http://www.irtc.org/anims/2003-04-15.html

Woohoo! :)

--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

Post a reply to this message

"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote in news:3ebbebbf$1@news.povray.org:

> http://www.irtc.org/anims/2003-04-15.html
> 
> Woohoo! :)
> 
> --
> Tek
> http://www.evilsuperbrain.com
> 
> 
> 

Congratulations! It is a great anim.

Post a reply to this message

Tek wrote:
> http://www.irtc.org/anims/2003-04-15.html
> 
> Woohoo! :)

Congratulations!

Some of the most fantastic images i've seen out of POVray so far.

One thing that's been puzzling me for quite a while: How many 
particles form the planet's rings at 1:30, and how long did it 
take to render?

Markus
(2nd place! Woohoo too... :-)

Oh, and i'd like to try something... i'll add the 
maal_jny.comments below, and i'll comment on the comments (sort 
of like the imitation of a talkback system). Just to simulate 
some sort of "producer - watcher" dialogue, and i'm curious about 
what other participants think about the comments *they* received 
(hint hint... ;)

My opinion is that it's especially the "negative" comments that 
help with improvement. Of course, reading "I really liked..." is 
great fun and boosts the ego, but reading "hey, this and that 
looks really bad" gives a good hint as to where to increase the 
effort, and things like "you may try to do this instead of that" 
are valuable pointers into new directions.

Looking forward to the "Evolution" results in two months - but 
most likely i'll skip this round. Real Life incoming again... but 
until it hits me tomorrow morning with a desk full of tax forms 
to complete :-S here's my totally incoherent half-serious half-;) 
response to the feedback (i hope nobody of the people quoted 
below is offended by this, remember you've posted your comments 
to the web :-):

 >=====
 >From marlo.steed
 >Once again you do a good job of the animation.  I like the
 >ship.  Some of the modeling could use a bit more detail.
 >For instance. the ruins had sharp even edges - those could have
 > been rouphed up a bit.  If pillars had fallen, there
 >would have probably been  other damage.

Agreed... i actually tried to smooth the edges (think wind 
erosion), but i just don't have a clue (yet) as to how to achieve 
this in Cinema without blasting the scene file trough the 15 MB 
file size roof. Adding other damage would be so much easier if my 
computer wasn't that slow while editing. Too much of the ruins 
are just simple extrusions or primitives like stretched cubes 
that don't allow for "simulated damage" (with my experience 
level, at least)

 >Not sure that the message of the journey was apparent to me

Message? Did i leave a message in there? Oooops... ;-)
No, actually i didn't think of the animation as having a message, 
just wanted to tell a little story.

 > - well it was but I guess it didn't have a strong
 >connection for me.  I was a bit confused because you start
 >out by saying "Late again.  Everyone is already there."
 >However, that did not seem to play into the animation.

No, it just refers to the large spaceships already parked in the 
orbit. No relation to this story in particular.


 >=====
 >From evilsnack:
 >JV:  The ruins look like a bunch of brand-new objects left
 >in a heap.

Yes. That's because they're in fact a bunch of brand-new objects 
left in a heap. ;-) The ruin is one of the models that didn't 
look at all like i wanted it. I thought of something like a 
cliche ruin a la Indiana Jones, dark, dusty, with a single ray of 
sunlight falling on the fountain, but i'm not that versed when it 
comes to modelling. Time was also a factor. So i ended up with 
extrusion objects, converted to polygons, then crumpled and cut 
in various predictable ways, placed into the scene by hand... 
some sort of automatic debris or particles would be nice. I 
remember some IRTC animation of a tree through the seasons, with 
an algorithm that did let snow and leaves drop to the ground. I'd 
like to be able to use something similar within Cinema... so far, 
no success.

By the way, what does the "JV:" mean? I've seen it on all your 
comments ("Judge's Verdict"?)

 >
 >The banter between the two characters isn't that amusing.

Which one? The one at the beginning wasn't intended to be funny, 
and the one at the end was more of a filler...
Oh, and remember the eternal lines (almost) straight out of Star 
Trek: "Dammit Jim, I'm a desktop publisher, not a writer..." :-)

 >=====
 >From tek:
 >Wow an animation with a proper story! :) I like it.

I like it that the creator of this round's winner video likes it :-)

 >
 >=====
 >From maarten_hofman:
 >I'm a bit disappointed that it is a sequel rather than a new
 >animation. However, it is still a technically superior entry,
 >with more details and wonderful effects.

