Showing posts with label CG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CG. Show all posts
Friday, February 04, 2011
You May Now
Fun little short film by Dane Winn and Daniel Keeble. Dane tells me they whipped this out in "a few days". Nice!
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Les Metiers
Very charming! I love the simple (but robust) character designs. Animation style isn't overly fluffy, but it doesn't need to be. Nicely done.
LES METIERS : LE BOULANGER from lam le thanh on Vimeo.
Found via 3dTotal.com
LES METIERS : LE BOULANGER from lam le thanh on Vimeo.
Found via 3dTotal.com
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Manfred
I liked this little short by Arjen Klaverstijn. Nice style, simple idea, clear characters. Pretty solid for student work.
'Manfred' an animated short by Arjen Klaverstijn from Arjen Klaverstijn on Vimeo.
found via 3dtotal.com
'Manfred' an animated short by Arjen Klaverstijn from Arjen Klaverstijn on Vimeo.
found via 3dtotal.com
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
new Despicable Me trailer
I totally dig the yellow minions. There's some clever gags in here, but there is also the potential for some ham-fisted handling of "emotional" scenes. We'll see- the proof is in the execution....
One thing, though, the animation looks well executed. The animators look like they had fun. Certainly not shabby by any stretch.
One thing, though, the animation looks well executed. The animators look like they had fun. Certainly not shabby by any stretch.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Who knows how this will go over?
Despicable Me trailer.
This could hit a nerve and really find an audience, or it could fall flat on its face. Right now I have no idea which will happen. There's some fun stuff here, and of course some cliche' cheese, some typical snark. Visually it looks pretty solid. It's not tough on the eyes like Space Chimps or Valiant. Some nice animation, good modeling, solid lighting, fun designs. What we're finding is that by now nearly everybody knows how to make a CG animated film look pretty good. No longer there this huge drop off in visual quality one you get past the big 4 (Pixar, DW, Blue Sky, Sony). That playing field has leveled off quite a bit. Is this enough to make Despicable Me stand out and make some money? I have no idea. Interesting times.
This could hit a nerve and really find an audience, or it could fall flat on its face. Right now I have no idea which will happen. There's some fun stuff here, and of course some cliche' cheese, some typical snark. Visually it looks pretty solid. It's not tough on the eyes like Space Chimps or Valiant. Some nice animation, good modeling, solid lighting, fun designs. What we're finding is that by now nearly everybody knows how to make a CG animated film look pretty good. No longer there this huge drop off in visual quality one you get past the big 4 (Pixar, DW, Blue Sky, Sony). That playing field has leveled off quite a bit. Is this enough to make Despicable Me stand out and make some money? I have no idea. Interesting times.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Elk Hair Caddis - fun short film
Lotso, lotso fun stuff. I really like the feel of the real life miniature sets. Animation is a fun ride, too. Love the deforms and the shapes in transition. Definitely see the Meindbender influences (which is a good thing). Enjoy!
And here's a really neat "making of" video that shows some stuff. Fun rigging, too.
Congrats to Peter Smith, Magnus Moller and the whole crew.
And here's a really neat "making of" video that shows some stuff. Fun rigging, too.
Congrats to Peter Smith, Magnus Moller and the whole crew.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Squiggle Line Tutorial
It's been a while since I've had enough free time to do anything with my Otto & Schmitty characters. But some time back I posted a little snippet of a squiggle line test animation. Since I don't know when I'll have the time to pursue this idea further, I thought to myself- Gee, why not share how I did it and see if somebody else can do something cool with the technique? I really couldn't find a good reason not to, so here it is- a quick and dirty tutorial on how I came up with the toony 'boiling ink line' look in Maya.
First, animate your character. The trick- throw away all those fancy animated goodies you've fought so long and hard to learn how to do well. The secret to success in this approach is not technical fluidity and super fine detail work. Keep it simple. No Moving holds! Seriously. Lock those poses in flat. And don't worry too much about smooth f-curves or flowing motion. We're emulating a rougher style, remember? I found the less polished the curves the better the results. Oh, and I usually do this at 12 fps, not 24. So be sure to set your time settings appropriately. Here's a good example of what I mean.
