morphing displacement "Neckling_Changing"

[Dennik]

Damn you Taron, i forgot my English now, i have no words to say! Just when i think it can't get any more amazing... :buttrock:

[Adam-Han]

Wow! Taron, that is stunning!

The messiah/zbrush combination is really amazing - I've been testing softbodies with flabby skin maps from zbrush and they work really well.
Now I wish I could run home and do more tests http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

[chikega]

Did you stay up all night again, Taron?! :)

This is really ground-breaking work here - thanks for sharing your progress. Very exciting stuff! If you don't mind my asking, why are the ZB_Color_o and ZB_Color_c inactive as they're being fed into the Basic Shader node? Also, would it be possible to see an expanded view of some of these collapsed nodes? :)

[dobermunk]

It sounds dramatic to speak of revolutionary techniques, but I have to agree with you. I think modeling will never be the same, when you can paint ribs and shoulders and have the mesh "slide" over them.

Just wish I had a clue as to how you are doing this!
Please keep the generous posts coming - I'm slowly starting to funz this!

D.

[SergO]

Wow Taron! This is really great stuff :D

Your texture deform idea is truly brilliant, I can’t wait to get me hands on the new version!! arghhhh... when when? :)

Do you have any plans to do a surface tension shader? It would be a fantastic partner to the muscle deform shader.

Like SkinDeep for LW: http://www.tufflittleunit.com/skindeep.htm?MainCat=2&PID=8
Or this XSI shader:
http://www.claus-figuren.de/addons/tensionmap.html

In addition to the tendon/muscle map you could also have a “Skin Tension Lines” map...

Visualise what happens when an older person (more obvious) bends the neck in any direction, dozens of wrinkles appear depending on amount of compression or become less visible with strech… These wrinkles follow what are called “Tension Lines”, these are lines run perpendicular to skin’s major strech/compress direction which incidentally is also the ideal reference for Edge loops .

So, imagine a map covered in wrinkles and these wrinkles automatically appear or disappear based on tension in the mesh.


Some reference for Tension Lines in the face: http://www.uni-kiel.de/mkg/personal/Reinhardt/3_03.htm

Btw, can you elaborate a bit on the updates to the basic shader? Plz :) ... I'm particularly curious about wether sss shadows from area lights are also scattered (in current version they were always razor sharp), and the possibilities with using radiosity sss.

Thanks

SergO

[Tidus_44]

wow ........... wow

[SpikeWorx]

In combination with the TextureDeform that continues to work underneath these wicked displacement changes the possibility to make believable transformations besides simply creating a new principle for building complex sets of preset characters with full setups will be without end. Who knows, maybe I will even create a library for messiah:Studio users! :D
OMG, Please yes, yes and yes :love:
You rock , Master Taron:bowdown:


OT: Taron, habt dich auch auf reasonstation.com entdeckt.
Hab mir deine Sachen mal angehört und muß sagen Du bist ja sowas von fies.
Extrem geile Kompositionen.
Soviel Talent gehört allerdings auf mehrere Personen verteilt :cry:;).
Machst Du da eigentlich noch was?

[FunBucket]

AWESOME! I have to go buy zbrush and messiah now, excuse me...

[otacon]

Ooooh Boy. That is just scary good.:eek:

[IanBlackford]

wow! :buttrock:
amazing again taron, truly amazing :scream:
thank you so much for sharing
regards
monsieurblack

[Swizzle]

Haaaaggghh aaahhh ga wa ya.... http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/surprised.gif http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/drool.gif*slurp* Wow.

[adam-b]

This is just insane!! words....stuck...in..throat/finger ;)

[-Vormav-]

Pretty impressive.
But can't this same type of displacement be done with different renderers? (mental ray, perhaps?)

[DaddyMack]

GADZOOKS!!!
Absolutely mental Taron333

[Confracto]

this looks like what matrox was doing when they were demoing parhelia!
they also did realtime LOD models with it too.
still neat idea tho.

[Adam]

truely amazing. The only pitfall I see which could easily be worked around is in the nose area. Instead of the nose pushing up to form into the new nose the nostrils simply cave back into the mesh in areas and pull back out higher up to form the new higher nostrils. Although very amazing at points in the animation has the feeling of two charcter blending between eachother instead of one character morphing into a new shape (if that makes since). Very very cool though

[pearson]

I've admired your work since I first found your site in '97...

While this is very cool stuff, the overall tone and excessive use of superlatives make this post feel like an advertisement. (You still work for the developers of Messiah, right?)

:shrug:

[cg219]

Wow, this is turning out to be a great experiment. I never really known much about Mesiah, I might look into it now. Looks like a Huge turning point in CG.

[leigh]

That animation is really... creepy. Excellent technique though!! :eek:

It still boggles my mind that this is only 350 polys.

