dont hate maya i use it along with xsi and max)

Tob

08-18-2002, 08:07 PM

one thing i could say to work on is the gloves they look too much like a rubber.

Very nice work in such a short period with so few people how many hours a day did you work on it?

Why did you choose maya over other software.(and no i dont hate maya i use it along with xsi and max)

Yeah, that glove is not one of my proudest moments; just a basic anisotrophic on a low poly glove.

Initially between 9 - 14 hrs/day; as the deadline approached, the hours increased. In the end we were running 30-40 hrs shifts :insane:

Why Maya? For no real reason really. We were using alias PA before, and when maya 1.0 was released it just felt natural to stay on that train; much of the workflow was the same. These days it probably doesn't make much of a difference - it has its benefits and flaws like any other package (I could go into a long rant about what's brilliant and what really sucks about Maya, but I don't think that would do anyone any good - just use what you're most comfortable with and you'll end up doing some neat stuff with :beer: )

anywho, do you got an email address that you will ACTUALLY check, so, if i send you something you will read it and reply in a speedy and appropriate manner?

Im about to model, wight, texture, and animate my very first character.... and im gonna need some helpage!

Just send me a privat message and I'll get it; can't guarantee the speedy reply though, I'm crowded with work right now, but I'll do my best. ;)

Maya's manual is a goldmine; dig deap and you'll find a lot of good stuff. Apart from that I can really recomend Paul G. Thuriot's tutorial on free form deformer skinning. You can find it here:

www.highend3d.com/maya/tutorials/charcterSetup/setup_1.3d

Some of the stuff is dated but the rest - the rigging stuff - is really good. From then on it's just trial and error (and a lot of it :airguitar )

ska ericsson börja göra krigsleksaker?
väldigt schysst och bra driv i actionscenerna, modelering och texturering var väldigt imponerande med tanke på deadlinen, hade ni modeler redan färdiga eller är allt gjort från scratch inom tidsramen?

:D No, this is Ericsson Microwave.
Thanks. Most of it was modeled from scratch. Some of it was stuff we've used in earlier films. In some cases we used low poly stock models and used them as base when making the high rez models.

Tob

08-19-2002, 11:36 AM

:sad:
Sorry guys! I had to remove the Divx due to lack of bandwidth. It seriously crippled the rest of our systems. Guess I underestimated the amount of downloads. I really apologize to those of you who been downloading for a long time but things were becoming critical over here.

I'm about to post a 16 mb QT later on today. Hopefully on a few mirror sites as well. I'm looking into that as of now. If all things goes well I can put the Divx back up this afternoon.

Really sorry about this.

Tob

Tob

08-19-2002, 04:00 PM

Ok, the divx is back online again. :) Same url as before

www.edithouse.se/tempmovie/ericsson480.avi

There's also a smaller qt for those of you with slower connections(sorry about the delay). You'll need quickTime 6 to watch it.

www.edithouse.se/tempmovie/ericsson320.mov

There's also a mirror at:

http://medlem.tripodnet.nu/map/Ericsson320.mov

(thanx to Mawibse for hosting) Enjoy!

Oh, time is not kind to me so X-Chun - the splendid fellow as he is - has promised to write down a basic tutorial on mountains and post it here some time this eveneing. Stay tuned.

:buttrock:

MasterZap

08-19-2002, 05:42 PM

Interesting, nobody commented (as far as I saw) on the bad english, obviously written by an oblivious swede:

"Have you control over your borders?" is a far too direct translation of the swedish phrase "har du kontroll över din gräns".

"Do you have control over your borders" is correct.

Didn't anyone proofread it ;)

/Z

Tob

08-19-2002, 06:32 PM

Originally posted by Master Zap
Interesting, nobody commented (as far as I saw) on the bad english, obviously written by an oblivious swede:

"Have you control over your borders?" is a far too direct translation of the swedish phrase "har du kontroll över din gräns".

"Do you have control over your borders" is correct.

Didn't anyone proofread it ;)

/Z

Funny you should mention this; I just had this discussion with a friend of mine 20 min. ago. The guy who came up with the title is from New Zealand; and it was ok'd by two britts and an American. I cannot vouch for its authenticity; only hope these guys know their mother tongue

MasterZap

08-19-2002, 08:11 PM

Hmm, well it sounds wrong to me.

