Attached Link: http://www.hybridculture.co.uk/video/melt.avi

Step 1: Load human figure, apply metal texture, pose figure on frame 1 Step 2: Load two props, rocks or cylinders, etc, and scale them to about 1cm in height, apply metal texture. Step 3: Scale them and move them horizontally to fit under human feet. Step 4: Move to last frame. Apply new pose to human, and transpose vertically to below the ground plane. Step 5: Scale two props on the horizontal axis to "spread" out like a puddle. Step 6: Render animation. Step 7: Apply for a job at ILM. Total time for this test animation: 5 minutes for loading props and applying poses and animating. 46 minutes for render. Only 123KB, so you can download and have a look. DivX format. Obviously this can be greatly improved by applying decent poses, facial expressions, using morphing puddles, and most of all, having a plot and a reason for the melting. OK, now we will wait for the next animator to give us Stupid Animation Trick No 2.

Thanks for the "animation trick number one". I shall wait for the response to your job application big grin

Sigh, I'm gonna have to wait till I get home tonight to see what I can contribute. This could turn out to be a quite interesting thread... (grin)

Step 1: Load human figure Step 2: add a box prop and scale it down about 25% or so. Step 3: Select the left eye and go to Object/Point at in the pulldown menu. Scroll to the bottom and select the Box and then select ok. Step 4: Do the same thing for the right eye. Step 5: Select the Box again and change the "ELEMENT Display Style" to outline. Step 6 Move the box up in front of the figures face. > The eyes follow the box. Animate the box and the eyes will follow. Now you don't have to mess with dials to animate the eyes. Just put the box in the location that you want the character to look at. > Changing the box to outline mode makes keeps it from blocking your view when viewing the scene in the document window. > The character looks at the bottom of the box. If this bothers you, you can use a Ball prop. I use a box because it has less polygons. I guess I'm anal about extra polys in my scene. :) > Be sure to hide the box when rendering. Or you can apply a transparent material to it. and turn off cast shadows to be sure it doesn't effect the render. Ok... Who's next?

LawnDart: you can also use a square or one-sided square. The eyes will point at the center of it, and it has even less polygons. Don't forget to take advantage of dynamic constraints (where available and applicable) to automatically take care of secondary animation for you. There are plenty of times when dynamic constraints can be used instead of cloth dynamics or spring systems, since dynamic constraints don't require any calculation time.

Please explain the dynamic constraints for the group. Can you supply the steps? I'm going to learn a lot with this one.

Thanks,

Joe

Message edited on: 05/27/2005 00:50

Certainly. I'll use a breast as an example, mainly because it's the simplest. In bones mode, create a new bone for each breast, parented to the chest, of course(If you don't have bones for them already). Right click on the model in the Project WorkSpace, and pick new:Pose:On/Off. In the new pose, Right click on each of the new Breast Bones, and pick New Constraint:Dynamic Constraint. This will give you a variety of options to experiment with, including an enforcement percentage, mass, drag, Object Collisions, Use Gravity, Use Forces (Like wind, for example) and an angle limit. I suggest creating a new action, and adjusting the enforcement, mass, drag, and angle limit until you get a bounce that you like. I also suggest turning off "use forces", as breasts aren't known to blow in the breeze. And that's it! Now every time you move that figure, the breasts will bounce and sway on their own. You can also use them on the last bone in a chain of bones. I used a dynamic constraint to make a ponytail move on its own. These instructions are how to use lag constraints in A:M version 10.5 and up. For older versions, you can take a look at using lag constraints here: http://demented3d.com/tutorial/lagconstraints/index.html And there is also an example of using lag constraints on pants instead of using cloth (which would also work really well with dynamic constraints). For all other programs, check your manual to see what kind of equivalent feature to dynamic constraints is offered.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=840753&Start=1&Artist=dueyftw&ByArtist=Yes

Stupid trick 3. Smoke and mirror's. More mirror than smoke.

Dale

Message edited on: 05/27/2005 01:26

Stupid trick 4 Reference box; Small box that is hidden under the ground plane. Used to match up objects in scenes when going from one program to another. Poser to Vue.

Explain Stupid Trick 4 in more detail please. I have my own reference system, but maybe yours is easier, better. I will put up another small animation on Sunday explaining your to warp a mirror and have your character appear/materialize out of it. One suggestion for everyone, because this forum is not program specific, if your trick is program specific, start the post with the program and version number, like "Animation Master 10.5 and up", or "Poser 5 and up", or "Any 3D animation program" if the principles do not need program specific features.

Stupid trick 5 Camera importing from Poser to Vue then back. 1) Attach cone prop to camera having the point into the camera and the round face matching the camera lens. 2) Save scene then remove every thing and save again 3) A edit the camera only pz3 file so it has no camera as it parent. (Something that I'm still working on) 3b) Make another cone and match its movements to the camera cone frame for frame. (This part sucks) 4) Set up background. Trees buildings, plants sky. Attach imported cone camera to Vue with its lens slightly in front of the cone. 5) Render in Vue. Place Vue's movie in the background of Poser. Render in poser with matching Vue background.