[Stoehr]

Ok! That's it. I'm convinced. I'm getting z-brush...

[???]

WOW the Zbrush masta http://cgtalk.com/images/smilies/thumbsup.gif new testure but the anim is... i cant comment :(

Something is wrong with the color shades

[claybub]

hello. Forgive me for being naive and stuff but I'm not exactly sure how you are creating these incredible images. What I understand is that you are using displacement maps to make details on a low poly mesh. But what are you animating? The mesh or the map? How do you get these excellent animations with only a minimal amount poly's?

great stuff!

[essencedesign]

I have been thinking of upgrading my pmG messiah to studio, it has sat unused for some time ( only really comming into play for animation)...You have shown me this now, and the possibilities are breathtaking like you say...I wasn't following the :Studio release, I didn't know it was capable of this...WOW...

[tlggungor]

Wonderfull technique.I love this animation.
:applause:







Would you like to see my 2D Challenge Concepts and City

[Taron333]

A. Did you stay up all night again, Taron?! :)

B. ...why are the ZB_Color_o and ZB_Color_c inactive as they're being fed into the Basic Shader node?

C. Also, would it be possible to see an expanded view of some of these collapsed nodes? :)
A. Yes...I am cursed, banned to the night...I can't switch back! AAHHH...ah..yeah...it's true!

B. ...because I made this little weightshade clip and thought of rendering a textured version, too, so I deactivated the color inputs and had a value going from the WeightSpot shader directly into color. But then I ditched it, got rid of that connection and just forgot to switch on the colormap nodes again. Sorry....check the image now! :D

C. Hmmm, it's hardly worth it in this case, because there ain't much to see on the textureDeform nodes and the texturemaps just get the weightSpot value into their opacity! If there was anything more fancy, I would have made the snapshot show it. It's amazing how little confusing that shader-flow actually is, but it's even more amazing how much it could turn confusing to show open nodes that only have one output used..hehe.
If You're interested in one specific expanded node, I can post it here, no problem!:)

[siouxfire]

:scream: Hell Yeah!!! Love that shake during the transformation! Man, I always try to find something that be improved when I post stuff, but this has me stuck. (What am I going to do, criticize the background? Who's looking at the background!) Amazing - can't wait to see what you'll come up with next.

[dansgarbage]

I'm still trying to get the basics down and now you present this! :) Great work!

[mickatt]

Simply great !!


the animation and the design look great

[paintbox]

Love it, more more ! :thumbsup:

I do think this will change the way things are done. Just think of ONE base mesh, fully rigged, say what, 2-5k polies max ? For different figures, just add displacement and some water, and your done :)

Maybe great for crowd sims too where a camera zooms in on individual warriors, and while the base mesh is lo-poly, the faces will look photo real and different from person to person....

Wow...

(correct me if I am wrong with some of my assumptions here)

[chinch]

That's insane! I saw the earlier version you had and was floored by it. Really remarkable work, congrats!

[Remi]

Just curious...would this be possible with a different toolset? Great work taron...keep it up man:)

[Taron333]

I've admired your work since I first found your site in '97...

While this is very cool stuff, the overall tone and excessive use of superlatives make this post feel like an advertisement. (You still work for the developers of Messiah, right?)

:shrug:
Yes, sir, thank you, sir, but I work not for the developers of Messiah, I'm working WITH the developers of Messiah, because it makes me truely freaking happy. I believe in this tool, because it allows me to express myself artistically and technically in the most direct and fastest way without any silly obstacles, like it is found in pretty much all other packages. It enables me to expand it and share this expansion with everyone besides programming with some of the most talented programmers in the industry. We are a group so silly small and yet everything we do makes me have to reach for superlatives to describe the process and results.
This software is entirely about what you CAN do with it and about what you can't. And what you can do with it is the bestest best that is in you and if you can't...well...call and we work it out! :)

[EVIL]

Sick shit Taron, Awsome stuff

[ambas]

wow ........... wow
wooow :eek:

[eliment]

How long it's take u to make it?....... nice work keep it up:)))

[xixax]

This is the kind of thread that makes me look at the $6k price tag we spent on XSI, and although we're very happy with what it can do, the process and output here may cause another spring for lightwave & messiah: studio. *sighs*

If only I were MADE of money. ;)

EDIT ADDITION: I guess that goes to the point of some of the other questions, can this be done in other software, ala XSI? I admit to being very new, but we have Zbrush and softimage advanced seats, is this out of the technical feasability of XSI?

[thematt]

Taron,
You push the bondary of modeling and rendering to it's limit and it's really great..I admire your work for that truely.
I myself am a Zbrush user..but truely not a poweruser.;anyway, I'm very interested in the process of the transfert between z brush and messiah (sorry I'm maya user but still).

i looked at your animation and saw that while the charaters was opening the mouth at the end of the clip you had a the lips stretch inside and then back to normal..have you model those target in z brush or is this all done in the animation..I'm wondering since in the preview mode of the charater on top of the video it seems that the lips are not stretching..

I was wondering how many map do you need to create an animation like that?
And do you model the muscle deformation inside zbrush for each shape?.or do you use special deformer inside messiah which I know is very powerfull for that..lucky you..
Finally do you use the Uv inside Zbrush? I never do because it's then impssible for other people who do not know the apps to go back on the texture..but I know everybody should learn Zbrush right.:)

Anyway you're work is stunning. I will keep my eyes on your post for a long time to come I'm sure.
Keep the great work

cheers

[jfoley]

Whoa... I gotta go pick up my jaw off the ground!

Amazing stuff!!!

[doublerr]

erm,its really really revolutionary ...... CG gonna be different,it will!
any tips/basic tutorial on this?
AMAZING:eek:

[Taron333]

First of all, for eveyone, who may have missed the origine of the Neckling, here's a link to the messiah techniques I've posted....
Technique behind the Neckling (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=187770)

Here's also the ZBrush post that goes into some more details on that end....
Animating with Displacement (http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=022061)

And another link to the ZBrush part for the current post....
Follow-up "Neckling_Changing" (http://206.145.80.239/zbc/showthread.php?t=022300)

As for the use of other packages, except for our "TextureDeform", which takes care of the tendons underneath the skin, it is obviously possible to do a lot of things with displacement and most likely blending them as well, but it's highly questionable whether it is as easy as it is with messiah. Let's see...here's the camtasia recording I did to show how to hook up displacement....it's just 5frames per second, but it is realtime, so don't think it was timelapsed...hahaha...just by looking at the steps, you will see that it is as easy as it looks!
Setting_up_Displacement(DivX5.x) (http://www.projectmessiah.com/x2/vids/tutorials/Setting_up_Displacement.avi)


I will also prepare a whole tutorial DVD that shows the entire process of rigging and texturing with messiah:Studio. I may as well make it a series that includes all steps, Lightwave modeling, ZBrush displacement creation, Messiah rigging+animation+texturing.
Those DVDs will have sound, too...hahahaha...sorry about the primitive recording. You'll soon find a nicer version with sound as well! (if you can take listening to me, that is!) :P

Alrighty...lot's of more to come...

BTW: THANK YOU EVERYONE!!! I'm blown away by your response. Again I am so excited to see that so many of you share the euphoria this causes for me. I can't wait to see what you all do with these new ways. I just wish that you get to see, too, for yourself why I'm so ecstatic with these tools.

[rebo]

Glad to see the morph finally Taron. Remember you dont need to limit yourself to displacements from the base mesh. One can use a traditional blendshape style morph (i.e actual geo changing) to vastly change the size and dimensions of the base mesh. This increases the range and magnitude of possible displaced morphs. I.e. small weedy 5' guy into 7' werewolf with barrelled chest.

Only tricky part is updating the rig so its functions correctly.

[Taron333]

Rebo, you are EXACTLY right! It's totally possible to morph the mesh and blend the displacement maps not only just like that, but controlled by the exact same weights, which can also be used to blend any surface properties, so you can practically do anything you could ever think of, almost, I believe...kind of believe that it could be everything. However, it is also possible to simply go ahead with ZBrush and make any wicked highres deformation as you want and you can literally save out the obj it generates for the level 1 division and use that as the morphtarget for your base geometry. I've done that a while ago as a little test. So the comfort of that is unspeakable beautiful. I love things that cause the "no worries" situation. But then you should watch out with the setup of the deformations of course. If you were using a lot of blendshapes for lipsyncing and such, it actually should work in your favor, because they should be relative and would continue to work even after some more dramatic morph changes the the basic look of the mesh....ahh...exciting....hmmm...now I want to play more....but I need to prepare some more tutorials now!

[max_5]

I love it!
It's awesome how you have explained it all to us as well, I have learnt allot.
Thank you.

[SteveV]

Awesome work Taron, I'm constantly amazed by what ZBrush enables the artist to do.

I see you're up to your neck in 3D, but we'd still like to see you in the Daily Sketch forum from time to time.

[bash]

looks amazing! :) Inspired me a whole bunch! :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Taron333]

HAHAHAHA, THANK YOU, SteveV! I miss the DailySketch forum A LOT! I've just made at least a tiny quicky for the Netherlands topic...huh..man...I'm so out of it....need to do more sketches again, too, really! By the way, I really recomment that to everyone! Get some 2dsketching practice, it's some beautiful exercise and gets your creativity boosted! Look at the DailySketch forum here on CGTalk...it's well worth it! Great artists, there, too!

