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Final post: Back to a single account...
Posted 11 years agoSo, the last years have proven that FA doesn't really have the facilities for a "group" account. Moreover, having two separate accounts means mostly one thing: that I don't check one of them regularly, and interesting conversations and developments get abandoned.
Given the fact that I don't do any manual drawing any more (I have gotten really horrible at it) I will return to a single personal account for posting 3D stuff, and abandon the Animated_Fluffies. All new stuff will be posted through the account
cairyn including journals, so if you have been watching here, you may want to watch there instead.
All watches will be merged as appropriate from my side, however, the art and journals posted here will stay here and not be reposted.
That's it, hope to see you on the other side.
Given the fact that I don't do any manual drawing any more (I have gotten really horrible at it) I will return to a single personal account for posting 3D stuff, and abandon the Animated_Fluffies. All new stuff will be posted through the account
cairyn including journals, so if you have been watching here, you may want to watch there instead.All watches will be merged as appropriate from my side, however, the art and journals posted here will stay here and not be reposted.
That's it, hope to see you on the other side.
EF CGI Events!
Posted 12 years agoThis year's EF will have two events by me:
- CGI Movie Making, which I already mentioned here - come by and see the results of the last half year of work! Then make fun of it. Uh, maybe I also present the "best practice" way in making a movie, and some additional thoughts.
- CGI Round Table - let's repeat last year's experience and sit together and talk about new developments, new movies, and the outlook for the dedicated furry animator. If you want to present something, bring it too, or if you are looking for second opinions on something that's on your mind... have us discuss it!
There will be even more 3D related events around - read the con book and the timetable!
- CGI Movie Making, which I already mentioned here - come by and see the results of the last half year of work! Then make fun of it. Uh, maybe I also present the "best practice" way in making a movie, and some additional thoughts.
- CGI Round Table - let's repeat last year's experience and sit together and talk about new developments, new movies, and the outlook for the dedicated furry animator. If you want to present something, bring it too, or if you are looking for second opinions on something that's on your mind... have us discuss it!
There will be even more 3D related events around - read the con book and the timetable!
Why U No UPDATE?
Posted 12 years agoWell, the long and short of it is that my current project doesn't
involve furry characters. So with all the spaceship stuff already
on my account, I just don't want to push the issue and post more
super bald tech stuff.
While I would like to continue the furry character line and make
a good mesh, I don't have the time for even more parallel projects.
Since January, I had two releases of the Space Mouse controller (and
there are still a few issues I need to correct), and I was building
and animating for that new project
(mind you, all of it in my free time, oh sometimes I wish I would be
able to make money from it so at least I didn't have to work on so
many fronts)
which, I guess, will be presented in due time.
But animating. Oh, animating.
It's not just that you have to actually animate (well, rig, weight,
bind, morph, assemble a controller, and THEN animate). You also have
to create the backgrounds. And while I am a stout apologist of the
theorem that you don't need as many detail in animation, because you
don't have as much time to look at each frame, shot, and scene...
you still DO need detail, and when you switch the scenario every
twenty seconds, that's still a helluva modeling work for stuff that
is just standing around.
So, you need to build a library of STUFF so you don't need to come
up with everything from scratch every time. Which means that you better
choose a style, size, degree of detail, and polygon count early
on because otherwise you may end up with STUFF that just doesn't look
good together (also a danger if you buy or download or collaborate with
others on assets). You need to develop a feeling for the necessary
amount of detail, and for the frequency you can actually reuse an
item.
People do notice. On the Star Wars forum I read how people find it
funny that in The Clone Wars every planet has the same kind of wooden
cart. Well, yes, some people do have too much time. But it emphasizes
that you need to have an eye on your backgrounds too. Just don't be
lazy.
And then of course there is the render. Yeah, this fits in nicely
with my last post about new computers and stuff. Sadly I don't have
GPU rendering or distributed rendering, and using my older machine
as render node is only of limited usefulness (since the new one is
so much faster than the previous one that the gain would be, uh,
a speedup of about a quarter). So, here I sit and render.
