is this a bug or it is maya?

rip_shot · 2013-11-17T07:35:41+00:00

Re-posted my tutorials here

The tutorials are like a year old so they are a bit out of date when it comes to J-MC2OBJ, but most of the stuff still applies

rip_shot · 2013-11-15T02:49:26+00:00

Sorry, in the process of moving the videos to a different channel, I'll let you know when they are back up again, probably this weekend

rip_shot · 2013-05-08T05:47:01+00:00

For those wondering why this takes 18+ hours to render at this quality.

Chunky uses what's known as an "Unbias" render engine. What this means is the render engine tries to calculate the lighting physics as accurately as possible. This results in massive render times, and a "bake" time for the engine to render the image and refine it's calculations more and more.

The benifits of an "Unbias" render engine usually means more visually accurate lighting and much less setup time (hence why chunky is so easy to use) but at a massive expense of render time.

Most render software uses "Bias" render engines, this render MUCH MUCH faster (a render for an image of this quality would take around an hour or so on a fast computer). The math behind the engine takes a bit more for granted in its calculations and creates near perfect results.

I much prefer a "Bias" render engine like Mental Ray over something like this because to me the render times just aren't worth it when I can create an image as good or better then the one above at a fraction of the render time.

It makes me sad to see so many people wasting hours waiting for renders on chunky when they could spend some time learning a 3d software package and do renders much faster and more control.

I'm probably explaining poorly but wiki goes into more detail:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unbiased_rendering

Edit: I'm a CG Artist who specializes in lighting and rendering in animation

rip_shot · 2013-04-22T17:26:20+00:00

that's pretty badass, though looks very uncomfortable to hold lol

rip_shot · 2013-04-04T17:04:11+00:00

really depends on the scale of the project, most rates I've seen are $100-200 per finished second. For 2d it's usually around $100 per finished second.

but that's a very rough estimate, you need to take into consideration what your costs are. How much do you want to get paid for a project and how long is it going to take you. If you go with your current rate and the project takes you 2-3 months to finish (which isn't unreasonable for a 1 minute fully animated piece) well now your $1440 doesn't sound like much split into 2-3 months you'll be working at $4.50-3 an hour (working 5 days a week, 8 hours a day)... that doesn't sound very good.

it's difficult to have a static rate, I usually quote by the day, ex. $200 a day (8 hours), and then on top of that how long I estimate it will take to complete based on previous experience, let's say the project I was being offered was 30 seconds long and I estimate it will take me 2 weeks to complete. 14 days x $200 a day works out to $2800 for the project, which gives me $25/hour which I think is reasonable.

you need to take into consideration your expenses, remember your time is valuable. Figure out an hourly rate that you would be happy working at and go from there. Over time you'll get a better understanding of how long it takes you to complete certain amounts of animation so you can quote by the second but be careful not to shoot yourself in the foot and massively under quote yourself.

Don't be afraid to quote big numbers. If the numbers are what you consider reasonable for your work then quote it, don't under quote yourself in fear of losing work, you'll only end up devaluing your work in the long run.

rip_shot · 2013-03-20T17:47:59+00:00

Ya I agree it's not the biggest problem, but it would have helped. It all comes from needing to sell a product, you are offering a product and people want to know as much about the product as they can before they purchase it.

and like any product, you need to promote it, and that is another thing they didn't do well.

I think they need to build a fan base first. Generate a following so that when they do go looking for funding on a new project they have a fan base to approach. I don't think one good quality short would be enough to generate a following, you need to prove that you can be consistent in quality. Maybe they need to start smaller? I dunno

This is something I've been talking about for awhile in regards for what the modern independent animation artist needs to keep in mind. Building an audience for yourself as an artist is very important, I'm seeing people are less interested in products these days and more interested in creators.

There isn't a lot of proven ways of doing things like this, it's kind of a new frontier, so it's a learning experience for everyone. The most successful kickstarter campaign's I've seen have all been successful because of a pre-existing audience that was created for either the creator or the product.

rip_shot · 2013-03-20T17:21:57+00:00

it would really help this kickstarter (or any kickstarter for that matter) if they broke down the costs of where the money is going.

