Category: Motion Graphics

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Daily 365 Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 8 – Xstage & XShatter

 

This  would have been my submission to robertleger.net Xpresso Task 8.  Apparently I filled in the form on his site but when I woke up my information was still in the form. So this is an incomplete assignment from me since I didn’t submit it on time.

I created the XStage because, although I love keyframing, setting key frames just to switch a camera always seemed tedious using the stage object. Also whenever you need to adjust it you had to hunt down the key frames and then play it out and see how it looked. A back and forth process that seemed a bit much to me. So after getting the assignment this is one of the first things I thought of doing.

This Xpresso setup lets you set 6 cameras plus your start camera to switch based on whatever key frame you input.  Just enable the camera, drag a camera in, set the frame, and repeat for the next one. You can also offset the begging key frame and all the rest after based on the start value. This can come in handy if you need to have more than 6 cameras to switch between in a scene.

I created the XShatter simply because I wanted to see If I could do more effects without keyframes. This effect simply lets you choose when you want the effect to begin and how long based on seconds or frames.  I made this option because it annoyed me sometimes in the CS Tools, which are great, that you couldn’t base the length of a tool’s animation or property based on frame just duration in seconds. It worked most of time but sometimes I just wanted it to end on x frame instead of having to adjust the beginning to get it where want.

I also created XMelt which has the same setup as XShatter and was mainly a test to see if I could transfer the Xpresso setup to another effect.  I did a test with it on my 365 project if you want the see witch hat melt and shatter. http://365project.org/g2b/365/2011-06-13

The tentacle setup was a project setup by DAGraphix- http://dagpx.deviantart.com/

Once I finish my final render I will upload the files here and on my DA page.

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Daily 365 Motion Graphics

Designers Couch Logo Animation

I have been on Designers Couch for a while now and after looking at the logo over and over I thought why not create an animation using their logo. Thus the idea for an animation was born.  (If you don’t know what designers couch is it is online art community similar to Deviant Art but invite only with high quality work.)

My idea for this animation was to have the logo appear, then the couch form, and then text roll out. Along the way I got the idea for the particles to form the logo with a little delay bounce. I also added bounce on the couch logo part but I should have pushed it more to make it more noticeable. The text is a simple animate in with some bounce back.

The tag line I wanted to do more than slide in since I did that already so I came up with the idea to use the underscore that is part of the text to reveal the tag line then animate back under the text to form the final logo with text. The background was the last thing I added. I felt that the flat red to black gradient was too plain so I added the flat DC logo I recreated and looped it behind.

So here is my end tag of sorts using the Designers Couch Logo.  Overall it’s ok but could be better. I also think now I should do one for DA as well considering how long I have been on that site.

 

The awesome Ident music is by Alkis from audio jungle.

 

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3D Modeling Daily 365

3D Mecha NutCracker

This is a 3D Model I made based off of kidchuckle’s  Mecha Nut Cracker X-mas Card.  My model is a little bit different from the original illustration since I couldn’t figure out how some parts would work together and still allow it to move. And since my end goal it to Rig it and animate it I had to keep that in mind.

The model took me quite a while working on it off and on. Getting the bump texture took quite a while to get it right. Originally I was going to go with a brushed metal effect, but it didn’t quite look right so I found this diamond bumpy texture and it worked out a lot better.  The rest of the model was composed using extruded splines that I made based of the design in side profile & primitives. The cuts I made I made with Booles or just two parts off a primitive or extruded spline.

I still see some errors that could be worked on & there are probably some things I missed but I wanted to get to the next step and make it shoot stuff and drill into something.

 

Also the other day I posted another model I made based off a vector design from Go Media vector pack on my Deviant Art page.

 

 

 

 

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Daily 365 Inspiration Mograph Notes Motion Graphics

DuckDuckGo + Process from the Pro’s

DuckDuckGo is a new search engine that I have been using for about a week or so now. It pretty useful for get information without having to do a lot of searching courtesy of their “zero click info” box. I have yet to use 100% yet, something’s I still use google for like maps and images but there are plans to implement some of these things.

The idea for this quick logo animation just came to me for looking at their search page at their logo and thinking it would be cool to see it quack. So I decided to make a quick animation that would involve the duck quacking. I did a quick outline that involved the duck duck goose game to tell about the search engine since that where the name came from. Originally I made the re-made the logo then found their forums where they had the Illustrator version…mine was almost exactly the same.

My animation turned out ok I think, I notice now that the Go bounce looks a little off but that may just be because I’m going frame by frame. I used my copy of the The Animators Survival Kit to try to get the bouncing right. I haven’t done a bouncing ball since my third year of college.   I also noticed that the head looks a little too stiff when the duck is quacking I think adding some more movement to the top beak might have made it look even better.

