This is my first motion capture test,done using ipisoft and the Kinect controller for the xbox 360.There is a lot of potential for this as a viable Motion capture set up and if you use around 4-6 PS3 Eye Cameras you can get some super accurate data.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4r7Tsk5NK8
I will carry out more tests as the week marches on and hopefully I can start blocking out scenes , improving the animatics greatly.
MrNexy
Hey there ,
I did a quick and dirty test of re-targeting the motion capture data I got from a capture session , using ipisoft’s desktop motion capture suite trail version.I slapped it onto a base mesh and simple rig that I had lying around . It was a fairly simple process and I was quite impressed with how the motion translated to the simple and fairly limited rig that I set up for the mesh.The video includes annotations with some extra information 
Mr.Nexy
I’ve been doing some experiments using http://www.ipisoft.com 's Desktop Motion Capture 30 day trial , while it was easy to use and yielded great results , as a trial version it was limited to a 5 second export so I twisted some arms and managed to purchase a license for the express version.The express version is a kinect only version of the application but you can upgrade to the multi-camera version at a later date if you so choose. I’ll start doing the motion capture for the first minute of the film within the next few days and rig it up to a base mesh that I have created.Thank you again for taking the time to read my posts and I look forward to posting some more fleshed out animatics soon , contributions are still being accepted over on the contributions page at Sponduly http://www.sponduly.org/project/waking-hour-jump-start
Mr.Nexy
Hey there folks ,
After a much needed software and hardware upgrade I’ve been hard at work and these are the first glimpses of the fruits of my labor. The sculpt is something that I created to test out the new base mesh that I made , it was very quickly decimated inside of Z-brush and rigged up in blender.I have recently acquired a 4 camera motion capture setup and have been testing it out and doing R&D on an efficient workflow.
There are a few issues with the video , like foot sliding and the feet dropping through the floor , that is due to my current rig and its something that I’ll continue to work on and refine.The mesh needs to be retopoligised and I plan to paint it and use it in my new Reel.
I am really excited to start getting the scenes for the film fleshed out and push my new system to its limits.
Software used iPiSoft Desktop Motion Capture Basic Edition , Z-brush 4 and Blender 2.59. My new system specs are i7 2600K 3.1Ghz Quad Core with 16GB RAM and 1GB GTX Nvidia 550 Ti card.
Mr.Nexy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5IRWSaQop8
After revising my re-targeting workflow , I tweaked some things and started blocking in hand and head animation.The feet still drop through the ground here and there and I have to adjust the rotation of the left arm but I will be fixing that shortly , after this test I will most likely adjust the proportions of the sculpt , re-topologise , uvmap ,texture it and go for a final version.
Mr.Nexy
In an attempt to improve the quality of my character work I spent the better part of yesterday on my anatomy studies .I have been reading Scott Spencer’s “ZBrush Digital Sculpting: Human Anatomy” , it is without a doubt one of the best learning resources that I have ever used and I will no doubt be re-reading it many times over the next few years.
After having spent so much time studying I decided that it was time for a break , I opened up Sculptris and created a base mesh of sorts and began sculpting , spending 1 1/2 hour on the head and another 15 minutes on the torso.
Its a WIP so there are still a few things here and there that need to be corrected but I am happy with the over all improvement in the quality of my work since I started my studies. As far as my workflow is concerned , I like to bounce back and forth between Zbrush and Sculptris for sculpting before decimating the mesh (The original Sculpt comes in at around 400,000 Tris )and exporting to blender for test renders using the default sss shader and a few lights, I have included the test renders that I did in blender and a render from Z-brush as attachments.
Ultimately this is the quality of the character work that I’d like to do for Waking Hour (with a fair deal of re-topology and texture painting of course ) and any other projects that I get involved in.
Still 1
Still 2
Still 3
Still 4
Mr.Nexy
Hey folks ,
I received some good news recently and wanted to share it with you .
The results are in from the Hollywood Screenplay Contest , Waking Hour placed as an official finalist in the treatment category , the pdf that I entered is an earlier version of the script and I am continuing to flesh it out beyond the pilot.
You can check the other categories and finalists by following the link below.
http://www.hollywoodscreenplaycontest.com/contest/past-winners-2010/2011-official-finalists
Mr.Nexy
Greetings from south africa mr Nexy.
Congratulations on getting to the finals! That’s a super achievement in itself. How many people do you have working on your team? The work looks very insightful and very productive so far. When did you start? Oh, and love love love the concept!