The other option would be "have you GOT control of your own borders"

/Z

Dr-spline

08-19-2002, 08:34 PM

could you post a few wireframe pics of the soldier for me i wanna see how youve got the edges aranged

X-Chun

08-20-2002, 01:39 AM

Hi folks, glad you liked our animation. :)

As my co-worker Tob wrote I’m going to describe a basic tutorial on mountains.
I’ll try to guide you to a simple way of making a good looking mountain instead of diving into the 55 nodes of the shader and its connections. Maya is the program that was used for the mountains.

Let’s open the cookbook and go to the terrain recipes. :beer:

For a natural looking mountain you should scout the internet for some nice DEMs.
A DEM-map (Digital Elevation Model) is a greyscale image describing height info of terrains. Of course, you can sculpt or paint your own K2 but mostly you’re in a lack of time and a couple of DEMs will speed up your work.
When you’ve found some nice ones, use Photoshop to stitch them together or pick some areas and make your own Rocky Mountains, a size of 512-1024 will do fine.
Blur the image a bit. High contrast between the pixels can make your mountain look spiky.

Modeling.
Create a polygon plane in Maya of at least 200x200 faces depending on how detailed you want your mountain. I didn't use displacement in my shader so I used a high polygon rate is instead. Use the Import Attribute Map function found in the sculpt polygon tool to shape your polyplane. Adjust the maximum displacement in the sculpt variables to achieve a good proportion between the width and height of your mountain. If your mountain gets too steep, just scale down in Y-axis.
You also can use Bryce to successfully build polygon-mountains from your DEMs. Additional sculpting may be necessary to smooth out scattered polygon spikes. Use several mountain squares if you want high detail close and far from the camera.

Shading.
A Blinn material was used for the mountain shader.
For the slope colour I used three tileable file textures made in Photoshop from photos of snowy landscapes: a snow texture (snow.iff), a snow-with-rocks texture (snowrock.iff) and a rock texture (rock.iff).
We want rock visible at the high slope and snow at the low slope of the mountain.
An easy way to do this is to connect a 3D-snow texture to the colour attribute of the Blinn.
In the Snow Colour field you connect the snow.iff, in the Surface Colour field you connect another 3D-snow texture. In this one you connect snowrock.iff to the Snow Colour and the rock.iff to the Surface Colour. Now try different settings on the threshold and Depth Decay slider of the two 3D-snow textures to get a nice blend between the rocky and snowy areas.
Use the same method when you create the bump mapping: low bump on low slope, high bump on high slope.

Lighting.
Sun: A white directional light with a dark blue depth map shadow
Bounce: A light blue directional light.

I recommend studying the TerraShader found at Highend3D, it shows you how to make connections between slope based nodes and attributes like wind-direction and altitude settings.
http://www.highend3d.com/maya/shaders/

Hope you find some of this useful. :airguitar

Raider007

08-20-2002, 04:19 AM

only thing i can say is "damn":thumbsup:

AJE

08-20-2002, 05:07 AM

New mirror download site:

Download 16MB qt version from CGAlliance (http://www.cgalliance.com/snowsoldiers/ericsson320.mov)

Cheers,

AJE

chillfillan

08-20-2002, 06:06 AM

Im with everyone else, that was amazing,
I love the ending!
Well , Im gonna go watch it again:p

Tob

08-20-2002, 06:40 AM

Originally posted by AJE
New mirror download site:

Download 16MB qt version from CGAlliance (http://www.cgalliance.com/snowsoldiers/ericsson320.mov)

Cheers,

AJE

Thanx AJE! :beer:

X-Chun

08-20-2002, 08:06 AM

Originally posted by HellRender

1. what process was used to make clouds (dont have to post a tutorial, unless you want to :D) ...but basically, is it volume? particle? or like what?

2. and then, what was used to render this whole project?

The clouds you fly through are rendered particle clouds in different layers and composited in post.

The rendering was made on a rendering farm made out of RenderDrives (dual AMD 1800+) and some custom build PC's (dual PIII 700 - 1130). Rendered in Maya's renderer.

iC4

08-20-2002, 10:40 AM

thx very much x-chun, that tutorial helped alot!

just one more question, is it possible to get a screenshot of the shading network? :)

hellrender, mayas build in render isn't that bad that most people think!

