Finished rigging up the characters, I changed there proportions in the rig so I can get a better result with my ideas.
made a quick mock up of the first scene, im referencing my rig models so the skinning is still a WIP, and as I get a clear indication of what extremite poses I need ill go back to skinning.
Hey Blackheart, looks cool! But he seems to just stop moving upward after the connects, which makes it look weird. Maybe make the transition into the kick smoother/more dynamic? I know it's just an animatic, but I think that would help the motion a lot.
The kicks pose is messed up, even in blocking stage. cause i have 2 almost conflicting poses in the 3rd and 4th thumbnails. right now its like to separate actions but ill make it into a smoother flowing combo hit.
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:
Ofcourse I have, you'll see at the blocking! Both characters are almost rigged now, just need some more skinning and some skeleton tweaks and I'm good to go!
How about splitting the horns like you make two edges close to each other, delete the faces between, separate the mesh so the horns are their own mesh, then you move them to position and parent constrain them to the original rig. That way you can parent constrain them to the other guy's hands aswell and animate it. So they may, at fist glance, look as they are one with the original mesh but when you parent them to the other guy's hands they'll come off and you may use then as you like
Blackheart, looks really nice, I like the idea you have!
The only thing Im worried about is that the storyboard you posted will result in an animation that is far longer than 6 seconds. That is just the first impression but if you can narrow it down and have a plan worked out on how long every "frame" will last that is fine
Ofcourse I have, you'll see at the blocking! Both characters are almost rigged now, just need some more skinning and some skeleton tweaks and I'm good to go!
How about splitting the horns like you make two edges close to each other, delete the faces between, separate the mesh so the horns are their own mesh, then you move them to position and parent constrain them to the original rig. That way you can parent constrain them to the other guy's hands aswell and animate it. So they may, at fist glance, look as they are one with the original mesh but when you parent them to the other guy's hands they'll come off and you may use then as you like
Looking forward to the block man.
Sorry mate, I meant that I'm having a hard time making her throw the big guy look good. Shes going to grab him by the horns and swing him around or something.
@Eoq Hopefully I can get my stuff together and post something at the end of the week:)
@Andreas take a look at kyle figgins wip on cgsociety. He uses a bone to tuck in a characters head inside the body and then having a copy of the head getting decapitated. That way you can get away without altering the mesh itself.
Looking forward to the block man.
Sorry mate, I meant that I'm having a hard time making her throw the big guy look good. Shes going to grab him by the horns and swing him around or something.
Ah, I see! Well unfortunately I don't have any solution to that except the put-it-there technique. Which could be rather painful if there is a lot of frames to deal with...
Ugh, It's week 2 and I just now finished storyboards. I'm posting them below. The fight I want to animate is between the Technomage (model 1) and the Shadow (model 4).
About the storyboard, I don't want the pacing to feel rushed so I figure I have enough time in 6 seconds for 1 attack.
New to the Forum. I am really looking forward to what everyone produces. I have both my characters rigged, and I am currently skinning them. I will post a pic of the finished characters very soon.
First Dominance War animation category. We need to rock this!
Phew!! Well, that took some time to all rig up... but should be about done now for both characters! (Using the 3DSMax Biped rig)
I have a video to prove it. It involves both characters with a slapped on motion capture of a funny dance. I hope it livens up this thread a bit Hehe
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WiJBwH4cik[/ame]
The guy's shoulders still have issues, but I'm not sure he'll be able to move his arms that much when I animate him. So, we'll see if it's a problem
Blackheart - Wow, very nice. I am guessing you have a job, Yes?
