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Modeling question: If I'm creating a jacket for a character and want it to look feature quality should I model in the pockets, or do them with color/displacement maps? And do pockets that are modeled create problems for nCloth?
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Dec 1, 2013 02:28
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Cool thanks guys!
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Dec 1, 2013 03:25
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Yet another question. If I'm planning on creating a zipper for an open jacket (which won't actually be used, it's just to make the jacket look realistic) should I make the zipper a separate mesh and wrap it or bind it with clusters to the jacket or just do it with a texture map? Again, I want to make everything look as close to feature quality as possible.
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Dec 4, 2013 03:29
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Awesome, I'll be using Vray in the upcoming months so that's good info to have. Also he's got a good tutorial on displacements for Vray. Looks like the way I was taught to do that earlier this year was wrong. Ccs fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Dec 20, 2013 |
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Dec 20, 2013 18:03
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If I'm modeling a character who's wearing a stocking, should I just fake the stocking with texture maps or actually model and skin/wrap deform a stocking mesh to the leg geo? I want it to look really good, as close to feature quality as possible.
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Jan 5, 2014 23:46
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That looks really cool.
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Jan 10, 2014 01:38
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Cool stuff! The lighting is very nice and the bee flocking or particle effects thing was nicely done.
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Jan 12, 2014 03:50
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cubicle gangster posted:it's because it mixes it with the glossy value in the material - the default value of which is 1. that's a percentage value of how much to apply the map over what's underneath it - every max material works the same way. Is Vray consistent across all programs? I'm using it in Maya right now and I can't figure out where to put gloss or specular maps. I'm using the default Vray material but putting the maps into Reflection Color, Reflection Glossinesss, and Hilight doesn't seem to change anything in the render. :/
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Jan 23, 2014 02:51
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Cool renders. Speaking of which I just watched part of Epic, which had amazing looking scenery and textures. But man, the uncanny valley characters and movement made my skin crawl. It's not terrible like Zemekis mocap but it doesn't work for animation.
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Jan 31, 2014 03:02
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What are you most interested in, modeling, lighting, or animation related stuff? If modeling is your thing, trying to model real stuff is definitely good practice. For lighting that's also true, try reading Jeremy Birn's book "Digital Lighting and Rendering" (the 3rd edition just came out). Actually, just trying to match reality for a while is good practice in everything art related. Then you have a basis for exaggeration.
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Feb 6, 2014 01:16
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Not sure if your system is anything like ncloth, but this is how the guy who created that describes the theory behind it: "“Basically, you are solving for a set of particles with constraints between them. In the case of stretch, we want to preserve the distance between certain points of the particle system. It doesn't matter whether they are part of a rope or a cloth. Underneath the hood, all you have is a list of pairs of particles and their desired separation length.”" More here: http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/stam_on_mayas_ncloth
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Feb 14, 2014 05:41
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If it's proprietary, are the people who wrote the tool part of your company? Can you talk to them about it? Or if not, is there a way to contact them?
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Feb 15, 2014 20:00
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On the subject of cloth sims, I'm putting an ncloth jacket on a character, but at certain times the character's arm is going to intersect the body. Is that going to cause the cloth underneath the arms to flip the gently caress out? Or is there a way of telling it to be cool in that area when that happens. Maybe an input mesh attract or something?
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Feb 16, 2014 23:54
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ImplicitAssembler posted:What I used to do, was turning the character mesh into a nCloth mesh, enabling input attract, except in the areas where it would intersect . So typically I would paint out armpit and elbows and control the amount of gap I need with the collision distance. This would leave enough of a gap for the clothing. This means running the sim in layers, but the skin is fairly quick to run. Interesting! I'll keep this is mind though it sounds a bit daunting. Now I have more than one option to try! quote:I got enough money to last about a year, and I'm looking for something creative and pertinent to put a lot of time and effort in. Learning and then doing freelance 3D while painting on the side would be a dream come true. Is a year's worth of lynda tutorials and practice at 30-40 hours a week enough to achieve a decent portfolio and land me gigs before I run out of money? I've found lynda tutorials to be very simplistic on the subject of 3d, nowhere near what's required in the industry. You might try Digital Tutors or Gnomon.com There's also a lot of really good tutorials on youtube, of all places. Vimeo too. Professionals who aren't yet really cemented in the industry post useful tips to help themselves remember how to do certain things as well as to get their name out there and maybe convince future clients that they really know how to do something. Ccs fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Feb 18, 2014 |
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Feb 18, 2014 04:36
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How does Maya need to be overhauled? It's the only major 3D package I've used but I like it, but also want to hear what could be improved.
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Mar 5, 2014 02:14
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Does anyone have any good resources or tips for how to match the color and lighting of a CG character with live action? I've got an HDRI that takes care of most of the lighting, but I need to do fine tuning in the compositing stage.