No.6 (Should be non specific) Simple waterfall Create an image map of blueish-greenish streaks. In photoshopCS2 you can do it by picking two colors and using the render fibers filter,(Looks really great if you use plastic wrap after, with high detail and low smoothness) or in other programs, use noise and vertical motion blur. Make sure the image has no seam when joining top and bottom. (In photoshop, use the offset filter, and the healing brush, or the cloning tool). In a video editing program, make a 1 second loop of this image rolling vertically (downwards). Apply this video loop as a texture to a simple arcing piece of geometry, (your waterfall) make it somewhat transparent (about 40%) snd give it a small, strong highlight. (You can even put the video in the bump channel). Add some particle steam or volumetric clouds churning at the bottom, and you've got a lovely animated waterfall, that will render faster than all particles, or an animated procedural material.

I'm using Poser to animate and Vue to render. If I have a scene that will be imported to Vue a number of times at the same location. I will use an object for a reference, like a table. Sometimes if their is no good object to use as a reference, I will place a box under the scene for the size and location. Dale

Dueyftw, what I do is this: My Poser workspace has a huge (really huge) six polygon block around my entire workspace, set to invisible while I work. So, when I export to Vue, I make it visible, and in Vue my scenes always load in exactly the right place, as decided by the position of the box. I then delete the box and carry on working in Vue. This way all my Poser scenes always load in Vue where they are in Poser.

Oh, forgot, I turn of the scaling on import into Vue. I never export back to Poser. In fact, I can't remember the last time I rendered anything in Poser. Question for Animation Master users: Can animation master export to Vue. Animations, models, anything like that? Sorry, too lazy to go searching the net now for the answer. If it can't, what do you use for landscape generation in Animation Master? Bryce? Or is that built into the program. Trees? and other vegetation? Do you have to model that from scratch as well? (PS Sorry I am too lazy to look for the answers myself)

Poser ProPack and up. For Poser users, the Dynamic Constraints that Brainmuffin explained for A;M above are possible in Poser. It works slightly differently. You need to have morphs in the breasts, such as up-down/left-right, or if you have a ponytail it needs morphs for moving. You animate your entire scene, ignoring those movement morphs. After you have finished animating your scene, run the Python script called Jiggles (by Ockham, available in freestuff). You can set the amount of movement, gravity, momentum, inertia, etc, for each morph. Not as easy as A:M, and not for beginners, but the effect looks good and worth the effort.

These are great! I especially like to see the cross-program nature of most of them. :D nemirc: Can we add another portion of this forum that has all these, (and hopefully more,) listed in them for easy reference? The Carrara forum has a 'Backroom' that has this kind of shared ideas, without having to search for the archive for the tricks. Thanx all!

Hey dueyftw, In Trick #5 Can you save the camera motion in Poser as an animation file? if so you might be able to apply it to the cone so the cone has a matching animation rather than being parented. You might be able to just copy your x,y, & z position, as well as rotation keyframes and paste them to the cone. If you could parent your Vue camera to just the cone (instead of the whole Poser scene) then you wouldn't have to worry about exporting the Vue camera motion. Stupid Trick No.? (any program): If I'm animating anything complex, I'll create keyframes on objects that don't move just so I can use them as markers on the timeline. This works especially well when I'm animating to music.

bluetone: We don't have a backroom here but what I've done before is that I add the useful threads to the FAQ to make life easier for the users :) <---signature---> nemirc Animation Forum

Jessica Alba! That is a beautiful Avatar. If I could write a song or create a picture as gorgeous as she is I'd call myself an artist! Of course If I could do write a song or create a picture as gorgeous as my wife or my daughter I'd probably call myself a god (with a lower case "g"). ;-)

very cool thread. Thank God (and not BOBASAUR) i already know the secret handshake

;-)

Hush... I'm at work when I'm writing, so sometime I have to hurry to finish: Stupid trick 5:

I think that Poser does a lot better job of rendering people than Vue. The problems with Poser are; One no network rendering. And the dam sniffer that complains if you have Poser running on two different computers that is hooked up to a network. Two, Poser is slow at rendering. But Poser renders skin and hair textures so much better than them imported into Vue. Vue on the other hand, is very good and making environments, indoors or outdoors over Poser. With that said wouldn't it be nice to use both programs?

Posers cameras do have dimensions. Poser tell the pose window to show only the outline of the camera. It would be nice just to tell Vue 'Imports Poser's main camera' I don't have Vue infinite or the python programming skills so I use a stupid trick.

Using a cone prop to represent the camera when the Poser scene is imported into Vue does work. You have to make sure that you can still see your Poser scene and have the round end act like the lens. Then parented to the camera, so if you have a camera zoom and sweep to one side the cone will have the same as the camera.

The problem is scenes the cone prop has a camera as a parent, when importing into Vue, It will get ignored. The current solution is to make another cone that matches the camera cone. If anyone knows how to get rid of the parenting by editing the pz3 files let me know.

Make a Poser scene where only objects are in the foreground and the people are in it. Import that scene into Vue. Now add the background. Then go back to Poser and make a save of only the one cone. Import the cone and put it where the other come is. Then delete the old Poser scene so only the camera cone is there. Now link Vue's camera to the cone and render.

With this render, use it as a background and render the same scene in Poser.

The results are stunning. You get the quality of Poser people and the background sky's and objects of Vue all matching. Of course you have to think little about matching the lighting.

Posers long render times are not that bad because it's really not rendering the whole scene. The real problem is unparenting the camera cone frame by frame. Ok for a two second shot but I wouldn't want to do this for a five minute short.

Dale

Message edited on: 05/28/2005 00:54

Message edited on: 05/28/2005 00:57