[loocas]

Very nice! :thumbsup: :buttrock:

[alexyork]

good GOD things are moving fast these days! not only have you successfully pushed the boundaries of realism in modeling, but you have kept it fast and feasible in production, too, without the overhead of ultra-high-poly meshes. that's quite an achievment by anyone's standards.

keep up the incredible work - looking forward to your future tests with great anticipation.

[depleteD]

Wow Taron, congratulations, you have revolutionized the way people are thinking about doing 3d. Seriously, props.

I was really inspired by this blending displacement maps thing and tried it in 3ds max and mental ray. I got shut down so hardcore. Mr wont allow it at all. What gives, its just blending a map right? But ah well.

Beuatiful work man.

[FlyByNight]

i swear it looks like a lot more than 350 polies in that viewport to me....

hhmmmm....

and it sounds an awful lot like making animated bump maps.

good creative use of the tools, but this still has long render times right?? for several diferent characters, individual displacement maps would still have to be made?? there is still lots of work involved and lots of rendering time.

I dont understand what is revolutionary

[chikega]

good creative use of the tools, but this still has long render times right?? for several diferent characters, individual displacement maps would still have to be made?? there is still lots of work involved and lots of rendering time. I dont understand what is revolutionary
Then you've never rendered displacement maps in messiah, my friend ... it eats ZB-generated displacement maps for breakfast.

Blazingly fast. :)

[Taron333]

great reply...:thumbsup:

[Taron333]

FlyByNight, I usually appreciate everyone's concerns, but in your case I shall make an exception. It's one thing to be afraid that the unspoken may hide terrible realities, but to accuse me of lying is quite a few steps too far. Not that it makes me angry, but it certainly makes me release the little more cynical side of myself.
Chances are that once you've experienced the performance of messiah and you find that every single fact I have listed here is not only true but also justifying all of the positive excitement, you may consider taking a day time trip as you've made it back down to earth! :scream:

Lucky us, you'll get to play with it first hand, if you have or get messiah, because I'm actually giving out the full project file of the Neckling as demo scene. You will soon notice that it's not so difficult to accept the good that is happening around us. Enough bad things are happening elsewhere! :shrug:

But, it's truely not my place to educate you about trust, behaviour and selfawareness. You really have to discover that for yourself! Keep your keen eye on things that could deceive you, but take a chance and see what you can proof to yourself. It's our turn to proof our skills and our understanding of what artists really need and how we can make it available to them. The benefit we have right now is, that I can act as selfish as possible, because I want the easiest and fastest tool to create what I want to create with the least if not even no handicap! If I disapprove of what we have, I do not brag about it nor would I publish anything. I held back for more than 8 months, because we had to grow to this point at which we can stand behind the tool and its powers, especially for rendering, since animation has already been a success. In many ways we have to continue growing and we sure are and will, but right now we already have the tool and the content to proof the fantastic results you can achieve with it. It's so simple when you think about it. If anyone tries the software and came to believe I was bullshitting right now, we'd be screwed for all of ethernity. We can not effort that....so....trust me, what ever I show to you, you can use it in exactly the same way for your own art or even better, you can figure out your own ways to make use of it all.

For more facts like rendertimes, please, go 12 replies backwards and check out the previous posts again behind the links I was putting there...

[Dennik]

Hey Taron don't worry, for some people you and Messiah Studio, are too good to be true. :D

[Taron333]

:blush: ...without words! :beer:

[Julez4001]

Picking jaw off the floor, drive to North Atlanta for reconstructive surgery thanks to chikega, Gasp! and Jaw hits the floor again.....

I was a maya meeting a year ago, and several Visual FX artist from the Xmen2 film were there.
There were explaining how they morph Mystique (bluekskin gal played by Rebecca Stamos) from Woverine to the fat guy and it wa sall high tech words but now after seeing Taron's example, I believe thats how it was done: Displacement morphing. Objects can be changed form a 5'7' amazon gal to a 350 pound, 6, 4 fat guy to a muscular build without having each mesh poly count be the same.

******************

"Who knows, maybe I will even create a library for messiah:Studio users! :D"

You of course know, that you sold a few xtra seats by mentioning this. As I live and breathe, a Taron DVD is coming soon. SWEEET!!



Oh How can we get this on the front page.

[thesuit]

I'm totally blowned away!!!
I was trying to write a thesis about extreame 3d transformations using combine methods with blend shapes. What I would like to know is if this is applicable in other apps. If it is then, we have just witness the beginning of a new morphing era.
Congrats Taron, on a most ground-breaking project and with good management of resources may I add.

PS: sorry for my english today i dont know where the hell all the spelling went!

