Random character design + animation

[darkshark]

I made a robot and rigged it for animation over the last two days.
The animation was quick and unrefined, but there will definitely be more to come now that it's fully rigged (as seen in the comments for the video, this is actually the first thing I've ever fully rigged).

Yep.

http://vimeo.com/19015943

Thoughts? Suggestions?

[Spenner]

It's alright, but it needs to be quicker and with less ease to all of the actions. The way it gradually ends every movement is really unnatural looking-- if it could be more aggressive, in a way, or just with less flow in the movements, it would look much more natural and nicer looking.

Good stuff though :)

[who_cares973]

that didnt look like a wave. looked more like a open ended fist pumps

[darkshark]

Agreed. Auto ease never tends to look realistic, haven't had a chance to really go through the curves editor yet, so I'll post up a more refined version tomorrow.
And wtf... Why does everyone think the wave looks awkward?

I'll find my camera so I can record own actions for animation reference. Does ANYONE here do any sort of animation at all?

[aperson]

Damn that looks good. I agree w/ the easing, almost all of them need to be much more logarithmic.

[Spenner]

The wave looks awkward because there's too much up the upper arm moving with the lower arm-- it should just be the lower arm pivoting on the elbow, with a little bit of upper arm movement to compensate, but it still looks too rigid because the hand doesn't move from side to side. Whether or not you can do that just depends on the architecture of the robot I suppose. So yeah, in addition to that stuff, the hand usually falls slightly in the direction the arm has swayed, after the movement.

Instead of rotating on just one axis per joint, maybe have subtle rotations in other directions. I dunno, just wave naturally and study your arm for awhile, you'll see what I mean I guess :P

[darkshark]

I'll fix the wave then xD

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/5264/36237813.jpg

Does anything look off/should I add anything as far as the character design itself goes?

[who_cares973]

i do stop motion and your typical gif animations. nothing overly complex

[makdaddy]

i was going to compliment your character design solely, he's trim, clean, crisp and simple something that would be good to use in all your other animation tests too.

i have very little animation experience so i can't really comment safely on his actions.

but nice robot haha

[Spenner]

Black, to me, looks the best because the eyes are so distinguished. I dunno what white would look like with white eyes, but it would certainly bring them out more (though at that point the colour of the body plates might have to darken to bring the eyes out more).

Black looks really cool, but it would depend on the environment it's placed in that would decide whether it would bring out more or contrast too little...

Maybe, even, eyes that look more lens like or something. Or like a car headlight with those scanlines over the front of the glass, with maybe a dimmer light emitting from them... not sure D:

Regardless, it looks good. I only really question the lower ribcage, it would restrict the possibility of leaning side to side.

[rushyrulz]

The shape of the head looks a little odd to me. Maybe a little smaller and a little more rounded on the sides instead of being curve..... then FLAT.

[darkshark]

Well Vimeo takes forever to convert these things, so I'll just post the link and you can watch it whenever it finishes.

http://vimeo.com/19054502

I think I want to do some super awesome fight scenes between the black and white versions of the robots. Need awesome ideas xD

[Spenner]

That's looking pretty awesome :D

[darkshark]

Got a pretty good storyboard drawn up. I'm leaning HEAVILY towards the animation style seen in the "Shock" series of stick figure flash animations, minus all the clones...or hell maybe clones included. I just know I want an extreme sense of speed and a ton of weight put into each hit.

If you haven't seen Shock 1, 2, or 3, I recommend you watch it immediately lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sMgvO8It8Y

[Mythix]

Nothing to add really, it's good but it'd be foolish to think it's complete yet..
I like the design, and lol how can white eyes on black be more distinct than black eyes on white?

How'd you rig the cable from his neck though?

[LongGone]

This doesn't seem like a bot designed for speed though; It seems more like a slow, clumsy (?) multipurpose bot like e.g. in futuristic homes lol

With regards to the bot design:

-Minimalist and clean as a whole, design seems to flow well together

-Spenner brought up a good point with the lower ribcage, if its not too late you might want to extend it a little, exposing more of the steel "ribs". While I'm at this, if I'm gonna be super nitpicky I don't see how the torso/waist is actuated (?)

-Is it just me or you got the knee joint backwards? It seems that the front has more space to bend, while the rear has that protrusion that stops it bending further like (a reverse-jointed mech). Watching your animation as the bot bends, it seems that protrusion unrealistically clashes with the thigh but its conveniently hidden from the angle of the camera

-Besides that the articulation overall seems to be well thought out. Very minor thing would be that the neck design seems like its not made for sideways rocking motions. Styling on "gauntlets" means that it can't thrust its palms forward, or do pushups (unless it uses its fists rofl)

-Pardon me if I'm delving too deep in the realism of this, but be a little careful with the way the outer shell is designed. Realistically a real robot like this would have seam lines/parting lines in the shell so that they can be taken off or manufactured more practically (e.g. a parting line running between the front and back shells of the torso). It seems from this design that the parts are fabricated in hollow shells, and then "slipped" onto the internals, which is still plausible from your current design fortunately

-If you plan to make an animation with a few of these bots in it you might want to make slight head variations for each to make them more distinctive, or small alterations of styling (e.g. two wires protuding from the back instead of one, decaling/markings on the shells, different curve stylings)

(gotta say I'm a sucker for the reflective finish though. Raytraced?)