Tried global illumination with three bounces and subpolygon displacement
at first. Ended up reducing to two bounces and bumpmapping. Still I
estimate the finished render to be at 36 hours for 250 frames (10
seconds of animation). At half HD (quarter area); no motion blur;
a really simple scene; no blurry transparencies or reflections, no
SSS or translucency, no refraction or caustics.
Duh.
I wish I were more prolific with the VRay material system. I should
render that out in VRay instead of the internal renderer (even if you
CAN animate in GI now...). But that depressingly reminds me of how
much of a noob I am in so many fields. VRay among them. Must spend more
time on my tutorials; I want to render all-HD soon...
Shucky-darn.
involve furry characters. So with all the spaceship stuff already
on my account, I just don't want to push the issue and post more
super bald tech stuff.
While I would like to continue the furry character line and make
a good mesh, I don't have the time for even more parallel projects.
Since January, I had two releases of the Space Mouse controller (and
there are still a few issues I need to correct), and I was building
and animating for that new project
(mind you, all of it in my free time, oh sometimes I wish I would be
able to make money from it so at least I didn't have to work on so
many fronts)
which, I guess, will be presented in due time.
But animating. Oh, animating.
It's not just that you have to actually animate (well, rig, weight,
bind, morph, assemble a controller, and THEN animate). You also have
to create the backgrounds. And while I am a stout apologist of the
theorem that you don't need as many detail in animation, because you
don't have as much time to look at each frame, shot, and scene...
you still DO need detail, and when you switch the scenario every
twenty seconds, that's still a helluva modeling work for stuff that
is just standing around.
So, you need to build a library of STUFF so you don't need to come
up with everything from scratch every time. Which means that you better
choose a style, size, degree of detail, and polygon count early
on because otherwise you may end up with STUFF that just doesn't look
good together (also a danger if you buy or download or collaborate with
others on assets). You need to develop a feeling for the necessary
amount of detail, and for the frequency you can actually reuse an
item.
People do notice. On the Star Wars forum I read how people find it
funny that in The Clone Wars every planet has the same kind of wooden
cart. Well, yes, some people do have too much time. But it emphasizes
that you need to have an eye on your backgrounds too. Just don't be
lazy.
And then of course there is the render. Yeah, this fits in nicely
with my last post about new computers and stuff. Sadly I don't have
GPU rendering or distributed rendering, and using my older machine
as render node is only of limited usefulness (since the new one is
so much faster than the previous one that the gain would be, uh,
a speedup of about a quarter). So, here I sit and render.
Tried global illumination with three bounces and subpolygon displacement
at first. Ended up reducing to two bounces and bumpmapping. Still I
estimate the finished render to be at 36 hours for 250 frames (10
seconds of animation). At half HD (quarter area); no motion blur;
a really simple scene; no blurry transparencies or reflections, no
SSS or translucency, no refraction or caustics.
Duh.
I wish I were more prolific with the VRay material system. I should
render that out in VRay instead of the internal renderer (even if you
CAN animate in GI now...). But that depressingly reminds me of how
much of a noob I am in so many fields. VRay among them. Must spend more
time on my tutorials; I want to render all-HD soon...
Shucky-darn.
The paradigm change in power computing
Posted 13 years agoSo, I bought a new computer, which is not very exciting in itself, but what's interesting is that it represents the paradigm change that will affect us as 3D enthusiasts.
In previous years, I was able to replace the old machine after three years with a new one at the same original price with triple render power. That's just what we get from Moore's Law, more or less. And it was true for about a decade since I switched to PC systems (being on Amiga before, I'm not able to make a direct comparison).
Now, I did get my render speedup of 3.5. Which looks good at first. But.
But.
-- I waited five years before I bought a new machine, not three. That should theoretically yield me a much higher factor.
-- I bought a more expensive system than I used to.
-- I had to overclock it to get to this performance.
All these points show clearly that I had to put more effort into getting the new machine to the "accustomed" speedup. And let's not forget that a major part of the speedup in the last years stems from adding processor cores. My last machines went up from one to two to four to six cores (plus hyperthreading).
