aesir's thesis
polycounter lvl 18
So I'm making a short film. This isn't my first film, but it is the first time that I've undertaken a project this big before on my own. When I started out, I had these grand amazing plans to put something out that was professional quality from every angle, however, I overestimated myself a bit (mainly my speed) and am now just determined to finish my film in time (so I graduate). I didn't have much time to work on it last semester due to classes and what social things and what not, so this next semester is gonna be crazy work time for me. Not everything is going to be perfectly polished like we all might want it to be, but I'm on a schedule and I'm sticking to it.
I'm at the point where my characters are all modeled, unwrapped, and morph targeted out and am now rigging the shit outta them using the AMAZING brad noble rig. Seriously, that shit is fucking tight. Makes me want to weep with joy. Since I can't script worth shit, I'm quite happy to have this lovely rig.
check it out here: http://www.bradnoble.net/rigging/index.html
Anyways, rigs. Im gonna try and rig one per day or so with maybe an extra day to polish em all.
In any case, here's the first guy. Weighting isn't perfect but I can always tweak the camera angles and increase the motion blur
I'm happy to hear crits, but theres no time to go back and change things so your crits are futile.
As far as the story and stuff is concerned, I've got my whole story boarded out and all. You'll all get to see a 3d animatic in a month or so. Not gonna spoil it till then.
I'm at the point where my characters are all modeled, unwrapped, and morph targeted out and am now rigging the shit outta them using the AMAZING brad noble rig. Seriously, that shit is fucking tight. Makes me want to weep with joy. Since I can't script worth shit, I'm quite happy to have this lovely rig.
check it out here: http://www.bradnoble.net/rigging/index.html
Anyways, rigs. Im gonna try and rig one per day or so with maybe an extra day to polish em all.
In any case, here's the first guy. Weighting isn't perfect but I can always tweak the camera angles and increase the motion blur
I'm happy to hear crits, but theres no time to go back and change things so your crits are futile.
As far as the story and stuff is concerned, I've got my whole story boarded out and all. You'll all get to see a 3d animatic in a month or so. Not gonna spoil it till then.
Replies
Thanks for the rig btw.
B
Something tells me you would be churning out awesome stuff regardless this just gave you an excuse and motivation.
his sword is backward?
I'm really interested in learning some basic character animation myself, so I snagged that rig, I'm grabbing a book this holiday too to learn from, I haven't seen any good tutorials online about animation. if anyone knows some though, pm em to me and I'd be ever so grateful
keep us posted if you get the chance. When's the full thing due?
eclipse and modeling_man: thanks and you will
vig: thanks! Im actually an animation major in the film school of a normal university.
slum: yes...
bouchfx: thanks. Try this rig. Its a lot better to learn on. Tons of fun to play with: http://www.3dluvr.com/clisk3d/
It's due the first week of May.
(note: very large monster)
(yea whatever, it's hardly in the film at all)
max has no real way of referencing characters. That means I'd have a master file for each character that is referenced into each scene file. That way I could update the skin, or the materials, or the morph targets, and all the changes would go directly into all the scene files. I assumed this was just a normal part of the xref package max has. I figured that just because maya can do it nice and easy, so could max. FUCK! Instead, I'm left with an xref system that can reference objects just fine, but once it gets into rigs and modifiers and morphers, just fucking DIES. You cant touch modifiers in references, so no morph targets. You touch the rig, it all breaks. You add an object, it isn't added to all the scenes. You rename something, everything breaks. The internet tells me everywhere that its impossible without a team of scripters to make it work for me. FUCK YOU AUTODESK! This should be fucking basic shit to have in your program. BASIC WORKFLOW SHIT!
-rant end
(guess I'll just have to do it the old fashioned way and manually save the animation, delete the character, re-merge the character, load the animation, re-set any links to objects in the scene. Then rinse and repeat for all the characters in all 60ish scenes.
But thats max for you, jack of all trades master of none.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gft4A1o7mS8
some things may need explanations, so if youre curious wtf happened, read this.
First off, the Title screen, it's either gonna be a simple title with text, or if I have time, Im gonna have some little black snakes crawl onto the screen and spell out the title with their bodies.
Secondly, the first scene, thats just going to be a simple matte painting. We will be looking off in the distance at the forest, and we'll hear a grumbly roar, and some birds will take off in the distance. Then there will be a blur pan down to our characters in the forest. They look up, hearing the roar, and take off in it's direction. They see a goat walking like a zombie toward a cave. It stops and the monster emerges and eats it. It's likely I'll change that scene slightly. I think I might have the goat jump onto the monsters hand willingly, and then let the monster eat it. Timing wont change much. The hunters watch it all in disbelief. The spearman is sent out, throws a spear which does no damage. The monster picks up the spearman, and it's eyes start to glow and hyponotizes the man. I need some come up with some sort of cool hyponotizing sound that doesnt copy the hypno-toad from futurama too badly. Anyways, when the spearman is dropped, his eyes are now glowing, and he attacks his comrades. When the axeman gets a chance to attak the monster, the monster looks to his hyponotized spearman off screen, its eyes glow for a moment, and as the axeman is about to strike we hear quickly approaching footsteps from off camera, the axeman hears it, barely dodges the spear which plunges into the monster's stomach. The monster growls, annoyed, then knocks over the men and hypnotizes the axeman. The swordsman runs away but finds himself cornered by a cliff face. The monster approaches, eyes glowing as the swordsman raises his sword to protect himself. The light from the glowing eyes bounces off the sword and slowly rises up until it hits the monster's eyes, causing it to have hypnotized itself. It collapes. Fade to black and we're at a castle gate where the men are dragging the monster into the castle. As the monster is dragged off screen, it's eyes pop open. The cheers coming from the castle for the "heroes" turns to screams and we hear the hypnotizing sound causing the screams to fall silent. We probably hear some chewing sounds too. All those sounds will be going on through the credits.