[darkshark]

@mythix, the cable that goes from his head to back? It's got a bone structure with IH controllers on it, linked to specific vertices for each bone, then each end of the bone is linked to a dummy helper on each attach point (linked to helpers in case I ever decide to detach it for some reason, and I can add individual weight to the helpers for reactor physics)

@LG, I love your in-depth stuff haha. About the legs, I already noticed that while animating, and it was on my to-do list for fixing that, but the hands you got me on...it has a small amount of clearance between the top of the hand and that forearm shield, but you're right, he can't do pushups, so I'll see about tweaking that a bit.

The torso just needs some wells cut out on the sides to allow the center spinal column to pass through, however when animating, this doesn't seem like it's been an issue, even when twisting and tilting to the side, there's still enough clearance between the torso and the hips, and the whole spinal column moves in sync with the torso shell, so it's more flexible than it looks.

I really like the thought of adding variation to each robot as well, aside from basic color changes. Also, yeah the bot doesn't look like it's meant for ridiculous speed, but ohhhhhhh I'm sooooooooo going to do it anyway haha. The story I have planned out will completely explain the high speeds.

Come Monday I'll be re-rigging it, and starting on this animation, so if anyone has any ideas they'd like to see make it into this short film, sketch it out and I'll make it!

[who_cares973]

Got a pretty good storyboard drawn up. I'm leaning HEAVILY towards the animation style seen in the "Shock" series of stick figure flash animations, minus all the clones...or hell maybe clones included. I just know I want an extreme sense of speed and a ton of weight put into each hit.

If you haven't seen Shock 1, 2, or 3, I recommend you watch it immediately lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sMgvO8It8Y

ive always wanted to do something like that but the amount of frames i would have to do is a ridiculous amount and im not motivated enough to do it =/

[darkshark]

Yeah, I want my animation to be around 2 minutes long at least, it's going to amount to like 10,000 keyframes.

This is going to pretty much be the thing that's going into my portfolio that will get me a job working for a big name studio. So I'm going to make this god damn amazing.

wc you should just try starting one, you'll want to finish it if you at least try.

[who_cares973]

add shading to the figures. its the only thing lacking in every single stick fighting animation ive seen. give it some real depth

[darkshark]

Shading? It's going to be in photorealistic 3d, not some 2d sidescroller.

[Reincarnate]

shock's got nothing on xiaoxiao

[revolutionomega]

Dude check out on the NG main page entanglement 2. Some sick more 3-d-esque stick-figure fighting.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/559446

Love the animation so far, pretty much agreed on all points, and just work on making the majority of the joints move together I guess.

Have you ever used the program alice? It's terrible but funny.

Here's what I mean:
http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRevolutionomega#p/u/7/lp4dEB6cHKw

[darkshark]

@Rubix, WHAT. Xiao Xiao is garbage compared to shock.

@revolution, yes I've used Alice, its the most horrible 3d/programming program ever.

[darkshark]

Just now watched that Entanglement video lol. I really really like the first scene with the teleporting. Could really be something I'd like to animate.

It could also play into the current storyline, because the hyper-speed was going to be a sort of overdrive time dilation generator built into the robot, so teleporting could be a wormhole generator or something.



**Just made this in After Effects.

http://vimeo.com/19147467

Just reminds me how much I love that program, there's not one single keyframe in the whole thing, everything is dynamic and ready to be overlayed onto any footage (the underlying footage also distorts)
Totally badass.

[Reincarnate]

@Rubix, WHAT. Xiao Xiao is garbage compared to shock.

@revolution, yes I've used Alice, its the most horrible 3d/programming program ever.

Xiao Xiao was like the original -- Shock kinda copied it

[Reincarnate]

That Entanglement vid was sweet

[Spenner]

That static/distortion effect would be so much cooler if it was full of random patterns, and randomly glitching rapidly back to the regular screen back and forth a couple times before finally showing itself.

But that's a neat and handy effect without even any keyframes to be associated with it o_O

[darkshark]

What do you mean by random patterns? I just uploaded another version that has a variable noise filter on it, so when the screen gets distorted, there's a ton of noise, otherwise there's only a little.

I'm trying to find a torrent of a particular plugin for AE that should be able to do this distortion way better than the effects I have available to me right now.

http://vimeo.com/19151283

Again, Vimeo takes forever to convert.