[thesuit]

First of all sorry to repost this here... its on the Maya forum.
But I wanted to keep the topic here where it started but also post my progress in the maya thread as well.

I tried the same thing in Maya with the following results... I've been trying at it for only 30min but its 2h00am so I think I'll leave it for tomorrow...

Here is my render sorry for the brief render but its late. >>>QT (http://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacemaya.mov)<<<:wip:
I know its not anywhere decent lol but I think its a first step in the direction that Taron is right now. My current situation is that I can only morph from one color to another. I think I can manage multiple transformations if I use layered shaders. I'll post the printscreen of my hypershade when I get something more clean and labeled to show.
The object is a common poly sphere (no special settings). The displacements used where these two at 1024x1024 each.

http://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacement2.jpghttp://www.blueprint3d.com/cgtalk/displacement/displacement1.jpg

The render time for this test was of about 3 seconds per frame. my specs are dual 3.06, 2gb ram, nvidia quadro fx 1100.
Thanx a lot Taron for pointing this out!!! It's simply amazing...

[rickycox]

The results look great. Is there anyway of doing this on a Mac?

[FlyByNight]

sorry. i didnt mean to offend. and ur right, u dont have to justify urself. u seem very confident.

Its just that, in ur viewports (by watching ur divx movies) it seems that ur original 350 poly mesh, has been subD'd right up. looking like a lot more than 350 polies. If this is the case, i wouldv thought that that is slightly misleading.

Could u tell me an aprox rendering time for one frame, where the character morphs from one to the other?? Also the lighting setup used??

Still trying to understand all this. Consider it as, growing ur fan base :thumbsup:

[siouxfire]

Could u tell me an aprox rendering time for one frame, where the character morphs from one to the other?? The render time is at the beginning of this thread - 45 minutes. (That's the total anyhow)

[Taron333]

Hahaha, man, now it all makes sense....I could have switched to a different display mode!
Stop the tutorial clip around second 10 and look at the specs in the upper left! Also look at the model before I activate the MetaNurbs! You'll see! Besides, obviously at rendertime the mesh gets subdivided, that's the whole idea behind it. Dealing with the low polygon amount during animation allows for the immense realtime interaction and animation of large numbers of objects or characters in this case. It's not a computergame, it's visual effects for feature films and commercials or whatever highend type of use comes to mind. By now I am very sure that most people are familiar with the concept of subdivision geometry. The idea is to deform a low polygon cage, created to deform properly for high-density representation during rendering. However, with the MetaNurbs you can even work in realtime openGL by looking at the final geometry as it gets seen by the rendering. This may not sound too familiar to Maya users at this point, but it's very known to users of Lightwave or, obviously, users of Messiah in the past.

3 minutes 30 seconds as average for the "morphing" animation per frame. 640x480, 5 GI samples (for each pixel it shoots 5 rays out to read the surrounding illumination in the first pass, but in the second pass, the antialiasing pass it will therefore examine a multitude of it, whereby we have an automatic reduction build into the renderer, that optimizes the render efforts on a need basis). Antialiasing set on adaptive at level 2. Rendered on my Pentium4 (2.6Ghz, 2Gb RAM). Although the gfx-board doesn't say anything about the rendering times, obviously, it's a GForce4 5900 (I think...yeah, I think so). So that's it!
Not to mention that the entire surface is translucent, simulating the SSStype of effect with the volumetric translucency! Two lights used and a sloped gradient for the environment, read by the GI. That's all! :)

Again, if you stick with the enrolling of the upcoming new version of messiah:Studio, you'll get the project file and can really examine what's going on in there, because it ain't much. It's actually rather very simple! that's the nice thing about it!

Thanx, FlyByNight, I appreciate your response and hope this answer was helpful. It's really fascinating how much many of us are already taking for granted, but I'm probably the worst. It's tough to think of times, when none of those amazing features existed. I come from a time where there were no MetaNurbs and I had to subdivide things step by step...haha...that's about 12 years ago for Lightwave users. :))

As for the fanclub...hahahaha...that would be the day! :love:...lot's of work before that's ok! :rolleyes:

[Taron333]

The render time is at the beginning of this thread - 45 minutes. (That's the total anyhow)
Huh?! How do you come to this? I said the total rendering time was a bit less than 4 hours! It's 60 Frames and average was 3min 30sec. So my rough guess of a bit less than 4 hours was quite adequate! :D

[siouxfire]

Doh! Maybe I was reading too much into that "and 45 minutes later" comment. (That'll teach me to post before noon) BTW - I think you ALREADY have a fanclub massing at your gates ;)

[Taron333]

HAhaha, that was about the new displacement map and not the whole morphing thing. The other interesting thing might be, that a test render was about half a minute per frame, rendered with GI at Samples4 but without antialiasing. So when I wanted to see a full animation test I had to wait for about 30 minutes:hmm:....man....I really wished I had more than just one working machine....a render farm:bowdown:...AAAAAHHHH....life would be truely different. Maybe not just for me...hehe...but then again, who knows what things would happen then!?
I feel like I'm spoiled already, regarding 3D, hoho, but man....there's still a dream of renderpower. :drool:

[eek]

Very nice, Taron,


I'll chat to you about additive subd displacement mapping soon. Ive been following research in this area i and am thinking about implementing it into my rig. My rig is following the muscle route, but in addition wrinkles, pores and finite creases are gunna follow the displacement(gollum) route.

