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RE: my first motion test on IC3

omanuel — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:45:01 GMT

I agree...I can also tell you definitely have a background with animating characters with the way you apply the Principles of Animation to those tests...keep up the awesome work. Look forward to seeing more too :)

RE: my first motion test on IC3

aknzrdude — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 13:16:30 GMT

very very cool chris - certainly the effect of the particles covey a lot of the impact! looking forward to the nexy test

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:06:10 GMT

[quote][b]martok2112 (7/2/2009)[/b][hr]I am simply stunned! You've really got the particle effects nailed. Great motion too, and camera angles. LOVED the reflection of the robot running away in the sunglasses. I left you some comments at your YouTube videos. Keep up the awesome work.[/quote]

Thank man, if you liked that one then wait for the weapons one coming next week. I think you are really going to enjoy it. :)

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 01:01:45 GMT

[quote][b]cortes_will (7/2/2009)[/b][hr]Im having a bit of a hard time creating smooth motions. Do you rely on the frames to set your motions or do you rely on time? For instance do you make motions between a certain number of seconds or frames?

Is there an advantage to using director mode for motions?[/quote]

Hi Will,
sorry it took me a while to answer, im kinda busy working on my next motion test with weapons. One of my biggest challenges is making the weapon strikes have weight on them. By this I mean when two weapons strike at each other, they should push/slide each other away from the impact. I should have a finished demo by the end of this coming week.
To answer your question, I dont rely on either frames nor seconds. I just tweak the motions and scrub the time line until it looks right to me. The best way to approach your animations is this:
1) know what are the actions you want in your shot
2) Search you motion libraries to see what are the closest motion you can use to create your
action/drama sequences. It is very important to know what you have. knowing what you have will give you a realistic look at what you can actually do for you sequence, unless you are an animator and you can keyframe every single motions yourself.
3) load the motions into the time line and dont worry if they dont match perfectly, you can tweak them later.
4) if you are having two character interact with each other (fighting for example) it is best to animate the first character until you make contact with the second(a punch for example). Then animate the second character until you have a reaction to the first action from the first character. (getting hit or blocking the punch) In other words animate an action and then the reaction. Doing this will give you a fluid motion workflow.
5) read as much as you can on animation, the more you know the better the quality of your movies will be. At least try to understand the main principles. This will help you with the tweaking and cleanup of your mocap. For example: look at the animation I did, when the main character punched the robot in the stomach, see how the bots body gets pushed upward and backwards. This tells the audience the punch was really strong and had weight to it. Little things like this go a long way.

I hope this helped you a bit.

your friendly icloneer,

stuckon3d

RE: my first motion test on IC3

martok2112 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:58:29 GMT

I am simply stunned! You've really got the particle effects nailed. Great motion too, and camera angles. LOVED the reflection of the robot running away in the sunglasses. I left you some comments at your YouTube videos. Keep up the awesome work.

RE: my first motion test on IC3

cortes_will — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:01:30 GMT

Im having a bit of a hard time creating smooth motions. Do you rely on the frames to set your motions or do you rely on time? For instance do you make motions between a certain number of seconds or frames?

Is there an advantage to using director mode for motions?

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Anim8torCathy — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:15:44 GMT

Hey stuckon -

I'm in complete agreement with you. And I really applaud your willingness and diligence to raise the bar on iClone project quality. The reason I have yet to post anything beyond 'Samurai Door' a few years ago is that I have not been able to create anything I am impressed with that meets my vision and standards of what animation could look like using this program. But I do believe it is possible, so I continue to experiment and test out new ideas. As more and better content is released from Reallusion it is hard NOT TO dream of higher quality animations using this software.

Cathy :hehe:

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:26:04 GMT

[quote][b]Anim8torCathy (2/28/2009)[/b][hr]Great animation, dude.

iClone's canned motions are stellar, either with characters or props (the horse motions are a good example) but what drives me batty are these robotic looking moves people put into their videos - I just keep thinking- There has GOT TO BE a better way. Because you can have the best story line and the best scenes and the best characters and you throw-in one robotic move for a live character and the whole thing caves in. It's the loss of suspension of disbelief. If a character doesn't move naturally, it throws the audience off. When I see a human I expect it to move like a human - not a robot.

While this may have been good-enough when iClone was first introduced, it doesn't cut it anymore. We have more sophisticated scenes, story lines, and characters - they need to move in a more sophisticated way, OR the people using iClone need to learn to edit around it in order to create more compelling content.

End of Rant.

Cathy :hehe:[/quote]

Hi Cathy,
thank you for the comment and the rant. I think the reason you see so many robotic like movements, is because people are not animators by nature. It take a lot of hard work to become an animator and while motion capture data is great for single cut scenes, if you need to string a few motions together, that is when the robotics kick in. The key to smooth out the transitions between two mocap actions like from punch to kick to block for example is using Iclone's "motion layer" feature. It is a very powerful feature that really helps, but it is just a tool for the artist not a miracle maker. :hehe: You still need to understand the principals of motion like Action reaction anticipation. There are alot of great books and dvds tutorials out there. I have a few of them, but the best teacher like Miyamoto Musashi saids "the way is in training". So practice, practice, practice. I have a motion test 5 in my drive that I have not posted yet, which I think is a great improvement from motion test four but I dont want to post it until im done with the facial animation, but I put this little project in the back burner so that I could developed a high-end look for iclone backgrounds as seen on my "[url=http://forum.reallusion.com/Topic15911-36-1.aspx]Art work in progress[/url]" link below. Now that I have done that, I will finish that scene and combine it with what I have learned from my motion tests to make the kind of animations I always wanted to make with the quality I wanted. I also believe that the skin on the characters in iclone still have some room for improvement, which is going to be my next development cycle after I release a few highend background construction kits for fella Icloners out there. They will be plug and play for newbies and super flexible for advanced users out there. It took several months of development, but I think I have the perfect balance of beauty and performance. Btw, the street scene is going to be the bonus content for the first pack im going to release in April. More info will be available as we approach the release date. ;)

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Anim8torCathy — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:25:44 GMT

Great animation, dude.

iClone's canned motions are stellar, either with characters or props (the horse motions are a good example) but what drives me batty are these robotic looking moves people put into their videos - I just keep thinking- There has GOT TO BE a better way. Because you can have the best story line and the best scenes and the best characters and you throw-in one robotic move for a live character and the whole thing caves in. It's the loss of suspension of disbelief. If a character doesn't move naturally, it throws the audience off. When I see a human I expect it to move like a human - not a robot.