Hey kvdo ,
Thanks for the support , for the most part I have been working on the project on my own though ,I had someone working with me on the concept art but as is usually the case he got paying work (which is fantastic as he’s really talented) and couldn’t lend as much time to help out. I’d love to get some other people on board when I have the resources.I started work on the script around July of last year while I was on holiday in Johannesburg and Tokyo , development has been going on slowly but steadily since then.
I love the concept too ! I hope more people jump on the bandwagon even if its just to add their 2c.
Some time as passed since I last posted here , there have been some positive developments on my side.I went from doing R&D on Stereoscopic 3D for the studio that I was helping out , to doing the stereoscopic compositing on their animation project. Since then I have also joined forces with a new concept artist as JJ was not able to fulfill his duties , I should have some concept art up in the next couple days to show. In the mean time I also gave my blog a much needed face lift Waking Hour Movie Site
MrNexy
Concept art has started rolling in , thanks to Scott Harris the new concept artist that I joined forces with a short while ago.What youre seeing is the early stages of character design for the female lead Abbigail Brink and a concept for the city that she lives in.Scott and I decided to start out with stylised character designs, working further towards more realistic versions using referance pictures of the performers who will be lending their voices to the characters.
Also after much research and the experience gained from my recent post as Stereoscopic Compositor at a local studio , I have decided to pursue Waking Hour as a stereoscopic production.I have been hard at work , developing the script further and looking into Digital Asset Management systems.
For the time being I have set up an ftp server , populating it with folders and resources to aid in the organisation and tracking of digital assets, coupled with .xls progress reports I think that this should help keep things organised and on track with less effort.
Other less important updates, I’ve taken the fall and opted into a tumblr account if anybody is on tumbler you can follow the project there too
http://nexymedia.tumblr.com/
Mr.Nexy
Hey there folks , after some time and project restructuring and much work , I want to invite you guys to check out the newest update.There’s a new pitch video with new material and a production schedule.If you like the idea , please share the campaign and help us get featured on IndieGoGo
The pitch video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewo742l4UsQ
The IndieGoGo Campaign
http://www.indiegogo.com/Waking-Hour-Movie
Let me know what you guys think !
Mr.Nexy
This is Abbigail Brink , the main character in Waking Hour.
Over the course of the next week , I’ll be posting more concept art and WIP images here and on the Waking Hour Blog Concept art Compliments of Scott Harris.
For the most part she is a sweet girl of 18 or 19 ,blond haired tan skinned and blue eyed , fresh out of high-school . Her musical tastes are a little eclectic , ranging from Rap and Hip-Hop to Punk Rock and Neil Young , as eclectic as her taste in music is her sense of dress.
When she was a child she was exposed in a radiation wave, her father tried to protect her and died in the process . she fell ill for a short while but the doctors accredited it to sunstroke and as a result of this Abbigail became more of an indoors person and something of a night owl.
Often sleeping during the day and struggling to sleep at night ,she takes the early late shift at a local convenience store to justify her sleeping habits.
Another Day and another piece of concept art , this is Lt.Rushton.
Enjoy !
Lt.Edward Rushton came from a comfortable background , growing up he did not want for much else but to hang out with his friends , he excelled academically and as such his parents allowed him the freedom to do as he pleased.
Provided ofcourse that he behaved himself , at the age of 18 Edward Rushton or “The Rush” as all his friends called him,began hanging out at “Live Bars” listening to local bands and drinking socially.Times were good , but tensions between his nation and their neighbor to the north grew, unfortunately war broke out not long after his 20th Birthday when the city was attacked in a series of strategic bombings.
He joined the army along with his friends to defend his homeland , he lost many of them during the fighting that followed and by the age of 25,he is a synical young man that finds himself faced with the task of extracting a particularly important civilian from a hot zone that is about to erupt.
Hey folks , got another update for you here.
This is the PRF Officer (People’s Revolutionary Front) he is the main antagonist in the story.
The PRF officer is a man who takes pride in his work and pleasure in the suffering in others , he is very well disceplined and as such he keeps his uniform imaculate.
He grew up in very unforgiving and tough circumstances as a child , he was left by his parents with his disceplinarian grandmother ,she was a tough woman who hated his mother for leaving him with her.
As a result of his regular beatings,he channeled his resentment and anger into bullying other children.Living in the country side afforded him the oppertunity to familiarise himself with fire arms , he became an excellent shot and joined he military at a young age.