Anyway nice work, ill pm you in a few days.
eek

[dobermunk]

eek and taron.
This is getting scary.

[wuensch]

The results look great. Is there anyway of doing this on a Mac? you can duplicate the procedure on a Mac with Cinema 4D Release 9 (with the advanced render option you have Subpolydisplacement) and maybe, as addition, the PlugIn DiTools for realtime-displacement to have better control in editor.

It does definitely work with Z-Brush displacement nicely and .

I am not sure if its a s smooth & fast as Messiah here, but when i have time (after xmas) I will try it out for sure.

Taron, I am really impressed how far you guys advanced with messiah.
I was M:A user in M:A3 times and even then was impressed by the clever Morphs you did for the Muscle-Demo character.
You are definitely a morph-master ;-)

Olli

[Taron333]

You are definitely a morph-master ;-)

Olli
Not to long, this kind of message would have terrified me to my frozen bones! HAHAHA! But now I must say, well, darned....thank you! :)

(little explanation: I still prefer to focus on muscles (bones) for setting up facial animation rigs, coming from times where people used complete morph targets in attempts to animate a face. Since messiah I've begun to involve expression driven morphs to correct or refine some of the bone deformations in such facial systems. Nowadays the mixture out of bone and morph deformations is nearly next to equal, but with the heavy element of displacement a new candidat has entered, that makes the weight of morph-like animations heavier once again! morph-master....wow....Fred, can you hear that!) :D

Thank you, Olli! :thumbsup:
And good luck with the cinema 4D route!

[My Fault]

Taron: You are a great artist and heck of a nice guy. I get inspired seeing the things you do. Please keep it up! :thumbsup:

[crossbones]

This is probably my fav test he's done in the last 3 years second only to the never before seen "mummy in bandages".
Taron has proved this can be done within messiah beautifully. I am curious if anyone's tried to replicate this technique in other packages, is it even possible to get near these results?

[svintaj]

Taron, I like your experimentation and innovation!

I can see that Messiah needs even more cool features, because now you got to create a tool that can make the nostrils follow the shape through the morph, and not just fade.;):wip:
Maybe a technique similar to a classical 2D-morph, but between the displacement maps, controlled by effectors instead of anchorpoints, wouldn't that be cool!

I hope this wont give you a headache...:thumbsup:

/ Svante

[Taron333]

Fantastic, I'm very happy to see some urges growing to make a perfect transition out there amongst you. I can't wait to see what you guys come up with! Very exciting for me and certainly for everyone else! GO GO GO, get those nostrils! Awesome! :thumbsup:

...just don't blame Messiah for my neglecting! For that stuff it has everything you need.

[essencedesign]

Tarron...how hard did you find the COMPLEAT transition from LW to messiah...I ha ve only used the original Project : here and there but am thinking about transfering directly over from LW just cause I'm sick of some of the limitations ....?

[chikega]

I don't know if Taron is the best person to ask that question. He's been using messiah in it's various incarnations ever since working at StationX with Lyle Milton et al. How long has that been, Taron - 7 years or so? I don't think he's ever had to transition really - since he grew with it from the very beginning and is now influencing it's direction. In anycase, I've picked up messiah within the last year, coming from a LW background. Since messiah started as a plugin for LW, there are a lot of similarities - so, the transition is not bad at all. There are some "gotchas" for sure. There are no weight maps. The shading system is completely different (but very powerful). There are also some things that you'll still have to use LW for, like Fur, Hypervoxels, Particle effects, etc... So, it won't be just messiah or just LW - it'll be a little of both for a while. And probably a lot of ZB. By the sound of it, Taron will be trying to use ZB as his primary modeler.

By the way, love your website! That's some kick ass creature work, essencedesign. :thumbsup:

[Taron333]

Very nice work, indeed, essence!