[Mythix]

The "scanning" lines that float up and down when you can actually see what happends seem to float too irregularly for me.. As in, if they sort of snapped from the eyes to his forhead, then the distortion, then some sort of note, distort, snap to cheek.. Get my point? I'm bad at explaining it would just make it more roboticishilysh. Yes.

[Spenner]

What I meant was lengthier horizontal lines randomly sequenced instead of just that two frame animation.

Look at your signature (the Shayne Webb one) :P right before it gets bombarded, that kind of spatter of movement that quickly goes from lengthier distortion to shorter distortion.

And by going back and forth between seeing it non-distorted, I meant 1/8th of a second type of brief moment ;P just the give it a bit more of an authentic glitchy look. Maybe even one frame with the whole thing vertically stretched. Idk, but I'd play with it more than rely on that short loop of horizontal distortion. The progressing noise works pretty well, though.

I'd make an example in Flash if I had flash handy <__>

[darkshark]

I could definitely do that, just not sure if I can do it JUST with scripting and no keyframes. I wanted to leave keyframes out of this so that I can reuse this footage and it will always be completely random (all of the movements going on).

Mythix I agree with the scanning lines, and I actually do want to have those scan actual areas of the robot, but I have no idea where the camera is going to end up in that shot, because I haven't made that portion of the fight scene yet...the image currently there is just a placeholder.

Spenner, I'll tweak with the distortion a bit more and see if I can get away with not having to use frames...while I was writing the previous paragraphs I had an epiphany for a possible fix to your liking xD

[revolutionomega]

Yeah I figured the Entanglement video would be pretty relevant. Personally my favorite part is the sword fighting at the end xD

And definitely have to agree that Alice is godawful. I had to use it in this computing class last year it was pointless, awful, and made no sense to me.

[darkshark]

I took the last couple of days to learn how to use a new plugin I got, called RayFire Tools.

This plugin is an effing beast of a simulator, and also takes its toll on every computer resource available, probably because it's not written very well...but it took me so long to learn how to use this tool because ANY complex simulation would just lock up the computer for more than an hour. So here's a few stills of what's going on.

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/392/test30038.jpg
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/2747/test30039.jpg
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/7026/test30040.jpg
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/4884/test30042.jpg

Compiled video is uploading.

In the final version I'd like this destruction simulation to be much less pronounced, there's too much debris and large chunks, so I'd like to pretty much have one good "smashed" chunk out of that corner of the wall, with lots of little cracks and smaller chips that broke off, but that's going to take some more tweaking to get it to my liking.

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1218/test5.gif

[Spenner]

Badass stills, cannot wait for it :3

[DotKritic]

What software was used for the robot animation?

[darkshark]

3ds Max. Pretty much all of my work I ever do is in that program. Do you do any 3d work?

[DotKritic]

3ds Max. Pretty much all of my work I ever do is in that program. Do you do any 3d work?Nope. I just seem really interested in it now.

edit: US$3,495 (MSRP)

[darkshark]

ThePiratebay.org

[revolutionomega]

ThePiratebay.org

lol thumbs up.

isohunt.com/lite is faster for most stuff though.

[darkshark]

http://vimeo.com/19764773

Started blocking in some of the background and surroundings, refined the impact of the car smash (probably going to make this a futuristic setting, so the Honda will need to be swapped with something else, probably my nVidia contest car http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/6928/preview5g.jpg )

I've got about 30 full seconds of animation, but I want to fine tune it a bit before rendering it.

[MageMonkies]

ThePiratebay.org

Demonoid.me is better imo, less idiots posting bad torrents, I can do a few invites on a first come first served basis for who's interested.

[darkshark]

Also animated more of this thing

http://vimeo.com/19849118

I refined the first half with the comments you all had, and just blocked in the last half, so I haven't even run through the curves editor at all so it's clunky.

[darkshark]

Made a ton of progress today. I built 8 full city blocks for the environment, added atmospheric fog, centered depth of field, traffic, sidewalks, re-rigged both robots with MUCH more in-depth rigging systems for an amazing amount of control for when I finally animate the fight sequences. Added in a few new scenes, got to implement the first iteration of a HUD POV scene...I need to add in a ton of details as I go as well, like stoplights, windows, storefronts, signs, maybe people, very open to suggestions.

http://vimeo.com/19956435

I'll try and get the scene where the black robot actually throws the car in place and fully rendered, along with the existing scenes updated with the new environment, I think that will begin to tie some things together and make it begin to make sense.


Here's the new animation rig, took 4 hours to get all of the controls working right. Everything that is green controls little nuances of the body in addition to major joint linkage.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/7208/capturevts.jpg

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/6378/captureoj.jpg

[darkshark]

Starting to tie together, the next scene will commence the epic battle.

http://vimeo.com/20006538

I'm just going to add detail to the environment as I go, since it all needs to be re-rendered at the end anyway. Easier workflow.

[darkshark]

Quad-post lulz

Definitely need to redo the lame new teleporting scene, as it says in the description. I rushed that part u___u

http://vimeo.com/20042891