Cableguy

08-20-2002, 10:50 AM

You guys obviously know what you're doing. Some fool questions for you:

How much of the animation is done through scripting? If a lot is the trouble taken to script worth it in time savings?
The directing is pure Ridley Scott! How did you learn such good cinematography? Any references you use and can recommend?
How did you create/animate humans? Did you use anything other than Maya?
Were all terrains 3d or are some photos?

Keep posting your great work!

ghZaaaRK

08-20-2002, 11:44 AM

Michael Bay could go to the bed! :)

Good rendering, but rythm is too .... mmh not enough... mmh
so it's a very bad rythm! (like Mr Bay ^_^)

Anyway the cam's movement are great on somes sequences.

This trailer reminds me the movie "behin enemy lines", oh yes it's bullshit as movie..

bye

60megs! ouch!!

Tob

08-20-2002, 12:37 PM

Originally posted by Cableguy
You guys obviously know what you're doing. Some fool questions for you:

How much of the animation is done through scripting? If a lot is the trouble taken to script worth it in time savings?
The directing is pure Ridley Scott! How did you learn such good cinematography? Any references you use and can recommend?
How did you create/animate humans? Did you use anything other than Maya?
Were all terrains 3d or are some photos?

Keep posting your great work!

Thanks :)
Depends on what you mean by scripting... Basically everything was keyframed (dynamics and such aside); some driven keys.

Ridley Scott, eh? :cool: Very flattering, in one way; he's a good filmmaker. I'm not a fan of his though (apart from Blade runner - big surprise).
As far as cinematography goes: not sure what to say here.... I've just seen a lot of old films (u can't beat it; most of the stuff you see today has it's origin in the pre-70's), read a lot of books, and done a lot of storyboards. Storyboards are good; very, very good. If you're ever thinking of doing a film, do take the time to storyboard it. It will save you a world of trouble. If you're looking for books, then "Shot by shot" by Steven D. Katz is an excellent book to start with. You'll find it here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0941188108/qid=1029844015/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-3704733-8294252?s=books&n=507846

Create the humans? Eh, well, first of all I made some sketches of the soldiers (such as
this (http://www.edithouse.se/TempImg/Skiss.jpg) and this (http://www.edithouse.se/TempImg/Skiss2.jpg) ). The modeling was pretty straight forward (not really sure what to say here). A mixture of NURBS, SubD and polys. Rather LowRez (http://www.edithouse.se/TempImg/Wire.jpg) and instead I concentrated on making detailed textures.
If you look at the geometry you'll see that there are no real joints apart from the knees and elbows; they're all hidden under other geometry. This was also done in the name of Timesaving.:thumbsup:
All Maya.
More or less all geometry. Some sprite trees and sky images. A lot of photos was used in shaders.

I'll do my best :beer:

otacon

08-21-2002, 12:27 AM

Great! I like the music, animation, camera, everything. I would have liked to see more facial movement from the ground team....but o well, it was good anyway.:thumbsup:

WillJohn

08-21-2002, 03:48 AM

very impressive..

isnt ericcson the phone makers though?

i hope we all had clearance to watch that..

Artic

08-21-2002, 12:37 PM

Wow, that's awsome... great work!:buttrock:

You where talking about finding DEM maps on the internet in the tutorial.

Does anyone know good web sites that have DEM maps?

iC4

08-21-2002, 01:20 PM

found this: http://edcnts14.cr.usgs.gov/Website/store/viewer.htm

facial

08-21-2002, 02:11 PM

Well, Well done, Smart character design, i feel that It will be better if take more time to refine character animation :p
Very nice work. i love it.

:beer: :thumbsup:

MasterZap

08-21-2002, 03:17 PM

isnt ericcson the phone makers though?

Yes, one of their biggest mistakes. Cellphoes is a small peripheral business for Ericsson, but a highly visible one. Hence, when cellphone bussiness goes down, ericssons stock go down, although in reality they do WAAAAY more stuff such as

- phone exchanges/switches
- base stations for cell phone networks
- encoding/decoding chips for telephone networks
- optical network technologies
- microwave devices (such as this movie is about)
- e.t.c. e.t.c. e.t.c.

/Z

X-Chun

08-21-2002, 07:23 PM

Originally posted by iC4-
thx very much x-chun, that tutorial helped alot!

just one more question, is it possible to get a screenshot of the shading network? :)

hellrender, mayas build in render isn't that bad that most people think!

