Final

Final from acorn on Vimeo.

New video

I've uploaded a new video, some things need to be changed but the lens flare is giving a nice effect to the bulb -which is what I was just working on...soon I will upload a final version.
I thought the lens flare works nicely as a glow, and I've found in the past that the glows give me trouble. One nice side effect is that the lens flare brightens the image so that (in the final) it will show the walls that I spent some time on, which otherwise would be hidden in shadow.

new still (render region)

here's a still from the Establishing shot, for the battery animation, The bulb appears to be shaping up nicely. Also the velvet looks pretty good.


* I should mention that the errors on the surface of the bulb is where I didn't completely map the reflection.

Battery animation

Working on the battery animation, have put together a short video with the basics- I think I'm going to add some parts where he tries multiple times to light the bulb, but other than that I can't think of anything else to add.




prefinal from acorn on Vimeo.
posted on blogger:

New stuff

Been a while since I've been here. I havn't been working diligently on XSI, back to it now.

still working on the battery animation.

have some thoughts on the most recent renders -- some images from the sequence.


These images demonstrate the unfinished state of the animation, although they have some good things to them. Clearly I have to finish the floor because when the light goes Up, you can see everything. I don't like the way the back wall (in the long shot) shows up. The texture is alright and I think the original is a nice picture but...

So, I'm making some progress.


here is the video:


Rough (CS-->LS) from Arthur Dent on Vimeo.

X skeleton

I've got a skeleton I'm using for the character that is effectively an X, if you look at previous posts you will see that a certain behavior is inherent with this skeleton. I now think that this is not a effective means to animate the character. Although it gives me a walk that I want the lean or bend is not right.


I could use two separate skeletons for the two separate behaviors, but this seems cumbersome and might be evident when viewing.

I can't think of another framework to use.

quick post _ progress

quick render showing the texture on the back wall and the new
lighting rig.

trouble with texturing

I'm experiencing a problem right now with the texturing of this battery character. It seems that the textures on the side of the shape get a disproportionately large degree of shadow, as shown in the examples below. The first example is a render region, the second is a screen shot, of the same object. The texture doesn't show up in the render region.
After some exploration I discovered that the issue might have something to do with implicit/explicit texturing.



*fixed the problem with some learning about basic lighting, see more recent posts.

Long shot rough

ZAPOPATHIC: Breathing and Concentrating

• too dark
• not sure of the affect it has
• missing light bulb
• may add crowd
• may add additional lights
• velvet pillow needs work
  

+ textured, label
+ good atmosphere

LS rough from Arthur Dent on Vimeo.





*working on the light bulb, have to add another PASS, a BEAUTY PASS so that I can see whats going on, currently I have a DIFFUSE PASS so that I can render Ambient Occlusion and Composite the DIFFUSE, AMBIENT, & HIGHLIGHT PASSES together.

this is a bit thrown together from a post I saw on XSIbase, the gist of which (from what I gather)
is that you Composite a color PASS with an ambient occlusion PASS. I also determined, I'm not sure how, that there should be a SPECULAR PASS. I looked around in the preset PASS list and found that there was a HIGHLIGHT PASS, so I used that. These PASSES are set up using OVERRIDES to add or subtract (I think) material parameters. So in the case of the HIGHLIGHT PASS, the Diffuse and Ambient parameters of the materials are Muted.

*The lightbulb has issues in and of itself... the spiral shape doesn't lend itself to easy manipulation other than with PROPORTIONAL MODELING.

*some of the questions I am asking myself right now are, should I make a new BEAUTY PASS, so that I can get all of the illumination that I need? What should I do about the lightbulb socket? It doesn't look good right now.

*have to work on the velvet pillow

Walk!

Zapopathic:


Walk! from Arthur Dent on Vimeo.
finally making some progess

Working on the walk cycle ( comments on Vimeo); there are a number of things that I did with this that are probably a waste of time although I guess I'm learning,

• constrain the effector on the arm chain to a curve

I could have accomplished this just by normal animation, although

its very easy to cycle, and it mightlook better.

makes a bit of a mess in the scene

• duplicate in symmetry the setup from the left side

This is just a pointless waste of features in this case.. in my opinion/ quick though

• used a curve to generate the bone structure for the arm

This is also a waste of good features, although again it seems to work well

One thing that I found is that the constrain feature gets you into
trouble when trying to pose the skeleton with multiple
bones

• rotated the upper body to accentuate the arm movement +

• enveloped the "sleeves"/boot to the bone

this might have been accomplished better and I'm not sure how, maybe if I constrained the cluster "boot" to the root null

there are some problems with this envelope when it is tested under X-treme conditions: for instance the arm itself buckles with 40 degree bending, maybe I could use a bend modifier, don't know, have had difficulty with the bend modifier before

walk1 from Arthur Dent on Vimeo.

ant body

Working on the body for the ant character, has a really modern/new looking sleek style. Not just an ant anymore.

here are some assorted pictures,

...reminds me of the Dark Knight.

More..

Here is a new hand that I find more satisfactory. Rigged too.

Ant character

So I've started to model an old character I had from school. Not sure of what I'm going to name it, had Helio, but that doesn't do anymore. Here are some images of the shoe.























...and here are some images of a hand that I just made, I don't think I'm going to hang on to the hand but I made some progress with it.

softimage.net

seems to be down today, which is kinda a downer because I was starting to get back into it.

still in the frame of mind to do some designing before I even touch the program

Personal musings on the Use and Abuse of XSI

So I've been trying to stray away from endlessly banging my head against the software, instead I think there must be a more strategic, efficient approach.