Critique so far, the starting pose just seems to snap way too fast. I would like to see him move a bit sooner. Also, the first kick he does feels floaty.
cheers suberbbum,
i still have no idea where i want to incorporate new mesh or logo, i was thinking with that kick before he jumps in the air, knocks the polycount helmet of the demon, at the camera since there a gap there so people can still pay attention and not get confused with visual noise.
yeah mate, I work in a local game company in Australia. I haven't had a chance to do any key-frame animation in over 9months though.
as for the critique, on your anim so far, poses are cool, and easy to work with, id almost have the shadow dude move more like a snake. (similar to the shadow dude from ninja scroll) and it got slightly hard to follow when he was dragging her down, but thats hard enough to see in a block out.
@Blackheart: Looking really nice there! I agree with Zadrel about the beginning and the kick. I also find it a bit fuzzy when he's working his way up on top of the horned guy. I think it's because his left leg is flailing around a bit too much. Love the end punch!
@Zadrel: I like your idea and I think it's a nice block out. My only concern is that there may be too much crammed in there. I found it hard to read what was happening and I had to watch it a few times. Could it be the moving camera that makes it hard to really keep up with the action? It would be great to see it with a still cam.
I've added the first blocked out half of my fight, though mainly to document my progress. Any CC welcome, of course!
Blackheart: Nice! My issue is that the middle segment seems to be too shrouded from view due to the big guys arms. There's too much happening and from this distance as well as due to his arm positions, we can't really see much of it. You could give his arms more anticipation before they go in for the grab to fix this, maybe make him pull them back before clapping down?
Zadrel: There's not too much to critique here, but the blocking looks sufficient. The camera moves feel weird, though. You only want the camera moving if there's a reason for it to move, i.e. a character walking, the camera should move to keep them in frame. The part where she parries the attack looks weird, because I'm not sure how she gets hit in the back from there? Might just be because it's such an early blocking.
Rymdmonster: There's an awfully long startup to this, and it's not clear what happens to the guy on the right. Obviously when he teleports back in we kinda get what happened, but you might do well with pushing a strong pose or motion before he vanishes to give us a good feeling of movement. Also, the pause for the girl to react also feels a bit lengthy.
Rymdmonster, yeah that kick pissed me off, it didn't work as a push away, but then i wanted it to swing hit the demon away, but sorta just left it as something in between for now. As for the leg flay-ling i sort of wanted that in there for the anticipation of the kick to the head before the jumping rising attack. It looked to unnatural when it was stiff, i might take a look over it again since its not so subtle. cheers for the crits!
Base, good call mate, thats where i personally had the biggest issue, and where i didn't put too much work at all. ill try to pop out another render soon, this time with the camera slightly panning from left to right so you can seem most of the action before hand. cheers.
Rymdmonster & Base: Thanks for the critique and I do very much plan on reworking the camera when I animate. I am thinking of adding a more subtle movement to the camera along with some camera shake during Impacts with her staff. Think the camera shake would be a good Idea? Yes or No?
Rymdmonster: I agree with Base that there should be a pose or something to tell the audience that he has teleported. Also, I think that he should re-appear 0.25-0.5 seconds later behind her; this would cut out her looking around and leave room for more animation. Last thing, I like her final pose that we see but the other poses on both characters could be more exaggerated. It feels like they are too squared off to each other - disregarding her last pose.
Good luck with the rest of it and I will comment on it later.
Great Blackheart, that looked very nice and you mediated the feeling in under 6 seconds.
I love the work you have done so far and can't wait to see the results.
You could try and give the big guy a little more strenght, as for now his failed attempt to counterattack seems powerless (when he grabs the attacker). You could do it either by editing the animation to give him more power or you could animate the camera slightly to simulate the power. We were allowed to animate the camera right? So I don't encourage you to do something that goes against the rules lol :poly131:
I'm gutted I haven't been able to do something for this, bloody laptop still in the repair shop. When is the deadline, December 4th or something? I might be able to whip something up if the comp comes back in a day or two.
Great Blackheart, that looked very nice and you mediated the feeling in under 6 seconds.
I love the work you have done so far and can't wait to see the results.