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Mar 10, 2014 02:11
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So Autodesk announced their 2015 Maya has Bifrost and showed off an awesome water simulation. Like all things Autodesk, I don't expect it to actually integrate well until the 2016 or 2017 edition, but it's pretty cool what it can do. Also there's some fancy new skinning method involving voxels. So that's interesting. Still nothing about preventing gimbal lock once and for all.
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Mar 21, 2014 00:43
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tuna posted:Have you ever looked at quaternions in an fcurve editor? It isn't something that translates to human interaction at all. For all non-human interaction items, most processes will already be using quaternions to solve rotations. Well the program would do the quaternions in the background, but still show the euler curves in the graph editor. I think that's how it works in Motion Builder. It's really annoying because to avoid gimbal lock I actually have to add extra controls and animate the y rotation of the main torso on one control, and the x and z on the other. This is also what the Norman rig has. But constantly having to switch between controls can eat up time. quote:I never thought folks in BC/Quebec would be ok with their governments giving out about a billion dollars in cash rebates to buy work from the US Studios. It was one reason why I left Toronto over a decade ago because the early BC DAVE "rebates" were dicking over all non-BC bids in Canada. Never saw the industry for below the line workers in such a hosed up date. This is part of why I'm doing an animation program in Canada now. I want the work visa, and after that apply for permanent residence status. It seems to be where the work is going for CG. Also I like your guys universal health care thing.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:43
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I'm in Toronto, but yeah I'm aware animation is the thing everybody goes in for, so it's more saturated than the other parts of CG. I also know how to rig, texture, and model, so I'm hoping to find work as a generalist if I cant find an animation job right away. If in 2 years I realize the animation thing just isn't panning out I'll start focusing a lot more on TD aspects. Gonna try learning Python this summer.
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Mar 22, 2014 00:59
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Yeah, I've seen Seneca's stuff, some of it's really good. I'm at Sheridan right now, which I'm liking. In the next two years they're transitioning their programs over to more TD centric stuff, with more creature animation, mocap retargeting, compositing with live action, and using Houdini for muscles, etc. but right now it's still mainly an animation and CG generalist course.
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Mar 22, 2014 04:12
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No, they're still a college. They'll be a University in a few years, once the paperwork goes through with the Ontario government. Anyway my program is a one year intensive thing, and it's almost over. We've got some great teachers, a couple ex-Pixar guys, a guy who ran a studio in Toronto for 20 years, etc. They'll probably be hiring more for when the creature animation program starts.
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Mar 22, 2014 21:42
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It's good, all about animation exercises, learning more about rigging, and putting together a short film. It can be a 2 year program, with the first year being Computer Animation where they try to learn everything (and people stay in the lab 16 hours a day every day sometimes to do so) and then after that there's the optional Digital Character or Visual Effects courses. I went straight to Digital Character since I learned Maya from tutorials last year and it's been pretty good, though the first year students definitely work more because they've never used CG before. Many of my classmates already have work experience from studios in India or China so that's cool. I've heard some funny stories about how the first season of How to Train Your Dragon was made. It involved the Chinese studio's TD department falling apart due to inexperience and they needed to hire a bunch of new animators to hand key every piece of cloth movement using clusters. Insanity. Also their rigs were totally bonkers. The digital character course will become the creature animation and TD course in 2015. I'm sort of tempted to come back and take it but it wouldn't extend my work permit and it's too expensive. From now on I think any additional CG education I get will be from online workshops. But if you're a Canadian citizen it's a pretty good deal.
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Mar 22, 2014 22:39
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Yeah, even paying international tuition it's still cheaper to go here than a school in the states. But it is a luxury, being able to attend a brick and mortar school when there are so many cheaper online opportunities. I'm lucky to not be in debt.
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Mar 23, 2014 05:52
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uglynoodles posted:I'm personally really frustrated with my Game Art course I'm on right now and their refusal to teach anything other than 3DSMax. Try Digital Tutors for a month and take an intro to 3DS Max course with it. They're really good at breaking things down into easy, digestible chunks. Whereas your game course might not have the best instruction. For ZBrush CGWorkshops are great. You get feedback and lots of high level workflow tips.
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Mar 25, 2014 04:33
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Speaking of textures, I've been given a model with texture maps, some of which have materials change mid-face. The client wants different materials depending on what the texture map shows, so skin has a skin material, cloth has a cloth material. Is there any way to have a face have more than one material applied to it? Somehow "paint" a map telling Maya where to put the materials? Because I'm not supposed to alter the textures, but I'm also supposed to have the materials change exactly where the painted map changes. I can get some of what I want with painting diffuse and specular differently, but they actually want completely separate materials.
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Apr 2, 2014 00:49
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SynthOrange posted:Pretty sure that Maya has layered shaders that you can use for that purpose. Oh cool, thanks! This is a good reminder to never tell a client something can't be done (which I just nearly avoided doing). Because it probably can, I just don't know how.
