Monkey Rig

[altbighead]

hi there,

Your model is coming along nicely.I have a couple of suggestion tho.

I am not sure what kind of money you are going for so ignore my post if i am comparing with different monkey.

First , I think you need to break the silhouette into intersting shapes.In nature nothing is really straight unless it is man made.

I also think You need to play with fur a little bit.I think they shold tilt to 20 degree rather than strainght down .

good luck with your project.

[spice]

Here's a test render of the model with nice looking hair, courtesy of Arno...

And a close-up of the face, with my own shaders...

Still a fair amount of tweaking to go, though!  Comments appreciated!

17779[/snapback]

Nice, nice...

But i have still a suggestion

In my opinion the hair looks a bit too greenish. I think you should decrease the green in the ambient (diffuse ?) color...

Cheers,

Arno

[djpeanut]

Since I've pretty much finished the project I thought I'd post an enlarged still so you guys can see how it's looking. In this shot, the character has just suffered a rather painful landing on a rather inconveniently-placed branch.

(Just for reference, this is my computer science undergrad major project, and the objective was to produce a short education/entertainment film for kids based on a fictional script but with setting/characters modelled from real-life animals and environments (the Amazon flood-plains). The result was expected to be very rough and basic, but given that 7 months ago I'd never done any CGI/film/Houdini work in my life, I'm pretty chuffed with it!)

I'll post the finished video once all the rendering is done - it's taking quite some time!

[Mcronin]

It's my new desktop!

What does "chuffed" mean?

[djpeanut]

It's my new desktop!

What does "chuffed" mean?

18330[/snapback]

it's an anglicism meaning "mighty pleased"

[djpeanut]

Here's a clip of the finished shots so far (about 35 seconds of video). It's in DivX format and you'll need audio enabled to appreciate it fully...

http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/ug/cs02/tra/swamp_divx_wip.avi

Comments very welcome!

Things I intend to work on after my finals:

- Hair too springy (any other dynamics solutions I could use for better effects?)

- More facial expressions

- Slow down the pace

- Add more foliage and background life

- Create a fly-through intro

[Jason]

Hey there,

Well done on the progress over there!

I noticed that the tree texture "swims" - it looks as if you're basing your texture space directly on "P" - which by default is world space (an easier way to think of it is "camera-space"). Wire P into a Space Change VOP - and the default is to convert P it to object space - texture fixed to the transform of the object.

One thing I really miss some animation of the tree - wobble on the branches, flutter to the leaves. You could play a small amount of Depth Of Field to some of the shots that justify it too - and make the lighting a little more directional, render shadows against the tree - and you can use a projector map of dappled spots that'll help you get the feeling of being lit through the foliage.

Your underwater shot could use use Fog to simulate murkiness in the water. An easy 2D lightbeams effect could be played for rays of light penetrating the water.

All in all, thats a fair amount of work! Keep it up!

Jason.

[djpeanut]

Hey there,

Well done on the progress over there!

I noticed that the tree texture "swims" - it looks as if you're basing your texture space directly on "P" - which by default is world space (an easier way to think of it is "camera-space").  Wire P into a Space Change VOP  - and the default is to convert P it to object space - texture fixed to the transform of the object.

One thing I really miss some animation of the tree - wobble on the branches, flutter to the leaves. You could play a small amount of Depth Of Field to some of the shots that justify it too - and make the lighting a little more directional, render shadows against the tree - and you can use a projector map of dappled spots that'll help you get the feeling of being lit through the foliage.

Your underwater shot could use use Fog to simulate murkiness in the water. An easy 2D lightbeams effect could be played for rays of light penetrating the water.

All in all, thats a fair amount of work! Keep it up!

Jason.

18373[/snapback]

Hey Jason

Thanks for the comments. I wondered why the texture was doing that. It's a shame I didn't notice it until the renders were done.

As for moving leaves, I think it would be quite difficult to add that kind of movement to the tree models - they were generated solely using L-systems and are just .bgeo files with groups for bark/leaf and corresponding textures. I would have done extra animation work if I had had the time and knowledge to set up such a system before the deadline for this project. Branch bending should be relatively easy to set up though and I'll probably work on that and add some falling leaves.

I will play with the lighting as it was not my highest priority - I like the projector map idea. I've actually used significant amounts of compositing effects in most of the shots although they are so fast-cut it's difficult to see, but the hi-res screenshot I posted a few posts back shows it well. (I used Z-depth additive fog for imitating very bright sun and Z-depth defocus for greater effect of distance.)

I did actually use Z-depth fog in the underwater shot, but it needs a riverbed and more fish and foliage to give it better perspective. I've set up fish shoal flocking HDAs and foliage HDAs so I can add them very easily. I also intend to add some 2D animated distortion to the shot to add to the underwater effect, once I have time to research and implement a way of doing this. The lightrays are something else I didn't have time to play with - how could this be done in Halo?