Besides the absolutely correct observation of Gary, regarding my knowledge about the transitioning, I've been working with both Lightwave and Messiah together for the past 6 years, seizing to use lightwave's layouter for about 8 months now, I believe. For the most part when you switch over to messiah it really quickly begins to feel like, damn, that's just how I would have wanted it in LW, haha, but it soon becomes somewhat like: How was that in LW again..oh no...ah...never! At least that is what I remember and certainly how I feel now...hahaha. That goes for animation as well as for rendering now. I'd say, lucky them we don't offer modeling hahahaha...but besides that. Gary is right to as for our current missing pieces, which are automatic fur and heavy volumen things, but especially all the volume things including hypervoxel type effects will soon be there and certainly make a lot a lot of noise..hahaha...it's kind of a personal favorite of mine and I can't believe that we didn't find time to focus on it, yet, but it's been brewing for a while now and I'm almost willing to promiss that it's going to be a very nice premier! But, I must admitt I'm currently continue to be very captivated by all of the displacement and shading discoveries. Those are just too powerful and I am already brewing on a new concept for expanding on these things in yet another big revolution...maybe bigger, actually...well, it's some way to go...I'm very excited, but I don't want to jinx anything already.

Anyway, we're working on the particle section as well, which already did get a bit of a good boost, but still is in it's first steps. Particle is actually fun for us to code, but for some reason they got pushed into delay for a few times already. Many people may not realize how simple it can be to create stunning particle systems, particularely with a strong architecture underneath that allows for all sorts of crazy and conventional ideas.

[essencedesign]

Thanks for the compliments guys...really means alot.... :thumbsup:
...I think the reasons you point out are why I have been so drawn to making the switch..the 2 places where LW lacks most...in my opinion..are it's shader/render system, and advanced rigging and animation...although I haven't made the 8 upgrade yet...from what I've heard the changes aren't that drastic.......

...Any ways Taron seeing what you've done here really makes my mind gloW...and I know what I'll be saving my beans for now.....Thanks ;)
Jeremy

[Zithen]

I look forward to the advancements in the Render portion. I really, though would llike to see some improvements in the softbodies/collision detection part. Unfortunately it's still not complete or reliable at all, which is too bad because it has some great choices as far as features go. But that's another topic.

There's some important things in Render that need to be there in order to go full steam ahead, I think. Basially they are Hair/fur and flares, glows and soft filter solutions. And of course, particle effects. Hair especially, it's not easy to get around that one...what about Shave and a Haircut? pmG talking to him?

[Julez4001]

Fast Volumetric Shader - hmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

[PaulNewman]

Judging from these future trends, the value of my m:Studio just keeps on appreciating every day! I'm as excited just lurking here reading the advances and breakthroughs as I am to be using this software in my long term animation pipeline. At this moment I feel like I bet on the best horse, and the race has just started, and listen to all the cheers from the galleries . . . thanks pmG and keep it up!

[tjnyc]

Taron,

A bit off-topic, but any leak, I mean word on hair/fur or instancing for hi-poly count rendering? How about a render region tool for rendering via the viewport? And of course, when can we expect to see 2.0c, no need for a specific date, just something like tomorrow would be nice.http://www.cgtalk.com/images/icons/icon12.gif


Cheers,

[Taron333]

Can't let things leak out...hihi

As for the render-region tool for the view port or for window render, it's there and in great shape. I use it way too little, but it's working just fine. There's one fascinating trade it has, although I would most likely have to pretent that it was ment to do that, but if you have rendered a frame and then activate the render region, you can sort of truncate the render over the openGL and move around like a window into the rendered picture. It's a big blast with displacement, because while openGL show the original mesh, you can just reveal the rendered displacement over top of it....really funky and entertaining!

As for that...well....only days away now! Hold on tight! :)

[thesuit]

The results look great. Is there anyway of doing this on a Mac?
I don't think this is Os driven... its more like app driven. At the moment I'm moving pretty fast to reproduce this on Maya. As soon as I crack that up I'll post the Hypershade printscreen on the Alias Maya forum. For now I want to keep the conversation flowing here at pmG messiah forum where it all started.

other ppl should should be testing this with their apps...

[Taron333]

other ppl should should be testing this with their apps...
No reason to studder, I totally agree! ;)

The principles of it should be easily replicated with what ever app you're using. If not, just come and try m:Studio with it's upcoming version! :)

[Sil3]

As for that...well....only days away now! Hold on tight! :)
:thumbsup:

Im dying to see your scenes and dissect them bit by bit :applause:

[tjnyc]

Can't let things leak out...hihi

As for the render-region tool for the view port or for window render, it's there and in great shape. I use it way too little, but it's working just fine. There's one fascinating trade it has, although I would most likely have to pretent that it was ment to do that, but if you have rendered a frame and then activate the render region, you can sort of truncate the render over the openGL and move around like a window into the rendered picture. It's a big blast with displacement, because while openGL show the original mesh, you can just reveal the rendered displacement over top of it....really funky and entertaining!

As for that...well....only days away now! Hold on tight! :)
Nice! Thanks for the info. Days away... Can't beat that.


