rooster's anim thread: update: 06/05/05

rooster

Some of you might remember this thread I made a while ago about a lil ugly midget. Well, the deadline is approaching and I've got a month left to get it all done (dissertation and animation.. eek!) so I thought I would appoint myself a thread to document the development in the last few weeks of work and take comments and suggestions.

As you can see theres a helluva lot left to do, but what kind of uni student would I be if I didn't leave it all till the last minute?

http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/observatory.jpg
the desk is gonna be all cluttered with junk, textures not finished

http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/mountain1.jpg
this is going to be a mix of 3d and matte. crap rock texture to be fixed. close up the snow sparkles

http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/snow1.jpg
setting up a blizzard

http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/telescope.jpg
wip 'scope he looks through

http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/village1.jpg
pleasant sunny village, proper houses on the way..

thanks for having a look!

rooster

aw I dont believe it, what a noob. ehm, moderator *cough*

edit: cheers for moving it bearkub. nothing like a healthy dose of embarrassment to spur one back to work.

MoP

Hey, cool stuff. I like the metal on his periscope/telescope thing that he's looking through - also the external view of that is very cool.

The grass outside the village looks really neat! Alpha-mapped planes or something?

Shaping up nicely... keep at it... last minute work rules!

rooster

wip hoos!
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/hoos1.jpg

stompy robot!


video of stompy robot walkcycle! (11 megs tho need to watch the compression next time..)
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/walkanim3.mov

edit:
aye Mop, just a shitload of wee triangles, about 40000 or so . Its not them that takes long to render in that scene mind, its them thar smooth shadows. its all pretty managable though.

rooster

Hmm I guess this stuff isn't too interesting. I'm going to plod on and keep updating as stuff progresses, and if anything catches your attention feel free to comment. I don't know if anyone checked the animation but it actually doesn't take too long to dowload with a fastish connection thanks to plusnets spiffy server, I get it in 3 or 4 mins.

working on village plants & flowers, trying to blur the transition a bit from plane grass to texture grass:
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/village3p.jpg

Ramucho

looking damn good rooster nice color composition so far!! good luck!

Cork_Soaker

You really need to compress that animation. I like the sense of weight in the robot's walk. I can almost hear the foot stomp and the gears creaking. The small wiggles of the pipe and the dude on top add believability. Good job.

Josh_Singh

What is a good way to compress video files for the internet?
And Rooster This is coming along magnificently! I love it. Props to you for undertaking such a large project!

notman

Two things about the animation. I noticed that the bicept of the arm goes through the 'c' shaped piece that holds the arm on. Shouldn't that c shaped piece rotate with the arm?
I also think you should add a glow to the chest/grill to look like something is burning in there to run the robot. Just a thought though

But I may just be too picky. I love everything else. What are the three red blocks for in the village?

rooster

ramucho: cheers man :]
cork_soaker: thanks, yeah stupidly I rendered straight to the .mov, dont know how to compress it more. Subsequent anims will be smaller though definately!
ghost_rider: thanks man, only 3 1/2 weeks to go.. I'm totally bricking it.
notman: absolutely, nice observation. Basically that part wasn't done yet, but it is fixed now cheers! I did think about adding glow but with so much left to do it'll have to be put on a wishlist. The red blocks are basically just to test the shadows at differing distances. Basically stuff like that in any of the shots are just to test scale or shadows, they won't show up in the final thing.

Here's a composited pic of the robot striding across the show:
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/400smoke%20copy.jpg

the full sequence isn't rendered yet but it'll look like this when finished

ScreaminBubba

Rooster I remember your thread awhile ago about the rigging problem you were having with the sockets in the arm area. I wanted to help but after some testing I couldnt find a solution either. Were you able to rig it the way you needed?

Really nice work btw, the robot turned out great! I like your snow material also.

notman

That snow scene is excellent. I like the added smoke and snow dust.

Cork_Soaker

That almost looks like a scene from Ice Age.

rooster

Just finished my fist ever digital matte.. watch out Mullins! hah I wish . It's far from perfect but tons of other stuff needs my attention right now so I might come back to it later.
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/fincomp.jpg

based on this:
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/comp_b4.jpg

edit: and a whole bunch of thanks for the encouragement, sometimes it feels like theres so much left to do it's impossible. Keep chipping away my tutor says..

