Pre-Dom War V - 3D Animation
polycounter lvl 18
We are not making a game, nevertheless, it would be awesome to see artists interpretation of how characters in a Dominance War Universe would look like in an MMO type game. Important things to remember, DW is a world comprised of magic, technology, aliens, machines, and demons. The time period is set in the distant future where cities lay in ruins and signs of great wars can be seen across the lands. For further specifics, please read about character classes available to create and about the rules & regulations for the following categories: 3D Character Art, Concept Art, and 3D Character Animation. World standings await the best designed prelim entries! Good luck to all those brave enough to enter!
- Everything for this challenge must be made from scratch (animation category may use base mesh supplied by DW). No pre-existing ideas, sketchs, drawings, base meshes, or body models can be used.
- Keep gore and nudity to a decent level please! Dont get DW banned in various countries!
- Artists can only join 1 team for all of dominance war V. If you start with polycount, you cannot later switch to gameartisans or cgsociety. Traitors are not welcomed.
- You are not required to enter all challenges. Pick the ones you like, and join.
- This is a wip challenge. Posting your work in progress in your chosen forum is ABSOLUTLY MANDATORY. Do not wait until the last day to show your progress or you can potentially be disqualified.
- You can only submit one 1000x1000 350k max final image. What this means? 200w x 1000h is fine. 999w x 500h is fine. 1001w x 200h is NOT fine. This image must include your team logo, your characters name, and your personal name and/or contact details.
- You can use any 3d, 2d, or animation software package in the world to create your entry. You can also use traditional mediums like pencil, paper, paint, etc to create your entry.
- Only 1 entry per person. Do not create or try to create multiple entries with different user names.
- Final submissions are final. If you upload your final image 4 days before the deadline, do not ask us to change it. Make sure you are happy with your image before you submit it into the system.
- Public voting to find each team's best entries, starts December 6th and will continue throughout the Christmas break. Later, each teams best will be gathered into a single pool, and a grand champion will be chosen and announced with all other Dominance War V event champions in April 2011.
To download the basemesh, click on the corrosponding thumbnail image above.
You have 4 weeks to finish a short 6 second fight sequence between two characters with the following specs:
- Create a fight sequence where one character is the attacker and one character is the receiver of the attacks. The receiver should start standing, but finish dead on the floor.
- Mandatory: Use and rig two of the above 3d base meshes for your character animation. They must be different models.
- Keep in mind, when animating your characters, they should reflect two of the 4 character classes found above: War General, Technomage, Shadow, or Corrupted.
- No textures or coloring allowed. Entire Mesh should be a single color. Optional: You may show the wireframe on your rendered animation (the wireframe can be a uv map texture applied to your model).
- No sound fx or music allowed. Animation should be silent.
- You may NOT alter the base mesh, but you may add up to 500 extra polygons per character for gear, clothing, appendages, and weapons. No pets or extra sentient beings (including pet robots). Example: 500 extra polies for character #1 PLUS 500 extra polies for character #2. Optional: At your discretion, you may modify (add more lines/topology) the joints of each model if it helps its movement in your animation. This joint modification does not count towards your 500 extra polygons/character.
- All lighting solutions and rendering solutions from any software package is allowed.
- For this warm up challenge, you may not use special effects, particles, or polygons and textures for special effects, magic effects, etc.
- 6 seconds maximum for entire fight sequence. No extra time for lengthy credits.
- Important: Your animation presentation must include your team's logo emblem and your two chosen character class names (War General, Shadow etc) in your animation. It can be on the floor, it can be within an overlay that frames your shot, it's up to you. Optional: You may add your name, website, and/or contact details alongside your team's logo and character class names if you choose. For logos, visit - Here
- Animations should be uploaded onto Youtube or similar site and you must paste the url to your animation in the submissions page for animation.
All 3D Animation work in progress entries are required to be posted in this thread. DO NOT create your own thread for this challenge.
If you have any questions, post them in the Pre-Dom War V FAQ Thread.
For more information and the full brief, head to the Official Dominance War site.
Good luck.
Replies
If they want a flat plane, then they should specify it. I'm happy to make whatever environment simplified as all hell art wise.