You could try and give the big guy a little more strenght, as for now his failed attempt to counterattack seems powerless (when he grabs the attacker). You could do it either by editing the animation to give him more power or you could animate the camera slightly to simulate the power. We were allowed to animate the camera right? So I don't encourage you to do something that goes against the rules lol :poly131:
cheers buddy, yeah, i smoothed that scene of the anim, and ended up trying to make it as though Demon fumbled, and couldnt get a good grip before shadow dude slipped underneath. Hopefully it looks better in this vido im uploading now, yeah Emil clarified that it was cool to do cameras. So i stuck in a little camera work. its really rushed though. but i dont want to get any fancier honestly.
Onto the new upd. I hope the mask isn't 2 distracting from the finale. Tryied to make it sync/slow in the air in time with the dude jumping up, and crashing down on the demon.
___
crap, what bad karma, this video renders main file went corrupt i hope i have a recent backup ! - panic-
@blackheart- play with that camera work more, I think you could make it more dynamic and overall more interesting! Animation looks great!
Now that you mention it does look really awkward.:D I'm having issues finding the right distance. I don't want to make a street-fighter style cut-scene cam even though id love to, it will hide the animation of the characters, hence solely what were judged on, but this pan around is just awkward and definitely looking boring.
I think I'm going to try cutting it into a few different scenes instead of slow transitions.
I prefer the "New Cam 2" except for the quick zoom in after the first hit. I find that quite distracting. Also, the helmet is supposed to be the polycount logo correct? To me, it doesn't quite look close enough to the logo. To me the problem is there is no defined mouth even though you have the upper teeth...But that is just me. What do others think?
Agreed, the zooming in and out is really distracting. I think if the helmet had the whole logo shaped out it would help.
I'll have something cobbled together soon, I'm having trouble working out some motions. As for coloring the characters, are we allowed to? As long as they're all one color, like in Blackhearts animation, right?
thanks for the replys guys. I think ill rework the helmet thing tonight, and probably learn how to render motion blur before i start skining final pass and rendering.
here's my dilemma though, I'm really torn between a stable camera (blast enviro), and the dynamic camera (new cam 2).
will make the vid harder for the animation to be judged on if i stick with dynamic cam, even though its much more prettier to look at?
Blackheart i would go with the blast enviro but get rid of the zooming.
Would you mind posting a tut on how u rigged and skinned those guys after the comp ends?
Really pro work Blackheart, awesome combo.
I suggest get rid of the zoom out in the beginning but i like the quick zoom that comes after but with no pan/rotation maybe(?). Ending is cool.
@Rymdmonster: Agree with Base that it's a bit unclear whats happening. It's a shame that it's not allowed to use polies for proxy fx cause it's hard to make magic and stuff like that without it.
Currently working on the bull. Also the end isn't timed yet so step through the last poses.
The pre-throw-grabbing-horns part sucks, feels like shadow is losing her flair.:poly141:
@ru4it
yeah I compromised and somehow merged the best aspects of both camera renders, I'm letting the pc render a amb-occ vid at home, i hope it turns out cool ill post it up tonight.
I'm honestly embarrassed about my rigging skills, and still learning how to optimize custom-made rigs , I will definitely post one up for a character of the major animation event new year, since ill be going through the full rig on my own. For this pre-dom war though, I used my workmates script for the fundamentals of the rig, bone structure and attributes with the controllers.
(which is similar to biped + motion-builder rig that people use)
I pretty much fit the bones in the mesh, linked up the chains (to bones/ ctrls) and go straight onto skinning after that. My skinning is mediocre at best, since these characters are the result of my second attempt of skinning on Maya.
@barnev, Man that animation felt really satisfying i cannot wait to see how the other character takes in all that damage. sweet work.
@bejkon,
the throw looks smooth, id like to see the demon trying abit more to resist.
This is a WIP of what I have so Far. I would love any and all critique I should have quite a bit more done by the end of the week. I will post another update either Saturday or Mid Sunday
@bejkon : i think the fight is just a little too One sided. I would also like to see him resist more.
