Animation: Wip Please Crit

[jussing]

'Yello!

I love the animation in the clip. Wonderfully loose and natural movement in the joints. :thumbsup:

I really appreciate seing an animation where you can see how the bones are placed - that's really insightful.

Nitpicking: I'd prefer a higher camera angle when they run over the tires. At that point you sorta have to guess what happens.

The only animation I'm not very fond of, are the very last few seconds, but I take it that's still WIP?

Cheers,
- jonas

[unrev]

thats a great animation , fluid, good story, nice character designs. it inspires me alot. The thing you can improve is that some of the camera shots are too long. Shortening them will add some dynamism and make everything even more interesting.


excellent job overall!!:buttrock: :airguitar

[John Lee]

Heys guys i think i will change the camera shots a little bit i just don't want to fall into the trap of the CGI camera thing!

Thanks

Neolee

[jussing]

Good point, neolee40...

In the tire shot all I mean is go a little higher, so we look a bit DOWN on the tires... think of it as a crane shot, or just a 10 feet high shot.... I'm not talking vertically down, just with an angle... Keep the distance exactly the same, but lift the camera 5-10 feet, and adjust the rotation correspondingly. That's my humble advice, anyway.

And yup, it's a really good idea to avoid that roaming camera-of-god stuff... ;)

I can't wait to see this stuff rendered. -What do the sets look like?

What's the package, Max/Maya/Lightwave?

If I may ask, what were your conciderations regarding using bones in the face, instead of, ie, using gizmos linked to selected vertices? (or any other technique there might be - I have yet no experience in facial animation)

Regards,
- jonas

[John Lee]

These are just test renders i need some sort of out door moutain range like the LOTR stuff landscapes having trouble making them! and making them look good! LOL


http://www.lemon-tea.com/john_avi/Pics/Out_dorr_013.jpg

http://www.lemon-tea.com/john_avi/Pics/Out_dorr_014.jpg

[John Lee]

As for face bones use them if u can u get alot more realistic momvment! i chose them cause their non liner!

neolee40

[jussing]

Great! uhm... can you elaborate on how they're "non linear"... as opposed to what linear technique...?

(Thanks! :cool: )

- Jonas

[Dave Black]

As opposed to morph targets, or blend shapes, bones are very "non-linear". And he's quite right...Personally...I think morphs are a pain in the rear. I use them only were I have to.

Amazing animation, btw. Really pulled alot of character out our those bones.

Sweet job. Pretty long, too...Must have taken some weeks...

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[jussing]

Sure, I believe both of you, but I still don't understand "non-linear", in terms of bones in the face... :shrug:

How does it compare to, say, in Max, linking a "gizmo" object to certain vertices, and move the gizmo around for facial muscle control?

(sorry if I'm going OT, I don't want to take focus off of neolee40's great animation...)

Cheers,
- Jonas

[KurtBoutilier]

Totally cool!!!!!! Great stuff

[kurt30]

Very nice character animation! I a bit confused at the very end but I'll just wait till you finish up.

I've never used the boned expression technique (seems like I only have time to cheat with morph target) but you have inspired me to give it a try. It looks so much better!

Great work!

[harmonic01]

Awesome animation. Yeah, I was also wanted camera to be a bit higher in a tire shot. Than again, it's clear enough for me what's going on. It's just I allmost stood up so I could get a better fiew. :-)

For facial bones, do you set up sliders for expressions or you just move the bones manually? (or some kind of helper object) I tried facial animation with bones in max before by moving each bone, and it took me longer to animate than with morph targets. Well, I guess you gotta pay with some speed for quality. :-)

again, great anim, can't wait to see more.

[John Lee]

Harmonic!


http://www.lemon-tea.com/john_avi/Pics/Face_Pic.jpg

AS u can see i had the same problem! Well the set up it's self took about half a day to set up. And yes the their are expression involved. I also use CTRL Null objects to CTRl the lids to Blink and jaw bone CTRL! The thing is modeling isn't my strongest. So to counter act i just set it up and literally do straight ahead animation with it putting in overlapping action in lips, jaw brows etc....

Thanks

Guys just working now on the second half of the film it should be finished by MAY 2003 LOL!!!!

Laters

Neolee40( John Lee )

[Oren Ben-Tov]

the animation relly flow good :)
I felt that the green dude should breath more after he runs, didnt feel he was breathing hard after that long run,
but other then that great animation.
I should try morphing with bones, instead of doing 30 face morphs.

[Dave Black]

Some packages are now implementing(or already have) non-linear morphing. Not 100% sure how it works, as I've never used it, but I've seen some very cool stuff from that technology. I think Nichimen(or whatever they are called now) already use it in their software.

One other thing to consider with Morphs Vs. Bones facial animation, is that if you use bones, you don't run into the evil problem of having to recreate you morphs if you need to edit the underlying structure of the mesh, i.e. if the vertex count increases or decreases...It can help in some situations, though doing so is obviously not the best idea. Of course, I'm not very up on how packages like Maya and LW implement morphs...But in Max, it needs a rock solid idea of your vertex count and vertex ID numbers.

(sigh)

Again, AWESOME animation!!!

-3DZ

:D

[webfox]

Excellent work so far! :applause:

A couple of things stood out to me.

The back flip in the beginning seems odd somehow. I know from personal experience that the body follows the hips in a move like that, so immediately after the jump, the hips need to tuck into the situp-style crunch and come out of it as the body unfolds for the landing. Maybe his legs don't tuck in tightly enough... Something looks off as far as the center of rotation when he does that move. (I'm sorry to be nitpicky about it, everything else looks so good in that shot.)

Also, when the robot character fell down after the last tire, as he's getting up, he just gets up and goes into a full run. I feel that he should look up, check his competition to gauge how much ground he lost, and then pick himself up and get back into the race. At the very least, he should be looking for his opponent while he's getting up. At this point he's just looking down while he gets up and he doesn't seem to have the conviction that his speed and effort suggest. Seems almost passive, if you know what I mean.

Thanks for sharing this. I can't wait to see more!

[Crash]

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Gr8 animation :beer:

[Flog]

Your great, I wish you were working for me, hehehehe or working with me. Great fluid animation!!! Keep up the good work!!

How long did it take you to get it to look like that, or work the animation to be so fluid?

[John Lee]

Hey Web fox

U know your right man. I spend so much time thinking about motion and trying to get everything looking smooth and sometimes i forget about stuff like that! It's not about how the characters move it's about the motivation! And if that's not portayed then there no point in making the animation smooth is there? Oh Man i got 5 mouths left to do another 2.15 mins of animation. I'm getting so much crits off your guys? Which igonna write down then once all animation is done i will finese shot by shot!

Thanks Alot guys!

John Lee

[John Lee]

Hi Flog!

Well what u see there for script, animatic to half way animation took me about 1 mouth and a half! I plan to do 3 sec a day minium! and so days 7 secs! It's tough but it's worth it in the end!

John Lee

[sebek27]

wow great animation! what software did you use ??

[John Lee]

Hey sebek27

I used project messiah 1.57, i know it's about 5 years old! LOL. I'll still an old dinosaur! Thinking of changing to MAYA?

John Lee

[TimP]

:applause: Keep It going John, great work. You seem to have put loads of time in to developing this baby and ya know what? It shows keep it up M8 the it will be fantastic when u finish!

[sinbad]

Looking really good John, I hope you'll have it pretty much tweaked for when we go to 3d Festival next month!

Keep going buddy!

paul

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