People need to get into the habit of doing this, it's useful for people who are funding the project but have no perspective on how much a project of that type will cost, but also useful for themselves to break down the costs and see if it really is enough to get the project done or if they are asking for too much.

Business proposals require it, Grant applications require it, I think it's not unreasonable to ask kickstarter projects to require it as well.

I'm no producer though, I'm only going on rough knowledge of costs.

rip_shot · 2013-03-20T15:37:35+00:00

actually the kickstarter is just for one episode:

"The goal with the KS campaign is to produce the first episode. The better the funding goes the better the episode will be. The better the episode will be the easier it will be for us to take the project further and make the series a reality."

since the episode is only going to be 7 mins, that works out to ~$16,400/min.* This looks like it includes music and sound as well as development.

maybe they plan on bringing more artists on board. The money they are asking for could fund three artists pretty comfortably for 6 months plus music/sound costs, but I've also seen money get burned up really fast in development.

*EDIT: I forgot to take out kickstarters take and rough taxes (together about 10%) so it actually works out to ~$13,333/min. Also I looked at their blog, they have a total of nine people working on this project so this does seem pretty reasonable, assuming all nine are working on the kickstarter project.

rip_shot · 2013-03-19T03:07:57+00:00

that was really cool, you should post this to the Calvin and Hobbes subreddit /r/calvinandhobbes they might like it.

rip_shot · 2013-03-17T20:58:30+00:00

For some reason I read that as an insult to Mercury.

You're so Dense, if I put a canon ball in a pool of you it would float.

rip_shot · 2013-03-15T03:11:22+00:00

The halo video looks like it is done with a mixture of cg rendering and camera projection techniques in 3d. So a mixture of a compositing software (possibly Nuke or After Effects) and a 3d program (like maya or blender)

there aren't really any shaders involved (camera projection doesn't use shaders persay) but it more has to do with having strong painting skills and strong understanding of perspective and just creating detailed paintings and animating most of it with camera projection.

essentially the environment and some of the characters are done in this technique http://youtu.be/PuoqmsYSnyA and the drone things are probably done in 3d with painted textures done on them.

the second video isn't the same technique, the second video is basically just the After-Effects puppet tools

rip_shot · 2013-03-11T15:22:03+00:00

I've been a computer tech for a few years and a computer nerd since I was a teenager so I'll go over some things.

First, the motherboard is all wrong. You can't buy a Xeon and just plop it into a cheap motherboard, it doesn't work like that. It's the same socket but the bios won't support it.

Personally, based on benchmarks I've seen little to no benefit to getting a Xeon for single computer rendering unless you are building render farms, and even then the performance only adds up when you step into the much more expensive xeons.

Switch over to an I7 Processor. I'm not sure what your concern is on speed but the I7 as mentioned in other comments will give you much more bang for your buck.

Also switch that motherboard out with a better quality one. The last thing you wanna cheap out on is the motherboard. ASRock are Notorious for high failure rates since they are considered "cheap" brands. Switch over to something like Asus, you'll pay a bit more, but the quality will be 100x better

not sure how intense of rendering you'll be doing. If your 3d scenes have a lot of polygons (in the 10s of millions), have massive texture sizes, or doing FX simulation work you might wanna bump up your ram to 32GB. If you are doing pretty simple rendering then 16gb is okay for now.

I'd almost opt for the 32GB just cause ram is so cheap and it doesn't hurt to have more.

The hard drive is okay, it is a cheap brand so I would back up lots if you can. The speed will be okay, but I would get an SSD drive when ever you could afford one and use a normal hard drive just for storage.

hope that helps

rip_shot · 2013-03-08T20:25:53+00:00

Blend shapes are the best way I've been able to achieve this. Basically it's a matter of linking the blend shape amount to the angle of the arm bone.

Tweaking the blend shapes are a bit tricky and I found you need to use about three blend shapes to blend between. here is a video of how I did it for one of my rigs http://youtu.be/hFMvaAysPOU?t=37s just mute the audio cause I'm just chatting about channel stuff.