He progressed rapidly through the ranks and soon proved himself as a ruthless and efficient leader.Once he reached a high enough rank in the military he returned to his grandmother’s home , the woman had not changed at all and proceeded to nag at him and wear him down until he lost his composure and strangled her with his bare hands.He buried her in the woods in an unmarked grave and never returned .
The team and I would like to take the opportunity to welcome Atey to the team !
Atey is a fantastic Swedish concept artist , he will be working on the storyboards and concept art for the film.Below you will find a sample of his amazing work and a link to his blog , where you can see so much more of his beautiful art work.
http://blog.sina.com.cn/snatti
Mr.Nexy
Hey there folks ,
This is the new video that we created in order to tell people,what they’re getting for their contributions to the project.
We also have a new team member joining us , I shall post more on this tomorrow though.
Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeCtH3Q9rjk
Mr.Nexy
Hey there folks . more exciting updates and news for you !
BRINGING CHARACTER TO THE TEAM
The Waking Hour Team and I would like to welcome Dani Garcia (Woody) to the team !
Woody is a fantastic character artist from Spain,below youll find an example of Woodys amazing work and a link to his website, where you can see more of his work.Woody will be helping us create the Hero characters in the world of Waking Hour.
HAIR AND SKIN
Todays update comes with two fresh renders , testing out Zbrushs new Fibre Mesh functionality and Blenders Node Based shaders and the Cycles Render Layers.
Zbrushs Fibre Mesh is a fantastic tool for creating hair and fur for your character, its grooming tools allow you to quickly and intuitively style the hair or fur in almost no time at all .Creating realistic hair that looks good and renders well inside of Zbrush itself , as with all things that look good in 3D it does come at a cost and that cost would be the poly count. I am sure that there is a way to reduce the poly count in a minimally destructive manner to the hair , I shall do some tests using Zbrushs Decimate plugin.
Below you will find two renders of a base mesh I brought in from Daz Studio Pro (Which they are giving away for free at the moment) to Z-brush , isolating the head and chest I changed the facial proportions and then sculpted in more detail using the claytubes brush.
Fibre Mesh was applied and the hair was groomed , after that the mesh and Fibre Meshes were exported separately and reassembled in Blender.I will be speaking in length about the use of base meshes from applications such as Daz3D or Poser.
There is also the issue of ensuring that the hair is animated , something that I think shall be saved for another post.
SKIN SHADER NODE
Because the cycles engine doesnt have an SSS shader to speak of , you have to combine three shaders to get a similair effect.Below you will see a combination of the translucency shader,diffuse shader and glossy shader to achieve the same effect.I have used a noise node to break up the specularity of the skin aswell as to randomise the mixing of the diffuse and translucency shaders. With a nice texture map applied to the mesh and mixed in on top of the skin shader , this should look pretty damn good.
HAIR SHADER NODE
The hair node is fairly straight forward , a spherical Gradient Texture to guide the roughness of the hair color on the Diffuse shader and a glossy shader for a little bit of specular action , you could also use a grey-scale texture map to control the shape and intensity of the specularity of course .
RENDER SETTINGS
The render settings are fairly straight forward , the samples were just boosted for most of the setting and in terms of lighting , all that was really used were two point lights and a background light with a sky texture applied to it.
COMPOSITING NODES
The Cycles Render Engine now outputs to render layers and this is the first attempt at compositing them.Once weve established a nice clean workflow for the compositing process , Im sure it will be much easier.
FOR FUN
This one is just for fun , playing around with Fibre Mesh and the bpr filters in Zbrush was quite enjoyable.
We hope that youve found this update to be interesting and somewhat informative , dont forget that you can get involved with the project on our campaigns page HERE or by simply sharing the link using facebook or twitter.
Mr.Nexy and the Waking Hour Team
Before it was mention that I may use Daz 4 Pros Genesis as a base mesh , in order to create the background characters in the film.I have of course decided that it would be better,if I sculpted the characters from my own base mesh. The image I have attached to this update , is the first in a series of sculpts that Ive be working on in order to brush up on my anatomy,texturing and topology skills.
The model was sculpted from a base mesh I created before hand , the mesh was brought down from 15 Million polygons to about 22 Thousand.The texture,displacement and normal maps were exported from Zrbush at 4K, where a basic polypaint was applied pending a photo texturing session later on.
There should be a video update soon with a mocap test for this image aswell.
Mr.Nexy
Hey man! Cool project! Definitely deserves more replies…! I really like your open-source approach - sounds very clever as you’ll develop quite a library of props along the making! And I’m looking forward allot to seeing some mocap footage!
I’ll def keep checking your progress