You don't actually see how the attributes are connected in this picture so I don´t think this shaderdump will make you much happier:
ShaderDump (http://www.edithouse.se/TempImg/ShaderDump.jpg)

A good tip though is to work on the rock and snow images.
In some scenes where there were mountains far away and close to the camera I used two shaders, one with highres and one with lowres images.
Rock'n'Roll ! :airguitar

Saeid Mohadjer

08-22-2002, 08:28 AM

I downloaded the mov version but Quicktime could not play it probably since the codec is not among the default ones that come with Quicktime. Does anybody know which codec has been used to compress this file? The link to avi version is brocken too!

bigB

08-22-2002, 08:45 AM

I think the latest divx....

Saeid Mohadjer

08-22-2002, 08:59 AM

Updating to Quicktime 6.0 resolved my problem.

The video was well done. I found the wireframe scenes of airplanes too long. Also the characters were so rigid in their movement. In contrast, the environment was perfect! Considering the time constraint it was a big achievment nevertheless.

Saeid

Tob

08-22-2002, 03:39 PM

Originally posted by otacon
Great! I like the music, animation, camera, everything. I would have liked to see more facial movement from the ground team....but o well, it was good anyway.:thumbsup:

Thanks!
Well, as you might imagine; facial animation was one of the top priorities on my perpetual list of "things-to-do-when-there's-time". ;)

Well, Well done, Smart character design, i feel that It will be better if take more time to refine character animation

Also the characters were so rigid in their movement.

Improved animation (or even animation at all for some stuff) was on that list as well. It's funny; no matter what you're working on, you always seem to be a week short when it comes to deadlines. :shrug: (making mental note to make my scripts
shorter)

i hope we all had clearance to watch that.

As a matter of fact: No. Some of you are going to receive a visit by big men in suits and sunglasses one of these days.
....and they all carry cellphones. :twisted:

MadS

08-22-2002, 08:52 PM

Very cool. I think the one thing that truly stood out the most in my mind was the score; especially the ending climax(gave me goosebumps). I think the lighting and environments were terrific. Like others have mentioned here, the animation of the chracters fell short of the level of quality of everything else in the piece.
The soldiers looked mechanical and herky-jerky, which kinda threw a wrench in the suspension of disbelief. I also couldn't figure out what the dark spots on the backsides of the nostrils were. Woulda been nice to get a DivX version of this baby so I could play it fullscreen. :(
The camera work was very good, I thought. And the brief pauses to show the wireframes of the different vehicles was a nice touch. The music in these parts reminds me of Metal Gear Solid2.

Who was the composer for this piece? Did you contract someone, or do you have an in-house audiophile? Sounds like something Harry Gregson-Williams would put together(one of my fav movie composers).

Do you plan to further refine the animation someday?

GREAT JOB!

:buttrock:

oh, and the Character models were superb as well, except for the texture on the gloves. Coulda used some more attention there, but I'm sure you're aware of that!

Tob

08-22-2002, 10:00 PM

Originally posted by MadS
Very cool. I think the one thing that truly stood out the most in my mind was the score; especially the ending climax(gave me goosebumps). I think the lighting and environments were terrific. Like others have mentioned here, the animation of the chracters fell short of the level of quality of everything else in the piece.
The soldiers looked mechanical and herky-jerky, which kinda threw a wrench in the suspension of disbelief. I also couldn't figure out what the dark spots on the backsides of the nostrils were. Woulda been nice to get a DivX version of this baby so I could play it fullscreen. :(
The camera work was very good, I thought. And the brief pauses to show the wireframes of the different vehicles was a nice touch. The music in these parts reminds me of Metal Gear Solid2.

Who was the composer for this piece? Did you contract someone, or do you have an in-house audiophile? Sounds like something Harry Gregson-Williams would put together(one of my fav movie composers).

Do you plan to further refine the animation someday?

GREAT JOB!

:buttrock:

oh, and the Character models were superb as well, except for the texture on the gloves. Coulda used some more attention there, but I'm sure you're aware of that!

Thanks!
Glad you liked the score. :beer: It's always been my belief that music and sound is a very neglected part of film making (in all categories) so we tend to start as early as possible with that. In this case we had made a very detailed previsualisation film (don't know if that is the correct term) so he could start making music even before we had rendered a singel frame of the final movie. We worked a lot on the audio, changing sounds right up until the very moment we made the master. And, yes, we have an in-house audiophile. ;) He's really, really good, I must say. Great to work with. We sat down once or twice and went through what I intended dramathurgically (SP?) with each scene; if I had any music in mind, and then he came back a few days later with some really great music; stuff way better then what I had in mind. :buttrock: I think we only changed a couple of minor things; the rest is basically what it sounded like from the start.
I apologize for the rant, but I gotta give the man his credits; he excelled on this one.