And let's say there was a tree or a rock in the enviro. Can it be animated. Can I bash a character through a wall?
Thanks
I was thinking hmmm yeah, 2D, getting some painting going, should be fu--WHAT. Animation!!!
Yeah, I'm in!
Good luck to everyone!!!
You only submit the video, so they have no way of judging the rig. I'm sure plenty of people will be using pre-made rigs like biped or whatever their pref is.
Seeing as you aren't allowed to texture the basemeshes, I'd refrain from texturing any of your environment as well.
The environment CAN be animated also. If it's purely visual (wind, falling leaves, background animation of any kind), it's not going to be judged. If it's throwing a character through a wall and you want to animate debris... Then it should be fine. But keep it simple. You're being judged on the animation of the 2 characters.
scrawld: The cameras can be animated in any way you like.
Blackheart: The breif calls for 2 characters. No more, no less.
Also, existing rigs are acceptable, so long as you're the one applying the rig and skinning the model. You're getting pre-made basemeshes, so pre-made rigs should be fine. The primary focus is the animation.
Alias: No teams allowed for this challenge. One person per entry and one entry per catagory. If this changes, I'll let you know.
We do have a FAQ Thread for all questions, feel free to ask them in there.
I guess ill start things off then.
first batch of thumbs going to make a slightly large bulky guy fighting either skinny dude or the chick, still unsure.
I'm going to aim for a dynamic anime feel, hoping to get as much clear strong poses as i can without bombarding the eye with super complex movements.
still unsure how the skinny dudes going to get back from the big dudes beat down on the ground though .... well see
Just making sure I got this bit right, if a rigger/animator wishes to add any weapons, armor, etc, it's all gotta fit within 500 tri. Also, tweaking the basemeshes for smoothness of motion does not detract from that 500. Right?
Regardless of the answer, I'll probably try my hand at rigging all four of em. Doesn't hurt to practice what you've just learned in class, does it? Besides, they might be good practice on animation too, even after the contest ends.
FINALLY
6 seconds, love it. will have it done for you tonight! haha ;D
I havent read much of the first post yet, but whats up with making a 6second fight sequence inside a MMO "game". I've only played a handful of MMO's in my life, and they all have
idle loop > 30 frame attack animation > idle loop
I ain't seen no 6 second 2 character fight animation boss!
oh well, if we all set our brains to cutscene-mode it'll be fine!
If you want add armour, this can only be in the form of floating geometry, not actually cut into the basemesh and you are limited to 500 tris of extra geometry.
I hope that answers your question.
Doesn't this mean we can add extra deformation loops? Just want to clarify. I don't know if I'll need the loops, but it would be nice to know in case I run into an issue involving that.
Anyways, I'll post up some stuff related to my project now. Still really preliminary, obviously, but I wanted to get motivated early on it so I can get this going and finish on time with the best I can!
First off, I had to shrink the models down to a more relevant scale. After I imported the obj's into maya, they were all way different sizes, so I took a guess at their relative scales to each other. Here are the two I'm deciding to do:
The one on the left will be a Corrupter class and my Attacker. The other one, I'm thinking either War General or Technomage. Haven't decided quite yet!
I was also able to model a very simple prop onto the Corrupter. I wanted him to have a sort of macabre/disturbing kind of movement, as the description and concept art impies of the class. So I gave him claws bound to his wrists, so I can have him get uncomfortably close to deliver powerful, painful strikes.
They're obviously super simple, but it's just for a prop and I'm under poly limit so I think it's okay.
I'll do a thumbnail tomorrow, but hopefully this process will go smoothly. I'm not much of a rigger but it can't hurt to try!
EDIT: Finally found her, but I don't know who modelled her and in what program but she was off in crazy space and oriented crazy too...forseeing problems using this mesh :S At least Max users can use reset xform...is there a blender version for that does anyone know? Also importing meshes into the scene seems to have reversed my controls for zooming on the MMB?
