The 3D Thread

[fatbob]

Its a good point, they are fairly set in their ways, not much room for major inovation beyond purely iterative change. I guess something like zbrush was the only significant different take on work flow over my limited experience in 3d work, and then Autodesk bought the very similar Mudbox.

Last year Eskil Steenberg (the guy whos making the game 'Love') came to talk at my uni and I was lucky enough to hang out with him in the two evenings he was at the event. He was showing off some of the programs he created himself for himself for the creation of his game. Hes a coder, so his approach to creating 3d assets its fairly pragmatic, in so much as he makes geometry, textures and shaders proceduraly a lot of the time. However hes also made some crazy moddling and pipeline tools which are pretty much ahead of their time. I recall him saying he's taken his ideas to Autodesk actually and he said that although they saw the merit in it ingenuity, that the familiar 'language' of creation in 3d was set now, and anything too radical wouldn't sell. In the same way that film editing tools haven't changed to much since the cutting room floor days in their desktop layout.

Anyway, I don't pretend to understand half the things we talked about, but hes about the most interesting guy i've ever had the pleasure to meet, and the stuff hes doing is worth having a look at if you aren't familiar with him or Love. Both his game and his tools are very interesting.

Love

Verse

Quel Solaar

[fatbob]

One of the issues I have at the moment, is I prefer to different aspects of work in different programs, making it a omplicated workflow sometimes. I like poly modelling in Max and Maya relativly equally, although prefer specific aspects of both. Using NURBS in Maya for example I find far easier and more intuative. Certain aspects of animation such as blend shapes using curves are better than using morph targets in Max for me.

I realy dislike the Hypershade system in Maya compared to the Material Editor in Max. I wish they would make a special blended version just for me.

I think as with a lot of people i've spoken to at uni, you tend to prefer the program you learn to use 3d in, Max for me.

[Number 28]

One of the issues I have at the moment, is I prefer to different aspects of work in different programs, making it a omplicated workflow sometimes.

Yup. I preferred rigging/animating in XSI, modelling/UV unwrapping in Maya, and... um... Max I find a bit crap for all of that, tbh. 'Finicky' is the word i'd use. I still end up selecting the wrong faces in Max sometimes...c'mon, it's 2009 and you still need an 'ignore backfaces' checkbox??

Man, you read posts like this around their forums;

You will find that almost nothing will be removed from Max to keep it somewhat compatible with previous versions. There are already enough people having issues opening their files from Max 9 in Max 2009, imagine if one of the modifiers or object types was removed.

and

Which duplicates would you want to remove? The ones you don’t use, or the ones I don’t use? Could make some people upset.

...and the future seems rather bleak.

Also, I just noticed a 'wishlist' folder on there... damn.

[rundll]

I've been slowly learning Blender for my personal 3D needs. No worries about warez and all that sillyness. Plus you get to watch, and be involved in if you fancy it, the development process Quite interesting to watch as it's all open. Keen to see how the connection to the "love' guy's tech (linked above) develops.

Of course it can be infuriating to use being a once undocumented in-house tool. But it's really come along leaps and bounds in the last couple of years. Blender's future looks good.

[fatbob]

Keen to see how the connection to the "love' guy's tech (linked above) develops.

The last time I spoke to him he hadn't planned on releasing it (after speaking to Autodesk), at least the modelling tools anyhoo, he more or less just build all the tools himself out of frustration of having to work with the mainstream tools. Like I said, freaky genius this guy. Its just cool to see other ways of doing something not even considered in the mainstream industry.

I find the most interesting part of his ideas being his intergrated work-flow pipeline. The future is all about networks it seems.

[rundll]

The last time I spoke to him he hadn't planned on releasing it (after speaking to Autodesk), at least the modelling tools anyhoo, he more or less just build all the tools himself out of frustration of having to work with the mainstream tools. Like I said, freaky genius this guy. Its just cool to see other ways of doing something not even considered in the mainstream industry.

I find the most interesting part of his ideas being his intergrated work-flow pipeline. The future is all about networks it seems.

I certainly agree that the networked development environment will flourish. It's hard for me to imagine it happening right now at 'next-gen' quality graphics levels (for games). But in the future certainly.

I've wistfully imagined a game/animation development system akin to Wikipedia in a way.

[Asura]

I certainly agree that the networked development environment will flourish. It's hard for me to imagine it happening right now at 'next-gen' quality graphics levels (for games). But in the future certainly.

I've wistfully imagined a game/animation development system akin to Wikipedia in a way.

Yeah, I thought we'd have seen that long before now - Tribes 2 had a multiplayer level editor, where players could be in the map doing QA whilst you built it in real-time, and that was yeeeaaarrrsss ago.

[fatbob]

The idea of a modeller, texture artist and engine coder all working on a single asset for example, in real time is quite mind-boggleing. It would save so much time.

[Asura]

Asura always takes the time to type up clear, actually-helpful tutorials and advice here, (post 360 for example) kudos to him.

Thanks man, that means a lot. Even so, I'm not employed in this area, much as I'd want to be, so people should take my advice with a pinch of salt.

[Rossco]

Been getting some animation work done while my other project is rendering. Never done any before so today spent ages learning how to and rigging my first character and making the full walk cycle for it too. Spent about 12 hours on this alone today!

No video yet, haven't rendered it but here's a shot of it in the same scene as my other project. Not my model by the way! Not trying to take credit for that, we're allowed to use any model you want.

We have to make the character walk 20 steps, pick up a box and lay it on a table, walk up 3 steps and jump down them, sit on a chair and stand up from it and then lip sync a few seconds of speech!

[fatbob]

Night fever, night fever!

Like the M.C model!

EDIT: I'm in two minds about charachter animation. Sometimes I realy enjoy it, if I don't have to rush it for Uni for example.

I find rigging pretty arduous most of the time... maybe thats part of it.

For that reason last year I did a kind of simple dance, movement montage on a simple blocky charachter. The thinking being that I could make a series of cubes look human through keyframing alone it would look better than a very good model with shitty movement.

I'd quite like to go back to this actually and do more for each song.

[Rossco]

And it's done. Quite a crude compression for Youtube but looks alright. Not too bad for my first attempt learned in one day, I'm happy with it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k05C6haoZhY

Looks a bit like that fatbob, from that still yeh!

[Rossco]

That video is great mate, really like it. Considering I'm doing an animation course, 3d character animation is very new to me but I definitely appreciate the time it takes to produce something that good. Walk cycle is fairly easy compared to others like dancing about and all the other movements you've got in there.

I'm now onto animating Master Chief picking up a box and setting it on a table. It's really quite tricky!!

[Number 28]

A character animation exercise I did back at uni. Probably about as good as I ever got with animation...still pretty stiff.

[Rossco]

Pretty good 28, I like it!

I got my main project all edited together and finished last night. Spent about 2 hours on the title screen in Photoshop too, none of which helps for the marks but I like to keep with the theme of the video buy doing things like that.

So here's the final version on Youtube, the quality is AWFUL by the way, I can never get good uploads onto youtube, I tried uploading a really good quality .mov file earlier but it crashed at like 95% of the 400MB file! So this one will have to do for now so you get the idea of it all, obviously choose the HQ box to make it slightly better.

[Asura]

Sadly, my hard drive died two days ago. I've lost the rig for the mobile suit and everything I didn on the fountain after I finished the high-poly version, so the low-poly version and all the textures.

[Orchid]

Great work Ross!

[Number 28]

Yeah, cheers Orchid, you cunt.

[Rossco]

Sadly, my hard drive died two days ago. I've lost the rig for the mobile suit and everything I didn on the fountain after I finished the high-poly version, so the low-poly version and all the textures.

Man that really sucks! A bit late now, but for future you should store your files on the internet. I use something called DropBox, 2GB of data for free, and you basically set up a folder on your PC where you want, and everything you save in the folder is automatically uploaded to the internet. It's really good, you can access it from any pc again by downloading it from their website again or sync the folder with several PCs so if you upload something at home to the folder, go to work PC and it'll be on that!

Great work Ross!

Cheers!

The more work I see that others have handed in, the more happy I am with mine!

[Asura]

Man that really sucks! A bit late now, but for future you should store your files on the internet. I use something called DropBox, 2GB of data for free, and you basically set up a folder on your PC where you want, and everything you save in the folder is automatically uploaded to the internet. It's really good, you can access it from any pc again by downloading it from their website again or sync the folder with several PCs so if you upload something at home to the folder, go to work PC and it'll be on that!

I'll look into that. I normally keep backups on a USB HDD, but that died earlier and I was in the market for a new one.

