Acting Challenge #3: Post Progress; Deadline Nov. 27th

#27

YEYY! We’re getting some extra time! Great news!!:bounce:

-A

#28

Hey guys, I’m really sorry, but I wont be able to participate in this contest… I’m having alot of work to do and my time is really full… I hope I can join the next, but until there, I’ll be watching and learning with you all!

See ya in the next Challenge!

#29

4th december deadline did I read that right? Is it too late to hop on board this one? I have a nice little idea for the 2nd topic (exercise gone wrong) which I’ve been wanting to tackle for a while now. Is it okay to use an already rigged up character or a simple character rig?

#30

yeah ! go for it!

#31

cool. good stuff - I already have a character that I built recently for an animation short and I’m quite happy with the rig so I think it would be good to try and put him through his paces on this little test and it’d give me a chance to work with constraint/parent tools too.

i wanted to have my character walking on a treadmill, then his reaction as it speeds up to a faster walk (looking down, grabbing the side bars), then a jog and finally a full on sprint for life (seeing him run and slowly lose steam) before finally he ends up falling over his own feet, colliding into the treadmill floor and being chucked off the back in a mangled heap. I know its not exactly original but Is this a viable concept for animating in this challenge?

#32

lol I was actually thinking of doing the same thing :slight_smile: - granted I may not even finish it so go for it as well ! :slight_smile:

#33

Yeah, good thing the deadline is later, I didn’t get a chance to animate because of the Thanksgiving holiday. But I did make the switch from thumbnails to the rig now. And I really have to say that it was easier for me to just get the poses to roughly match what I drew on the thumbnails as opposed to trying to find them from scratch starting with the rig.

Quicktime

#34

I finally have progress to post :scream: SirRon you have some nice stuff going on and i will comment on it when i get some time later today. I will also try and comment on AmirP and DarkenR stuff.

Here are my keys for Exercise gone wrong.

#35

Aye, we are on the same page :slight_smile:

#36

Hey folks!

This is the first time I’m taking part in CGTalk animation session! Here’s my final animation…I wanna make it final, because now I really don’t have time for this. There is a lot of room for improvement, and I could have done a lot better than this. Well, I did my best to finish up with this 19 second animation in about a week. I hope its not that bad!! heh heh… I’ve learned a lot in the process of making it! So, it was a great experience! And I’m sure I’ll make something much better next time!!

           [i][b] [Loses at Roulette (QuickTime 644 KB)](http://www.amritd.com/MyVideos/mrLooser.mov)[/b][/i]

Hi there SirRon! Whats up! I saw your your update on CGChar. Nice to see it in 3d! I like what you’re doing! Looking forward to see your final stuff. Good luck!

Hey dudeacle! Your key drawings look nice!! I can imagine how your animation will look when its done!! I like what your’re doing with that little doggy! hehheh…

Hey there AmirP! First of all thanks for sharing your Roulette! I don’t know why, your link isn’t working. Looking forward to see your stuff!

Good luck everyone, and God bless!
-A

#37

Mad panic! Im trying to finish my animation but i am having troubles with the frisbees. I am animating them just as polygon geometry and when Maya interpolates the geometry it goes crazy. If i just animate the Y axis Maya will animate the X and Z axis too, causing the frisbee to flip and turn when it interpolates the motion. Does anyone know why this is happening?

If anyone can come up with a better way to do it then just animating geometry i would like to know. The frisbee just needs to be animated in the translate and rotations nothing fancy here.

SirRon i like the changes you made from the first test. The way he slings back and slumps down after he sees he lost is gold! I think you can give him more expressive emotion in his face when the roulette is still moving. It looks like he is angry.

Amrit-Derhgawen there is great snappy motion there. I like his astonished face when he sees he lost. There are too many expressions in his face throughout most of it. I think you can do without a few of them.

AmirP the link wasnt working when i tried it earlier today, ill check back later.

#38

hmm hey guys
dudecle - hey man, have you tried locking the attributes your not aniamting then,so animating one attribute at a time?
you could try putting it in a null group and animating that.

Amrit- I really like your aniamtion very cool :smiley:

SirRon - also very cool :D. Your looks like it could be really strong ! would love to see it finished!