Don't know Harry Gregson-Williams (that I'm aware of). Will check him out. What has he scored?

Oh, the nostrils. :blush: I'm surprised no one has mentioned them before. Well, I could lie and say that's dirt from spending a couple of days up in the mountains, but the sad truth is: it's just bad texturing from my part. Another one of those "I'll-fix-that-as-soon-as-I'm-done-with-this-thingy-here...", and all of a sudden you're on the wrong side of deadline.

I constantly plan to improve the animations; whether I find the time for it though, is another story...

BTW, speaking of the Divx; I plan to put the divx online again during the weekend. Hopefully the office will be empty then, so no one should notice the loss of bandwidth. Check back in a day or so if you want to download it.

Cableguy

08-23-2002, 10:05 AM

I found in the QT movie that your settings were not the most efficient - if you're interested in saving some bandwidth and your viewers some time, try this:

use 8-15fps, 12.5fps is great for 25fps originals
save the movie at Double size in QTPlayer before upload, or use the Scale feature in Cleaner - allows you to create a smaller movie that will play at same size, with very little loss in quality
crop the movie first, taking out the black bars top and bottom, they're a waste of bandwidth.
you'll know you're doing well if you achieve a good looking movie at about 1Mb per 1 min of movie, so yours shouldn't be much over 5Mb. 16Mb is too much!

Also, could you upload your previsualisation movie? That would be really interesting, to see how you developed this. Thanks a million for sharing, you've taught me a thing or two!

zurfer

08-23-2002, 11:42 AM

Snyggt

Great looking work.

Mats snackade lite om att du hade visat honom något om soldater i snö ( han var mäkta imponerad ) Har inte laddat ner den själv eftersom Datorbokhandelns datorer är röv sega, så jag får vänta tills jag kommer hem till min mindre sega comp.

Har lagt gräs problemet, jag berättade om, på hyllan och bygger ut bakgrunden lite mer och ser vilken teknik som funkar bäst för vilka shots.
Som tur vad slipper jag de extrema tidspressarna.

Peter

Ps: ville du fortfarande ha tag i Illusion of life så har jag beställt ett par ex. får även in Richard williams Animator´s survival kit snart. Maila on du undrar nåt.

Tob

08-23-2002, 03:17 PM

Originally posted by Cableguy
Also, could you upload your previsualisation movie? That would be really interesting, to see how you developed this. Thanks a million for sharing, you've taught me a thing or two!

Thanks for the QT hints. I never really had time to muck around with the settings, I just tossed together a qt as fast as I could.

Sure thing: I couldn't find the last version that we made, but there's only minute differences compared to this one. Get it HERE (http://www.edithouse.se/tempmovie/SkissFilmEricsson320.mp4). You'll need QuickTime 6 to watch it.

NP. Glad to be able to help. :beer:

Originally posted by zurfer
Ps: ville du fortfarande ha tag i Illusion of life så har jag beställt ett par ex. får även in Richard williams Animator´s survival kit snart. Maila on du undrar nåt.

Tokhajja!!!. :bounce: Lägg undan 2, jag tror X-Chun vill ha en också. Är det nyutgåva eller....? Får ta och kika på williams när den kommer in.

Sorry about the foreign tongue here guys....

Update: The DivX is online again 4 the weekend. See ya :beer:

nisse

08-23-2002, 10:46 PM

Otroligt snyggt.
Ericsson lär bli riktigt nöjda med den där sekvensen att visa upp. På tal om det, vad kommer kortfilmen att användas till, för lång för att vara reklam på teve men den såg nästan för filmisk och dyr ut för att bara visas för kunder och inom konsernen.

Hoppas jag kommer kunna åstadkomma något liknande i framtiden, har väl i alla fall något år på mig innan man måste ut på marknaden och söka jobb (är 17år).

Cableguy

08-23-2002, 11:05 PM

Thanks for that, very interesting. Not as rough as I expected and it gave a good insight into your development path on the project. Keep it up!