The paradigm is shifting. The market does no longer support boosting speed and power in desktops on a yearly base. The need for the ever-faster computer is over. Only a nice part of the market, like us renderers, powergamers, or simulators still needs more computing capacity. The overall trend is going into a different direction:
-- Energy saving - the new Ivy Bridge generation is not even faster than Sandy Bridge, it just has a lower consumption
-- Tablets - less power, longer battery life, different needs
-- Specialist chips (as in graphics cards)
Well, that's not really a novel observation. You can read it in every article that discusses the shrinking PC market. But it makes me wonder how it will affect the rendering efforts of hobbyists and enthusiasts.
-- The move away from increased tact to more cores already affects all tasks negatively that utilize only a single core. A better parallelization is needed for all simulation, hair, expression, real-time preview, and particle modules.
-- Games are already deeply into graphics card utilization. Yet, CUDA or OpenCL are not as widespread in the 3D rendering process as they could be.
-- Intelligent algorithms are needed for a dynamic load/unload of proxies and referenced objects, perhaps even a blend between various detail levels on the fly.
-- Scenes need to be constructed more efficiently, with tools allowing us to concentrate on the detail while not losing sight of the overall scene.
-- Rendering on several computers at the same time needs to be easier and hassle-free (this affects mostly certain companies whose licensing conditions are crappy, since about every 3D package has distributed rendering at least on scene level already).
All of this is in the works already (I am one impatient guy, yes) - announced, in progress, sometimes even available. What's really exciting (or annoying, depending on your disposition) is that the paradigm change in power computing also causes a paradigm shift in rendering. We will need to put more thought into modularity, proxy creation, referencing; even our baking and caching habits need to change. I am really curious when the first inventive company comes along with an application that helps along structure and efficiency -- and no, I have actually no idea how that will look.
In previous years, I was able to replace the old machine after three years with a new one at the same original price with triple render power. That's just what we get from Moore's Law, more or less. And it was true for about a decade since I switched to PC systems (being on Amiga before, I'm not able to make a direct comparison).
Now, I did get my render speedup of 3.5. Which looks good at first. But.
But.
-- I waited five years before I bought a new machine, not three. That should theoretically yield me a much higher factor.
-- I bought a more expensive system than I used to.
-- I had to overclock it to get to this performance.
All these points show clearly that I had to put more effort into getting the new machine to the "accustomed" speedup. And let's not forget that a major part of the speedup in the last years stems from adding processor cores. My last machines went up from one to two to four to six cores (plus hyperthreading).
The paradigm is shifting. The market does no longer support boosting speed and power in desktops on a yearly base. The need for the ever-faster computer is over. Only a nice part of the market, like us renderers, powergamers, or simulators still needs more computing capacity. The overall trend is going into a different direction:
-- Energy saving - the new Ivy Bridge generation is not even faster than Sandy Bridge, it just has a lower consumption
-- Tablets - less power, longer battery life, different needs
-- Specialist chips (as in graphics cards)
Well, that's not really a novel observation. You can read it in every article that discusses the shrinking PC market. But it makes me wonder how it will affect the rendering efforts of hobbyists and enthusiasts.
-- The move away from increased tact to more cores already affects all tasks negatively that utilize only a single core. A better parallelization is needed for all simulation, hair, expression, real-time preview, and particle modules.
-- Games are already deeply into graphics card utilization. Yet, CUDA or OpenCL are not as widespread in the 3D rendering process as they could be.
-- Intelligent algorithms are needed for a dynamic load/unload of proxies and referenced objects, perhaps even a blend between various detail levels on the fly.
-- Scenes need to be constructed more efficiently, with tools allowing us to concentrate on the detail while not losing sight of the overall scene.
-- Rendering on several computers at the same time needs to be easier and hassle-free (this affects mostly certain companies whose licensing conditions are crappy, since about every 3D package has distributed rendering at least on scene level already).