 

 

 

 

 

The second item I would like to share is the process page of capacity If you have watched NBC or Cartoon Network there is a good chance you have seen some of their work. They have been featured on motionographer a few times but for some reason I don’t recall checking out their site. Not sure how I came across their site this time but I started looking through their site and found their gold mine of a process page which has break downs on some of their projects.

Finding out the ideas behind a project is really cool and it’s even cooler that they share their process. It is always very enlightening when you can find out the why behind the what of a project. I listed bunch in my delicious account that I just started using recently. I also listed three of breakdowns in my new fav category I created just for them.  This reminds me of perceptionnyc breakdowns that will promptly be added to my delicious soon.

Categories
Motion Graphics

Dreary Walk Final

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This is the final version of my Dreary Walk animation. I made most of the tweaks I noted before in my last post.

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3D Animation Motion Graphics

Nickelodeon Hand Clapper Animation

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Daily 365 Downloadable Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 7 + Lego Swirl Cinema 4D File

 

I though I should share my result for roberleger.net Xpress0 Task 7. The first file below has my setup for the product table. My setup is pretty straight forward with only one extra flair for a custom shape. I would suggest looking at the results page to this lesson and checking out the other solutions.

The second file is part of my lego swirls file that I used to make the animation for this lesson. It’s not the whole file since I did buy the model but it has the rising tunnel and the lego parts as they swirl around. I though it might be cool to post up how I solved this task. There are a couple of ways to go about it and I choose my method because it gave me the look I was going for but an alternative could have work just as well.

Base Product Table File Zip | Lego Swirls File Zip

 

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Daily 365 Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 7

 

This is my submission for Robert Leger’s Xpresso Task 7. The task was to create you standard product table. After the last hair puller the straight forwardness of this one was welcomed. This one was hosted by Ryan Hamilton, a xpresso task regular who is always producing some great work. To add even more awesomeness to it this one is a contest of for an Iphone App…although I don’t have an Iphone.

As far as the xpresso setup I didn’t hit any major snags while building it. I did however run into an issue where instead of using the radius of the shape to control the size I used the scale so I wouldn’t have to link up each different shape. My main reason for this, besides not wanting to make a bunch of connections over and over, was so I could use any custom shape. So I used scale with a small increment to make it seem like the radius is getting bigger.

I didn’t add any other features to this one like I normally do. Instead I focused more time into creating this animation.

 

Lego Mario Build Up

I wanted to do something then just have a random product on a table with it rising. My original idea was to have mickey mouse’s head and shoulders one the table and have it rise up as the ears rotate around and land on his head. I couldn’t find a good model of his head and I didn’t want to take the time to build it, so I did some brainstorming and thought a lego would be cool to build up.

I found this model of lego mario on 3d ocean and figure it would be cool to use. After that I just built the scene up and made a little Xpresso setup for the body parts. Then I created the swirling blocks to wrap around Mario while the product table(tunnel) goes up.

It’s a standard effect of sorts but it does look cool I think. I think I was inspired by the stop-motion like work of a recent lego spot that was on tv (web since I don’t have cable),

 

 

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3D Modeling Daily 365

Coveleski IKG Hammer

I thought the Hammer from I Kill Giants was pretty cool so I wanted to see how it would look translated into 3D. I although that I may do some projection mapping on to it for my IKG spot to have some fake rotation on it.

I the modeling of it was pretty straight forward, it’s all composed of primitive object with booles to cut away certain parts. I wasn’t to sure of the color since the comic is black and white so I went for the shiny reflective feel.

The hardest part was the chain, in the comics it’s just a mass of lines that look like a chain but is more just a black shape. I made the chain links and put it helix with the cloner, I believe the duplicate on spline would off set 90 degrees perfectly but the cloner gave me more flexibility. I found that the sync option allow the random effector for almost near perfect equal rotation on each item.

The chain kills the render time, not to bad overall(5 mins) but it does push my computer near the magical number of 90 degrees Celsius for instant shut down(at least if I try to do other stuff while rendering).

I think as far as modeling this hammer it’s pretty much done for what I need and more. I’ll probably tweak it a bit and post on my DA page and here when it’s finished as an extra post/

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Daily 365 Downloadable Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Lesson 6 Homework



This is my submission to roberleger.net Xpresso Lesson number 6. The image above will goto the vimeo screen cast that I have of it working. Unfortunately I was not able to render the full quality screen cast due to to time but I will render the full quality one and switch it out.

The only issue is reading the Xpresso nodes, so for that I have created a mini gallery here so you can check it out. (WordPress is having some issues so this will be up in a bit.) You can also check out the My Xpresso setup in the C4D file as well. My set up it pretty much the same for each item just different ranges on the range mapper.

I made a little teaser at the beginning using the android droid mascot. I did all of the movement  with the(2) animators except for the hands and head. Oddly enough though the item I used to show the espresso is a an apple iPad…