I love this comment... it sounds like it's from a real movie 
review. Ah yes, the trouble with sequels... bigger, better, more, 
but actually, it's "same old with new colors" :-)

 >=====
 >From pterandon:
 >Pretty cool.  With all your technical ability now, you oughtta
 >implement a lip-sync system for your characters.  Having mouths
 >just open and close isn't as cool.  ;-)    Everything is very
 >impressively done.

Thanks a lot! As for the lip-sync: So far, i've used bones, but 
there seems to be a limit as to what can be done with this. To 
improve facial expressions, I guess it's necessary to use 
point-level animation and to create various states for at least 
the vocals, but i'll have to try this out - takes some time to 
set-up *and* to animate. Maybe there's some way to automate the 
process, like writing a parser that uses text as input and 
produces the vocal sequence as output? Not sure how to implement 
this in Cinema, though.

Did anyone take a look at Pixar's "Finding Nemo" trailers? Now 
that's what i call lip-sync - and it's even fishes talking... 
i've got a long way to go, i guess.

 >=====
 >From jps### [at] yahoocom:

[negative comment edited ]

just kidding... ;) here it is:

 >For the most part the animation is very well done, but the
 >story puts me to sleep.  Reoccurring characters are ok, but
 >filling the animation with unnecessary scenes/dialog just so
 >all your entries work together as a whole tends to bog
 >things down.  Plus it leaves people that haven't seen the
 >previous animation in the dark as to what is going on.

Agreed... it's just a linear story, with sequences arranged in 
order of passing time. Not really *that* creative.

 >If I were to re-edit the animation here is what I'd do.
 >First I'd drop all the filler that helps tie this animation
 >to the last and I'd start out showing Wyngz wandering
 >through the desert.  She could be talking to herself to fill
 >the viewer in on what she is doing.  I'd keep the rest the
 >same and append a scene of Amurel and Wyngz walking to the
 >shuttle, maybe modify their argument/dialog from the shuttle
 >landing so it would fit this context.  I think trimming
 >things down would help draw the viewer into the story from
 >the start.  As it is now, I have to sit though almost half
 >of the animation before the journey even starts.

Another nice effect of trimming down would be that the MPEG data 
rate could be higher, reducing image artifacts...

 >I've written a lot and most of it seems negative, but apart
 >from
 >the story the rest of the work is really good.

The comments were not negative at all, in fact it's a good 
summary of most of the story's shortcomings, plus a lot of good 
ideas for improvements that i'll try to keep in mind. Thanks a 
lot, seriously!

 >=====
 >From cle### [at] dholorg:
 >Easily the class of the field for story and modelling.  This
 >time, the lighting worked fine for me!

Flattery will get you anywhere... :-)

 >The winged one needs a more expressive mouth. The stiff upper
 >lip and constant mouth width seem to be the culprits.

That's a good idea, it fits well with what pterandon said about 
lip-sync. On the other hand, maybe she's british (see:
http://www.sterlingtimes.org/memorable_images61.htm )
and/or an AC/DC fan... SCNR, "stiff upper lip" reflex cutting in 
again... :-)

 >Some of the motions produce a skin and bones effect on both
 >characters.

??? Not sure what is meant here, maybe that sometimes the surface 
is bent like there's no substance to it. In this case, it's most 
definitely a problem with my IK and deformation area setup. The 
elbows are worst...

 >The transformation of the temple was easy to miss.

Agreed, i was running out of time and ideas here...

 > These, of course, are quibbles.  Great job.

Aaaaand once more, thanks a lot!

====

Post a reply to this message

"Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message
news:3ebc0cbe@news.povray.org...
> One thing that's been puzzling me for quite a while: How many
> particles form the planet's rings at 1:30, and how long did it
> take to render?

none! :)

It's a trick. The rings of the planet are completely flat and textured with a
very complicated pigment I dreamt up. It's based on pov's crackle function, with
a slight noise pattern layered over it. That is used to cut out the silhouette
of the rocks (so there's see thru bits and solid bits). Then the "lighting" on
the rocks is faked by using the same pattern in a function, but computing very
simple lighting as if it was a bump map. I would use a real bump map but that
renders much slower than my trick. All of this means the rings render in just a
few seconds per frame.

