Here is an animation, offered for your enjoyment
It has been my focus since the new year.

I am delighted with my character, Lin.
I will be animating her quite a bit
upcoming, and honestly one day I want to
dial out her hair even longer, and the next
I want to give her Demi Moore's GI Jane haircut!

I am also, as you might expect, newly
respectful of the craft of animation.

WHEW!

At the same time as possessing a satisfaction
and joy at the result here, I also hate every
frame. My list of grievances is a yard long,
but that's all I will say about THAT, so you
won't be influenced by my hyper-criticalness.

Constructive observations and
ideas welcome. When offering
such, please take into
consideration this context:

This is not presented as a 'release'
work, just a study. Therefore, it does
not have a big, polished 'finish' to it.
No audio. Please do not judge the low
res version on clarity; it is watchable,
but moderately grainy; I chose to retain the
frame size but reduce its resolution.

The focus was:

1. animating long hair (not dynamic)
2. low light conditions, interior
3. lighting through slats
4. render experimentation (time trials)
5. experience with the base character system

What was NOT the main focus:

1. facial animation, expression, speech
2. backgrounds or props
3. eye reflection or eyelashes

If I had gone on to improve those areas,
this clip would be dated about the time
of the baseball All-Star game. Instead,
I have decided to stop fussing with this
subject and sharpen those skills in
my next sequence, with a different character.

Since the file(s) are large, here are the stats
so you can decide if you wish to download:

Character: "Lin"
Situation: Moving in shadows, long hair down
Length: 60 seconds
Note: mild nudity **

It is highly suggested you right-click and 'save target as' to
download. Clicking will open new browser window and clip
will appear when loaded, but then you will NOT be able to
save to your desktop unless you have Quicktime Pro.**

Format: Quicktime
File size: 107 MB (high res) Link: here. Aprox 15 min, hi-speed cable modem
File size: 20 MB (low res) Link: here. Aprox 3 min, hi-speed cable modem
Image size: 500x550 pixels
Base character: Poser5female (judy)
Added morphs: EJ, by 3Dream
Texture: Selene, by Blackhearted
Texture mod: myself
Hair: Bliss Vison Hair, by danae
Lighting: three spotlights, one casting shadows thru blinds.
Lighting Prop: Morphing Venetian Blinds, by Mapps
Frames: 1800, framerate 30fps
Rendertime: 23 hours
Render Hardware: AMD Athlon 3500 XP, 4GigRam, DualRaptors in Raid-0, Windows XP Pro
RenderEngine: (surprise) Poser4 engine inside Poser5
Animation: hand-keyframed only, no walk designer or BVH

thanks maxxxmodelz, ynsaen, svdl, stewer, DaleB, DrGeep.

Please enjoy,

::::: Opera :::::

"Constructive observations and ideas welcome. When offering such, please take into consideration this context: The focus was: 1) animating long hair (not dynamic) 2) low light conditions, interior 3) lighting through slats 4) render experimentation (time trials) 5) experience with the base character system " Here's a few observations that may or may not be of use to you: 1) You gave a good effort on the hair, but it's movement is just not natural. This could be the result of a combination of things, including limitations of the morphs in the hair prop. At some parts, movement is quite stiff, and some other parts are "too" soft. To your credit, long hair like this can be very difficult to animate properly without some kind of dynamics assistance. It all depends on the quality of morphs available for the prop. This one doesn't seem to have all the movement morphs you would need to pull it off. The use of highly realistic texturing without an equal representation of movement does not lend to convincingly suspending one's disbelief. It's going to be difficult using that particular hair I think. 2) The lighting is good. No flicker is evident, you worked in some soft shadows, and pulled off an interior lighting that works. 3) The "lighting through the blinds" effect is good, but I get more of a "moonlight" feel than a daylight outdoor feel coming through the blinds. If this was your intention, then I guess it worked! 4) Render times... what were they like? 5) Your character is good. One problem I saw with her movement was... there seemed to be a hand motion at one point in the animation where she pushes one side of her hair back. The motion of the arm and hand was a bit choppy and unnatural. Try addressing that particular motion some more. Also, when she swings around near the beginning, the right side (her right side) of the hair in front moves into place too slowly. I realize it's secondary motion, but it comes to rest much too slowly it would seem. The facial motions/expressions were good. Perhaps a few quick glances with her eyes randomly would assist in convincing the viewer. Also some more variations with her mouth movement. Overall, I enjoyed it. :-)