The animation is coming along nice!!, cant wait to see how it turns out after you animate up those last poses. I reckon for the first 3 attacks from shadow dude need more second motion stepping in. perhaps in the leading attacks with the hips and more torso movement, sort of to accentuate the power behind the attacks especially the ones the girls blocking.
new upds, AO pass rendered that took 12 hours just for the hell of it, turned out ok with the cam, but its zoomed in too much so.... im never doing that again till the end, yep.
and now finally the only thing i have left to do is the damn modeling of each of face masks maybe add armor elsewhere, but I'm honestly not bothered the quality of the added mesh, I just wanted to animate, and then skinning!!!!! argh.
Blackheart: Really dense animation. I like that little flip the character does before smashing the horned guy's face in. What two characters are you portraying?
@Barnev : I personally think there is too much camera movement... I think I prefered, not saying it was perfect, the first camera angle you showed us. The high up angle shot; I would zoom it in though.
I like the animation though
@doublemint : need to see more. The camera angle is unclear as well. It's hard to tell whats going on when he jumps on her. Good Luck.
@double mint, I think the first guys going to be shadow, since his so mobile/versatile against a cocky war general or corrupted... actually now that i think about it, i think ill have the demon dude laughing at him at the start.
@Levus, thanks mate yeah I'm new to rendering in general in maya, the last time i rendered (when i new what i was doing, or at least thought i did) was in 3D max 6 or 7, and that was pretty much 5 years ago,
I pretty much heard of ambient occlusion just last year and just looked up a quick tut of it online.
since that I've been doing trial and error trying to get a good look out of it. I raised the samples on purpose to kill the grainy effect, and i popped it up to HD 720. I think those are the major factor slowing it down so much. Plus my pc is 4 years old too...
Replies
Finished rigging up the characters, I changed there proportions in the rig so I can get a better result with my ideas.
made a quick mock up of the first scene, im referencing my rig models so the skinning is still a WIP, and as I get a clear indication of what extremite poses I need ill go back to skinning.
[ame]
The kicks pose is messed up, even in blocking stage. cause i have 2 almost conflicting poses in the 3rd and 4th thumbnails. right now its like to separate actions but ill make it into a smoother flowing combo hit.
I've gotten started on some rigs for these guys (3DSMax Biped), and roughed out my chicken-scratch thumbnails!!
I'll have some work to show very soon!
Ofcourse I have, you'll see at the blocking! Both characters are almost rigged now, just need some more skinning and some skeleton tweaks and I'm good to go!
How about splitting the horns like you make two edges close to each other, delete the faces between, separate the mesh so the horns are their own mesh, then you move them to position and parent constrain them to the original rig. That way you can parent constrain them to the other guy's hands aswell and animate it. So they may, at fist glance, look as they are one with the original mesh but when you parent them to the other guy's hands they'll come off and you may use then as you like
The only thing Im worried about is that the storyboard you posted will result in an animation that is far longer than 6 seconds. That is just the first impression but if you can narrow it down and have a plan worked out on how long every "frame" will last that is fine
Looking forward to the block man.
Sorry mate, I meant that I'm having a hard time making her throw the big guy look good. Shes going to grab him by the horns and swing him around or something.
@Eoq Hopefully I can get my stuff together and post something at the end of the week:)
@Andreas take a look at kyle figgins wip on cgsociety. He uses a bone to tuck in a characters head inside the body and then having a copy of the head getting decapitated. That way you can get away without altering the mesh itself.
Ah, I see! Well unfortunately I don't have any solution to that except the put-it-there technique. Which could be rather painful if there is a lot of frames to deal with...
About the storyboard, I don't want the pacing to feel rushed so I figure I have enough time in 6 seconds for 1 attack.
I'm probably just going to rig these guys with the 3dsmax biped.
Also, I don't like model 1's hair. It reminds me of the [ame="
First Dominance War animation category. We need to rock this!