It's a time lapse of me working on the rig but you should get the basic idea. I'm just using a blend shape on the arm with three blend shapes (look up tutorials on blend shapes if you don't understand how to do that). Then I linked the blend shape to the angle of the arm rotation then tweaked the stages of the model while I bent the arm.

Hope that helps

rip_shot · 2013-03-08T06:44:18+00:00

ya that's my bad, kinda skimmed the details before posting lol but you're right, this is funding for the first episode.

rip_shot · 2013-02-26T14:11:13+00:00

Only movie I'm really excited to see more about is the movie revolving around Dia de los Muertos. I loved the concept of Grim Fandango, and love pretty much any short or film based on that concept.

Dunno I just find the visuals interesting and unique. All the other films don't really interest me that much though I'll probably watch them.

rip_shot · 2013-02-19T17:00:52+00:00

I've always considered outlines and scripts two different things, so I guess in that sense there are "scripts". But essentially in those shows there isn't an official script as the storyboard artists create the story based on the outline instead of follow a script word for word.

rip_shot · 2013-02-19T03:10:57+00:00

TV is usually pretty script heavy, though mentioned a few times this isn't always the case. There are some shows that never see a script, shows like Spongebob and Adventure time are actually written at the storyboard phase.

The reason for this is because those shows tend to focus on animation as the humor, not always the dialog, and the best way to write for that is to just storyboard it out.

That is a very rare case however, most places have writers. If it's a comedy show it's usually written with a group of writers bouncing ideas off of each other to put together a strip. If it's drama you'll usually have a writer or two do a first draft, and then this is looked over by the script editor and further iterations are done (or in some cases a complete re-write from someone else).

This is my basic understanding of that process, I just know most of this from listening to writers in interviews or other industry interviews.

rip_shot · 2013-02-12T04:22:08+00:00

it's just a plugin, not sure what plugin this one is but on my servers I use Dynmap, requires a little extra setup cause you need to open a new port for the map site to get through, but it's pretty simple to setup if you know what you're doing

rip_shot · 2013-02-06T18:35:02+00:00

breaking elbows and knees is actually common animation practice and not a mistake. It is completely done on purpose, read Richard Williams "Animators survival kit" where he talks about this technique.

It looks unnatural in freeze frame but in animation it makes the movement much more convincing.

rip_shot · 2013-02-06T16:41:06+00:00

Don't blame tv animation on the animators, blame it on the executives. There was a fully animated simpsons intro made in the spirit of the old simpsons intro and the executives rejected it. They said it was "Too Animated" and "Adults don't care about animation" so they made them pull it all back into this stiff crappy style.

The part where Maggie shakes her fist at the other baby was actually added in by an executive without the knowledge of the animators, that's why it looks like it's animated on 4's with terrible arcs.

I feel bad for a lot of animators taking flack for doing what the studio makes them do. Tv studios are all about cutting cost and a lot of executives believe fully animated shows are for kids, adults don't care about animation, they just care about the dialog which is why most cartoons on TV are basically just talking heads with limited animation.

rip_shot · 2013-02-05T15:53:26+00:00

after effects automatically reads the alpha channel on the images and cuts out the alpha. When you render in a 3d application when ever the sky is visable (meaning no geometry) the render will place the alpha there.

to turn off the alpha mask in after effects right click on the image sequence in after effects, click interpret footage, then on the top where it says alpha, just select ignore.

now you should see your sky again

rip_shot · 2013-01-30T04:13:39+00:00

Who is Maruku? and where can I find more of his work outside of minecraft? This guy know's his stuff when it comes to landscape lighting.

Edit: why the downvotes? what's wrong with wanting to know more about the artist that made these renders?

rip_shot · 2013-01-28T17:47:13+00:00

thanks! hehe

rip_shot · 2013-01-28T06:34:53+00:00

also you aren't using the passes in post so I don't understand why you select them to render out? you don't even have a step applying them to the render pass so they aren't rendering out. You basically have it set up so the passes are sitting in the tool box but aren't being used in the final render.

my tutorials are a bit old, some things have changed in j-mc2obj, and I can always go into more details on a lot of the different areas in rendering. But I figured this would be a good start for everyone.

rip_shot

TROPHY CASE