Im having trouble finishing mine been busy all weekend and been to 3 December today, so I prob wont finish this time either (getting to be a habit now) lol. Finishing college for the hollidays now tho so mebe i will get better at the time managment :wink:

#39

Hey dudeacle!

I’m glad to get your comment! I totally agree with you…there are too many facial expressions…lol…Oh well, I’ll try to make better stuff next time!! heh heh… By the way, I don’t think we have more time to work on it…do we?? hehehe…maybe I can get rid of those stupid facial expressions and re-render.

Hey Darken-R, I’m glad you like it! Cheers!:slight_smile:
Great work guys!! See ya’ll soon!
-A

#40

Have you tried changing the rotation mode? (Hold ‘E’ and left click and hold, you should see a marking menu to change the mode Global/Local/Gimbal) Chances are you’ll change to gimbal, just watch out for gimbal lock.

Thanks for pointing out the facial expression, I almost neglected it.

My finished animation soon.

#41

DarkenR- Thanks for your help. I tried making a group of the frisbee and that didnt work, i also tried constraining the group to the frisbee and that didnt work either. And when i reanimate the keys i didnt want (the ones maya did for some weird reason) I get something i dont want. GRRRRR! Maya can be imature sometimes.

Amrit-Derhgawen- The time says 12:56 AM GMT time and and contest should technicaly be over. But i am in Arizona USA and the time here is 6:00 PM :slight_smile: (pulling at straws) Im going to work till the end of the day and turn in what i have.

#42

SirRon- Thanks for your help. I havnt tried gimbal yet. Im going to give that a shot, it just might work. I usually avoid gimbal, because it can lock. Does anyone prefer using gimbal? And why?

#43

If gets really bad you can always key and pose every frame :slight_smile:

Edit:
Finished Animation. I’m not too happy with it, I know I can do better. :argh:
minor Edit: should have frame count.

Amrit:
Very nice, I do like the snappy movement. Though I don’t quite understand why the roulette wheel started spinning again. And the motion blur seems a little too much, it’s hard to read the anticipation when he takes of his glasses before he takes a closer look. I’m sure you can rerender with some changes, it’s not like this is an official challenge :slight_smile:

Hey, is that the AAU Norman rig?

#44

Originally Posted by SirRon
If gets really bad you can always key and pose every frame :slight_smile:

SirRon- Thats almost what it came down to. The bad part about it is that im not happy with the timing. Your animation came out great! Congrats.

Heres my finished animation…for now :slight_smile:

http://www.geocities.com/matt2morrow/CGSociety/MiniChallengeAnimatioin/ExerciseGoneWrong/FirstPass.mov

#45

Hey SirRon the aniamtion is great :). If I were you I might try and add some anticipation in before he realises hes lost… maybe a double take or just a little longer to reach his shocked expression?

great job either way mate!

-Darken

#46

Hi there SirRon!

I agree with you…I can reduce the motion blurr…Maybe soon I will re-render the whole thing and make some small adjustments in this animation!!

Ohh…lol…the roulette wheel started spinning again bacause it was tampered by some bad guys! LOL…Umm…Maybe I didn’t know how to show that in my animation…heheh…I could’ve tried something to show “why” it started turning again… but that would’ve made my scene a lot more complex, and I was running out of time, I had to finish something else. So I did everything very quickly. Next time I promise I’ll show something much better! heh heh…

Thanks a lot for your advice SirRon.:smiley:

For your animation: You’re doing good. But you’re letting the computer do a lot of work for ya. I can see some floaty-ness when the guy starts looking at the roulette wheel. You need to use the breakdowns effectively in order to get rid of that floaty-ness. Before you add interpolation or before you let the computer add straight-inbetweens…make sure your animation is looking almost like “full animation”. Making the tangents spline will just make it look smooth. Then you’ll need to clean up and look for those unwanted spline overshoots etc, and fix that.
Looks like you’ve used IK hand controls throughout your animation…maybe… Watch out for the popping elbows. The hands are looking a bit IK-ish. I don’t use IK hands unless I really have to. But thats okay if you’re comfortable with IK hands.

You’re improving! Keep animating…Good luck!:slight_smile:
Oh yeah…Its AAU Norman…

-A