• Newest 3DS Max animation [Soldiers Without Borders: Ep05]
    15 replies, posted
Welp, took some doing, and after a catastrophic hard drive failure, some re-doing, but after over 5 months, I've finally got the newest episode of SWB up and running! [video=youtube;QVvuxj8Z2F8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVvuxj8Z2F8[/video] (The total run-time is 8:30 including the 24 second credits and the pre/post roll. As I know many viewers probably aren't following or familiar with the series and may not be interested in watching the full thing, there is a brief fight scene at 5:46 that I'd greatly appreciate some insight on, as this was what dominated a good majority of animation time, and since there will be further 'confrontations' of this nature, knowing what needs work would be an immense help.) I cannot thank you good folks enough for all your helpful insight when it came to the previous episode. I took all your notes and critiques to heart and did my best to try and implement as many of them as I could. Namely bone movement, frame rates, and switching to low-key lighting over omni-lighting. Naturally, any additional notes or issues that should be addressed would be greatly appreciated. Thank you and hope you enjoy!
It's a huge improvement from episode 4, keep up the good work dude. And the fight scene was top notch too, already looking forward to the next thing you do.
You are too kind, thank you very much!
i think that the low-poly models look really cool in your animations. they also must be easier to animate than crazy detailed shit.
Most definitely. It's a lot easier not having to worry about fingers or additional bones / larger model sizes. And with my horrid Windows Vista, I wouldn't even be able to comprehend doing this series with current generation models, hehe. The drawback is it makes the 'action-free' scenes a little more daunting, to where they really can't be all that long. I'm hoping to eventually get eyeball and lip movement going.
I just stumbled upon this tonight and I must say you animations are awesome, and as was said before the low poly models just make it so much better. Congrats on doing an A+ job with what you have man really really good work!
Thank you kindly.
[QUOTE=milkandcooki;42654732]they also must be easier to animate than crazy detailed shit.[/QUOTE] Not only that, but mesh modding them is substantially simpler when I don't need to worry about messing up the eyeball and mouth meshes for certain models. Makes meshing original characters a lot easier: [QUOTE][IMG]https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/1380379_10151930476558887_608119532_n.png[/IMG] [IMG]https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/1003790_10151922997588887_1238287892_n.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/1014136_10151711805753887_1156521751_n.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] Which is great because a lot of MPO+ / PW models felt kind of generic as is. So not having to settle on that helps a lot, especially when they can be textured and meshed to still look like the base models, which makes it less likely for people to be thrown off in quality differences between models.
Speaking of which, as much as I really liked the attire for FOX Unit, one thing that always bothered me was that despite 3 base models, every single FOX Unit soldier was blond with blue eyes. And since mesh-modding is a lot easier with these low-res models and since FOX will be the dominating factor of the series from episode 7 and up, I decided to give FOX a little variation. Also, in addition to which, the lighting in the screenshot below is with two F-Spot lights, one with Atmospheric lighting and a strength of 0.6, and one as basic diffused with a strength of 0.3. Would this lighting be proper or would it still be too "High-Key Lighting" for models like this? [QUOTE][IMG]https://scontent-a-pao.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1385499_10151944395988887_1582381878_n.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE]
I remember back when you posted Episode 1. You've gone a long way! I see huge improvement in walking animations!
[QUOTE=Coyoteze;42699396]I remember back when you posted Episode 1. You've gone a long way! I see huge improvement in walking animations![/QUOTE] Thank you kindly. Admittedly, the walking animations, *and most animations in general* actually became far less stressful when I got the key-frame cloning down. It allowed clean organic flow for every bone to move in a properly timed pattern. Prior, nothing was cloned, so every single bone was re-animated again and again, and it just made for a giant mess in retrospect, heh.
So I recently turned 30-something two days ago, and the colleague who got me started on the 3DS Max Train sent me this picture since I play Cunningham: [IMG]https://scontent-a-pao.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/576643_10200125303773763_917978623_n.jpg[/IMG] Now, I'd LIKE to implement lip and eye movement, but for the life of me, I still don't quite know how to rig lips and eyelids. I'm hoping to find a tutorial online so I can re-rig the models before I start on Episode 6. However, one immediate thing I'd like to implement in my videos is his choice of lighting. It's Low Key and does a decent enough job masking PSP's low-res textures, but more importantly, doesn't completely black out everything in the shadows, which was one problem a few folks noted with this episode. Anyone who's familiar with Max got any recommendations in terms of lighting? Because I'm trying to release a Black Mask short this or next week and would love to give a smoother lighting option a test run with that short before I implement it in a lengthier video.
I'm still trying to get the hang of lighting, but here's a trick with D. Light and advanced Ray Trace that's peaked my interest in terms of appealing light for less appealing textures: [QUOTE][IMG]https://scontent-a-pao.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/q71/s720x720/942212_10200183641232163_1040589715_n.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]https://scontent-a-pao.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/q80/s720x720/1476540_10200183648312340_860705297_n.jpg[/IMG][/QUOTE] I'm a bit hesitant to apply it however. Because on one hand, it makes the lighting look infinitely better and far more realistic and consistent than the lighting I tried with this episode. On the other hand, each episode is around 200 plus rendered clips MINIMUM, and taking space aside, rendering just one of these with this kind of lighting takes at least an hour, as opposed to my more basic lighting which rendered 300 plus frame-clips from anywhere between 10-20 minutes. On a separate note, the ever talented Ty Konzak; who plays Sgt. Jackson and Gabriel in this episode, is starring in an upcoming plat former for PS3, along with a plethora of talented VA pals, called "Stick it to the Man!" [QUOTE][video=youtube;JmPae_q66Rw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmPae_q66Rw[/video][/QUOTE] Thus far, the game's getting quite a positive turn-out from review sites; praising the outlandish humor, and unique puzzles that make the game, and I'm hoping it and the cast behind it, get the credit they deserve for all their hard work.
So I managed to implement the lighting I was referring to in this short here, and all in all, I was relatively pleased with the result, *minus some positioning I should have done a little better to get shadows less domineering in some shots* [QUOTE][video=youtube;pD3Y3Da34Xg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD3Y3Da34Xg[/video][/QUOTE] However, each clip was rendered at 600x800 aspect ratios, and clips as small as 150 frames took over an hour to render, and there were only 10 clips rendered in total. Whereas, I was able to render over 200 clips for Episode 5, all of which were around the same length, AR, or longer, and the actual render time was a fraction of the time, typically 15-30 minutes max. From a completely objective standpoint, would anyone here say the more polished lighting is worth the time or is it just not worth the hassle?
Keep up the fantastic work dude.
Thank you kindly!
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