Hey - i would love some feedback on this simple site, and the work within. Thanks much Russ
http://www.marlboro.edu/~rwootton/GreenMountain/3d/Aztalan/Aztalan.htmlhttp://www.marlboro.edu/~rwootton/GreenMou...an/Aztalan.html
I remember your previous work. I like your stuff. I like that you focus hard on the entire animation process. So many artists want to be animators, but they get lost in building elaborate models that are far to difficult to use for learning animation. You seem to choose your props and characters very wisely. Not that they are simpler, but that you are more concerned with actually getting an animation completed instead of just still models. It is quite tough to do, but you seem well on your way.
Not much criticism. What issues I would have, I think you would overcome in your own time. You seem like a man with a mission, and know where you want to go.
However, here are a couple of items.
You have a great sense of timing. Now you need to refine your walk cycles a little more. Sure no one is going to give you a job for a walk cycle, because so many artists can simply use mocap data. However, it is still a skill that needs to be second nature. The old man character shows a good use of inertia to make him move. However, his feet stay totally flat, and there is no rock to his hips.
Just in case...never, never,never...let me say it one more time never, rough out your animation with your full res geometry. Use a block version or very, very simple shapes to setup your first passes of motion. The problem is not if you can move your effectors easily, the problem is that you need to make preview renderings at the maximum rate you can. Although, you are using OpenGL frames, if you need even a few seconds to produce a single frame, you are taking too much time. You need to tweak and tweak, and that can't happen if you need to wait 5 minutes for every motion sequence you do. Do otherwise really throws off timing. Once you get the timing close, then you can swap in your higher res. geometry to finish setup. If you are using this technique, ingore this. I just wanted to be sure.
Just some suggestions. Thanks for sharing.
Urp
It's nice to see a fellow Vermonter posted. I was going to e-mail you but was unable to locate an e-mail address on your site? Something to think about. I am building a new site at the moment but my old and unfinished site is Thomasring.tripod.com. Drop me a line I would love to hear from you. Take care Tom Quechee VT
hi guys, thanks for the replys, they are much apprishiated. Urp - generally i do do my animation with full rez geometry, but i bump it down to 1 on the rezolution, and generally hide much of it, so im only working with say the legs, at any given time, or even just the skeltiton. would you suggest a different way? yea i can get the chars to do pretty much whatever, even fairly smoothly but smooth walk cycles still illude me, grrrr.
therings- another 3d artist in VT!? no way, never thought it would happen. definatly get in touch. my email is russwootton@hotmail.com
"man on a mission", yea thats me. I spend way too much doing this stuff. but your right, i try to focus on the whole process, i spent a long time just learning how to model correctly, telling myself i was going to wait to learn how to animate, until i had something worth animating. i never saw the point of just building something, i want to see it move. anyway, comments were great, thanks much. Russ