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First Animation
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
First Animation // Work in Progress
Post by Liger ZERO // Aug 18, 2006, 6:17am
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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This is my first animation in trueSpace. I have created 2 characters. One is a Spark Bug(A Spark plug with legs) the other is a Fly(Wingnut). I'm planning on having a scene and story in the future but for now I just want to do some animation test and learn how to make them look natural. I'm using ts7 with Motion Studio. I have the basics down with the help of the Character Animation video by Oliver. Any help you guys can give would be great. Or if anyone knows of any good web sites to learn animation.
Here is what I have done so far. |
Post by trueBlue // Aug 18, 2006, 6:23am
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trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
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Looks like your off to a great start! I'll be looking forward to seeing more. |
Post by mrbones // Aug 18, 2006, 6:37am
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mrbones
Total Posts: 1280
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Looking good!
Cheers |
Post by Délé // Aug 18, 2006, 12:09pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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Nice work Liger! Looking good already. I like the characters. :) |
Post by Liger ZERO // Aug 21, 2006, 8:08pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Thanks for the comments guys. :)
Motion Studio, I'm finding is a vary fun and powerful tool. I have been trying out the blend tool for the past few days and it makes movements easy. I have been working on the flow of the movements and timing(vary time consuming). I'm going through lots of trial and error, but I'm learning a lot.
Here are some clips I have done with Wingnut. |
Post by frank // Aug 22, 2006, 3:48am
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frank
Total Posts: 709
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Liger,
Fantastic job! Six-legged characters as a FIRST animation is pretty ambitious, but I think you are on the right track with it!
Motion Studio, I'm finding is a vary fun and powerful tool.
Indeed. How do you like the way you can pin each leg (no matter how many) to the ground? Very handy. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Aug 22, 2006, 7:16pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Thanks frank.
Multiple nails = :banana:
You got to love Motion Studio. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 4, 2006, 8:21pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Well I'm back at this again. (I have been working too much :o )
I have done a few landscapes this is the one I think I'm going to go with for my short animation. The problem I'm having now is the rendering. I am getting a weird light effect. (see animation) Is this caused by the renderer or my settings. I'm using Virtualight with GI. Is the GI my problem? Can you render an animation with GI? Thanks for any help you can give. |
Post by Nez // Dec 4, 2006, 11:52pm
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Nez
Total Posts: 1102
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Don't know about the lighting issue, but just wanted to say your animation is suberb - has a very good 'feel' in terms of the quality of movement, to my eye at least.
Look forward to seeing where you are going with this. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Dec 5, 2006, 3:44am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Hi LigerZero,
These are great animations. The lighting one was too short for me to see what the problem was. Is your light source or the grass moving?
You may want to post a screen grab of your scene setup so we can see the position of the light to the objects. Is the grass alpha mapped?
-Jack. |
Post by TomG // Dec 5, 2006, 4:56am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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You mean the flickering on the surfaces? Not sure of the cause. Some things to try to see if you can isolate the cause
1. Render single frames and have a look if the lighting has changed. In other words, does one face getting suddenly bright always happen when a face gets to a particular angle, even if there is no animation being rendered. If so, then the renderer is calculating it that way.
2. Maybe the single frames render differently each time you render it. This would be possible if the renderer is using samples and approximations, which may be different each time around. Increasing samples / approximations would then be necessary to reduce the effect.
3. Render an animation where nothing happens (ie no movement). Does the effect still occur.
4. Render using the same engine, but with no GI, see if it is GI that is introducing this effect.
It could be anything really, could even be the codec for the animation file, you'd need to do some tests like the above to isolate when the problem happens to narrow down the cause (unless someone here has seen this very thing before and can tell us what it is ;) )
HTH!
Tom |
Post by hultek43 // Dec 5, 2006, 6:45am
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hultek43
Total Posts: 234
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Interesting. Is the light source to the left? Perhaps it is reflecting from Wingnut? How was this rendered from trueSpace (as in which codec if to an .avi file) ? |
Post by 3dpdk // Dec 5, 2006, 8:34am
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3dpdk
Total Posts: 212
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I think Thomas is close to the answer.
If I were to hazard a guess, you are rendering the animation using one of the compression schemes supplied with tS, like the Cinepak Codec by Radius.
Most of these have a setting for "Key Frames" every (n) frames. (At 30 FPS, every 15 frames would mean a key frame every .5 sec) Without a LOT of explination on what that means, if that setting is at the default (15 frames) it means that the image in the video clip, NOT THE RENDER, can drift if there is NO movement in the shot. That's what is making the lighting appear to flicker at about a half second rate in your clip.
Two solutions:
1. Render with no compression scheme (scroll down to the very bottom of the selection window and select "uncompressed frames"); then, after rendered, load the clip into an external video editor (Video Explosion is my preference) and let the video editor compress the clip into a .wmv (or what ever)
2. uncheck or deselect the key frame option. This makes EVERY frame in the clip a key frame and the flicker will go away. The file size will be a little larger but it's a good trade off. Little file = less quality / Larger file = better quality.
Paul |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 5, 2006, 7:48pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Thanks for the help everyone. Your input helps me out a lot. :)
There is a light array to the right with about 12 lights. The grass is polygonal. I render all my frames to bmp and put them together with Rostrum Camera. I think Tom is on the right track with answer 2. Here is 2 renders only 2 frames apart. On the mushroom you will see a difference in lighting. I'll try some more test like changing the material of the wing nut and rendering a still animation. I’ll also try the key frame thing with my renders of the video. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 11, 2006, 12:59pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Well after a week of test renders I have found that it is the irradiance setting that is giving me the problem. When there is movement in the animation the GI changes causing light to change and bounce off the charter. I have played around with the settings for the irradiance. (distribution, grid size, samples, blending area, bounce level, max error, and max distance) All of these setting had no effect on my problem. Well, I will fake the GI and use Light Works. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 18, 2006, 11:56am
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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I'm happy with the lighting and the renders now. I think it's looking good. I need to work on the sky textures still but over all I'm happy with the way it looks now.
I got one animation sequence done(ReadyOrNot.wmv). The other video(Flight.wmv) is 1/3 done. I got the body/leg work done, but I'm going to take out the part where she looks right to left. Next step is the eyes and antennas. Then the hard part the wings. Once I finish the animations I will work on the camera.
Maybe you guys can give me some feed back on these videos to help me improve them. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Dec 18, 2006, 1:57pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Very smooth animation! Looks good.
Only crit I'd have is that the background seems a bit static and moving blades of grass (wind) might help give a sense of a breathing living envirionment. But you're probably not worried about that until you finish the character animation. ;)
You should render a larger version and enter some of these animations in the animation gallery contest.
-Jack. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 19, 2006, 9:47am
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Thank you Jack for your input.
I saw that too in the video. It looks like a dead world frozen in time and that's not the look I want. I have done some tests on having the grass sway. I'll add that to it in the future when I get the main animation done. :) |
Post by e-graffiti // Dec 19, 2006, 2:37pm
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e-graffiti
Total Posts: 171
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good animation, especially to be your "First". Could these results have been achieved with the built in tS tools (anyone can respond). |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 20, 2006, 3:27pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Good question.
I would say it is possible to do a lot of what I have done with tS Bones. Just from what I have done here in these animations I would say it would be vary hard just using tS bones. tS only gives you one nail to work with and motion studio gives you an unlimited number of nails. For the eyes and antenna alone I use 8 nail most of the time. With these 6 legged creatures it would be hard to keep every thing where it needs to be. With tS 7.5 on the way, with a much improved animation tool set I think this would be vary easy for tS.
All I can say is try Motion Studio. You have nothing to lose because it’s free now. :D
http://www.primitiveitch.com/pub/ |
Post by ProfessorKhaos // Dec 20, 2006, 6:53pm
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ProfessorKhaos
Total Posts: 622
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Liger... this stuff you've done is really cool! The movements look very natural and though your little friends are made of metal parts they move with a character that is possessed only in higher beings.
Well done! |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 25, 2006, 9:35am
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Here is a full 14 seconds of animation. :banana: It took about 10 hrs to render this.
I added some camera movement to it but I may have over done it for the shot. What do you guys think? The cool thing I found out is you can use the Motion Studio bones for the camera. It made moving the camera a lot easier. I think this can be a helpful tool in controlling the camera. With tools like nails and blending for smooth camera movement it gives artist a lot more control. I don't know if any one has tried it but I just thought it was cool. :)
The grass is still not animated. For some reason I cant get the grass to rig like I have done in other test. So that is something I'll have to fix before the final render. There is a lot left to do. |
Post by jamesmc // Dec 25, 2006, 5:44pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Very nice animation!
You sure picked a tough one to do for a first animation. Flying and beating wings!
Looking good though.
Render times everyone hates them and as it always go, you notice something you didn't do or do properly as soon as the rendered movie pops up. :mad: |
Post by Jack Edwards // Dec 26, 2006, 12:14am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Interesting effect with the moving camera. Adds a lot of "life".
Gives me the impression that it's being filmed with a hand movie camcorder or that the view point is from the perspective of another critter.
Good work!
-Jack. |
Post by Morgan // Dec 26, 2006, 6:15am
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Morgan
Total Posts: 138
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Interesting effect with the moving camera. Adds a lot of "life".
Gives me the impression that it's being filmed with a hand movie camcorder
This is what I was thinking as well... it's a really neat effect, given how "mechanical" camera position can be sometimes in 3D animation. Very nice work, both with the camera work and the scene itself. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Dec 26, 2006, 2:01pm
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Thanks for the comments. I glad that you guys think it brings some life to the shot. That's what I was shooting for. I may still change the camera once I finish the rest of the animation. This type of camera movement will help a lot for the running sequence.
BTW, I see I never gave the title of this animation. It’s going to be called "Hide and Seek". |
Post by e-graffiti // Dec 28, 2006, 11:10am
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e-graffiti
Total Posts: 171
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Looks really good so far. Keep up the good work. |
Post by Liger ZERO // Jan 13, 2007, 8:02am
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Liger ZERO
Total Posts: 124
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Here is a little update. I got a little more animation done and I have also finished my last character for the animation. More video coming soon. |
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