While this may have been good-enough when iClone was first introduced, it doesn't cut it anymore. We have more sophisticated scenes, story lines, and characters - they need to move in a more sophisticated way, OR the people using iClone need to learn to edit around it in order to create more compelling content.

End of Rant.

Cathy :hehe:

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Sifr — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:06:53 GMT

Excellent character animation, great use of SFX, good cinematography.....bad cemera ease in/ease out. Shame on RL;)

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:42:02 GMT

[quote][b]warlord (9/11/2008)[/b][hr]It DOES just keep getting better.[/quote]thanks warlord, I try to keep improving it but the progress is slow on weekdays, I can only put a couple of hours a day every other day, I get home too tired from work. But I love doing this so being a little "tired" is not going to stop me. ;)This little motion test is begining to evolve into a story, this will be episode 2. It will all make sense once I put the audio this weekend. :DHere is [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pATAw506ZMc]motion test number 4[/url], I added a some laser beams to the bot so the fight it is not so one sided, I also added some interactive lighting for the particles.Hope you guys like it,Stuckon3d

RE: my first motion test on IC3

warlord — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:00:48 GMT

It DOES just keep getting better.

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Raven2angel — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:22:15 GMT

Looks really good :D

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:50:30 GMT

Hi guys, thanks again for the comment, here is pass number 3, I did a little more motion refinement and some camera work, now that I have this, I can see where I need to spend the most time in crazy talk doing facial animation, which will be on the closeups of course. ;) I also did this lense reflection shot that I really liked but it is hard to see on the youtube video. Hope you like it,Stuckon3d[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3EAdYUgL6g]Motion test 3[/url]

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Cricky — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:24:01 GMT

Stuckon3d,

Very well done animation...looks good seeing where it begins and where it's going. Kind of like a reversed bloopers reel.

* one a side note...nice signature icon you have there Duchess...

RE: my first motion test on IC3

duchess110 — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 02:52:06 GMT

Most enjoyable looks like you have the motion timeline well under control.

duchess

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:57:04 GMT

wow thanks guys, I appreciate the comments. :D Here is test 2, I refined the end a little more where Zak is trying to get out of the mega fire fist, once I get the dialog and sound fx in it will be a lot funnier, until then use your imagination. So what is test 3? Using Crazy talk for facial motion and then bring it in to IC3, I'm also going to refine the hand and finger movement as well as exagerate the double take on the fighter when Zak runs away. Im also going to play with the camera switcher to get better angles in certain part. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-RskqTBYg]motion test 2[/url]Wish me luck,Stuckon3d

RE: my first motion test on IC3

Alley — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 00:14:01 GMT

What's important here is that the one figher guy got annoyed that the other guy ran away...and you demonstrated that brilliantly with the motions you added.

Great job!:)

RE: my first motion test on IC3

warlord — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:21:28 GMT

I think it's excellent motion work. The splashs do add a lot. Real good work.

RE: my first motion test on IC3

JMartin — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 17:35:33 GMT

This is a nice blend of motion editing. The fake-out joke is great too. Your use of the water particle is very good and shows how important it is to blend the features of iClone in scenes for more visual impact. Keep working on it and keep us tuned in. Thanks!

RE: my first motion test on IC3

ljw3321 — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:38:45 GMT

Nice and funny. Good Work.

RE: my first motion test on IC3

shygirl — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:21:25 GMT

Great work on the 'splash' scenes and nice smooth transition of the motions. Excellent job.

Shy

RE: my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:05:34 GMT

[quote][b]gizmo (9/7/2008)[/b][hr]Looks like you have cracked it to me. Excellent. Love the water splashes too. Brilliant.[/quote]Thanks Gizmo, but I dont think I have it cracked, yet! ;) after all this is my first try. :rolleyes:Next im going to work on the timing for the end part, Its happening too fast and im not letting the audience sink in the punchline. Hopefully i'll have a new test by tomorrow. :DWish me luck. :PStuckon3d

RE: my first motion test on IC3

gizmo — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:46:09 GMT

Looks like you have cracked it to me. Excellent. Love the water splashes too. Brilliant.

my first motion test on IC3

stuckon3d — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:13:18 GMT

Hi guys, I was testing out the new integrated motion editor in IC3, im still having trouble with the feet sliding even after doing the root alignments, I wish realusion did a very detail tutorial on how to join different types of motions together, where the root positions a very different from motion to motion and how to fix it. All in all I'm pretty happy with the result, the fact that I had both character in view was a huge help to get the timming of the hits, and the motion layer track was indispensible. I will keep adding new tests as I have them so that people can see the work in progress. I hope you like it.Stuckon3d[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8YE4RRugrk&eurl=http://forum.reallusion.com/Post.aspx?SessionID=fd4v0dz5cxvzsm2zeckf0h45]Motion test[/url][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j-RskqTBYg&feature=related]Motion test2[/url][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3EAdYUgL6g]Motion test 3[/url][url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pATAw506ZMc]Motion test 4[/url]