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The Dancing Muleboy Wearing Chaps
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.
The Dancing Muleboy Wearing Chaps // Work in Progress
Post by Mr. 3d // Dec 1, 2008, 5:44pm
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Mr. 3d
Total Posts: 747
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Great imagination and work Steinie, for the "Muletide Season" !!!
I like how all the pieces fell together in the end !!!:D |
Post by mrbones // Dec 1, 2008, 6:51pm
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mrbones
Total Posts: 1280
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I meant to say I liked this earlier. Nice ending... |
Post by Dragneye // Dec 1, 2008, 8:24pm
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Dragneye
Total Posts: 602
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Very cool Steinie! You now are officially an animator! :D
So do tell; how does it feel? What's your impression - before and after? What surprised you the most about the process? |
Post by Steinie // Dec 2, 2008, 3:07am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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Thanks guys! I'm glad some of you like it.
I did find out a couple things I'd like to share for those interested in Animation.
1) Don't let anyone say it can't be done with trueSpace.
2) Exploding Bones bug is still around but easily avoided.
3) Controlling movements like doing a predictable head rotation took me 2 days to figure out.
a) use the 4 view panel
b) click on the rotation "joint" (not bone)
c) lock the parts that will not rotate
d) now using the 4 view rotate the object.
4) To do Morphs the Character must be only one mesh. (I used bones and not the Morph tools)
5) Realtime rendering is awesome for this kind of work! (I rendered 455 frames in under 8 minutes)
6) Again the stupid object selection problem is still there. How do you un-select "everything" in a scene? This one is killing me and it has been there for two years. Fix it Roman!
7) Matrix and Owner's Matrix? Is this the "Standard" naming convention?
8) For this Animation I tried different effects all at once.
a) Notice the scene out of the window as the camera pans right creating a depth perception.
b) Caligari hair on the Mule and whiskers on the Mouse each being animated by influence from the surrounding bones.
c) mouse knocks over the present the same time mule knocks over the tree.
d) A little "Matrix" Mule fall at the end.
9) Keyframe Animation is fun but very time consuming. If you want total control of your Characters this can be a rewarding option to study.
10) Notice how the camera was used? Panning, Zooming, Tracking etc. to bring the viewer into the action.
I could have cleaned this up more but since this Animation is our Christmas Card this year I had to say "enough" (time ran out)
The ornament falling down to his nose should have been faster. My original plan was to have it bounce first. (but then it would break, right?)
There is an odd neck jerk when Mule falls I wish I had time to clean up. The Mule falling to the window should have had more back stepping and done a little quicker. The Mules head should have dropped down slightly when each antler hit his head to show the effect of added weight.
What the heck it was my first try with tS7.6 Animation tools.
After ripping the music segment from my Christmas CD. using iTunes I converted to a WAV. I loaded the WAV into Audacity to edit and time. I have an older version of Premiere which was used to combined the music and Animation files.
Well I think that covers it. Like I said in the beginning, this was not going to be a tutorial but rather an exploration into the inner workings of the trueSpace Animation toolset. trueSpace 7.6 has a lot to offer and after 20 years it was about time I used the "Other" tools it provided.;) |
Post by trueBlue // Dec 2, 2008, 6:43am
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trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
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No Handles?
For myself I do not think I could pose a character without them. Very powerfull tool. There is a Manual video explaining/showing how to set up Handles with Locks. Basicaly you select your Handle and then the Lock. So when you use the Handle the Lock engages temporaraly. Example: Handle on Hand/Hoof with Lock on Shoulder Bone. You can now pose the Arm/Leg without the rest of the body moving.
If you were to add a Handle to the Neck Joint and use it for Rotation you could freely rotate the head about up, down, left, and right. |
Post by Steinie // Dec 2, 2008, 1:47pm
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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Yes I used IK handles on his hooves and his two ears. I never thought about attaching them to a neck joint. I'll store that one in the ole memory bank...who am I talking to again...?:D
FYI
My Christmas Card actually continues after the Mule falls on his Steinie heinie. The camera then pans left to show a picture frame on the wall with family photos in a slide show. This project will be mailed on cd to all my relatives and friends.
Elf Movie next year isn't very long from now! I can't wait.
This movie made you all smile, nice! Makes the work worth it.
I'm an Animator? Stand back Pixar! Yeehaa...
Muletide Greetings, I like that! |
Post by tahnoak // Dec 2, 2008, 4:10pm
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tahnoak
Total Posts: 487
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Great job Steinie. Impressive. |
Post by spacekdet // Dec 2, 2008, 5:24pm
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spacekdet
Total Posts: 1360
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I could make a joke here about 'Assless Chaps', but I think I already did.
Besides, that would be totally inappropriate at Christmas time.
Thanks for the step-by-step illustration of your process.
I'm hoping someday to have a computer with enough mulepower to render more than one frame. |
Post by kena // Dec 2, 2008, 6:25pm
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kena
Total Posts: 2321
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this was a good one. Hope you are entering it in the monthly animation contest. |
Post by nigec // Dec 3, 2008, 12:16am
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nigec
Total Posts: 314
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Really cool Steinie :cool:
Yes isn't key frame "fun" :rolleyes: did you export as a AVI or image files? |
Post by Steinie // Dec 3, 2008, 3:25am
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Steinie
Total Posts: 3667
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Spacekdet,
Assless Chaps! hahahahah, bending over slapping knee, holding my sides because they hurt too much, out of breath, now slurring words from lack of oxygen, I slowly come to my senses and realize "I don't get it"...:rolleyes::D
Kena,
I hadn't planned on entering it into the Gallery and then decided to do it on November 31...I then came to the realization that the date was really December 1st.! A December contest will be more appropriate. I'm not so sure the quality is up to par but hey it's an "Animation Entry!" :)
nigec,
I rendered out to individual files. In Premiere they were synced with the Music and the ending JPGs were added. The hardest part for me was deciding which video codec format to use vs. file size. It is not perfect but the WMV format in a 2 meg file size turned out to be the best option. Rendering to QuickTime gave me awesome quality but a 1 gig file size!
I found Camtasia Studio to be another excellent program for combining audio and video . You can drag in WMV, AVI, WAV Jpgs onto the timeline, add transitions, text, voice overs etc. easy as pie. An amazing piece of software I highly recommend.
I want to see if it will also combine individual files into an animation like Premiere did. I'll check that out next. |
Post by nigec // Dec 3, 2008, 5:03am
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nigec
Total Posts: 314
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I know all about the scary file sizes vs quality :rolleyes:
I use mainly flash and I did an experiment game, there's an animated sequence of a Daz character talking.. with lip sync, first attempt was 50 meg! not good running online lol.. i got it down to 10meg but still it was way to much, the rest of the game wasn't half that, i think i rendered 10 different versions just to get decent balance, the final thing is now 2 meg.. another fun thing with Flash is the frame rate changes online so that made life interesting as the sound runs the right speed but the lips don't lol the offline version runs a lot better |
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