Works in Progress

#401

Originally posted by pequod
Carl … Not seen much of Gaty recently!

Yes, Stephen. :blush: I’ve been very busy with non-AM work & projects.

I love your new animation with Briar munching the apple. Her new 'do looks great. Her eye flick, where she looks off to the side, seems a tad abrupt? One suggestion: Move her head in the same direction, just a tad, a frame or two later, to convey the idea that her head is following in the eye’s wake – that whatever caught her eye, over there, is of a more startling nature, and is worthy of a rapid redirection of her attention. Alternative suggestion: Just add a frame or two between the eye keyframes, to make it less abrupt.
As usual, here is my boilerplate disclaimer: Whenever I give you animation advice I feel like I’m carrying coals to Newcastle. Don’t rely too much on my judgement, please.

William: Your Balrog looks really terrific! It’d be fun to see him in a spoof. :smiley: According to elvish lore (as recorded in Tolkien’s “Silmarillion”) the Sun is actually a good Balrog, one that was not twisted and fouled by Melkor, the master of Sauron. (That’s right, Sauron is actually just the assistant Bad Guy!) Well, maybe the Sun is not so innocent after all. I’d like to see a suntan lotion commercial where your Balrog explodes from a blasting hot sun, and attacks a beach babe, who wards him off with a bottle of Coppertone. A literary spoof.

Feel free to ignore my lame suggestion. My imagination is always excited whenever I look at your work. :cool:

Sincerely,

Carl Raillard

#402

Originally posted by raillard

William: Your Balrog looks really terrific! It’d be fun to see him in a spoof. :smiley: According to elvish lore (as recorded in Tolkien’s “Silmarillion”) the Sun is actually a good Balrog, one that was not twisted and fouled by Melkor, the master of Sauron. (That’s right, Sauron is actually just the assistant Bad Guy!)

Carl,
Thanks for the compliments! Isn’t there a scene in the Silmarillon with an entire army of balrogs and dragons flying out of Angband fortress leaving a scorched middle-earth in their wake? I’m thinking of doing that!:eek:

#403

Thanks for the feedback Carl, Dalmation and Mike.
A few people have mentioned the abrupt eye flick, I just hadn’t noticed how uncomfortable it looked before, so thanks for pointing it out. I think all it needs is maybe one or two additional frames.

Zandoria, terrific Balrog model! Great use of ambiance maps, those are ambiance maps?

#404

yes, those are ambience maps
there is a blueish sun keylight, and an orange bulb light in the mouth–not casting shadows (which gives a nice accent to the horns and body and will complement the sprites later).

#405

Originally posted by zandoria
Isn’t there a scene in the Silmarillon with an entire army of balrogs and dragons flying out of Angband fortress leaving a scorched middle-earth in their wake? I’m thinking of doing that!:eek:

Oh, that’d be cool! Er, hot, I mean! :stuck_out_tongue:

There’s another scene out of the Silmarillion that would be meaty to film: the fate of the giant spider, Ungoliant, the mother of Shelob. Nobody is quite sure what became of her … but legend has it that finally, in her uttermost famine, she devoured herself. :argh:

Carl Raillard

#406

Ungoliant! That would be a great thing to model–but I’m afraid of spiders!:scream:

#407

Lighting did a lot for this:

strat.jpg845x839

My notes:
-the tuning keys should be turned
-the floor is a wee bit reflective
-judging by the reflections, the guitar doesn’t quite hit the ground
-the strings will come out the top a bit more
-material on headstock will be added
-wall is flat, needs bump map to simulate, you know… that bumpy stuff
-environment map on body needs to be less opaque
-decals needed on tone and volume knobs

Now it’s your turn :slight_smile:

Zack

#408

And a hush fell over the crowd…

#409

If you are hoping for realism then shadowmaps should be avoided. And I’m seeing a LOT of aliasing. It feels like something I would see in the corner of a realtime game right now. No real defined clear lighting or shading. Really push your textures. Don’t just deal with color and reflection. There is a whole toolbox of options. Specularity maps, reflection maps, bump maps, raytraced shadows etc.

#410

Hi Zack,

I once heard a quote that I always try to remember - “The details are in the hilights - the form is in the shadows” - unfortunately, your lighting is really hurting the look - like Wegg said, you don’t have either shadows or hilights.

I don’t have a problem with the floor being reflective, or the fact that the wall is flat - or even the environment map. Like Wegg said, your textures are very “flat” - and I think a lot of this is the lighting and use of shadow maps (I don’t use them at all - they’re really only good for moving shots - and even then only under certain conditions).

It seems like you have the ambience in the scene turned up really high(?) - I would suggest you turn ambience all the way off until you get your lighting tuned. Remember that you can and probably should turn the intensity of lights up past 100% - I usually have lights pushing 120 to 150% depending on what they’re doing - and have gone as high as 300% in the past. Start with one light - your key light - and get it placed and casting shadows where you want it - then add lights from there to “punch up” certain areas and features. Remember that you CAN have a light only cast diffuse or specular - and that shadows aren’t required of all lights (and it’s usually a good idea to have only one shadow casting light). If you don’t know about it, I’d suggest you look up the “standard” 3-light studio setup. The setup that comes with AM as the default Cho has a 3-light setup, but (at the risk of pissing off Hash) a pretty weak setup - designed so that a newbie can see something other than a black screen when they drop something into the Choreography. If you haven’t guessed it, lighting is an art unto itself - although I get some pretty nice effects with usually one or two lights…

Also, like Wegg said - take advantage of the mapping types you have available. Hunter’s skin uses color, specular size, specular intensity, bump, and diffuse maps. Surfaces in general are very complex - and layering mapping effects can help you achieve this. You can also use Materials to combine effects - such as getting reflectivity drop-off on the edges of objects (like you guitar body) - for example, use an edge gradient to combine an environment map material over your base body material - so the edges of the guitar are reflective, but the facing side is much less reflective…

Finally - I’d use Klieg lights to light the scene - set their size to something like 10" and under shadows, use Raycast and turn the Rays Cast up to something like 4 or 5 - then turn on multi-pass for final rendering - you’ll end up with very nice, soft shadows and excellent anti-aliasing (to show off all of that great detail you’ve added :slight_smile:

JoeW

#411

Wow Joe, what a fantastic and detailed reply. Very helpful to me and i’m sure to others. Very generous.

I look forward to seeing your changes based on these suggestions Zack. Nice model, it’ll be even better with nice lighting work. Good luck.

Doug

#412

Okay guys, here’s one for a critique. This is a prop from a much larger project that I wanted to submit an image of to AMMAG (http://home.comcast.net/~ammag/home.html)…it’s not intended to be an exactly accurate reproduction, but it’s kind of modeled after a Colt Python. In the previous version of this Zack Taich pointed out a few glaring problems, so I thought I’d let some more fresh eyes review it before I make a final.

The biggest thing that bothers me at the moment is the reflection under the end of the barrel. I’ll have to fix that, am I missing something else? I’m pretty sure I should go back and re-light it. Would a different angle be better? It might be too vanilla at the moment. Thanks for taking a look. Sorry about the white background, I couldn’t get the PNG to upload for some reason…the white area is where the alpha channel would be.

#413

I think the angle is fine. You should try playing with the focal length on the camera. Exaggeration is good, you can always dial it down later.

#414

This may be an ignorant question, but what’s with the bullets? I thought the hard pointy end went in barell first. In looks like you have the primers facing the barrel instead of the hammer.

#415

that’s a “hollow-point” bullet

#416

A really first class job of mechancial modeling!

The following image points out the only inconsistencies in surface shape I could see and they are ridiculously nitpicky. And since I am by no means a gun expert they may actually be prototypical, especially the shape of the trigger. I’m not exactly sure what’s going on there but it looks like it they could all be corrected with minor bias tweaks.

One other comment. The two symmetrical parts in front of the trigger with the uneven edges don’t look like they are exactly the same shape. Unless this is also prototypical I think that part on the left side in the image suffers from copied & mirrored alpha sign flip. If I’m correct, go through the cps on that part and change the sign on all the alphas to get the shapes you originally modeled on the right.

#417

Thanks for the input guys!

I did play a little fast and loose in a few places, I’ll try to straighten out some of those problems I created.

#418

Hey Joe, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand…

Nice model :slight_smile: If what you are looking for is realism, remember that realism is heavily dependent on details. I agree with the other comments and have a few additional if you’re still in the market :slight_smile:

There are no fasteners or any visible means of attachment for the parts - no screws, pins, welds, etc - this makes the gun look like a toy.

The edge at which the grip meets the metal of the frame is flat - there should be an edge there - at least something to catch light. Right now, it’s too smooth - which again lends to the “toy” look.

You may want to play with the Diffuse Falloff value for the materials - it looks like it’s set at 100, and you may want to try higher values - metal tends to have a higher diffuse falloff than other materials. (try something like 125).

The barrel has no rifling and has the same tonal value as the outside of the weapon - if it’s never been fired, this is OK - but I think I’d add some rifling and a diffuse map - or at least a darker colored material. The front of the drum - at least around the edges of the cylinders should be blackened a bit - something that happens when powder burns in the chamber…

The rib under the barrel is usually the mechanism for releasing the drum (the “revolver” part of the revolver). You might think about adding a knurled slider of some kind - I’m not really clear as to what’s going on with the “window” that’s there right now (no pun intended …clear… window…)

The bullets are a little weird - they almost look like a mix of a “wadcutter” and a “hollow point”. If you want a hollow point, you should probably make more of a cup than what is there. The copper jacket is also a bit bright - think about pushing it more toward the red-orange, and once again push the diffuse value up.

There is something strange going on with the map on the grip - like it’s faded out - is that intentional??

The front sight is a bit thin - you might think about beefing it up - adn there’s something a little strange about the opposite side of the front frame - like the sides aren’t symmetrical - is that intentional also?

Some diffuse maps and “dirt” maps would help this a lot - right now, it looks a little too “plasticy” to be convincing - BUT if you put it in the right style of animation, it would fit right in…

These are extreme nitpicks - so keep that in mind - it’s a great model overall :slight_smile:

I snagged an image that might help - but I’d also go to Smith&Wesson as well as the Ruger websites for reference… Here’s an image that came to mind when I first saw this - it might be useful: http://www.hash.com/users/joewllms/cgtalk/dtd.jpg

JoeW

#419

Man, I’d forgotten how much work a “simple” walk cycle can take - sheesh. Been messing with this for a couple of days on and off - most of that was adjusting out little jerks here and there - I’ve found that my rig is a bit sensitive when you get to the extremes of leg extension… going to have to see about trying to tune that out…

Anyway, here’s the start of a walk cycle for Hunter - going for sexy as well as athletic - a tough combination - this is hips down only - I haven’t touched the upper body yet since everything in the upper body depends on what the lower body is doing…

If you see any glaring problems - speak up - I won’t like to hear it, but if it makes a better animation, I’ll just have to suck it up - LOL!

http://www.hash.com/users/joewllms/cgtalk/LowerWalk.mov

Be sure to set Quicktime to loop (Ctrl-L)

JoeW

#420

Thanks for the tips Joe, I’m always in the market for help.

On the details, I’ve been wrestling with how realistic I want to go, the world this gun will go in is a cross between real and cartoon. I have a target in my head of somewhere near 90% real…you’re right it could use some bumping up. Very helpful suggestions, thanks.

The rib under the barrel is usually the mechanism for releasing the drum (the “revolver” part of the revolver). You might think about adding a knurled slider of some kind - I’m not really clear as to what’s going on with the “window” that’s there right now (no pun intended …clear… window…)

There’s a push rod in there, the knurled portion of it is too smooth at the moment. I’ll have to do something to improve it.

There is something strange going on with the map on the grip - like it’s faded out - is that intentional??

I was trying to put some wear on the handle. I faded the bump and added a spec map in the attempt. I’ll see if I can tweak it better.

I really like the Hunter walk cycle so far.