2 shots

Let me preface these by stating that they're nothing amazing or breakthrough or anything....so don't get your hopes up or complain

Here are 2 shots I've done for work lately. VERY simple. VERY short.

Squirrels chasing guy on bike (squirrel's position controlled by crowd sim, squirrel's individual motion controlled by repeated run-cycle):



http://www.theonlyt.com/Main/Animations/squirrels.mov

Birds pulling leaning tower of pisa up (pisa, birds, ropes and trees are cg...the rest is a composite):



http://www.theonlyt.com/Main/Animations/pisa.mov

cool stuff!!! I heart squirells.

Hmmm....I guess I should also note that there's a good chance I'm going to be still working on the squirrels shot. I'm still not really happy with it

It's funny...because early on in the animation/compositing process I made a test that looked GREAT! ....and then it all went downhill from there

Well, the Pisa shot is simply superb! Really very nicely done and comp'd perfectly (the colour match with the non CG building is spot on). I may be coming to you for some hints on bird animation very soon too - they're great!

As for the squirrel shot - it's good but there is something about it that doesn't quite work. I'm not quite sure if it's the actual motion of the squirrel or the compositing (though I gotta hand it to you - that must have been pretty tough to camera match!)

On the motion side of things, I think it's that they don't quite bound forward far enough and come down a little too quicky. It's quite tricky to see clearly but I think there is an odd shape to the tail and body posture just as the animal lands. It looks like the hind legs shoot forward and the tail springs out from a very nice 'C' shape on the previous frame to a very straight line on the next - which makes it look like the tail is whipping out and propelling the animal forward.

Hope you don't mind the crits

Btw, how is Crowd to work with? I've never tried it myself.

Yes....the squirrel shot is being redone Thank you for the points....they are all valid! In fact...haha....Cam told me it looked like a flock of little kangaroos hehe.

It's funny....sometimes you can work on a shot for a huge length of time, and then come back to it after a break and see how incredibly bad it looks...and, well...that's what's happened here ....update soon though!

Oh...and as for the crowd thing....it's incredibly easy to work with once you play around and get the hang of it. Very convenient too....the bird motion you see in the pisa shot was done with crowds too

awesome piza-bird animation! the animation is spot on

The squirrels are good, but need a less "jumpy" animation loop so they match the speed of the bike at the rate that is going. thats the reason it looks odd after a second glance at it. Also, video is rendered on 2 passes for interlacing of DV. it would help if you converted your raw biker video to non-interlaced footage so reduce the amount of scanlines that are coming through ont he frames

Hope my scrap of information helped. Can't wait to see the update

Hey man...that's your eyes playing tricks on you ....the DV footage that it was rendered on is not raw...and the interlacing was removed before the comp

oh man tyson you rock, squirrels rock...THEY ALL ROCK! great job on the squirrels, even though it's simple just the idea is brilliant!

Well they both look fantastic though here are a few suggestions on the Pisa shot, I could be way off on all of these but they might seem alright.

First off while the compositing is pretty damn good it seems to me, just from the scale of things, that the building in the BG should be a bit more out of focus.

Also, while I'm sure this probably wasn't the main focus of these exercises that cut between the tower shots really seems odd and kinda kills things for me. It looks like its just a still image with directional blur applied (which looks pretty lumpy if you know what I mean) and a zoomout with your compositing software. Maybe thats some editing effect you're going for but personally it bothers me enough to notice it at least.

So, maybe gaussian blur on that layer as well as the directional blur could ameliorate the lumpiness. Also in that same time frame perhaps shake the camera a small bit so it doesn't look like its zooming out from a still image. And if that is how you're doing it and with 3d layers on the compositer maybe you could render out a pillar or some rubble falling and just have it from from above the initial boundarys of that layer/frame and just to again try make it less like a zoomed pic. Maybe with that stuff you could slow down the zoom a small bit too without the fact that it's a still (if it is) being noticeable

I can't comment much on the 3d as it's nearly flawless (and I haven't really used much 3d software in a while) but I've had to do more compositing than anything lately so that's why I comment on it. Anyways, as always, it's bloody great, I guess it's just to the stage where nearly everything is SO realistic you're eye just picks up anything that's not.


-Kieran

your CG pisa? lol pisa is the name of the city, not the name of the tower

both animationg are looking good do u have GI in the pisa one?
and dont forget to post the finished animation of the squirels when ure done

I know I know...I just say "pisa" instead of "the leaning tower of pisa because it's shorter and easier

No GI in the pisa one....but an ambient occlusion pass was done for the first half of the shot (the closeup on the birds)

i know just messing with ya :p
maybe it would be nicer if u had GI or redo ligthing, as the illumination kinda breaks the realism a bit..
otherwise, both are looking great

note on the squirrels: it looks like if the camera had moved left in the beginning of the shot you could see them getting squashed, the bike is going real fast compared to the movement speed of the squirrels(eg: either make them farther away from the bike i nthe beginning, slow the bike down or speed up the squirrels)

Yeah no worries...I've been working on the squirrel shot and the animation is completely new and different now Will post soon

cant wait for it, also i know the squirrel probably isnt too detailed, but i'd liek to see a shot of the little guy close up

Omg the shots of them animations look so amazing, i just formatted my pc and dont have quicktime yet so ill look at them tommorow when im at college