3D_Mike

08-24-2002, 02:36 PM

Tob, dont know if youve got this one from Mawibse already but heres another mirror for the fab movie:

ftp://kyousr8:km654df@193.173.148.70/Ericsson320.zip

~Absolutely excellent work guys, especially considering the tight deadline. Superb, brilliant, argh, makes me want to do update some of my early 3D-animation navy stuff :buttrock: :bounce:

stephen2002

08-24-2002, 05:40 PM

holy crap, that is a good pice of work. Everything flows together so nice, it is just amazing.

The realism is good, but the animation of some of the things could use some work.

The renderings were absolutly amazing.

Tob

08-25-2002, 04:27 PM

Originally posted by 3D_Mike
Tob, dont know if youve got this one from Mawibse already but heres another mirror for the fab movie:

ftp://kyousr8:km654df@193.173.148.70/Ericsson320.zip

~Absolutely excellent work guys, especially considering the tight deadline. Superb, brilliant, argh, makes me want to do update some of my early 3D-animation navy stuff :buttrock: :bounce:

Thanks man.
Mawibse mentioned that you made a similar movie a couple of years ago for the Dutch (?) navy or something, containing almost the same elements. It's a small world. Would be good fun to see it. :wavey:

BTW, your new DOD map looked very cool. :buttrock: Really liked the twilight look of it. Could hardly beleive that was the hl engine I was looking at. Mawibse told me about the minefield idea; hope it ends up in the final version

Originally posted by Cableguy
Thanks for that, very interesting. Not as rough as I expected and it gave a good insight into your development path on the project. Keep it up!

Np. Glad if it is to any help. :beer:

Fred Heys

08-25-2002, 06:36 PM

Very Impressive good work!:thumbsup:

sprite

08-26-2002, 07:00 AM

What about Ericsson ???

:shrug:

Tob

08-27-2002, 05:43 AM

Originally posted by Fred Heys
Very Impressive good work!:thumbsup:

Thanks!

Originally posted by sprite
What about Ericsson ???

What about them?

Dr-spline

08-27-2002, 05:55 AM

what methoud of modeling and editing did you use for the bodys and head
please be fairly descriptive ie what promitives and how many illiterations

sprite

08-28-2002, 07:16 AM

Originally posted by Tob
Thanks!

What about them?

Well, you have with the Ericsson logo!

AJE

08-28-2002, 10:43 AM

Sprite... They have what with the Ericsson logo?

Did I miss a post of yours earlier on or someting?

AJE

sprite

08-28-2002, 10:54 AM

Originally posted by AJE
Sprite... They have what with the Ericsson logo?

Did I miss a post of yours earlier on or someting?

AJE
I mean, why does they have the ericsson logo in the movie ?

Sgt.Pepper

08-28-2002, 04:00 PM

Tjenare, supersnygg film. :applause:
Hur många är ni som arbetat på den, och hur länge?
Antar att du jobbar på Edithouse...jobbat där länge eller?

3D_Mike

08-28-2002, 06:05 PM

Tob, Im sorry my Link is broken. Ill have it up again asap...

AJE

08-28-2002, 07:36 PM

Sprite, Ericsson was the company that the animation was made for. They make electronics. The whole animation was an Ericsson advertisement.

AJE

X-Chun

08-28-2002, 07:55 PM

Yes, Ericsson Microwave Systems develop different types of radarsystems. This movie was intended to show the radarsystems key functions in a scenario where they also communicate in a network.
Thereby the logo. :)

Tob

08-28-2002, 08:09 PM

Hi. Sorry for not responding; been away shooting.

Sprite: Yes, like AJE said, this is a presentation of Ericsson's concept for "Net Centric Warfare". It incorporates products from Ericsson's Microwave division (mostly early warning systems) - hence the product presentation parts of the film . ;)

Dr-spline: I'll have to get back to you later with that. I'm really stressed for time right now (I'm working on three films simultaneously - directing two of them - and it's begining to take it's toll.... :argh: ) I promise to get something up here as soon as things quiet down.

Sgt.Pepper: Tackar tackar! Vi var tre 3d-killar och en FLAME-kille. Tog ungefär 8 veckor (står lite mer i början av threaden :) ). Visst sitter jag på Edithouse. Har väl vart här en 5-6 år tror jag. Var sitter du?

3D_Mike: NP. I think the worst flood is over by now anyway (not sure). No need to rush. :beer: