"Concrete" adaptation by Ed Babb

[apeman]

wow... not one comment?

[soulshaker]

The stone-monster's midsection looks kind of akward. Might wanna do something to that. (You asked for a comment, that's the best I can give...)

[apeman]

Here's the new and improved half-built concrete with the sketches of him i drew. His feet are missing, i need to clean up his fingers and his back shoulder (not really visible) also needs some work. Quite happy with the muscle structure on the upper and forearms. The speed of my modelling has also slightly improved, which is nice. Nice.

Problem is i have a work project (money work..) to do simultaneously. Its hard to concentrate on this for extended periods of time... *sigh*

http://pantsula.neggme.com/concreteWIP/sketch.jpg
http://pantsula.neggme.com/concreteWIP/concwire.jpg



still would appreciate any ideas on how to split the amoeba in frame 4. Partcle fx sounds fun, but i know nothing about what kinda process i'd have to use. Fluid fx also looks interesting, but the same (lack of knowledge) applies.

[ximage]

hey, cool, ilke the idea.

but the topology looks a bit wierd in places, ul need to run the peck on to the shoulder muscle properly else it will just animate shit, don't know if ur still working on that bit, but the mesh does need cleaning up in parts. hope this help.

keep up the work

sweeney

[apeman]

Ok, he's still not done (ive been multitasking like a bitch.. doing another project on the side - crazy, i know - the car, the main road scene, the space scene, the amoeba.. etc): his hands need work and his facial blendshapes arent yet done. Niether is his rigging. This weeks gonna a tight fit...

nonetheless, here he is in pre-rendered, maya software screenshots.
edit: keep in mind, once rigged his shoulders will be slumped and his arms will seldom lift more than the angle shown here (except when he jumps the car - theyll be over his head then.... ). He really looks alot more 'in character' slumped like that; the massive arms arent quite as 'in your face'.. mmmm, 'inverted commas'

http://pantsula.neggme.com/concreteWIP/concwire5.jpg


the evolution.
http://pantsula.neggme.com/concreteWIP/concskyfin.jpg


tomorrow there shall be more, and of higher quality i hope. Textured (and hopefully) rigged. Then i can pose him and put him in the scene ive built...


oh yeah.. and the dragonfly...

[apeman]

here are some screenshots of stuff relatively complete.
Concrete, now skinned correctly (except for those knees... i made a screw up with the placement of the bones around the kneecap area.. too high. The idstortion isnt very nice but wont be very visible in this animation)
Other than that everything works peachy. Its IK for the legs, FK for the upper body and arms. No need to screw around with set driven keys for things im not gonna use.

http://img151.echo.cx/img151/2093/concretetextures9eo.jpg

the bump map needs some serious work and teh textures will be slightly fixed up, but this is pretty close to final. Im not too worried about these textures, theyre fun and easy for me to do. (anyone hiring texture artists? *~:D

http://img256.echo.cx/img256/9031/concretepose5uk.jpg


And heres a shot of the road (this angle is the opening shot and also shot 5, except he'll be under the spotlight at the far end in that one)
The lighting is a bit bright, it will be dullified ;)
The background (in the second) is composited in using photoshop (will try my hand at after effects later this week..), which explains the nasty edges. I'll render it with a black background on final (the ligher grey is just to judge contrast with what will be the sky) which, hopefully, will give me better looking edges.

I'll also fix up the light linking so that the far off lampposts recieve no light (i want them as silhouettes). Once again, the groudn will recieve less light than its currently getting. Concrete will have his own set of lights bound and following him.

http://img275.echo.cx/img275/1023/test3bo.jpg

V*** becomes *** *V

http://img150.echo.cx/img150/2321/testcopy2ly.jpg


comments and crits welcome.

[Waple]

So far it looks great! I really admire the way you can sketch out and storyboard like that. It's something I've never really been able to do.

The legs on the rock guy seem too small. Something that heavy would need more support I'd think. Unless he has rebar bones of course.

[chi]

im going to comment on the contrary to what waple said...I think the legs are to fat/thick...i like the skinnier legs in the concept sketchs...also the sahaping on the calves should be sharper and more angular, not so round like you have it...actually mabey some sharper edges throughout the model...I think the background is beautiful and once everthing is put together i see this being a great peice...im also wondering about your desktop scheme...it that a custom windows scheme? or just altered colors?

[qwed88]

This is really good, I like the lighting, and the concrete texture is getting pretty close, I think overall concrete needs to be a little bit more angular

you should have allot more replys to this thread it looks really awesome where your heading

[apeman]

thank you all fr your replies. Most of them seem to be regarding 'concrete'. Considering that the scene itself is a night scene, much of the models form will only be seen 'in full' and with full on lighting (like the example render) momentarily in the shot. Most of the focus is on teh 'shot' as opposed to the content, if that makes any sense at all.

And since i've painted weights and done all the jazz to set up the character, it'll be a long while before i go back and adjust him (meaning: only when im done with this particular project and decde i need extras for a showreel). As far as the concrete model is concerned, he's complete (except for the textures and maybe a few more blendshapes i might make). No alterations will be made to his structure. I may eventually paint him a distortion map, but thats it. ;)

Right now i have other things to focus on, namely the amoeba scene and the galaxy i plan on compositing into the space scene. Thats gonna be a major challenege to sort out. :banghead:

Maybe i should also ask the admins to move this post (considering its in the 'stills' section as opposed to the motion/animation section).

Once again, thank you all for your input :D

[apeman]

im going to comment on the contrary to what waple said...I think the legs are to fat/thick...i like the skinnier legs in the concept sketchs...also the sahaping on the calves should be sharper and more angular, not so round like you have it...actually mabey some sharper edges throughout the model...I think the background is beautiful and once everthing is put together i see this being a great peice...im also wondering about your desktop scheme...it that a custom windows scheme? or just altered colors?


as for the scheme, its quite a rare find: its called "Storm" and is by a modder called Krezno. Is msstyles os as long as you have UXthemepatch or stylexp you shoudl be able to use it. The _working_ download is hard to find as most links in forum posts regarding the theme are dead... look at page two or three for updated URLs hosted by other people who liek teh theme. The creators link is dead (or was last time i checked).

[qwed88]

Kind of curious as to why you asked for comments & critiques then?

Yes I'm thinking this should definitly be in WIP/Critique: Animation (http://www.cgtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=153)

[apeman]

Kind of curious as to why you asked for comments & critiques then?

Yes I'm thinking this should definitly be in WIP/Critique: Animation (http://www.cgtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=153)

hehe, more on motion than character design. Its not that i intend to rebuff or even contradict your suggestions, my intenion was to illustrate that at this point the model itself is unlikely to change; notbecause i dont want to make it better, time does not permit.

As soon as i have some workable animation to post i will do so :)

[doca]

Cute, funny, original...I'm jalous.:twisted:

[qwed88]

Cool, what I said probably sounded harsher than I intended it to, It's still looks very good will be keeping an I on it

[apeman]

Its been a while since ive updated, sorry for that. It sucks only having to render on one machine (though the advantage oof that is that i can at least access and manage all the files from a single point). Still...a renderfarm woudl be swell. Save a lot of time.

Anyway, here are some shots (in roughly chronological order, missing a few shot between that arent quite finished). Refer to the storyboard for reference and a hint at what voiceover will be playing in the background.

The Story centers around Ron Lithgow who has had his brain transplanted into a massive rock body by departing aliens. He can no longer feel, taste or touch and in eseence is no longer human, but has new eyes cabable of viewing the most amazing things such as the amoeba at his feet and galaxies far away. Theres lots more to it, other characters and backstories, conspiracies, government agents and senators but that area of the storyline doesnt figure into my short adaptation of just two pages. I focus in on pages 6 and 7 (originally i went up to page 9, but i really dont have the time to adapt that much; it involves 4 more characters and many blendshape animations which given the timeframe i have - june 1st to 30th - is just plain impossible by myself). These pages focus on Concrete's escape from his government captors and few friends to visit his ex wife who thinks he is dead. Theres no conclusion in the two pages but i chose to adapt them because they gve me a lot ot work with visually.


The Storyboard
(using frames from Paul Chadwick's Concrete, all images copyright)

http://pantsula.neggme.com/concreteWIP/01story.gif


ok, so..

-
the opening shot (sans Concrete - I'll post some pics of him and his new textures later)

http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/00.jpg

-
The Space scene, 300 frames (tho likely ill cut it down to the first 150. The clouds in the bottom left (turqoise) the bottom right (pinkish) and top right (blue) are all animated using cube, sphere and cone fogs with solid fractals on the transparency. This is frame 1/3001

http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/01.jpg

-
"Galaxies and the vast worlds at our feet". This shot zooms into the amoeba scene.
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/02.jpg

may preceed the above shot, then again, may not even be included
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/03.jpg

//



- a bunch of shots with the car and a majority of the motion will be here, will fill you in-



//

-
Final Shot, ("Like a dream..") though im not sure if i like this angle...
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/10.jpg

-
This dragonfly will be used in the opening shot
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/dragonfly.jpg

but will only be this big...
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/realsize.jpg

-



crits on lighting/texturing would be appreciated
will upload some motion clips later for crit too.

Later!
Ed

[apeman]

ALMOST DONE! editing and comping now (deadline is tomorrow morning)
will post an avi or mov as soon as i can

[apeman]

ITS DONE! finally.

Almost...
The edit needs some tightening and the voiceover was recorded so low that it wasnt usable in the final product so that area of labour.. isnt.. exactly... done, but the tedious process of painting weights, waiting for renders and tweaking lights is OVER. thank god. At a later stage i might decide to redo the opening shot (not happy with it) and make the dragonfly comp larger. you can hardly see him as its a bit too dark. I also encountered problems with the way the AVI was compressed; on some machines it would come out supercontrasted and way to dark (namely mine and a few others) but on others it was perfect. I still cant understand why.

Considering the voice over what i may do is replace speech with narrative text identical to the comic. I was very happy with the score and once the text bubbles are added and the other sound finalised i think it will flow much better than it does right now. Though it can wait a week... ;)

in chronological order (missing shots A, H, I, J & K - 'll post them later as i dont have those final composites here at home). Shots B1 (concrete looking at the ground) and C (the space sceen) are also not the finals. They will be replaced with their final versions when i get them onto my machine here at home along with the other missing shots. I will post the animation as soon as i can encode it decently and hae a space to store it.

B1
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/01.jpg

B2
http://img275.imageshack.us/img275/9753/b2silhouette000482gb.jpg

C
http://pantsula.neggme.com/conc/02.jpg

D
http://img275.imageshack.us/img275/7403/damoeba9ff.jpg

E
http://img275.imageshack.us/img275/2598/edriftingwithamoeba000035le.jpg

F
http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/1048/fnotimetothink000185pd.jpg

G
http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/4885/gonlytoreact000091zh.jpg

I would enjoy hearing your praises, slander and libel. Also any stories you may have about Natalie Portman's knockers in "closer".

[apeman]

/me does a dance for comments

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