I have a video to prove it. It involves both characters with a slapped on motion capture of a funny dance. I hope it livens up this thread a bit
[ame]
The guy's shoulders still have issues, but I'm not sure he'll be able to move his arms that much when I animate him. So, we'll see if it's a problem
Now, onto the animating...!!!
Nicely done!
more upds,
hopefully this makes sense to all. my drawings are pretty rap when it comes to animating thumbs.
ill post the vid up soon soon ive blocked most of it out now.
render done!!! got a ambient occul vid up for ya all... took ages to load.
[ame]
Critique so far, the starting pose just seems to snap way too fast. I would like to see him move a bit sooner. Also, the first kick he does feels floaty.
Very nice though,
Animatic:
[ame]
i still have no idea where i want to incorporate new mesh or logo, i was thinking with that kick before he jumps in the air, knocks the polycount helmet of the demon, at the camera since there a gap there so people can still pay attention and not get confused with visual noise.
@Zadrel
yeah mate, I work in a local game company in Australia. I haven't had a chance to do any key-frame animation in over 9months though.
as for the critique, on your anim so far, poses are cool, and easy to work with, id almost have the shadow dude move more like a snake. (similar to the shadow dude from ninja scroll) and it got slightly hard to follow when he was dragging her down, but thats hard enough to see in a block out.
@Zadrel: I like your idea and I think it's a nice block out. My only concern is that there may be too much crammed in there. I found it hard to read what was happening and I had to watch it a few times. Could it be the moving camera that makes it hard to really keep up with the action? It would be great to see it with a still cam.
I've added the first blocked out half of my fight, though mainly to document my progress. Any CC welcome, of course!
[ame]
Zadrel: There's not too much to critique here, but the blocking looks sufficient. The camera moves feel weird, though. You only want the camera moving if there's a reason for it to move, i.e. a character walking, the camera should move to keep them in frame. The part where she parries the attack looks weird, because I'm not sure how she gets hit in the back from there? Might just be because it's such an early blocking.
Rymdmonster: There's an awfully long startup to this, and it's not clear what happens to the guy on the right. Obviously when he teleports back in we kinda get what happened, but you might do well with pushing a strong pose or motion before he vanishes to give us a good feeling of movement. Also, the pause for the girl to react also feels a bit lengthy.
Base, good call mate, thats where i personally had the biggest issue, and where i didn't put too much work at all. ill try to pop out another render soon, this time with the camera slightly panning from left to right so you can seem most of the action before hand. cheers.
Rymdmonster: I agree with Base that there should be a pose or something to tell the audience that he has teleported. Also, I think that he should re-appear 0.25-0.5 seconds later behind her; this would cut out her looking around and leave room for more animation. Last thing, I like her final pose that we see but the other poses on both characters could be more exaggerated. It feels like they are too squared off to each other - disregarding her last pose.
Good luck with the rest of it and I will comment on it later.
i hope being able to post soon but i got a big contract atm...
I love the work you have done so far and can't wait to see the results.
You could try and give the big guy a little more strenght, as for now his failed attempt to counterattack seems powerless (when he grabs the attacker). You could do it either by editing the animation to give him more power or you could animate the camera slightly to simulate the power. We were allowed to animate the camera right? So I don't encourage you to do something that goes against the rules lol :poly131:
cheers buddy, yeah, i smoothed that scene of the anim, and ended up trying to make it as though Demon fumbled, and couldnt get a good grip before shadow dude slipped underneath. Hopefully it looks better in this vido im uploading now, yeah Emil clarified that it was cool to do cameras. So i stuck in a little camera work. its really rushed though. but i dont want to get any fancier honestly.
Onto the new upd. I hope the mask isn't 2 distracting from the finale. Tryied to make it sync/slow in the air in time with the dude jumping up, and crashing down on the demon.
___
crap, what bad karma, this video renders main file went corrupt i hope i have a recent backup ! - panic-
[ame]
Now that you mention it does look really awkward.:D I'm having issues finding the right distance. I don't want to make a street-fighter style cut-scene cam even though id love to, it will hide the animation of the characters, hence solely what were judged on, but this pan around is just awkward and definitely looking boring.
I think I'm going to try cutting it into a few different scenes instead of slow transitions.
[ame]
[ame]
Edit;
feel free to crit away
I'll have something cobbled together soon, I'm having trouble working out some motions. As for coloring the characters, are we allowed to? As long as they're all one color, like in Blackhearts animation, right?
here's my dilemma though, I'm really torn between a stable camera (blast enviro), and the dynamic camera (new cam 2).
will make the vid harder for the animation to be judged on if i stick with dynamic cam, even though its much more prettier to look at?
This video contain single caracter animation
[ame]
Would you mind posting a tut on how u rigged and skinned those guys after the comp ends?
I suggest get rid of the zoom out in the beginning but i like the quick zoom that comes after but with no pan/rotation maybe(?). Ending is cool.
@Zadrel: Cool idea! want updates=)
@Rymdmonster: Agree with Base that it's a bit unclear whats happening. It's a shame that it's not allowed to use polies for proxy fx cause it's hard to make magic and stuff like that without it.
Heres my wip.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7179363/bejkonDWwip.mov
Currently working on the bull. Also the end isn't timed yet so step through the last poses.
The pre-throw-grabbing-horns part sucks, feels like shadow is losing her flair.:poly141:
yeah I compromised and somehow merged the best aspects of both camera renders, I'm letting the pc render a amb-occ vid at home, i hope it turns out cool ill post it up tonight.
I'm honestly embarrassed about my rigging skills, and still learning how to optimize custom-made rigs
(which is similar to biped + motion-builder rig that people use)
I pretty much fit the bones in the mesh, linked up the chains (to bones/ ctrls) and go straight onto skinning after that. My skinning is mediocre at best, since these characters are the result of my second attempt of skinning on Maya.
@barnev, Man that animation felt really satisfying i cannot wait to see how the other character takes in all that damage. sweet work.
@bejkon,
the throw looks smooth, id like to see the demon trying abit more to resist.
This is a WIP of what I have so Far. I would love any and all critique
@bejkon : i think the fight is just a little too One sided. I would also like to see him resist more.
[ame]
The animation is coming along nice!!, cant wait to see how it turns out after you animate up those last poses. I reckon for the first 3 attacks from shadow dude need more second motion stepping in. perhaps in the leading attacks with the hips and more torso movement, sort of to accentuate the power behind the attacks especially the ones the girls blocking.
[ame]
and now finally the only thing i have left to do is the damn modeling of each of face masks maybe add armor elsewhere, but I'm honestly not bothered the quality of the added mesh, I just wanted to animate, and then skinning!!!!! argh.
[ame]
awesome character to animate fellas
i busy right now, so i can´t participate, but good luck everyone!
[ame]
[ame]
Blackheart: Really dense animation. I like that little flip the character does before smashing the horned guy's face in. What two characters are you portraying?
I like the animation though
@doublemint : need to see more. The camera angle is unclear as well. It's hard to tell whats going on when he jumps on her. Good Luck.
12 hours is a lot, you have a slow machine or maybe need some help with settings?
@double mint, I think the first guys going to be shadow, since his so mobile/versatile against a cocky war general or corrupted... actually now that i think about it, i think ill have the demon dude laughing at him at the start.
@Levus, thanks mate
I pretty much heard of ambient occlusion just last year and just looked up a quick tut of it online.
http://www.jonathanrnelson.com/tutorials/occlusion/occlusion2009.htm
since that I've been doing trial and error trying to get a good look out of it. I raised the samples on purpose to kill the grainy effect, and i popped it up to HD 720. I think those are the major factor slowing it down so much. Plus my pc is 4 years old too...