Awsome… Il mess around with some deformers on the eyes this weekend… (something i havent yet used in maya), but i assume there prety much the same as the FFDs in max… Im also hoping to do some tests loosly based on the Intro story board… Is there any way i can get fists ship model ?
I noticed some audio files in yourweb archive… Are the aliens going to speak, please say they speak
cheers and beers,
paxton
Hye Pax great idea lets do some story board action. Let Kirk pick what ever he wants to see animated and lets do it I’m totaly psyched about it. 
paxton - Yes, the aliens speak. However, they don’t speak any recognizable language. I’m thinking of writing down a few ‘most excellent’ phrases muttered from my 2 year old son and converting these into the alien’s dialog. 
We have the ship about 80% complete, and models for the characters that should be good enough to put together roughs for the opening sequence. I think you guys should go for it and we’ll fill in the details later. Even if you’re animating in 3DS it’ll be good to break down the shots as an animatic to see how everything flows and if any changes are needed.
Once we get this sequence done, some of the music and sound fX guys will have something to play with for awhile.
Sure great, but I only have the 1st Alien in my posetion, so I will need the second and the cockpit.
Hello,
here my animation test relating this storyboard pic. I use the
KIRT sketch material to scale the cockpit relating the Alien.
Test05 - Storyboard_01 (938 k)
I’ve some problems with the heaviness of the NOTTOSHABI rig and the confusion of the FIST cockpit (maybe due to the fbx conversion…is it?).
I know that FIST and NOTTOSHABI don’t know the fantastic minds of KIRT , but I would like to speak about some problems that fly in my mind.
About the rigging: I’m not sure that the full setup is necessary for Alien#1, I think it depends from the storyboard. I dunno what he has to do during the movie, but (for example) if he has only drive the ship, the current setup is unnecessary.
I hope you understand what I mean…it is similar when I have to animate a character walk and the storyboard says that the camera never shows his legs: I don’t animate them !!
Other: I’ve some diffucult with the spine controllers…for me, they are few usable…they allow little rotations with a lot of side-effect on the other part of the body. In the cockpit, for example, I’ve to parent the hand controllers to the steering wheel to obtain realistic movements, but when I try to move the spine the arms jump and twist themselves.
In the end, I think that some controllers for the forehead part is necessary to grow up the expressiveness of the character, but it is my opinion.
About the cockpit :
The FBX file that fist sent me had been converted and imported in Maya, but the scale and the pivots are almost everytime not aligned with the right axis of the animation. We have to find quickly a safe procedure to setup the file coming from Max (or other).
There are, also, a lot of separate objects…my suggestion is to organize them in logical subdivisions and group or weld them in macro objects. Only the significative objects have to be isolated.
For the animation, I ignored the behaviour of the cockpit commands, levers and buttons. So, I suppose that it has a moving seat and I place the pivot of the steering wheel using my fantasy :).
That’s all folks, I hope you suggest me a lot of c&c.
T H I S________P R O J E C T S_______R U L E Z
hey cut, i’m downloading the animation right now, i’ll talk about that later.
on the cockpit: i fully understand your concerns, but you have to understand that the spaceship is still in progress. i don’t know what kirt want to do with it through the course of the story because we don’t have complete storyboards, so there might be some unforseeable changes in the future, keeping the objects seperate but well organized makes that process a lot easier (or at all possible)
i’m sure for the final animation your job will be much easier 
Yes,
yuo’re right… I want only manifest my minds
If all everybody know the right way, well… great!
Yes…it’s really funny open your cokpit file!..an explosion of objects!! BUMMMMMMMMMMMM
ahahah
you rock, man
cutnpaste - I believe that Paxton is working on fixing a lot of the rig problems with the alien and trying to add some deformers to the face so we can get more expression out of the eyes.
You’re right that for most of the film the legs will not need to be animated on Alien #1. He doesn’t even have a walking scene so don’t worry too much about the leg problems. I want to concentrate on his upper body and facial expressions. That’s what is going to sell this character to the audience.
The seats in the ship should probably stay stationary. In your animation the seat moves but the body isn’t moving with it. As fist stated, we’re still working on the ship so all the animation controls will be included when we get to a final version.
One other thing I noticed though … the exterior view into the cockpit is something we’ll want to avoid. The widow will have a dark reflective glass on it so it won’t make sense that we can see through it sometimes, but other times we can’t. I’d rather you just hide half of the windshield and shoot the interior scenes as if the camera was inside.
You know, like how Hollywood would shoot interior shots of people riding in the back seats of cars. They would cut the car in half and frame the scene so you only saw the interior parts and the actors.
Can someone c&c my animations pleasE!!
I need it to learn! gh
I mean…more funny, more jumping, more realistic, more alcoholic, or …
p.s. Only positive and kindly c&c pleaseeeeeee
Hello,
here another animation relating the Storyboard
Test 07 (889k) - xvid compressor
It was made with nottoshabi setup, tell me what do you think about it. It was hard because it has the raspberry (pprrrrrrrrr) and the fat laugh…
Kirt : the camera is fake-inside the ship, but it doesn’t move with the nacelle. Do you think it should be move with it?
Ok, now, I will examine the beta version of the setup by PaxtonGerrish, just to get confidence!
wow you’re working hard these days cutnpaste
as far as my judgement goes it looks very good. btw i’ve noticed that the hands deform very bad on this rig, that should be fixed as they can be seen very close-up.
Thank you Fist,
I hope that XVid compressor is not a problem for all everybody, because DivX installs the Gator application too, that is a famous spyware.
If I try to remove the Gator, Divx cannot permit me to encode…bahhhhhhhhhhh…
:shrug:
I hope that XVid compressor is not a problem for all everybody
you guessed right!
well, why not to try QuickTime Mov Soronson3 compression? atleast everybody can make/play it freely. Let’s try to find/make some standards in every aspect of this projects, before we migrate to the new homesite.
Yes…quicktime is another one solution…
I choosed XVid 'cause it is really powerfull…the file is more small than using DivX (900k against 1200kb)
:rolleyes:
i’m ok with xvid, i think it’s one of the best encoders out there and i definitely prefer it to divx… but it’s not popular enough to be used on the website once it goes online, that’s true.
i think quicktime is the way to go, the only format that’s even more compatible is mpeg-1, but we don’t want to use that right 
Hey Cut great work, I love the animation. I have just one thing to say. The way he moves the steering device, its to much it looks like he is swerveing side to side. That should be a lot more subtle.
P.S. If you guys decide to use my set up I will rework those deformations on the model.