I really like your description, and I can kind of picture the dragon sort've laying relaxed, summoning the goat maybe with a finger motion while smirking kind of care free.
It's probably too late now, but it'd be helpful to have more unique builds for each character to help tell them apart. ie: spearman tall and lanky, axeman short and pudgy.. Could add a lot of character that way..
I'm looking forward to seeing where you take this!
As far as character desings, I see what youre saying, but that gets really cliche sometimes.
also, Ive decided, I really need to re-time some stuff. again.
Right now I think you can do more with the monster. It almost seems like the star of the short yet not a lot of personality is coming across and it seems like you're trying to show a story instead of connect with the audience, you want to do both. That could be just because you're blocking it out right now?
Suggestions:
- When the spear man runs up you might want to drag that out a bit, with cuts back and forth between his determined face and the monsters. Keeping the spear man's face constant and determined (maybe have him running) If you establish the short distance with the current shot you have, and extend the cuts it will build tension and prep the audience for the punch line. One of the last cuts before the spear hits could be of the monster rolling its eyes, as if to say enough already, this will help the audience identify with the monster. Then you deliver the current punch line and maybe have the spear man look back over his shoulder at the other two and shoulder shrug, as if to say "what now?". Behind him the monster could be raising up on its hind legs.
- If the monster was bigger you could do a little bit more with the camera and you wouldn't have to block out so much of the environment, the monster could fill most of the shots. For example when it picks up the spear man if the shot was the same, and the monster was bigger you could have the little spear man standing at the feet of the monster, looking up as its hand comes down and picks him up, then the camera follows the hand up to the face where they meet. The monster examining him like he does, and the spear man giving a nervous smile. A bigger monster would also add to the comedic value during the goat scene, and the dragging.
- I think it would be kind of cool for the monster to lure the goat with some kind of food like a branch from a berry bush. At first all you would see is a branch behind the rock wagging and a hungry goat looking at it tentatively. Maybe some piece of the monster could be poking out from behind the rock, but it shouldn't be the first thing you notice in the scene. It might be funny to take some branches and tie them to the monster, like cheap camouflage, which it quickly becomes embarrassed about and removes when it sees the humans.
I know you're pinched for time but you have to think about this being a huge part of your grade, and your future. The strength of this short can get you much praise, a good grade and a good job or it can be the project that towed the line right along with the others in your class and got you an ok grade and not much more. I think you owe it to the work you've put into this already to make just a few more attempts to connect with the audience.
Keep at it, you've got some really great progress so far and in such a short time, nice work!
really, posting this kind of thing really helps me get a better of idea of whats wrong with it. I'm definitely gonna try and rework some things before I get to the animation phase.
I started on the textures for the characters. Its still a WIP but Im gonna leave em alone for a bit while I work on other things. I'd LOVE suggestions on color schemes and what not. Also, if the skin is too red for you. Different monitors are showing me different things. I decided not to go for any SSS cause it was being a bitch to get to look good and dont really want to deal with the render times.
(sexual tension?)
i also made some rocks. They'll come in different colors. Lack of specular map and really fine detail is a style choice that may or may not work out. We'll see once I have a full scene.
also, I retimed my animatic a bit. No huge changes, but it feels a lot better to me. Changes are still gonna be made in the future, but not till the animation phase starts in a month or so.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRiSS4pEbF8
Lastly, I've got a badass professional composer working on my music right now. I cant wait to see what he makes for me.
(i've been doing other shit too but i'll post it some other time)
btw, I'm at 11 weeks and counting till the due date. so scary.
Just wondering how you are handling the eyes/ eyelids- are the eyes perfectly spherical with the eyelids being animated by morph targets?
Im doing a similar character at the minute and am having some problems figuring the eyes out- I've posted a more indepth explanation of my problem in 2D/ 3D discussion if you can help out!
Alex
(sexual tension?)
[/ QUOTE ]I actually lol'ed
Looking good, now it is much easier to distinguish who is who, before it was pretty easy to get confused. For a cheap SSS you can add FallOff to your opacity slot. It will render pretty quick. I use fall off in the self Illumination map slot to help pump up rim lighting. You can even use it in the defuse slot to create a toon shaded outline.
Do you have a thing for raised eyebrows?
[/ QUOTE ]
you have no idea
vig: thanks for the tips. I'll try those out.
low odor: thanks, I'll be messing with camera angles a bit more as I animate.