And here's the f-curve editor just so you can see. There's nothing fancy in here at all. Just solid blocking basics, really. Poses, good breakdowns and maybe an ease if you think it's needed. Maybe.
Second, apply a non-realistic looking texture. I'm including a link to one I made here. This was an earlier, simpler version of what I finally ended up with for Otto & Schmitty, but it's enough to give you the basic idea. Again, we're not out to make it look real- so one of things I focused on was breaking up that nice, smooth gradient of light to dark that is very common in CG materials. A flatter appearance is key. Here's a quick snapshot of the hypershade node tree. My final one on Otto was actually even more complex. Who knew being simple would prove to be so complicated?
Once we have the color and the simple animation, let's put the secret ingredient- the wobbleDeformer. This is a plug-in deformer that you can download for free from CreativeCrash.net (formerly highend3d.com). What it does is simple- it wobbles your geometry over time. You'll need to go to your Windows > Preferences > Plug-Ins dialog to load the plug in. Once you have it loaded , select your geometry, go to Create Deformers > wobble Deformer. You should notice your geo gets warped some. Hit play or make a playBlast and you'll see the geometry wobble. (hence the name). The default settings are kinda mushy, so we'll push things a bit to roughen it up. Try bumping up the Frequency Scale and the Time Frequency for the wobble deformers attributes in the channel box. Also, if the deformer is making things wobble too much tone down the Space Frequency X, Y and Z and maybe the Strength, too. Here's a quick sample of the settings I used for this example....
OK, so it wobbles pretty good. But that's not enough. It needs some ink lines. So now what we want to do is add some ink lines to this. We'll use Maya's built in toon-line features. Select your mesh and add a paintFX toon line. Be sure to turn on Show Strokes in your Display menu so you can see them in your viewport. Here's a quick render of what the toon line looks like right out of the box....
Meh. The typical CG curse of perfection. We can't accept the toon ink line “as is”. We need to break the line up. Let's push it some. The primary issues are that the line thickness is too thin and too even. Fixing the thickness is easy. Just select the pfxToon object in your Outliner, then adjust the Line Width attribute in the channel box. Pick something that looks good. There's no magic number really.
Fixing the uniformity of the thickness is a bit trickier. For this we'll use a 2d Noise texture and pipe it into the LineWidthMap attribute. In your Hypergraph make a new 2d Noise texture and then connect it's outAlpha to the LineWidthMap of your pfxToon using the Connection Editor. (I'm not walking you step by step through that process- I'm assuming you know how to do these things. They're pretty basic.) Anyhow, the default Noise is a good start, but we can adjust the settings to get the best effect. A good example would be what I did for Schmitty...
Here's how that looks.
Better, but still not what we want. The thickness is non-uniform alright, but it doesn't change over time. So what I do is animate the Implode attribute on the Noise texture. I use a 4 or 5 frame cycle animation on it. Vary the settings from roughly -0.5 to 0.5. By doing this the Implode value will cycle for as long as your animation is and you'll get good results. Feel free to make the cycle have more frames in it, but 5 is a decent start. Here's how that looks...
Much better. But one obstacle remains. CG is really good at keeping perfect forms. The object is wobbling and the line thickness is changing, but the line is stuck right to the edge silhouette of the geometry. If we can get the line off the geometry that'd be pretty cool. Easy enough- just do the same Noise texture trick on the Line Offset Map attribute and set the Line Offset attribute to something noticeable. Make another Noise texture (or duplicate your other one), adjust it's settings to be different, animate its Implode values on a cycle and connect its outAlpha to the Line Offset Map attribute on the pfxToonShape. Here's the result....
Pretty cool- and that's pretty much all there is to it. There are other variations you can play around with. You could put the pfxToon on a duplicate object that has a slightly different wobble deformer setting on it but has its primary visibility disabled so all that renders is the toon line. This way the the color geometry and the ink lines aren't wobbling at the same frequency or amount, further adding some random organic-ness to the thing. And you can put more than one pfxToon on the object, too. With that approach you get the effect of multiple ink lines of varying transparencies and thicknesses and noise- maybe to emulate rough pencil lines. You can also put a noise texture on your color shader and animate that to break up the shading on the main part of the geometry. I'll let you and your imagination figure out ways to expand the concept. Here's a quick example of multiple ink lines and the hidden duplicate object technique...
Lastly, you can download the Maya 2009 files for you to mess with (here and here). Just remember- you'll need the Wobble Deformer installed for these to work properly.
Anyhow, I hope folks find this interesting. Enjoy!
First, animate your character. The trick- throw away all those fancy animated goodies you've fought so long and hard to learn how to do well. The secret to success in this approach is not technical fluidity and super fine detail work. Keep it simple. No Moving holds! Seriously. Lock those poses in flat. And don't worry too much about smooth f-curves or flowing motion. We're emulating a rougher style, remember? I found the less polished the curves the better the results. Oh, and I usually do this at 12 fps, not 24. So be sure to set your time settings appropriately. Here's a good example of what I mean.
And here's the f-curve editor just so you can see. There's nothing fancy in here at all. Just solid blocking basics, really. Poses, good breakdowns and maybe an ease if you think it's needed. Maybe.
Second, apply a non-realistic looking texture. I'm including a link to one I made here. This was an earlier, simpler version of what I finally ended up with for Otto & Schmitty, but it's enough to give you the basic idea. Again, we're not out to make it look real- so one of things I focused on was breaking up that nice, smooth gradient of light to dark that is very common in CG materials. A flatter appearance is key. Here's a quick snapshot of the hypershade node tree. My final one on Otto was actually even more complex. Who knew being simple would prove to be so complicated?
Once we have the color and the simple animation, let's put the secret ingredient- the wobbleDeformer. This is a plug-in deformer that you can download for free from CreativeCrash.net (formerly highend3d.com). What it does is simple- it wobbles your geometry over time. You'll need to go to your Windows > Preferences > Plug-Ins dialog to load the plug in. Once you have it loaded , select your geometry, go to Create Deformers > wobble Deformer. You should notice your geo gets warped some. Hit play or make a playBlast and you'll see the geometry wobble. (hence the name). The default settings are kinda mushy, so we'll push things a bit to roughen it up. Try bumping up the Frequency Scale and the Time Frequency for the wobble deformers attributes in the channel box. Also, if the deformer is making things wobble too much tone down the Space Frequency X, Y and Z and maybe the Strength, too. Here's a quick sample of the settings I used for this example....
OK, so it wobbles pretty good. But that's not enough. It needs some ink lines. So now what we want to do is add some ink lines to this. We'll use Maya's built in toon-line features. Select your mesh and add a paintFX toon line. Be sure to turn on Show Strokes in your Display menu so you can see them in your viewport. Here's a quick render of what the toon line looks like right out of the box....
Meh. The typical CG curse of perfection. We can't accept the toon ink line “as is”. We need to break the line up. Let's push it some. The primary issues are that the line thickness is too thin and too even. Fixing the thickness is easy. Just select the pfxToon object in your Outliner, then adjust the Line Width attribute in the channel box. Pick something that looks good. There's no magic number really.
Fixing the uniformity of the thickness is a bit trickier. For this we'll use a 2d Noise texture and pipe it into the LineWidthMap attribute. In your Hypergraph make a new 2d Noise texture and then connect it's outAlpha to the LineWidthMap of your pfxToon using the Connection Editor. (I'm not walking you step by step through that process- I'm assuming you know how to do these things. They're pretty basic.) Anyhow, the default Noise is a good start, but we can adjust the settings to get the best effect. A good example would be what I did for Schmitty...
Here's how that looks.
Better, but still not what we want. The thickness is non-uniform alright, but it doesn't change over time. So what I do is animate the Implode attribute on the Noise texture. I use a 4 or 5 frame cycle animation on it. Vary the settings from roughly -0.5 to 0.5. By doing this the Implode value will cycle for as long as your animation is and you'll get good results. Feel free to make the cycle have more frames in it, but 5 is a decent start. Here's how that looks...
Much better. But one obstacle remains. CG is really good at keeping perfect forms. The object is wobbling and the line thickness is changing, but the line is stuck right to the edge silhouette of the geometry. If we can get the line off the geometry that'd be pretty cool. Easy enough- just do the same Noise texture trick on the Line Offset Map attribute and set the Line Offset attribute to something noticeable. Make another Noise texture (or duplicate your other one), adjust it's settings to be different, animate its Implode values on a cycle and connect its outAlpha to the Line Offset Map attribute on the pfxToonShape. Here's the result....
Pretty cool- and that's pretty much all there is to it. There are other variations you can play around with. You could put the pfxToon on a duplicate object that has a slightly different wobble deformer setting on it but has its primary visibility disabled so all that renders is the toon line. This way the the color geometry and the ink lines aren't wobbling at the same frequency or amount, further adding some random organic-ness to the thing. And you can put more than one pfxToon on the object, too. With that approach you get the effect of multiple ink lines of varying transparencies and thicknesses and noise- maybe to emulate rough pencil lines. You can also put a noise texture on your color shader and animate that to break up the shading on the main part of the geometry. I'll let you and your imagination figure out ways to expand the concept. Here's a quick example of multiple ink lines and the hidden duplicate object technique...
Lastly, you can download the Maya 2009 files for you to mess with (here and here). Just remember- you'll need the Wobble Deformer installed for these to work properly.
Anyhow, I hope folks find this interesting. Enjoy!
Friday, February 05, 2010
Pivot
I've been away, busy with a big cross-country move and the new job at Valve (which is going awesome, by the way!). Thought I'd come back with a post highlighting this really sharp short film. I love so much about this one. Enjoy!
More info at their website... http://pivotthemovie.com/
More info at their website... http://pivotthemovie.com/
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Eye Like Pizza- short film in prod
Animator Jeff Robinson is working on a neat looking little short film project titled Eye Like Pizza. He has a production blog here. The image above is one of his main characters. I like the look. Jeff tells me it's gearing to have a "classic-cartoony vibe". I'm all for that. He's got a quick little motion test he put together in this post. (note: Jeff- make this stuff embedable!)
Looking forward to seeing more soon.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
"I solve practical problems..."
Why am I posting this, besides the fact that it's really well done and funny? Well, because I've accepted an offer to be an animator at Valve Software in Bellevue, WA, creators of the above linked Team Fortress 2 and Half Life game properties (among others). I'm quite excited about the opportunity because even though the position is titled 'animator' it's really more of an animator/TD/CG generalist/creator type deal. I'll have opportunity to spread my interests across a broad spectrum of roles and tasks- something that I find really intriguing. As much as I understand the whole "focus only on animation" mantra that's preached among animators these days, I honestly get bored doing just one thing for months and years on end. I like a challenge and I love learning new things. As such the switch to the interactive side of media is a whole new deal for me- which is exciting. I'll have a chance to work with and learn from the best- the roster of artists, animators, designers, technicians and programmers at Valve is beyond impressive. It's gonna be cool to see where it all goes and I'm thankful to have the chance to play along.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
NHS short film promo
I liked this. Has a neat UPA vibe to it, but it's not hiding the fact that it's CG, either.
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Cacure San Valentine -- short film
A fun little short by Luis Angel Villalobos. I love the texture and hand made paper look of this. The timing of the animation to the music is neatly handled. The characters have simple expressions, but they read. This is another great example of finding the right match between visual style, motion and story.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Squiggles!
An old trick in the world of limited budget 2d animation is to cycle through two to four drawings for a hold. This way you can chew up the scene footage with as few drawings as possible. The result is animation that kinda squiggles as it holds, maintaining the illusion of life more by an expression of energy than literal movement. This is very cost effective and the image stays alive due to the cycling. Since the animation stays so rough the audience accepts it for what it is- as well as whatever other limitations of the animation that come along for the ride. It's surprising what an audience will take in and filter through once they perceive the internal rules of an animated universe- a task that takes perhaps all of two seconds of viewing. Certainly I think this attitude of getting by with the least possible effort can be way overdone, but in the right balance I think there's real potential for cost savings without surrendering richness. The richness just comes in a different form, that's all. Nina Paley used this technique in Flash while making her solo feature film Sita Sings the Blues. You can see what I mean in the very first scenes in the following segment of the film....
It's rough as heck, but it totally works. In fact, it more than works. It thrives on a level that is completely different than if it were tied down tight, tightly polished and had the holds all animated in like a typical big budget Disney 2d film. The rough look has a kind of vibrancy to it that actually adds to the film. I don't have a fancy explanation for how it works- I just know it does.
Since I have these little stories I want to make, but I don't have a huge budget (natch: I don't have any budget) to hire an expensive team of animators and CG technicians, I keep looking for creative ways to leverage lessons and tricks from other mediums of animation into my little CG toolbox. I've lost years of effort trying to be a one man band making short films employing the big-studio CG film style. Those were lessons learned the hard way. So I've been messing with this squiggly thing for a few years now (off and on). It's taken that long to find something that works. Due to the rigidity of the meshes and well established visual norms CG just doesn't like to do this sort of thing. And nothing looks worse in CG than a cycle- of any kind. So I'd try something, but it'd look like crud- like some kind of mechanical or technical error rather than a purposeful artistic style. So I'd leave it for a while and then come back and try something different after thinking of something in the shower. More failures each time, each coming closer to what I wanted but couldn't see in my head because it just wasn't being done anywhere else. CG is so picky when it comes to the imagery it makes. There's so little margin for error it seems. It's too demanding, too rigid an artform at times. But like Edison and his silly light bulb, I kept at it. I finally feel like I got it. Here's my version (watch it in HD for a better look. Or best yet- here's a link to a full res QT)....
This is really fast to animate because I'm using flat out 'dead holds' on the controls and letting the squiggly part keep the scene alive. I hit a pose and that's it. I hold it. No 'moving holds' or overdone overlapping business. This 4 second scene took maybe 15 or 20 minutes to animate (compare that to 4 sec. per week doing it the "right" way in feature films). In fact I over-animated it at first out of habit, so I had to go back and rip out the moving holds I had started to build in. I tell you, the hardest part is de-programming myself from doing CG the "right" way. It's not as easy as it sounds to embrace simplicity and then trust it. Anyhow, here's a screen grab of my f-curves to show the dead holds on the major controllers... (click to see it larger).
This is what it looks like without the squigglies....
You can see that it's super dry and just goes dead without the squiggles. The squiggling really keeps it feeling vibrant. So yeah. I'm really, really happy with where I've ended up with this.
It's rough as heck, but it totally works. In fact, it more than works. It thrives on a level that is completely different than if it were tied down tight, tightly polished and had the holds all animated in like a typical big budget Disney 2d film. The rough look has a kind of vibrancy to it that actually adds to the film. I don't have a fancy explanation for how it works- I just know it does.
Since I have these little stories I want to make, but I don't have a huge budget (natch: I don't have any budget) to hire an expensive team of animators and CG technicians, I keep looking for creative ways to leverage lessons and tricks from other mediums of animation into my little CG toolbox. I've lost years of effort trying to be a one man band making short films employing the big-studio CG film style. Those were lessons learned the hard way. So I've been messing with this squiggly thing for a few years now (off and on). It's taken that long to find something that works. Due to the rigidity of the meshes and well established visual norms CG just doesn't like to do this sort of thing. And nothing looks worse in CG than a cycle- of any kind. So I'd try something, but it'd look like crud- like some kind of mechanical or technical error rather than a purposeful artistic style. So I'd leave it for a while and then come back and try something different after thinking of something in the shower. More failures each time, each coming closer to what I wanted but couldn't see in my head because it just wasn't being done anywhere else. CG is so picky when it comes to the imagery it makes. There's so little margin for error it seems. It's too demanding, too rigid an artform at times. But like Edison and his silly light bulb, I kept at it. I finally feel like I got it. Here's my version (watch it in HD for a better look. Or best yet- here's a link to a full res QT)....
This is really fast to animate because I'm using flat out 'dead holds' on the controls and letting the squiggly part keep the scene alive. I hit a pose and that's it. I hold it. No 'moving holds' or overdone overlapping business. This 4 second scene took maybe 15 or 20 minutes to animate (compare that to 4 sec. per week doing it the "right" way in feature films). In fact I over-animated it at first out of habit, so I had to go back and rip out the moving holds I had started to build in. I tell you, the hardest part is de-programming myself from doing CG the "right" way. It's not as easy as it sounds to embrace simplicity and then trust it. Anyhow, here's a screen grab of my f-curves to show the dead holds on the major controllers... (click to see it larger).
This is what it looks like without the squigglies....
You can see that it's super dry and just goes dead without the squiggles. The squiggling really keeps it feeling vibrant. So yeah. I'm really, really happy with where I've ended up with this.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Cartoon CG fun
Friday, September 18, 2009
"9" = not a bad little money maker
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Another painted CG short
This one is a little more cohesive than the previous one I posted.
There's some neat use of projections that I think is very clever. The end result is the geometry is free to move, but the painter's control over what part of the whole image has which color, tone, value, etc remains. For an example of what I'm talking about, watch the top of the merry go round as it spins in that first shot. The geometry is passing through the painting as the top spins, but the painting is not stuck to the geometry. If you watch carefully you'll see this technique is the very foundation for this style of look through out the short- even on the characters. This is a great way of getting a consistent sense of the painting being alive without it feeling like it's just a painting plastered onto a puppet. The normal 'rule' in CG is to avoid having geometry swim through a texture, but for this kind of stuff it's a great trick.
There's some neat use of projections that I think is very clever. The end result is the geometry is free to move, but the painter's control over what part of the whole image has which color, tone, value, etc remains. For an example of what I'm talking about, watch the top of the merry go round as it spins in that first shot. The geometry is passing through the painting as the top spins, but the painting is not stuck to the geometry. If you watch carefully you'll see this technique is the very foundation for this style of look through out the short- even on the characters. This is a great way of getting a consistent sense of the painting being alive without it feeling like it's just a painting plastered onto a puppet. The normal 'rule' in CG is to avoid having geometry swim through a texture, but for this kind of stuff it's a great trick.
Schmitty Walk cycle
Watch it in HD if you like. It's extra tasty at full rez.
This is just a generic walk for Schmitty. Walks are like chicken broth. You don't ever eat plain chicken broth, but it's the basis for a lot of tasty recipes. Walks should be adjusted for moment, character, emotion, physical limitations, etc.
On a technical note I'm exploring some new techniques for mixing up the shading texture as well as distressing the mesh silhouette in order to make a more "hand crafted" feel. I'm working on some other tests that will show that better which I hope to share soon.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
More painterly CG
Another Gobelins effort. I like the shading, especially the active line within the objects defining light and shadow on the form. The clouds & FX are cool. The backgrounds are handled very well, but in the darker moments the characters get lost against them- something typically avoided when one employs an emotional palette as opposed to a literal one. The stark shadows work well. I think the animation, while good at points, could have benefitted from being dialed back into limited frame rates and not full on 1's the whole way through. It's that same bugaboo that has plagued NPR CG for the last decade. Looks like a nice painting until it moves. It's that visual harmony/cohesion thing again.
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