PDA

View Full Version : "Monolith" by Marte Studio

MarteStudio
08-19-2006, 02:36 AM
Here it is, hope you like it

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/Panasonic-AndroidesWeb.mov

This is a project we did in 2000. This was in the days of Lightwave 6.x

I was not able to post it then, but I would really like to hear opinions from you guys now that I can share it with the community outside Costa Rica.

Here are some stills from it (including this wallpaper).

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/RobotsWallPaper.jpg

The whole project took two months from start to finish. Of those two months, five weeks went into designing and building the robots. We had to adjust pistons and other pieces in many places to achieve a design that would actually work physically.

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/FaceTests.jpg

I am proud to say that all the mechanics actually work... now if only we could build them for real and feed them a AA battery!

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/RobotaMS.JPG


http://www.martestudio.com/demos/FullBody02.JPG


The lighting uses mostly shadow maps and a single area light because at that time we did not have a big enough render farm. The frames took about 20 to 30 minutes to render on a PIII.

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/escenacincofix_00022.JPG

The robots' faces are scanned with an old MicroScribe from plaster molds that we learned to make especially for this project. The girls seemed to be much more courageous than the guys about having an alginate mold made of their faces.

On most scenes the backgrounds are matte paintings, but a couple of scenes use filmed backgrounds that we had to track using tennis and ping pong balls and later erase. Gosh... today it's so much simpler!

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/MattePaint.jpg (http://www.martestudio.com/demos/MattePaint.jpg)

http://www.martestudio.com/demos/Maschio2.JPG


As usual, there are things we would add or do different these days, but that's what we always say.
mistasam02
08-19-2006, 03:20 AM
haha why is it all the cool arsty stuff is old? back in the day people made some really sweet cg shorts! that one was awesome btw! very very cool :thumbsup:
MarteStudio
08-19-2006, 03:27 AM
We keep wishing to get projects like this more often. But the truth seems to be that most clients are not asking for innovative or cool things in recent times.

I'm hoping that by showing this work, people who see it become aware that there's a lot to get from cgi besides your average cartoony character.
Silverwing
08-19-2006, 12:14 PM
Jeah... that was great
Amazing performence... ha ha

Time has changed for CG since
2000 alot! Things has become
much more easyer...

I really like your work!
Amazing projekt!

4 Stars form me...
colony
08-19-2006, 02:10 PM
Very nice!
What software did you use for animation? ( maybe it was messiah ) and Is it mocap?
MarteStudio
08-19-2006, 02:59 PM
There are (or there were then) no MOCAP libraries that we knew containing the subtle motion of a person just standing up, so what we did was that we animated a very long cycle (40 seconds) of a robot just standing up, sometimes balancing their body to one side or the other or letting a foot slide slightly in one direction and rebalancing, etc. We did one cycle for the guys and one for the girls. In the big scene you can see 40 robots standing and looking at the camera, each robot has a different moment of that long animation, so that it looks like each of them is moving independent of the others. Only their heads were animated separately to have each of them look at the camera. That was done by hand to have differences between each robot that other auto procedures would not give.

For the walking motion we were fortunate enough to use MOCAP sequences from a Library. It was the most photorealistic solution, but because of the way MOCAP works, it tends to add a bit of shakiness to the motion of the head that is not totally human (probably an accumulation of errors that can affect the smoothness of the topmost part of the rig), it felt rigid, but at the same time it looked a bit robotic and we decided to keep it.

We used Lightwave for animation and rendering and Max for converting MOCAP motion to Lightwave compatible files (it was possible with Lightwave, but we took a strange turn and ended up using Max for that...).
Random Sime
08-19-2006, 06:46 PM
I am proud to say that all the mechanics actually work... now if only we could build them for real and feed them a AA battery!

--

The robots' faces are scanned with an old MicroScribe from plaster molds that we learned to make especially for this project. The girls seemed to be much more courageous than the guys about having an alginate mold made of their faces.

Nice work! So... fantastic :)

I read that if battery technology had advanced at the same rate as CPU technology then we'd all be running our cars off a AA battery... replaced ONCE a year!

And I understand the aprehension to having your face covered in alginate! I've done that before, and as the alginate was being put on my face, one of my nose straws fell out! I could only breath through one nostril for an hour:eek:
MarteStudio
08-21-2006, 09:22 PM
It's funny how things have changed so much in just a few years. Modelling has become so easy, we rarely have a need to use a scanning device anymore.

We actually used the scanner as a guarantee to the client that the faces would be identical to those of the actors. The client was a bit incredulous that realistic faces could be done (ha ha!!!).

Anyway the morph targets were all done by hand, and frankly I think we achieved better acting than that we had shot.
M-TICO
08-22-2006, 10:39 PM
Excelente modelado :thumbsup:
CGTalk Moderation
08-22-2006, 10:39 PM
This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.