The same pattern is used as the backdrop to the sequence inside the asteroid
field, meaning that I only needed about 20 3D asteroids, and the rest are flat
ones on the sky sphere. If you look closely you'll see none of them are moving
:)

> (2nd place! Woohoo too... :-)

Congratulations! Your entry was my favourite :)

> My opinion is that it's especially the "negative" comments that
> help with improvement.

I agree, except that I always feel kinda down if all I get are negative
comments! I feel a bit mean, always finding some fault in other people's scenes,
so I try to give some positive and some negative.

BTW, sorry I couldn't think of anything much to say on your one! I was feeling a
little uninspired. To rectify, I'll comment a bit more here, but I'll avoid
saying stuff others have said:

The camera movement seems a little excessive, it's like the Matrix at times but
that seems out of place when it's not used in an action scene. A trick I think
works well is to think about how you could move the camera if you were actually
there shooting a movie with real cameras, because people are used to seeing
footage filmed in that way.

The editing is generally good but gets a bit quick in the desert sequence. I
would expect to get lots of much longer shots emphasizing the heat and weariness
of those scenes, but instead they're shown almost as a montage. A classic shot
pointing towards the sun would be nice (i.e. with just the sun in the centre of
the frame), it's a bit cliched but it works.

And one other thought: why are your characters a big cat-woman and some girl
with wings? Maybe I missed an earlier episode where this was explained, but they
look kinda like someone's just taken a model of a nude and decided to mess
around and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case 'cause the
cat's face is really detailed, but I'm curious about that choice of character.

--
Tek
http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

Post a reply to this message

Markus Altendorff <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in 
news:3ebc0cbe@news.povray.org:

> By the way, what does the "JV:" mean? I've seen it on all your 
> comments ("Judge's Verdict"?)

That's John VanSickle of "Rusty" fame ;)

Post a reply to this message

Tek wrote:
> 
> It's a trick. The rings of the planet are completely flat and textured with a
> very complicated pigment I dreamt up. It's based on pov's crackle function, with
> a slight noise pattern layered over it. That is used to cut out the silhouette
> of the rocks (so there's see thru bits and solid bits). Then the "lighting" on
> the rocks is faked by using the same pattern in a function, but computing very
> simple lighting as if it was a bump map. I would use a real bump map but that
> renders much slower than my trick. All of this means the rings render in just a
> few seconds per frame.
> 
> The same pattern is used as the backdrop to the sequence inside the asteroid
> field, meaning that I only needed about 20 3D asteroids, and the rest are flat
> ones on the sky sphere. If you look closely you'll see none of them are moving
> :)

Oh, so it's really just "smoke and mirrors"? I didn't notice at 
all! The impression of "my goodness, what did he do to his poor 
computer" was overwhelming :)

>>(2nd place! Woohoo too... :-)
> 
> 
> Congratulations! Your entry was my favourite :)

Mine, too... :) ooops, that came out totally wrong - the other 
way round, of course: *your* entry was *my* favourite :)

>>My opinion is that it's especially the "negative" comments that
>>help with improvement.
> 
> I agree, except that I always feel kinda down if all I get are negative
> comments! I feel a bit mean, always finding some fault in other people's scenes,
> so I try to give some positive and some negative.

Of course, getting a comment listing that basically says "your 
artwork sucks" (in a nice way, of course) can wreak havoc on an 
artist's self-esteem... that's why i'm always very nervous when i 
start reading the comments...

> BTW, sorry I couldn't think of anything much to say on your one!

No problem. Most of my comments were rather short, too.

 > I was feeling a
> little uninspired. To rectify, I'll comment a bit more here, but I'll avoid
> saying stuff others have said:
> 
> The camera movement seems a little excessive, it's like the Matrix at times but
> that seems out of place when it's not used in an action scene. A trick I think
> works well is to think about how you could move the camera if you were actually
> there shooting a movie with real cameras, because people are used to seeing
> footage filmed in that way.

That's some sort of chronical disease i've acquired... sort of 
"restless lens syndrome" ;-) most of the time, i'll render lots 
of versions of a scene, with different camera angles. Did the 
same this time, but a) the ones i wanted turned out too short, 
and the ones i had turned out too long for 3:45 runtime, so i 
compressed the running speed - result: "camera on speed", sort 
of. Lessons learned: Create a final storyboard. Start early. 
Stick to the storyboard... and most important: Move camera, *or* 
move object...

> The editing is generally good but gets a bit quick in the desert sequence. I
> would expect to get lots of much longer shots emphasizing the heat and weariness
> of those scenes, but instead they're shown almost as a montage. A classic shot
> pointing towards the sun would be nice (i.e. with just the sun in the centre of
> the frame), it's a bit cliched but it works.

I only had one of those sun flare shots... and the scenes in the 
desert are actually the earliest. Meaning: they suck. No nice way 
to put it. It's an awful walk cycle, it's *only* a walk cycle, 
the first version of the ground rendered slow as snails, the IK 
setup was in its infancy (not that it's that much improved now, 
either), it's actually just slapped together to have a starting 
point. Result: Not enough usable frames. And no idea how to 
create what i really had in mind: heat blur, as seen in BBC 
wildlife documentaries... *sigh*
And there's this odd behaviour of my raytracer, where one frame 
renders in 3-4 minutes, and the next one - even though there's 
only minimal change of the bones placement! - takes more than ten 
times longer... at 240x176!

> And one other thought: why are your characters a big cat-woman and some girl
> with wings? Maybe I missed an earlier episode where this was explained, but they
> look kinda like someone's just taken a model of a nude and decided to mess
> around and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case 'cause the
> cat's face is really detailed, but I'm curious about that choice of character.

Well, that's a long story... okay, maybe not *that* long. I 
started airbrushing some 12 years ago (haven't touched it for 
seven years now, but i'll try to set up some small room in my new 
flat as a working place in the future). It's not that hard to 
draw or design technical stuff like cars, metal surfaces etc., 
but i'm not that good when it comes to the human body or the 
human face. On the other hand, i had the ambition to *not* copy 
things but to actually construct my drawings (and now 3D) from 
scratch. You know, head height is 1/8 of body height, length of 
hand equals distance from chin to (average) start of hair, and 
all this stuff. Takes more time, but i don't have to earn a 
living by this (most illustrators copy all of the time... take a 
look at any of the "making of" photos of the working places of, 
say, Hajime Sorayama, or Boris Vallejo... either photos, or 
*ahem* "magazines" lying all around... :)
Anyway, i was able to construct halfway believable bodies, but 
not faces... that's where the cat design first appeared, inspired 
from the title of the german "nature" magazine i saw a few years 
earlier (human body with the head of a house cat superimposed, 
professionally hand-drawn - ah, the days before digital 
retouching...). Some article about how we link human character 
attributes to animal images or such. Cats are especially popular 
with this. I've done quite a few of motorcycles with lions or 
panthers on them... the best i've managed so far is:
http://www.asamnet.de/~altendom/bilder23/airmax/d02603.jpg
http://www.asamnet.de/~altendom/bilder23/airmax/d02629.jpg

Anyway: The line of reasoning was like: Want complete character 
design > Can't draw human head > Try something other. Simple 
avoidance tactics... :-) but somehow, the design sticked over the 
years, even though it appeared in similar form only once on 
paper, on one hood and on one scooter side. One of my first 3-D 
animations (for a LAN party demo reel) featured a four-legged 
cat-bot with a laser cannon on its back, welding the party's 
logotype out of a rusty metal wall. The next LAN party saw a 
longer animation, building on the previous one, this time with 
claws breaking through a metal plate. Then i found the IRTC 
website, back when the topic was "Alien Invasion". That's when i 
decided to take the old pen-and-paper design to 3D and built the 
first version of the cat creature. I guess it's a try to do some 
strange alien-mythology-independence-dangerousness-crossover 
design ;-) That was three versions of Cinema and 120 revisions of 
the model ago... the way i fumble around with 3D software, it's 
not that easy to create lots of various different characters...

The "girl with wings": This was an add-on for the 
"pursuit-escape" IRTC contest. It's a rather crude model, which 
also shows in the RAM footprint. Cat: 3-4 MB. Girl: 1 MB. Again, 
based on some scribbles. Originally, i just wanted to do an 
airbrush painting titled "Fantasia", with a faery-like girl, but 
having a darker touch (that's why i chose skin-based wings, 
instead of the usual "butterfly" type ;-), but so far, it hasn't 
gone beyond the pen-and-paper phase... and the 3-D version isn't 
that great either. On paper, it just has to be "believable" 
pseudo 3D. On the screen, it *is* 3-D. And that's when you 
realize that a pair of wings is something terribly impractical 
and clumsy, can't be properly folded, creates self-colisions and 
lots of other consistency problems... :-)

