So this is the animation I’m making for the QR Code Dunny I worked on a while ago. The render will take to long so it’s just a preview for now. My original design had them bunch together and at diffrent angles, but that looked odd to me with every thing floating, moving and intersecting so I went with the floating ring look. Pretty standard I suppose but it’s ok.
I was able to achieve the spring effect using the spring connector in cinema 4D v12. It took me a bit to figure it out simply because I was trying to create the effect using one spring which would tip the box over with anything added on top. I tried aiming multiplier springs at the corners which helped but not much them. Then I realized I could just use invisible walls on all four side, higher in the back to keep the dunny from falling back sometimes. After that is was just tweaking every thing. Might do some more before the final render.
I was sketching (or attempting ) some logo designs based around the letter m when I started doodling this character head that came out of a M. I also think I was subconsciously influenced by megaman and some of other cartoon.
So I decided to scan it into my comp and out line it in illustrator and translate in into 3d. A simple task one might think but no so since the m shape is quite hard to get it to place right on a circular surface and conform right. I tried a number of things including projection and deformer but it looked off. So I when with a loft and make the second copy of the spline smaller. The I adjust the points on the front one to bend in. It still had some issue if you bent it to far but I was able to get it to a decent place.
The body Pez part just came about since I need something to put the head on. It’s mainly made of a bunch booles like the head with some extrusions. I was even able to find the pez font to add-on the side. Booles work well but some complex items like sphere give you weird edges like around the eyes, which I need to fix. I was lucky enough to actually have a pez dispenser which helped a lot even modeling this simple object.
The lightning I was going for is similar to the product displays on the pez website.
Overall I think I got somewhat close, the bottom body is off and doesn’t pick up the specular quite right. Also I think the M head covering isn’t picking up light right or is just to white to pick much up. I used soft boxes from http://www.creatingfilm.com/ renderkit. Also looking at it now I think I should have added some ambient occlusion. It look to strong when I tried it and my original reference was a lot more washed out.
This is my result for the expresso task 5 from robertleger.net. I was able to have all of the required functionality plus I added a spline warp that gives it path follow capabilities. I have also included the file below if anyone want to check it out and use it. I made a screen cast of it in action which is taking a while to upload so when it’s done I will add it to this post.
Day 3 of weekend animation for Woot Minion. The tweaking adjusting of the animation went pretty smoothly. I fixed a bunch of little things that I think bring the animation together well. I didn’t run into any major hiccups like the other day with expressions. I made all the arrows animated with the tip leading it on the path. I noticed on some part it creeps ahead of the tip but I adjusted it for most and hopefully the speed makes it unnoticeable to most.
This is the final day of my weekend animation. I plan to work on it some more but not as a daily project. I will post it when it’s official finished. My goal is to time it out so it is almost completely readable. “Almost” because I timed it out to be about 3 1/2 min but my track will only goes to abut 2:25. I though of looping parts but it just sounds odd and monotonous.
I also plan to share it with the people at woot when it’s officially finished to see what they think. Hopefully they don’t try to sue more anything for copyright something since I did do this without permission…
Edit: Damn I notice some things wrong with the ligntning and the light bulb. I will have to remember that for the true final version.
This my final version for the Unity House Tribute Opening 2011. Overall I like the whole animation. Some parts could use some more tweaking but I think it works well. I added some color with some curves to the whole scene since straight back and white looked odd to me.
The hardest part of this was trying to get the wall texture to look right. The real Keith haring room/museum/store, that he painted was seamless with everything connecting to each other. I tried different projections but none really worked. Some would just work for one cornet and not the other. And moving the texture just seemed off. I thought of making a repeating textures but it didn’t quite work with the different characters. I opted to just go with flat and adjusted it a bit.
I think solution would be to make a separate texture for each side of the room and have it aligned up photoshop. That would be a bit more time consuming, which I didn’t have time for. I also noticed once it was full rendered that the texture look pixelated up close which sucks since I did vectorize it. I guess I just didn’t output a large enough copy for the texture.
I’m not sure if I mentioned it before but the song is the begining of Pon De Floor by Major Lazer
Day 2 weekend animation for Woot Minion. I was able to put just about all of the main animations I wanted to in the in it today. A lot of it still needs tweaking and some fine tunning but the base is there for most. Some things I might change that are not just unfinished is the last path arrow. I think I should set it up so that the arrow tip is on the top all ways instead of just masking it up. I also think I need to work on some of my hierarchy of whats important in terms of animation.
The animation as it stands now is way to quick to actually be read. Not sure how I want to deal with that. I could time it out longer, but I doubt anyone would really read. Voice over is another option but I haven’t looked to much into it. Also it times up perfectly with this track I got from http://www.danosongs.com/
I’m not sure why but for some reason all of the expression in the project just broke which I thought was just sure target at first but all of my loops stop to as well. This really sucked having to go into each and flip them back on. Even Sure Targets built in switch to fix it didn’t work. I wish I had the script from http://aescripts.com/ that lets you batch edit. I will make sure to have that next time.
This is the beginning of my animation for the somewhat recent woot minions design. I saw this design when the sent out there newsletter about there become an minion(affiliate). I thought immediately, as I do with most designs that it could be animate nicely. The minion character is a nice vector design and the designs themselves make the character look pretty animated already so it looked like a good idea.
I took me about and hour or so to break the image apart into pieces that I though would be easy to extract and cool to animate. There is a lot of possibilities but I limited my self to what was easy to break up and could be done quickly. After that I brought it int to After Effects and adjust each main part in 3d space on various angles so when the camera move there would be some apparent depth and camera rotation.
I used vidoe0copilot.com sure target two for the camera movement. That made the camera animation very easy, so easy then it use to be . I was planning on rigging a null to a camera and some other stuff till I remember sure target. Despite having all of VC’s plugins and presets I tend not to use them a lot or forget about until I need them for some reason…
I’m not exactly sure how long the whole animation will be. I would be nice to have a voice over, which would definitely push it towards a longer animation. Maybe I’ll check out DA for anyone who will do one for me, hopefully for free. Or if any one what to give it a try please do.
Obviously this needs more work, this will be my weekend project so it will have to be done this weekend(minus voice over possibly). Also this is done without permission or commission, so I hope there cool with this.
This was my attempt at making a Dynamic football gauntlet in the time it took my favorites in grooveshark to finish( a little under 2 hours it seems). The goal was to make a football gauntlet that would bend and deform like a real one would when a person would run through it. The task turned out to be quite difficult for me. This idea behind it seemed straight forward and if I my goal wasn’t to make it dynamic it could be done with spline deformers and constraint tag with clamp on spline or point mode. Then the task would be just to animate the curve property.
Dynamically this prove to be an issue. I thought of jiggle deformer but that didn’t bend it correctly it seemed. I also tried dynamic ik, new in v12 of cinema but that also prove to be off a bit. I’m sure more tweaking could of had it work but I wanted to add an item to end of it and I didn’t see how to do that. I suppose one mesh might work but it would look odd I think since the only part that needs to deform it spring area.
So I decided to just go for the half cop out and just use hinge connector which seemed to work, although there is no bend in the spring part, but my idea to hind that would be to but a sphere to hide the moving connection or another item. I used to hinge connectors, one for the base to the spring and from the spring to the pad to give it little bit more motion.
This of course had other issues with it not reacting like a real spring. To combat this I tried to animate the angular limit and add bounce, which worked to a point depending on what was cause the collision and how much force was applied. It might go all crazy and wonky which was no good.
I also found that I would not be able to cloner or use symmetry the pad and hinges which mean I would have to make all eight pads/springs and hinges which would be a lot (((2×2)x4)x2=32) parts. I’ve seen and used connectors on cloner before so I’m not sure why it’s not working this time…
So in the end I didn’t find a viable dynamic solution . I added my file to this post in case anyone might want to try and find a way to do it. If any one does please let me know.
This is an image I did with my homework for robertleger.net expresso lesson task. I completed all of the base functionality with one extra feature for now. I used the spline ware to make it bend in this image, which I think I might add as an extra feature in my final version.
I will add more in depth review of my process when I finish. Also for any one who might stumble across this and is also doing the task I won’t post any tempting spoilers for a possible solution. 🙂
This is my final animation for the Jungle alien character that I started yesterday. I was able to add some more movement in the head and jingles on the want below the orb. The new glow effects I added kind of hide that but I think it adds a good amount to it to bring the animation together. There still a bit that I notice I could work on but it will never end and I need to move on to some other project that I have in my folder to do.
I think this might be one of my favorite animations for my 365 project so far. It simple but looks nice and flows pretty well.
Also it seems that the shadowbox that plays the video does not adjust for smaller screen sizes. So it may look odd if you don’t have a decent resolution monitor and the browser is maximized.
The character is from www.1001head.com
The background is also stock from vectorjungle.com