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Apr 3, 2014 02:39
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This is the first version of my CG animation demo reel I'm comfortable sharing. Before I've mostly done rigging. Got an interview tomorrow with a studio in Halifax, but I'm not gonna get my hopes up on being hired, so be merciless with (constructive, hopefully) criticism. I need to improve! https://vimeo.com/92857009
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Apr 25, 2014 05:15
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ImplicitAssembler posted:While he's entitled to his opinion, he frankly knows gently caress all. I saw Serkis' and the animators performances on a daily basis during LOTR and Serkis provided a template for them to work from. That was LOTR though. On the Hobbit movies they're actually capturing his performance and not doing much keyframe animation at all. They also now have the facial performance capture stuff too. Of course the animators still matter a lot. But Lango is right about Serkis having primacy in those performances, and primacy = authorship in the minds of most people.
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May 11, 2014 17:07
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--edit-- Never mind, I don't want to get more into the mocap debate. Ccs fucked around with this message at 19:32 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 19:28
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Look dude, I've talked to people at WETA and they admit that for more human-like characters (we're talking about Gollum, not the Planet of the Apes stuff) what they do is more like what Disney cleanup artists did in relation to the key animators work. In this case Serkis' performance would be the key aniamtion, and the mo-cap artists would be the people who erase all the extra pencil lines and trace over the important lines to get the drawings ready to be photocopied onto cells. And then get to do a bit of key animation in addition. So still a very important job. But not animating it from scratch with only video of Serkis' performance as reference like they did on LOTR. The technology has gotten past that.
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May 12, 2014 02:48
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Alright. A guy in my iAnimate class named Peter Kasim gave me the cleanup animation example. He currently works at Weta. Anyway I guess I shouldn't even be arguing this. I'm glad if there's more work for animators. And no one in the audience really knows or cares who has authorship of performance of CG characters anyway. Serkis is just trying to minimize animators to get an Oscar.
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May 12, 2014 04:47
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Hey guys, so I'm working on a model and face rig (after the model) for Madame Medusa from The Rescuers. I've trying to make a rig that will be able to hit he same poses that Milt Kahl could draw. I was wondering if I could get feedback on the model, and what stuff could be done to make it look more like her (though it's gotta be an expressionless her, which is difficult because the character is always expressing...)    Here's my reference: 
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Jun 18, 2014 19:15
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Guy teaching my iAnimate section is a supervisor at Dreamworks and says they're in talks to move production to Quebec or China in the next few years. Katzenberg apparently visited Quebec recently to scope out spots the studio could go. America is sure getting drained of its animation industry.
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Jul 1, 2014 06:02
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Now another major Indian company has gotten involved in the Double Negative/Prime Focus Deal. "Anil Ambani owned Reliance MediaWorks has bought shares in Prime Focus and merged itself with Prime Focus. The trio will now be the world’s largest and most integrated media services group with over 5500 people across 20 locations offering services such as visual effects, stereo 3D conversion, animation and cloud-based digital media solutions that transcend the film, advertising and television industries." http://www.indiantelevision.com/tel...me-focus-140702 So maybe that means they'll have more bargaining power and be less likely to fail? I dunno how these things work.
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Jul 2, 2014 17:58
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If you have access to Zbrush the UV Master tool will make doing UVs much easier. You just have to flip them and do a little tweaking once you get your mesh back in Maya. But I've never had a problem with what Zbrush returns. But learning how to do it in Maya is useful. Try the cylindrical mapping option for heads. edit- Guy above me knows what he's talking about.
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Jul 16, 2014 00:32
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Try unparenting it from the hierarchy and parent constraining it instead, and then baking it.
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Jul 29, 2014 04:11
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By the way, how difficult is it for an American to get a job at a VFX or animation place in Canada? It seems like a lot of studios are moving there. I went to Sheridan so I've got a work permit for Canada until June 2015, but I'll probably want to stay longer than that. Are the studios willing to fill out paperwork to hire someone from south of the border if they don't have years of industry experience yet?
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Aug 2, 2014 04:09
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Big K of Justice posted:You already got your foot in the door with your existing work permit make sure you mention that in your resume/cover letter. June 2015 will be long enough to get on a summer 2015 show which would be hiring now and wrap in spring 2015. After that it depends if you can get summer work and have the file for whatever the Canadian immigration change of status equivalent is. Cool, thanks for the info! I will keep all this in mind and start applying in the next week or two once I finish updating my demo reel. Ccs fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Aug 3, 2014 |
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Aug 3, 2014 20:05
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Anyone know how to mirror nCloth in Maya or if it's even possible? I've got a wing setup and I've done all the ncloth work on the left side. Do I have to redo it all on the right or can I click some buttons and get it for free? Google & youtube are being of no help.
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Aug 15, 2014 18:41
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:34 |
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magnificent7 posted:The Blackwater Gospel is probably the least of the 3 I'm lusting after; but you're right. Storyboard it, then start with set pieces, etc. That's a lot easier to do than Blackwater Gospel. Just build assets in Flash or something, put them in After Effects, rig them with the puppet tool, and make the layers 3D so you can do 3d camera moves. You could also texture backgrounds in a 3D program and do the camera moves there, then export that data into after effects and add the characters.
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Aug 18, 2014 18:07
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