Cheers,

[Tesselator]

Hahaha, man, now it all makes sense....I could have switched to a different display mode!
Stop the tutorial clip around second 10 and look at the specs in the upper left! Also look at the model before I activate the MetaNurbs! You'll see! Besides, obviously at rendertime the mesh gets subdivided, that's the whole idea behind it. Dealing with the low polygon amount during animation allows for the immense realtime interaction and animation of large numbers of objects or characters in this case. It's not a computergame, it's visual effects for feature films and commercials or whatever highend type of use comes to mind. By now I am very sure that most people are familiar with the concept of subdivision geometry. The idea is to deform a low polygon cage, created to deform properly for high-density representation during rendering. However, with the MetaNurbs you can even work in realtime openGL by looking at the final geometry as it gets seen by the rendering. This may not sound too familiar to Maya users at this point, but it's very known to users of Lightwave or, obviously, users of Messiah in the past.

:rolleyes:
Yes, and of course you DO know that YOU were the inspiration for that feature in LW.
With all your ultra low-poly expiriments in LW5.0 they had no choice but to put the
Subdivide->Meta tool into real-time play in 5.5/5.6! When everyone saw your (and
yours alone), 3min. head modeling as a result of the techniques you and you alone
perfected there was just simply no going back! Allen and Stu knew it - you made it
happen!

LOL, I still keep your jester and a few other old works of yours as wallpaper files. :D


PS- It's always a treat for me to see what you're playing with presently.

[crossbones]

"Besides the absolutely correct observation of Gary, regarding my knowledge about the transitioning, I've been working with both Lightwave and Messiah together for the past 6 years, seizing to use lightwave's layouter for about 8 months now, I believe. For the most part when you switch over to messiah it really quickly begins to feel like, damn, that's just how I would have wanted it in LW, haha, but it soon becomes somewhat like: How was that in LW again..oh no...ah...never! At least that is what I remember and certainly how I feel now...hahaha. That goes for animation as well as for rendering now. I'd say, lucky them we don't offer modeling hahahaha...but besides that. Gary is right to as for our current missing pieces, which are automatic fur and heavy volumen things, but especially all the volume things including hypervoxel type effects will soon be there and certainly make a lot a lot of noise..hahaha...it's kind of a personal favorite of mine and I can't believe that we didn't find time to focus on it, yet, but it's been brewing for a while now and I'm almost willing to promiss that it's going to be a very nice premier! But, I must admitt I'm currently continue to be very captivated by all of the displacement and shading discoveries. Those are just too powerful and I am already brewing on a new concept for expanding on these things in yet another big revolution...maybe bigger, actually...well, it's some way to go...I'm very excited, but I don't want to jinx anything already.

Anyway, we're working on the particle section as well, which already did get a bit of a good boost, but still is in it's first steps. Particle is actually fun for us to code, but for some reason they got pushed into delay for a few times already. Many people may not realize how simple it can be to create stunning particle systems, particularely with a strong architecture underneath that allows for all sorts of crazy and conventional ideas."


If you guys want a taste of all great things to come for particles/fluid systems in Messiah, go see Gothika and look for that scene where the shirtless guy gets lit on fire. Even though it was done in Lightwave, Taron wrote the plugin that allowed for "3D" fire to be created so artistically accurate(Love those heat distortions). The render times were so dam fast(seconds) not to mention it rendered over a network . If you all just want to see the shot, cafefx has it on their website.

I am very excited to see what comes next.










__________________

[MoodyB]

Just spent the last hour rendering the Neckling project file from various angles :bounce:

[Taron333]

HAHA! Awesome! Make me happy, too!:thumbsup:

[Julez4001]

"

If you guys want a taste of all great things to come for particles/fluid systems in Messiah, go see Gothika and look for that scene where the shirtless guy gets lit on fire. Even though it was done in Lightwave, Taron wrote the plugin that allowed for "3D" fire to be created so artistically accurate(Love those heat distortions). The render times were so dam fast(seconds) not to mention it rendered over a network . If you all just want to see the shot, cafefx has it on their website.








__________________
Things that make you go "hmmmmmmmmm!"

[Spex84]

Amazing.

Apparently the upcoming Unreal 3 engine can handle displacement mapping...I wonder if animated displacement mapping will reach the games industry any time soon? Could base geo changes combined with animated displacement mapping potentially be used to create a complex damage modeller for driving simulation games? What if physics engines were used to drive dynamic creation of displacement textures in real-time? For instance, a brick landing on a metal panel would bring about the creation of an appropriately sized "dent" displacement map according to physics data. Or a boat travelling across a lake could generate wave-maps according to a fluid dynamics simulator. The possibilities are endless now, but I can't wait to see what the future brings.

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