"Rendertime: 23 hours " Ah, didn't see the rendertime. Ok. :-)

thanks maxx, Hair: This is a very telling comment, very well put: "The use of highly realistic texturing without an equal representation of movement does not lend to convincingly suspending one's disbelief." In the course of getting as much out of the hair as I could, I have come pretty much to the conclusion that i did not match the product up correctly. Certain most people purchasing danae's fine product will do so to use it in single frame poses. I think I simply became "enamored" with it. My plans for Lin in the project I have at hand...she will mostly be clothed in business attire with her hair up, so that will change my strategy...but certainly I will want to also show here in the "state" in which you see her in this clip! I'd be nuts not to. Lighting: it IS intended to be a moonlight effect, although it would take a pretty strong full moon shining thru slats to produce strong shadows like this. Animation: your comments on point 5 are well pointed. Those are the exact two spots of gross movement I am least happy with. Thanks Maxx! ::::: Opera :::::

Outstanding Opera. Very flowing animation. My only crit is that she moved maybe a tad smoothly - people are a little more jerky. Her animated hair is outstanding. Well done.

Attached Link: scientist speaking

We character animators have a term called "Holds" you are probably familiar with it. your animation has no "holds"(ei natural ,brief and definite hard pauses before one moves from one position too the other.) its very subtle but the lack of it causes that " floaty "effect that face-off may have saw as too much smoothness also the hair you are using just does not seem to enough sections to get a realisitc cascading effect (the head moves and causes a cascading ripple from root to end.. this type of natural motion unfortunately is nearly impossible to hand key and almost demands a dynamics simulation( arggh!!!) for true realism so not really a shortcoming on your part. here is an example of a "hold" again VERRRY!! subtle ;-) but watch carefully as my scientist says: "the sex of the perpertrator is unknown and remains undetermined....(-HOLD-)..... "allow me to introduce you, this is the handy work of the puppetmaster....(-HOLD-) .....infamous as the most notorious hacker ......." stay with it though animation is the patient mans game ;-)

face_off, I hope you are not disturbed I did not employ your Shader! I am a big fan, as you know. But after all was said and done, the ONLY reason I had to render in Firefly was to get your skin shaders to engage, I just could not justify the render time hit between the two options. It was the engine, not your product, at fault. Average render time for these 1800 frames as rendered on Poser4 engine... 46 seconds Average render time for equivelent FireFly render: 147 seconds. But important: IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF THE SHADERS or anything to do with face_off's product. The product DOES increase render time, in my experience, but only a very few percentage points, no matter how complex. The real culprit was flicker. When you shoot in deep shadow like this, with lights set back (to accomodate shooting thru the blinds), you start to get very small angle of incident along the model's side...such as across the back of her cheek and near the ear when she is facing the light head on. This extreme angle, combined with low light, REALLY agrivates the problem of FireFly numeric overflow. What this means (for those who have not been following other threads on the subject) is that that from one frame to the next, the data is not resolved to the correct (or sufficiently deep) decimal point, and you get 'flicker" So, I of course took the step of 'scaling up' and this scene is scaled up not times 10 (1000%) but 100 TIMES (10,000%). It was stil not enough to blow out all the flicker with FireFly. So, I had to move the light closer, no problem, that helped. I had to turn up the light intensity and add a third light. (originally, my desire was even deeper shadow and noir in this scene.) Then, I had to start kicking up the settings. Blowing the shadow map size up to 1024 got rid of more of the flicker, but it also extinguished the nice blur and softness of the shadows. They were harsh; Lin looked like she was in jail! Bringing the shadow map size back down...I kicked up the pixel samples, knocked down the minimum shading rate, like down to .02, played around with the shadow blur radius and bias, etc. The best average render time I could get with no flicker and the soft great shadows was 147 seconds. With some settings it was blown out to 5,6,7 minutes. Now, during this process I caught on that I may have not exploited the AngleStart/AngleEnd feature enough, and with more fiddling I probably could have worked into a solution that got me maybe to 100 seconds, or 90... But this is only an excercise. I have to move on. So I rendered with the Poser4 engine and no face_off driven shaders engaged, just the Selene texture with a bump map made from it. The quality of the image resolution-wise with all that FireFly power dialed in...very nice, but not dramatically better than that produced by the older engine. LOL. I thought shooting in low light was going to be an 'easy' route...no forty-light-set-domes and ray trace and simulated GI...little did I know. Thank you for your kind remarks face_off. ::::: Opera :::::