Given him a giant hammer and shield whilst she will just be using her fists.. thinking about giving her a cloak and wrapping one (or both?) of her fists in some kind of cloth or chain that moves around with her. Idea again is that the cloth will make her seem a lot more 'flowing' whilst he'll be far more rigid using metal and wood.
fffffuuuuuu Thats practically exactly the thing I thought of doing. :poly124:
I can think of something else though, the possibilities are endless.
It's awesome that they have an animation contest and I really hope I find the time to do an entry.
Still deciding on the scale for the two characters, might have to make the girl a little bigger just because if the guy was really that big it would take more than the 6 alloted seconds just for the anticipation of the guy swinging his hammer. I don't think I will give them any gear besides his hammer and she'll have a floating circlet on her head, she also will get a sword that pops out of her elbow.
I will add some thumbnails for what my plan is later but the idea is pretty much that he is a giant war general, shes a shadow person and she dodges a hammer swing after he stands then spins around and stabs him in the back with her elbow sword.
I'm just thinking about the scale. The elbow-blade thing needs to be proportioned to the character, so, she in turn has to be big enough that her sword is big enough to actually kill the warlord in one stroke. Unless she really hits something vital.. Or maybe slitting his throat as she darts past him?
Sweet. Thanks for clarifying that you two. Main reason I had asked is because I worried a bit about the shoulder/upper chest joints on the models, at least, I was worried with some of the plans that are running through my mind. Once midterms finish tomorrow, I'll start trying to put some of it together.
Unfortunately, as great of an idea as that is, it's disallowed to alter the basemesh (unless adding support loops for improving deformation).
However... You do have an extra 500 tris to play with for gear and weapons. So you could potentially model up an extra set of horns for the character, so these could be ripped off and used as weapons. This would be perfectly acceptable in the rules.
I'm gonna begin my rigging today, while I figure out how I want the fight to go in my head. So exciting
Rigging and weightpainting is done! I didn't have any cool idea to show off the weight paints like Cfish though. So fresh with that hammer man.
Now I'll get to work thumbnailing the battle. I've got a general idea of how I want it to go, so hopefully this'll all go well for me.
rigs are coming as soon as possible
Do you get ok deformation when rotating the big guys wrist in rotx without a forearm joint?
I came up with an outline yesterday. The horned guy is the wargeneral and the girl is the shadow.
-Shadow punches him in stomach with right hand.
-Wargeneral bends over
-Uppercut with left hand
-Shadow grabs his horn and throws him to the side tumbling. His horns is his weakness that shadow is using.
-Shadow do a cool aerial jump and crushes him while he's still on the ground.
Also, I realized jazz is the ultimate music while skinning.
About halfway. It's job is to retain the volume when twisting the wrist.
But i don't know if its necessary if it looks ok but if its collapsing into a bowtie u may consider it depending on how much you want to rotate it in your animation.
The goal is to have the forearm joint get half of the wrists rotation in x. I know of two solutions, one with constraints and one with expressions.
tldr
check out this tutorial, I'm terrible at explaining:)
[ame]
The character which is to resemble the War General:
Not properly skinned yet but the main rig is almost done
thx for answers
I made a test rigging of the horned guy, whom I'm using as the Shadow character. I haven't decided on the other character yet though.
Here's a quick animation that I made after work to give myself an idea of what the Shadow may move like. I'm thinking of making him really beast like and savage. Ignore the cube and stuff.
You can use a parent constraint to both the attackers hand (a joint in the hand) and to the recievers back (a joint in the back) then you animate the parent blend so at a given point in time the knife follows the attacker and the frame after it follows the reciever.
No, it does not have to be a part of the rig.
Rigging at the moment...it's taking an age as I'm still learning it. Not even finished the big guy yet
CAT is an animation system. Skinning is done the regular Max way, by using the Physique (if you're old) or the Skin modifier.
Was just wondering: can i add like, say, tentacles to one of the characters or would that be counted as modifying the base mesh (since the tentacle would be connected to the body)?
hfhdrtrtr: If you use the bonus 500 tris to model in tentacles this would be fine, ONLY if you leave it as floating geometry (clipping into the original mesh). You CAN NOT alter the original mesh.
Hells yea! Do you have something cool planed out?
My characters are rigged and ready to go but i don't know if I can pull off her throwing horned guy, tis hard:poly127: