buttons on Ncloth

I just found a nice little script to use to attach objects to a deforming mesh (ie nCloth)
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_duncan/blog_detail/parent_to_surface_script/

so i think thats sorted...

check out his blog for more useful tutorials, mostly about particles etc.
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/blogs_duncan/blog_list

heres a quick render of a bump map on ncloth, just to test if it would deform correctly with the material.

(adding video shortly, need to compress it!)

also a few shirt tests, trying to get the values right for bend/stretch/compression/bounce/friction/damp.. as well as testing out the different constraints you can assign vertices (to stop the shirt leaving the belt, or the end of the arms)

(adding video shortly, need to compress them!)

Xmas Catch up

Well Ive just about sobred up from xmas and new years, and I'm now back at uni, I've finally got my laptop back from getting fixed, and just about installed all my programs again.. as you can imagine its been quite frustrating and time consuming, but I think I've got everything back to 'normal'.

Work status :
Ive modelled the bandits body and have been learning about ncloth to use for his shirt, Im actually just waiting for an animation to cache while im writing this so I'll post some results soon.

Theres still a lot I need to do, this week I need to finish El Banditos head and make the blend shapes. And I cant get onto texturing yet as I'd want to use autodesk mudbox for all the displacement maps for the stitching on the shirt and jeans etc, however the mudbox trial is playing up, probably something to do with my graphics card drivers, hopefully get that sorted out this week!

Also Ive been asked to Rig several characters, and we were planning on using a maya plugin called zooCST to make sure all the rigs are the same and as such are much easier to animate all the characters together. I know how to manually create most of the rigging setups that this tool creates, so its not cheating really, like I say, its just to standardise the riggs. As Im using maya 2009 now instead of maya 8.5 Ive not managed to install the plugin yet... hopefully, again, this will be sorted by the end of the week.

and then theres my dissertation!

cactuses and landscapes...

Messing about with colours.. Would be nice to change the colour of the ground from orange to blue as the sky changes from blue to orange when the sun is setting.


Everyone loves a good cactus:

A few quick sketches and references for my cut scene idea in a previous post:

some convict sketches

The basic model for the convict for blockout, who should turn out in the same proportions etc.

for those of you still using google images

Dont!

Use www.live.com instead... soooo much faster and easier. thumbs up.

Clouds

Just a quick thought, I'd quite like the clouds in the film to be like cowboy hats.. 

Also, just seen this, looks like we could aspire to this style... plus I love monkeys :)

http://cghub.com/images/view/1231

screen writing tips!

I just stumbled upon this website:

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp40.Off-Screen.Movie.html

It has some really good tips for screen writing, you should check it out!

Blockout

Starting to blockout the last part of the film, still need to make some rough models for the sherif and guards to animate in the scene, and cut it all together properly.

The cuts in this are wrong, It should go to an interior shot straight away, the guards are strangling the guards, the sherif is stood on one of the guards shoulders pulling his hair like crazy, bent right back like he is doing the crab, when they enter the outside they can finally see who they are attacking, the sherif realises he is attacking the wrong guys, turns to the convicts and growls.. he slaps the guard and is about to jump down when a convict throws El bandito who is sent flying into them. Only now do the other two convicts realise they have been strangling each other and stop, they see the guards and the sherif down and they run off down the carriage to escape.

Posting El Bandito Reference

As so much of the outside landscape is pretty boring, or easy to make should I say, I think the train should be speeding about towns along the way, that way we could have a really nice slow shot of a grandpa in a rocking chair on a porch in a town saloon, and the train goes rocketing past it, a little kid points at the train and says 'look papa' or something similar at least. It then cuts to El Bandito breaking through the window of the train, and full throtle action ensues.

I think by having at least one of these short clips would enhance the film by adding different peoples perspectives of whats happening, and would help try and show that the film isnt just set up, that there are real people outside of the film living their everyday lives, and something extraordinary has happened that they have witnessed.

This picture was taken from the 3dm3.com website. Focusing on the water tower!





a nice little neckerchief in the same fashion that we want, maybe El bandito pulls it up to cover his face as he prepares to jump on the train? I love the warm colours and the sponge feel of the two sillouetted cowboys on horses in the middle, hopefully our lighting and rendering will acheive something similar.


All of the images of the 'wild west' are dominated with orange rock and blue sky.
Heres the orange:

Heres the blue:

Finally...

I know its been ages but my house mates mac F A I L E D so I couldn't scan it in for ages... heres the train references anyway:

some block outs

I've been assigned to do some block outs of the train after the mines till the end.. also some quick character block outs.. so here are the first few ones from today..

The train track was made by extruding the edges of a polygon along a curve, simply select the curve, then the edges, click edit mesh - extrude and choose to have more than one division. I also played with the taper and twist settings to make it angle as it curved around a corner.
To do the beams, I attatched one beam at the start of the curve and made it into a motion path. I then chose 'create animation screenshot' and edited the settings till the beams appeared to be placed the right distance away from each other.

end of the day render: see how much it has changed already.

Stuff!

 As we are mainly doing concept this term I thought I would compare some different software, Adobe Photoshop, Autodesk Sketchbook pro and most recently, corel painter X, which has a really nice water colour brush feature.

Here are my first few 5/10 minute sketches, done in Painter.

A reference from SqueezeStudio:

Colour Pallette added: