May/June - Noob - NoStr0m0
 

Deep breath... chill, put down the puppy... Wish me luck...
Thank you! :D
Now, on with the show...

So... I'm gonna try, no harm in doing that...
I'll probably use my Pyre model, just have to rig it (oups!)
and do some basic animations, probably a walk cycle, a flight cycle, maybe an Idle and an atack... depends on the time I have... with school and all.

So, I'm officially in for the ride.

So let's get started. Pyre has gone through some minor modifications so I can rig him.I'll post an image of the 'latest' Pyre after I render it... in about half an hour.

A bit over half an hour :p

Houston, we have bones. :attn:

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/8...rebones6kg.jpg

Next, we'll see a walk cycle.

Well - good start at least - lets see how far you can carry this :) Any ideas on what animation you're going to do with it?

That sounds like a challenge... well, I guess it is a challenge, we being in the challenge zone and all.. .nevermind... sleepless night.

Well, I'm gonna do a walk cycle first, then, depending on the time I have, I might make him fly, or do an idle cycle. Or I could do a few special moves, like eating a man, bar-b-q-ing him... we'll see.

I wonder, do we taste like chicken? :rolleyes:

Well, this is what I have so far. Still have to animate the wings.

Now, how do I do this? Let's see...


http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/3...rewalk24ko.gif

Hey Nostromo! Nice work there so far - the subtle clenching of the claws as the feet are lifted is great!

Cheers! priimate.

Thanks, priimate!

Well, I try my best to bring him to life. Hopefully I won't have to resort to a giant lightning rod and an Igor-ish assistant to scream "It's alive!".
There's nothing wrong with the huge lightning rod, it's just I'd rather use it on something else. :rolleyes:

I don't want anyone to think I'm just sitting on my chair doing nothing to win this challenge :D.
The truth is my PC has been rendering for two days straight and still has a long way to go finishing some animations for a school projects that's begging to be finished before the deadline.
That and the fact that it's a rather old boy makes working on something else a bit M:I-4.
But I promiss I'll have something new by the end of the week, or my name is... what was it again?:rolleyes:

Anyway...
Till then, Work, work :zzz:

:p

Nice start to the animation :)

The dragon's shoulder area would probably relax a bit and the wings would probably drop a little at the highest point of the walk cycle (to keep the balance right)

Probably, if he was bipedal, but I have greater things in mind for him.
What you see there is only half a walk-cycle. The other half includes the wings and a little head-tail.... er, stuff. He's gonna be a quadruped, and have a walk cycle very simillar to the vampire bat, if I'm not mistaking.
I've already done the animation, just need to render it... which is kinda difficult right now.
Most likely, I'll have an update this week-end.

Nice work so far NoStr0m0 - I like your model.

Ok, here's the update, as promissed... not much to look at but....

http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/3871/pyrewalk24lo.gif

Still needs some tweeking, but it'll get there.

Hey Nostromo! That's some fantastic progress! Keep up the good work and goodluck with your school work!

Cheers! priimate.

Fantastic work for the moment.
Like to see the mouth and eyes move a little bit but it my own opinion.
Hurry ... want to see more :beer:

thats starting to look really cool :) nice choice of using a bat walk style

I think his head is rolling just a little too much if you keep staring at the animation for a while

Thanks, guys :blush:
I'll look into the walk anim... now that I look at it for more than two cycles I must agree... the head is walkabout... I'll fix it before the next update.


Two more animations done. Sorry for the poor quality but I've been testing out several GIF animators and most of them... well, expired :p so...

anyway, here they are....



............... A level flight animation ............................................. and a Point hover animation

http://img54.imageshack.us/img54/8291/fly0wg.gifhttp://img232.imageshack.us/img232/1305/hover3em.gif


There are quite a few thing happening in the animations: the mouth slightly opens just before the upstroke so he could inhale more air, all the "muscles" flex and all the parts crunch as a result of the effort needed to power the downstroke, the wing fingers bend to simulate wind resistance, the tail remains behind the movement of the body then catches up (level flight) or balances the body (hover), the neck stabilisez the head so it doesn't move so much to confuse the dragon and spoil it's aim :p... like I said, lots of things... you just don't see many of them in the GIF's :headbang:

wow, that birdie is coming alive ! nice animation.:beer:

Very nice !!! :bow:
Need a little bit more curvature on the wings ... I think.
But it's impressive :ninja: :eek:
And for the gif animation ... If you have photoshop on your computer, search for a tutorial on google to make an animated gif with Image Ready. There is a lot on the web. ;)

Hey Nostromo! Your entry is rockin' along! I love the hover - Did you use any references [like hawks or falcons] or did you just think through the sequence of required actions? you're dion a brilliant job!

Cheers! priimate.

Yeah - excellent work mate - I really like both of your flying animations. This is a very cool entry so far.:beer:

:blush:

Deffinetly more curves... everybody loves curves :attn:
I'll look into that tomorrow, it might just give it that extra something, thanks.


Well, I did a bit of both, or maybe all three... I had some reference vids of hawks flying, but they were more along the lines of take-off and gliding. The big break-through came when I saw a hummingbird clip on tv one evening in slow motion and I saw how the wings went back and forth and were rotation to an almost vertical position.... well, the rest was filled in by me and there you have it...

I don't want anybody to think I'm just sitting here doing nothing... because I am... doing something :D, unfortunetly not along the lines of lw and animations... but I'll post some more as they come.
Had some troubles with the IK nulls jumping all over the screen... sorted that one out by placing some more keyframes...


anyway, wish me luck on my exams :headbang: ... and many happy updates.

:beer:

Ok, so... I guess this is it....

I wish I could have done more but it's been really crowded around here so this is all I managed to do...

This is the non-cycling animation... it's my Pyre model landing from a "neutral" pose, that can be inserted at the end of a powered flight cycle, or a glide, or a freefall, or anywhere you can think of.

http://storeandserve.com/download/29...reens.avi.html (1.4 Megs)

(Just go to the right and click the third option: Download then go to the bottom of the new page and click the name... and there you have it)


I used the DivX Pro 5.2.0 that came with the Ace Mega Codecs Pack... which you can get here if you want to: http://www.free-codecs.com/ACE_Mega_...k_download.htm



I'll post the cycle animation tomorrow, once I get it rendered. Till then, maybe somebody can comment on this one and tell me what they think? :beer:

This is the other animation.
It's the hover cycle, tweaked a bit, hope you like it.

Great work on both your clips Nostromo! Good Luck!:beer:

Cheers! priimate.

good luck on the contest !

you did a nice animation on the dragon.:cool:

Thanks, guys! Good luck to you too! :beer:


Oh, yeah, if anybody's gonna read this.... how are the animations playing? Cause my computer seems to prelong the animation by several seconds (the hover anim is 30 frames long yet it plays for about 4 seconds for me... and trust me... I know it's 30 frames long cause I've counted every one of them a few times) and I have absolutely no idea what the heck everybody else sees.
I mean... are they in slow motion or normal?

One more thing... what codecs do you usually use when rendering? I never saw any advice on that anywhere. :beer:

Thanks again, now back to work for me.

.....Now, if I could only learn to calculate the light interferance for the Young device :headbang:

Hi NoStr0m0 !

Congratulation for your both animations ... they are really great.

In my own opinion, for the render, I choose Quicktime Sorenson 3 to encode my videos to be sure that Mac and Pc users can see the video ...

Good luck for your entry ***** 5 Stars

The frame rate seems to work fine this end.

Ok, thanks for the feedback.

Now, if I could only find out why the heck my pc's acting up. Could it have something to do with the non-stop moth long render I did on it? :rolleyes:

Best of luck with your animation project! Sounds like you have a cool character (Pyre) in mind. In between rigging and animating, you might take a quick break to check out planetracker.com.au. It's a great website to track flights in real-time, so you can see all sorts of planes taking off and landing - maybe it will inspire some epic flight cycle animations for Pyre.