Well, some questions hopefully answered...
Yours,
Markus

Post a reply to this message

Markus Altendorff wrote:
> 
>  >From evilsnack:
>  >JV:  The ruins look like a bunch of brand-new objects left
>  >in a heap.
> 
> Yes. That's because they're in fact a bunch of brand-new objects
> left in a heap. ;-) The ruin is one of the models that didn't
> look at all like i wanted it. I thought of something like a
> cliche ruin a la Indiana Jones, dark, dusty, with a single ray of
> sunlight falling on the fountain, but i'm not that versed when it
> comes to modelling. Time was also a factor. So i ended up with
> extrusion objects, converted to polygons, then crumpled and cut
> in various predictable ways, placed into the scene by hand...
> some sort of automatic debris or particles would be nice. I
> remember some IRTC animation of a tree through the seasons, with
> an algorithm that did let snow and leaves drop to the ground. I'd
> like to be able to use something similar within Cinema... so far,
> no success.
> 
> By the way, what does the "JV:" mean? I've seen it on all your
> comments ("Judge's Verdict"?)

Those are my initals; in times past, my e-mail was not properly posted
to the comments.

>  >The banter between the two characters isn't that amusing.
> 
> Which one? The one at the beginning wasn't intended to be funny,
> and the one at the end was more of a filler...
> Oh, and remember the eternal lines (almost) straight out of Star
> Trek: "Dammit Jim, I'm a desktop publisher, not a writer..." :-)

Yeah, well, okay.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

I loved your vid! I'm just getting started in POV - I'm learning it for my
job - and stuff like yours makes me want to make things for the fun, rather
than the money.

Any way, i was wondering if it would be possible for me to get that pigment?
I'm doing a solar system image right nw, and I can't seem to find a good way
to add the asteroid belt.
Thanks!
OpalPlanet


"Tek" <tek### [at] evilsuperbraincom> wrote:
> "Markus Altendorff" <maa### [at] anthrosphinxde> wrote in message
> news:3ebc0cbe@news.povray.org...
> > One thing that's been puzzling me for quite a while: How many
> > particles form the planet's rings at 1:30, and how long did it
> > take to render?
>
> none! :)
>
> It's a trick. The rings of the planet are completely flat and textured with a
> very complicated pigment I dreamt up. It's based on pov's crackle function, with
> a slight noise pattern layered over it. That is used to cut out the silhouette
> of the rocks (so there's see thru bits and solid bits). Then the "lighting" on
> the rocks is faked by using the same pattern in a function, but computing very
> simple lighting as if it was a bump map. I would use a real bump map but that
> renders much slower than my trick. All of this means the rings render in just a
> few seconds per frame.
>
> The same pattern is used as the backdrop to the sequence inside the asteroid
> field, meaning that I only needed about 20 3D asteroids, and the rest are flat
> ones on the sky sphere. If you look closely you'll see none of them are moving
> :)
>
> > (2nd place! Woohoo too... :-)
>
> Congratulations! Your entry was my favourite :)
>
> > My opinion is that it's especially the "negative" comments that
> > help with improvement.
>
> I agree, except that I always feel kinda down if all I get are negative
> comments! I feel a bit mean, always finding some fault in other people's scenes,
> so I try to give some positive and some negative.
>
> BTW, sorry I couldn't think of anything much to say on your one! I was feeling a
> little uninspired. To rectify, I'll comment a bit more here, but I'll avoid
> saying stuff others have said:
>
> The camera movement seems a little excessive, it's like the Matrix at times but
> that seems out of place when it's not used in an action scene. A trick I think
> works well is to think about how you could move the camera if you were actually
> there shooting a movie with real cameras, because people are used to seeing
> footage filmed in that way.
>
> The editing is generally good but gets a bit quick in the desert sequence. I
> would expect to get lots of much longer shots emphasizing the heat and weariness
> of those scenes, but instead they're shown almost as a montage. A classic shot
> pointing towards the sun would be nice (i.e. with just the sun in the centre of
> the frame), it's a bit cliched but it works.
>
> And one other thought: why are your characters a big cat-woman and some girl
> with wings? Maybe I missed an earlier episode where this was explained, but they
> look kinda like someone's just taken a model of a nude and decided to mess
> around and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that isn't the case 'cause the
> cat's face is really detailed, but I'm curious about that choice of character.
>
> --
> Tek
> http://www.evilsuperbrain.com

Post a reply to this message