I propose that in January, we have the following challenge: Using a 3D software package, animate one of those slow motion "Charlie's Angels" hair flips. For those of you that didn't see "Charlie's Angels," Prince Charming did one in Shrek 2 (when he's first shown after taking off his helmet). Hair must be at least shoulder length. What do you think?

I assume the timeframe for that would be one month?

That's what I'm thinking... but I'm just throwing out an idea for discussion.

We need more members to start the discussion )D

Agreed!

I like the idea of having an animation challenge that isn't specific to a certain software package. This sounds like a great challenge that anybody could have fun with and learn from.

Now that I think about it, since I am using Maya I could very easily animate the head and let the simulation take on the hair, haha. evil grin

@nemirc As long as you "have fun with and learn" that would be ok with me. Of course, as the Forum Mod I figured you'd throw in at least a $500 gift certificate to the 'rosity Marketplace for a prize and declare yourself ineligible to win. ...But you could still take the challenge. [grin] All kidding aside, if we do this can we post about it in the other forums? There's a bunch of animators out there that I don't think check in here regularly and maybe we could increase our active members a little. That's one reason I figured we should start discussing it now - it might take some time to get the word out.

I did that for the Maya challenge... I wonder if it will work.

If I win it, it worked. [grin]

I'm a little confused -- is this a challenge, or a contest?

Message edited on: 12/01/2005 00:14

It's just an idea. I used the term challenge initially because I didn't think there would be a prize. In all honesty I don't think we could really make it a contest if participants are using everything from Maya with hair simulations to Poser 4. There just wouldn't be any comparison. I think the main thing would be just to get people to try something new.

I'm personally looking forward to trying it in poser 4 :) Since I do cell shading, I use polygon based hair, so I figure I can do it all with morph targets, and lots of them. The best thing about this challenge is if everybody comes up with a different way of doing it, and then we all explain how we did it.

I started using Carrara, and I don't think it has animated hair ability. I know there's a plugin that can assist (AnythingGrows?), but I've never seen it used for this before. On the other hand, I also have Poser 6, which has dynamic hair, but I hate animating with Poser. Wish I could participate though! People with programs like Maya , Lightwave, and 3dsmax will be able to do this easily I think.

It wouldn't be just the hair, though. It would include smooth movement of the head, neck and shoulders (as well as some facial expressions). My initial thought was to take some of the Kozaburo hair models - some of which have individualized strand "groups" and animate that in Poser Pro Pack. There's no way it would compare to actual hair systems in the higher-end software, but it would be a great excercise in creating a smooth overall motion. Poser has a wave deformer that might be useful, come to think of it.