Fetch | Cg Short.

#221

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone. :slight_smile:

No updates today. I started doing my first animated render test.
Nothing fancy , just a camera move like the one in the pre-viz.

This will help me to get a feel of the shot and see what will actually be seen in
the shot. It will give me an idea how to break down my layers for compositing.

I have 4 computers to work with for rendering, right now I’m testing it on the fastest one.
It says it’s gonna take 2 days to render 400 frames but will be much faster as I start to
break it down and spread the tasks over the network.

So 39 hours to go… I will post it when it is done.

Good update Jon, remind me to send you the textured version of the dog,
that way you are not skinning the one with the wrong UV mapping.

#222

Oh yeah! Thanks for the reminder… Could you send that to me in an email? or even under my folder on the server? That would be awesom. Here is an update on the boy. I just did some more skinning.

http://blog.pinnacle3d.com/2006/08/18/boy-v52/

#223

Hey, the rig is working better than I planned… Never done a quadruped before, well, successfully… :slight_smile: Anyway, here is a test render. You can see the control object setup on my blog site. Just a little more skinning work to be done.

#224

I did a yapper run down. You can check out the vid on the server. I also have the yapper rig file on the server under the Jon folder.

http://fetch.boy1da.com/jon/YapperRunDown.zip

Its 10% done right now (11:15A Pacific Time) so give it maybe 10 more minutes.

Peace.

#225

tired to have alook at your vid.zip…won’t unzip for me. :cry:

#226

A few questions/requests…
Can he lay down in the same pose but with his head on the ground as well ?

The next thing is the eye rig.
I would like his eyes to be able to slide from the top of his head
to the sides of his head. What I had in mind was a path using splines.
that his eyes can slide on. Image below.

I had no problems vewing your zip video file. Good stuff…

#227

OK, I got it unzipping too finally.
Nice demo with the commentary… Nice work overall!
Not on Max, but I’d love to somehow see your skinning- weightmaps/bone assignment if possible when you get them done. :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

#228

Omar: I am uploading a video of the updated dog with scrolling eyeballz… Check it out in a bit. http://fetch.boy1da.com/jon/YapperUpdate1.zip

softdistortion: I am going to upload a video of the skinning… Pretty straightforward… What did you want to see? Just the weighting setup on the envelopes?

#229

Okay I put the boy rig on the server in the Jon folder named: Boy Animation Rig

If you wanna start doin walk cycles or whatever to see if the rig will work. You can see the tutorial video on the control objects for the rig in the video_tutorial folder.

Peace

#230

Quick comment on the eyes… each eye should slide to each side of the head.
That way we can have him look a bit normal at times LOL
sorry for my poor example in my last post…

It is very important that we get him to lay flat on the ground.

When we first see the dog he is sleeping ( head on the ground )
EDIT: google image


Then there is a scene I want the boy to kick the ball from under the dog while the dog is
bouncing on it.The dog will hit the floor SPLAT flat spread out.

Some solutions my be to do other dog rig simplified for just those shots.
Or model the dog in a flat pose and rig him that way… keep in mind
we can use many “STUNT DOGS” one rig does not have to do it all.
Think of real movies, they use many stand ins and swap out stuff based on
a shot to shot basis.

#231

Omar Okay I will try it. maybe a dummy. The one thing I was concerned about was the placement of his neck… Thats the reason why I thought he wouldn’t be able to lay his head down flat.

Here is a test walk cycle that took 15 seconds… By no means a good animation :). Just testing the goods.

http://fetch.boy1da.com/jon/SlowWalkCycle.wmv

EDIT: Sorry about the darkness, just realized that. I compressed it in cleaner and i forgot to toggle the color modification.

#232

Yeah…at the beginning i was trying to predict how your skeleton was going to perform, and looking at the clips you are now showing its turned out different than what i expected.

Also what are all the extra small markers in that last clip?

thanks

#233

Is that a good thing that its different? lol. Which markers are you talking about? If I am thinking of the same things, they are just helpers for weighting position locaitons on the spline IK.

#234

Click the green text below .wmv
VIDEO TEST SHOT 1

2 days or 48 hours later , the first video test render is done.
Like I said before this is nothing special, just to set a bench mark.
This test will help me to analyze the shot and see what needs to be adjusted.
Ignore the strange animated grass, I didn’t know it was set to animate
until I started rendering it. The flat area to the right of the shot,
I will place a deck there that the boy will be laying or siting on.
I moved the dog house more over to the left, so I will also have to adjust
the ground texture to show a bit more detail on that side as well.
I have to also fix my aspect ratio too.

Also you can see flickering spots on the ground, that is due to low light samples.
More samples slow down render time, but I can increase it once I start doing layers.

My goal now is to lock down the shot and start fine tuning everything that
is in this shot. Once the camera motion is set then I can start breaking
down the layers for compositing.

I think next I will start working on the placement of the title.

#235

Looking good Big O, nothing to say other than the things you pointed out yourself and it is only a test.

The more I see of this the more excited I get :stuck_out_tongue:

The only thing I can think of is that in the original previz you had the junk behind where the ball is now. This looks like a pretty small area for the junk at the moment! Have you other plans for the junk?

#236

Yea, I was thinking about that too… :shrug:

I can squeeze it in, when you think about it we don’t have the much junk.
And the junk should be stacked upwards… I guess the mower is the biggest thing.
If all fails I can always push the fence back some more away from us.

This next note has nothing to do with what I was talking about above…
I would also like to point out that there will be tall grass in the foreground
obstructing the camera, kind of like we are crawling on the ground peeking trough the bushes.

#237

looks really great. Again nothing to crit (as always :D)

if you need some more rendering power let me know. Don’t know what renderer you use though but if it is mental ray or normal scanline I can give you a hand with a couple more computers :slight_smile: (Maybe not needed right now but for the final animation?)

#238

I just wanted to post some images of what I am working on.

As far as the logo goes, The freak wanted to do something custom made
not an off the shelf font. So he modeled the logo and made a design based
on the style of the #5 font I posted before, since that font seem to be very popular.

I’m pretty happy with it.
Now I need help to decide if the “E” should be upper case or lower case ? Images below.

This image is what the font will look like in the yard of the opening shot.

The images here show it with an upper case “E” and the lower case “e”


I also found space for the junk, the yard has been stretched twice
the size maybe even more… just so that the junk does not show up in the
TITLE shot until we pan the camera left and right.
Here is an image of the lawn mower with no textures yet, just a quick color
to show placement. The other junk should go in the corner to the right of the mower.

I tried to animate the ball because I haven’t heard from “sebtiffon/sebastien”
Since his last post, so I don’t know if he is still with the project .
( sebtiffon, if you are check in, let us know what is up )

So here is my go at it… no squash or stretch yet on it.
Just trying to get the timing down first. I will also try to
Put some secondary animation on the letters as they move,
like wobbling and bending.

Please ignore the bad quality of the render with all the flickering.
The image below is of the ball rig.

CLICK HERE FOR THE VIDEO FILE .wmv

#239

Did you wanna do the whole squash&stretch deal? I think that may add a little to the animation. It seems like a bouncy rock… almost… Could I get the fetch logo or something? I just wanna try it with some squash… I liket he movement of theball though. I like the sizes and such… Good work

#240

Oh! As for the E I really do like the lowercase… It compliments the C like the thickness of the F on the H.