"also the hair you are using just does not seem to enough sections
to get a realisitc cascading effect (the head moves and causes a cascading ripple
from root to end.."

Right. That's what I was trying to indicate as well. Just to be clear, it's not that the hair product is a bad product. In fact, I'm sure it's a great one. Problem is, most static hair props (especially ones of LONG hair) aren't designed specifically for animation, and lack either the morphs, modeling, or sections you'd need to pull off realistic movement that compliments the character and textures used. Collision is also a big problem with hair like that.

Message edited on: 02/11/2005 16:45

good comments about holds, wolf. Actually, you are being mild.. what I have come to realize is this: there is a 'grammar' or syntax in animation. Certainly it comes from the early days when we had no computers to so preciesly interpolate infinite smoothness between keyframes. The film-goer accepts the holds, and as you point out EXPECTS the holds. "Oh this is an animation. I accept it will be transition/hold/transition/hold and that is fine, my imagination will fill in the rest." I engaged disregard for that in this example. The result is as exactly pointed out by the two of you...over-smooth and unreal. I went against the grammar. I think in real life, with humans, even in a very quiet moment...there is constant movement. But when one is listening or just still but breathing, the movement is so subtle it 'might as well be a perfect hold' and the absolute holds in animation echo those nearly-still human moments. I think I was so leary of the rock solid stone faced dead Lin syndrome, that I over did it when I moved from constant/linear into spline here and there. Next animation I am going to stay in constant/linear a lot longer and see if my sensibility can 'take it.' I will very gradually move the transitions out, but leave the holds in. It will look like bad TV animation at first, but I'll fight my tendancy to overcompensate for that! And you are right about the hair, it was a somewhat inappropriate tool for the situation. It's just...I saw that hair and got cocky, "I can animate that!" Thanks for your well-exampled comments. ::::: Opera :::::

Your welcome , i have found also that most of the time a hold is dictated by the situation/motivation stimulation of your "actor" in my linked example it was the points he wanted to emphasize that dictated when a hold would occur. try creating some simple point of interest in the scene for you r actor and you may find the holds come to you more naturally. Good luck ;-)

Hey Opera - don't sweat on the script thing - use what ever works for you... Pls keep us up to date on how you go with this animation quest you are on. Seems to be a side of the product that doesn't get a lot of exposure.

Who did that scientist's voice? He's a decent voice actor...

Just went over the hiband version, Opera.... I think Maxxx and Wolf covered everything I saw, so I won't repeat themselves... :P Definitely looking good though, and you seem to have an eye to the concept of dramatic lighting. Yah, face_off, it's only just recently that the 'dirty dozen' of Poser animation started finding new blood interested in the process.

Hi dale, glad you took a look. My optimized Poser Rig you helped me build really tore into this render. Thanks for the kind words. I am already working on the next one. Lin's counterpart. Hopefully I can stay around long enough to make it a Dirty Baker's Dozen. ::::: Opera :::::