All of this is in the works already (I am one impatient guy, yes) - announced, in progress, sometimes even available. What's really exciting (or annoying, depending on your disposition) is that the paradigm change in power computing also causes a paradigm shift in rendering. We will need to put more thought into modularity, proxy creation, referencing; even our baking and caching habits need to change. I am really curious when the first inventive company comes along with an application that helps along structure and efficiency -- and no, I have actually no idea how that will look.
New year, new luck
Posted 13 years agoWell, I wasn't intentionally leaving this account so long with an update... neither have I been lazy, to be sure... I spent the last month updating my Space Navigator plugin for C4D. Since the internal controller is horrible, non-extendable, and does not properly work with the navigation modes, I originally regretted my buy of this little piece of hardware a lot. With the new controller, it is a piece of fluff, and I like it very much (even if it is not strictly necessary for navigation).
I keep wondering: how can one make animation easier - more fluent, quicker, smoother, easier, more natural. Early animations only had forward kinematics. Then we got inverse kinematics to save ourselves the need to "reach the goal" ourselves. Then there were puppeteering hardware thingies, like the infamous Dinosaur Input Device. Then we had motion capture. Now there is the Kinect, making motion capture (of sorts) cheap, and mocap has gained the ability to capture facial expressions and transfer body motion to different body structures.
Technology sure is there. Whether a hobbyist can use it is another question; even if you can afford the devices, you may not have the space to mocap a scene. If you have mocap data, you still face import, transfer, and smoothing issues. If you have the character moving, you may land in Uncanny Valley. And then there is the general issue on squash and stretch, anticipation and follow-through, exaggerated movement, and impossible angles that you may want to achieve a cartoon look. Both cartooning and mocap have their uses, but are they compatible?
I'm not quite "there" with animation; there are quite a lot of questions to dive into. Well, new year, new luck; I can already see where my free time is going.
I keep wondering: how can one make animation easier - more fluent, quicker, smoother, easier, more natural. Early animations only had forward kinematics. Then we got inverse kinematics to save ourselves the need to "reach the goal" ourselves. Then there were puppeteering hardware thingies, like the infamous Dinosaur Input Device. Then we had motion capture. Now there is the Kinect, making motion capture (of sorts) cheap, and mocap has gained the ability to capture facial expressions and transfer body motion to different body structures.
Technology sure is there. Whether a hobbyist can use it is another question; even if you can afford the devices, you may not have the space to mocap a scene. If you have mocap data, you still face import, transfer, and smoothing issues. If you have the character moving, you may land in Uncanny Valley. And then there is the general issue on squash and stretch, anticipation and follow-through, exaggerated movement, and impossible angles that you may want to achieve a cartoon look. Both cartooning and mocap have their uses, but are they compatible?
I'm not quite "there" with animation; there are quite a lot of questions to dive into. Well, new year, new luck; I can already see where my free time is going.
Beyond proportionality
Posted 13 years agoNow that I have a working proportion mannequin, I should probably make some more decisions regarding the future appearance of the character...
- Digitigrade vs. plantigrade: For the moment, that's a no-brainer: I'll go with plantigrade. Digitigrade may look cute in single images, but I have yet to see an example in CGI animation that doesn't look weird. The Anubis guards from the Scorpion King (or was it the Mummy?) didn't really work for me. I am not even sure a bipedal animal would remain digitigrade; the paws alone do not provide enough standing area for proper equilibrum, so evolution may work against digitigrade furries. Yay, science guesswork! Also, the "additional" joint (it's not really additional, I know) will need to be included in the inverse kinematics; mocap data would need to be adapted; book examples and tips for motion sequences would not work any more; the optical appearance of the leg would change; and finally, uh, I just don't know why I need all the baggage. So, it's plantigrade until I have some genuine experience.
- Four vs. five fingers: (counting the thumb, naturally) Toughie. I have the gut feeling that four fingers would be too mickeymousy, too cartoony for what I would like to achieve. The fingers would need to be thicker, and perhaps interaction with items and props would become harder? Gee, I just don't know. The one additional finger does not seem to be so much more work that I would want to drop it. So, five fingers for now.
- Head shape: Changes with species. Sure, my current mannequin head is a ball with a box, and I will need to create various heads for various characters. The different muzzles will hugely influence the perceived size of the head, and the ears may or may not add to the height of the overall figure. Fortunately, the head is relatively static shape, and I have a good idea about how I want it to look. (Things will become interesting again once I am making the facial expression morphs. But that is for later.)
- Tail: When Timothy Albee did "Kaze - Ghost Warrior", he said that tails would have cost him too much time to be done believably, so his furries went without. Now we do have spline IK and dynamics and inertial forces on hair physics, so perhaps the tails can be automated? Hmm. Personally I feel that the tail is a major furry appendage and totally important for the look and feel, so whatever I save with plantigrade furs, I will sacrifice gladly again to do tails.
- Clothing: The major obstacle on the way (much more than fur, by the way). Cinema4D has no good cloth engine. (It does have cloth, but the collision detection is for the birds, so I can't really use it.) Softbody dynamics goes only so far. And tight jumpsuits that can be animated just like the actual skin lock me into a modern or even sci-fi theme. I would like to have loose clothing, flowing dresses, layers of cloth, scarves, gloves, bandanas. Belts, too, both around the waist and across the shoulders, with scabbards and holsters. Clothing expresses so many facets of a character that I just can't imagine going Tarzan and provide all of them with a Weissmueller loincloth or swimming trunk.
The irony in the clothing issue is that I need to have the cloth behave "dramatically" more than naturally. I want control over it, so even if C4D comes with a new cloth engine next year, it may not be what I want. Oh, I wish I could peek into the Pixar studios to see their new cloth engine they did for "Brave"!
Sure, I could program it myself (yes, I can) but that would be a huge effort that would take me months and might not perform fast enough, and I would really like to spend a few bucks on such a system. Why oh why isn't there any alternative?
(Just for the record: There are alternatives. Blender has a cloth engine although I don't have a clue how good it is. There are standalone dress makers and simulators. But changing programs for a cloth simulation means that you have to bake, export, import like a madman.)
That's where I am. And I still have to update some of my plugins for the R14... so the rest of the year is spoken for. Hopefully I can get a body mesh done for rigging; my hands are itchy, and it wasnt the ivy.
- Digitigrade vs. plantigrade: For the moment, that's a no-brainer: I'll go with plantigrade. Digitigrade may look cute in single images, but I have yet to see an example in CGI animation that doesn't look weird. The Anubis guards from the Scorpion King (or was it the Mummy?) didn't really work for me. I am not even sure a bipedal animal would remain digitigrade; the paws alone do not provide enough standing area for proper equilibrum, so evolution may work against digitigrade furries. Yay, science guesswork! Also, the "additional" joint (it's not really additional, I know) will need to be included in the inverse kinematics; mocap data would need to be adapted; book examples and tips for motion sequences would not work any more; the optical appearance of the leg would change; and finally, uh, I just don't know why I need all the baggage. So, it's plantigrade until I have some genuine experience.
- Four vs. five fingers: (counting the thumb, naturally) Toughie. I have the gut feeling that four fingers would be too mickeymousy, too cartoony for what I would like to achieve. The fingers would need to be thicker, and perhaps interaction with items and props would become harder? Gee, I just don't know. The one additional finger does not seem to be so much more work that I would want to drop it. So, five fingers for now.
- Head shape: Changes with species. Sure, my current mannequin head is a ball with a box, and I will need to create various heads for various characters. The different muzzles will hugely influence the perceived size of the head, and the ears may or may not add to the height of the overall figure. Fortunately, the head is relatively static shape, and I have a good idea about how I want it to look. (Things will become interesting again once I am making the facial expression morphs. But that is for later.)
- Tail: When Timothy Albee did "Kaze - Ghost Warrior", he said that tails would have cost him too much time to be done believably, so his furries went without. Now we do have spline IK and dynamics and inertial forces on hair physics, so perhaps the tails can be automated? Hmm. Personally I feel that the tail is a major furry appendage and totally important for the look and feel, so whatever I save with plantigrade furs, I will sacrifice gladly again to do tails.
- Clothing: The major obstacle on the way (much more than fur, by the way). Cinema4D has no good cloth engine. (It does have cloth, but the collision detection is for the birds, so I can't really use it.) Softbody dynamics goes only so far. And tight jumpsuits that can be animated just like the actual skin lock me into a modern or even sci-fi theme. I would like to have loose clothing, flowing dresses, layers of cloth, scarves, gloves, bandanas. Belts, too, both around the waist and across the shoulders, with scabbards and holsters. Clothing expresses so many facets of a character that I just can't imagine going Tarzan and provide all of them with a Weissmueller loincloth or swimming trunk.
The irony in the clothing issue is that I need to have the cloth behave "dramatically" more than naturally. I want control over it, so even if C4D comes with a new cloth engine next year, it may not be what I want. Oh, I wish I could peek into the Pixar studios to see their new cloth engine they did for "Brave"!
Sure, I could program it myself (yes, I can) but that would be a huge effort that would take me months and might not perform fast enough, and I would really like to spend a few bucks on such a system. Why oh why isn't there any alternative?
(Just for the record: There are alternatives. Blender has a cloth engine although I don't have a clue how good it is. There are standalone dress makers and simulators. But changing programs for a cloth simulation means that you have to bake, export, import like a madman.)
That's where I am. And I still have to update some of my plugins for the R14... so the rest of the year is spoken for. Hopefully I can get a body mesh done for rigging; my hands are itchy, and it wasnt the ivy.
Some links of more or less interest
Posted 13 years ago...which you may actually know already
TV Tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...../Main/HomePage
The site for disenchanted storytellers. I reject responsibility for the ten thousand hours you will spend with that.
CG Society:
http://www.cgsociety.org/
They have all kinds of computer aided art, not just 3D. I am a member there mostly for the application specific forums... but I guess I'm the only one to use Cinema 4D here...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=47
In case you want to look at some SIGGRAPH papers about "hard" problems in computer animation:
http://www.disneyanimation.com/library/list.html
(Warning: math and stuff)
I am reading this magazine (in paper, no less):
http://www.3dworldmag.com/
There are actually very, very few magazines on 3D art these days. One of the two German ones has closed shop, the other is a very expensive mix... aimed at production studios, containing mostly other stuff and dedicating only a third of each issue (or less!) to 3D content. Duh.
In the panel on EF18, I also mentioned Sculptris, well here it is:
http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/
Just in case you didn't get the name right.
Do I need to add a link to Blender? I guess not. But...
http://www.blender.org/
...just because I started to talk about it.
And that's it for now.
TV Tropes:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p...../Main/HomePage
The site for disenchanted storytellers. I reject responsibility for the ten thousand hours you will spend with that.
CG Society:
http://www.cgsociety.org/
They have all kinds of computer aided art, not just 3D. I am a member there mostly for the application specific forums... but I guess I'm the only one to use Cinema 4D here...
http://forums.cgsociety.org/forumdisplay.php?f=47
In case you want to look at some SIGGRAPH papers about "hard" problems in computer animation:
http://www.disneyanimation.com/library/list.html
(Warning: math and stuff)
I am reading this magazine (in paper, no less):
http://www.3dworldmag.com/
There are actually very, very few magazines on 3D art these days. One of the two German ones has closed shop, the other is a very expensive mix... aimed at production studios, containing mostly other stuff and dedicating only a third of each issue (or less!) to 3D content. Duh.
In the panel on EF18, I also mentioned Sculptris, well here it is:
http://www.pixologic.com/sculptris/
Just in case you didn't get the name right.
Do I need to add a link to Blender? I guess not. But...
http://www.blender.org/
...just because I started to talk about it.
And that's it for now.
So, this was a rocky start...
Posted 13 years ago...with FA going down immediately after the group had been created. Good thing I do not believe in omens!
For this week I have added some watches on people that I found who are also working in CGI on FA. Feel free to suggest more. (I admit I left out some on purpose... I don't find poser porn all that inspiring.)
For this week I have added some watches on people that I found who are also working in CGI on FA. Feel free to suggest more. (I admit I left out some on purpose... I don't find poser porn all that inspiring.)