ScreaminBubba: nah I didn't manage to fix the rigging problem, I couldn't afford to spend any more time figuring it out so I just animated it manually. Wasn't as bad as I thought it would be

MoP

Matte painting looks good, and the robot composited into the snow looks really excellent.
I like the walk animation too, has a nice mechanical feel to it ... keep it up, it's turning out well!

rooster

Hey all, im not dead! just been writing dissertation and animating stuff.. theres not much visuals to pimp but i've got a short bit of animation handy, and the tune that the villagers will dance to:

animation: (3.1meg)
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/stitch2.mov

small folk-musicy style loop: (131k)
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/folk.mp3

edit: theres a few rough edges on the animation, some are fixed some are gonna be soon. the part where he pushes round the seat is proving very difficult to make convincing

Thegodzero

LOL i love the way he walks!

MoP

Looking good so far. I think for the chair animation, it should swivel faster initially, then slow down gradually - in fact I think it would be more effective if it actually swivelled about 30 degrees further than it is at the moment, and if he hops off while it's still slowing down from the spin, that might look more convincing?

rooster

hehe cheers Thegodzero, it looks simple (and is really) but took me 3 attempts at a walkcycle to get it that way

thanks for the crits MoP, I think you're right about the swivel I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately some of this stuff I'm doing for the first time ever and I dont always have the best setup, so some of it is a pain to change. I'm learning pretty quick that way though

I definately feel our last animation assignment was poor preperation for something like this.. (make a character walk up to a box and say a few words) Slightly bitter about that..

rooster

Update time! I've been working away, on my dissertation and the animation. lemme see, these are the main things of interest, theres also a bunch of small other tweaks I've done that arent really worth posting pictures of. The well is finished for the village etc.

heres how the observatory looks:


telescope in blizzard:


Steam regulator thingy (part of door mechanism)


Constructing the robot suit:


Ok that should do it for now, thanks for taking a look

MoP

Hehe, cool new stuff. The welding scene looks good, if anything I'd even up the brightness and saturation of those sparks, and make the light a bit brighter too, just to get even more contrast between the shadows and light.

Love the steam regulator gadget, very nifty.

The telescope looks good, although if that's supposed to be a blizzard, I'd maybe multiply the number of snowflakes by half as much again, and possibly add some subtle white volume fog to make the hills in the background seem obscured by the snow.
Also the texture stretching on the tower and the brick rim on the telescope is pretty obvious, looks like you could have maybe used some higher-res textures there... if you let the consistency drop like that, it usually stands out a bit too much.

The inside of his observatory is turning out really well too, I like the colours and materials in there.
The papers on the floor appear to be hovering above the tiles? Looks like there's far too much shadow there...
Cool touch having one of the wall panels come off and lying on the desk. Stuff like that always helps to make it more believeable.
Depth of field in that render is great too, maybe even crank it up a tiny bit to really focus it on the guy?

Great work though, I think this is gonna be cool when it's done. Can't wait to see the final anim!

rooster

Cheers mop you make some good points there :]. I know some of its a little rough around the edges, (like the scope I admit) but basically I bit off a huge chunk of work with this animation, and for something that occupies a small ammount of time in the story I can't always afford to get it just right. My advice to you if you do an animation come 4th year is set your animation in a relatively small space, like a couple rooms so you can get them down perfect. Rather foolishly I designed my animation around a large number of sets and it's taking its toll.

The blizzard thing is kind of a paradox.. I wanted it to be snowing but at the same time, hes got to be able to make stuff out through the snow. I think if I made it any thicker its going to be hard to believe he can see anything at all (I think im stretching it as it is heh). In principle I agree with what you're saying though and there is a slight fog (quite noticable if compared to the scene without fog anyway)

The paper bits are slightly crumpled and thats stopping them lie flat on the ground. I wonder how I can thin their shadows without reducing their opacity. hmm.


and: robot dancing (wip) to eggman theme (4 meg divx):
http://www.rooster13.plus.com/anim%20posting/dance.avi
heh dont worry if its slightly out of time its dancing to a different tune, I just happened to listen to that theme while the animation was playing and I noticed it fit pretty well

MoP

If I decide to do 4th year, that is...

Very true about the number of sets thing... yeah, I guess it doesn't really matter about that then.
And, yeah, I see what you mean about the blizzard visibility. I hadn't considered that he had to look to the village out of his telescope.

The dancing animation is very cool. I love the way all the bits rattle and shake, as if it's a pretty flimsy machine. Got a lot of character there. And the music fits damn well, yeah!