[Anaardvark]

Well I've just finished my end of year 1 assignment. We had to do a 90 second animation where our character George (the child) goes into a little dream land and meets the other character we modelled and they have a little adventure before he snaps out of it and realises he was just daydreaming.

It's taken me many many hours but I can't wait for year 2 now after a long, long rest....

It's only a Rabbit! (XviD) <-- Direct link.

P.s.

Rossco, that's nice dude!

[Cheeko]

What course are you doing? 90seconds is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long a length for a first year animation, it's all about quality, not quantity, they should focus on the art of concise storytelling before allowing projects of that length.

In fact, if the assignment was specifically to make a 90second animation and you have your course directors email address I'd like to write to them about that.

That must've felt like an epic amount of time to fill surely?

[Anaardvark]

Yeah it was, seemed like an eternity as all our previous assignments have been 30 seconds and this one was 90. Well it was maximum of 90 seconds but they told us they didn't want it to be any less than that.

Doing Foundation 3D CGI: Animation and Modelling Degree (with 3rd year topup) @ Bournemouth Uni but I don't have any of my tutors e-mails unfortunately but this is the course http://www.thecollege.co.uk/highereducatio...rses/?cid=22179

[Number 28]

At Teesside we didn't even touch animation till the second year... saying that, they really should've started us on 3D before the second semester of the first year. There were so many shitty, trivial and downright laughable modules...unbelievable stuff.

[rundll]

I think you should def be diving into animation quick on a course. Only way to learn really.

Not seen that course before anaadvark. Is it at the ncca? Did my degree there years ago...

My most recent character animation is in my signature. I don't really consider myself an animator though. I just do it more of a means to an end.

[Cheeko]

I agree that the best way to learn is to do, when you've ot such a large amount of time to fill it isn't about making quality work and actually becoming a good animator. You end up with stuff that you know yourself needs fixing and every piece of work should allow you to analyse and improve it until it's the best that you can achieve at that time, not what you could get done by a deadline.

I'll get in touch with Bournemouth though, they've been doing 3D degrees pretty much longer than anyone in this country so they should know a lot better by now.

[Cheeko]

At Teesside we didn't even touch animation till the second year... saying that, they really should've started us on 3D before the second semester of the first year. There were so many shitty, trivial and downright laughable modules...unbelievable stuff.

We didn't get to do any 3D until the second year, and even then it was alongside graphical maths :s

I get where they were going with it though, I appreciated why they wanted an understanding of the theory and also the art modules that went alongside the 3D art.

Some of the module I had were really good though, I'd say they touched on some really good and unique areas that a lot of courses don't cover like being a technical animator/rigger/scripter but I don't think that even now they've really sorted out where to go with it all. Admittedly 3D software is advancing so fast it's realyl hard to keep up, we've just installed Max2010 at my company and there's a crapload of stuff that makes me feel out of touch. But I think they need to focus on the principles instead of trying to keep up with technology, sure everyone wants to be using mental ray and GI to make everything look nice but that isn't worth anything unless you have good principles of a 3 point lighting system and pose to pose animation.

They'd do really well to just have courses dedicated to lighting/cinematography, animation, effects(particles and post) and other more focused courses.

I think 3D is accessible enough now(there's some amazing free software available) that there's no real excuse for students to start a degree course having never touched a 3D package, the assignments should throw you right in the deep end(as long as it's supplemented with good documentation as to how to use the software in case people get stuck). Maybe as part of the welcome pack when you get accepted onto a course they should send a DVD with some software on it for the students to get to know before the term starts. If they're serious about their degree they'll get their heads down and use it so the course can focus on what you do with the programs instead of what buttons you need to press.

[Anaardvark]

Here's the BU course information, which has all the UCAS info and stuff.

http://onlineservices.bournemouth.ac.uk/co...rse_information

To be honest I've enjoyed the course so far and yes, although we've been thrown in at the deep end and our targets are tough I've learn an awful lot and everyone has learnt the same thing this year which is basic modeling techniques and methods of doing things. Next year we split off in to 3 different pathways. One is modeling and animation, one is architectural visualization and one is technical illustration and that's where the course really gets stuck in deep.

I guess they do it this way so everyone is on a level playing field and by the time they get to the second year, they can split the groups off and go more in depth.

[Ran]

Not been able to get the idea of a 3D gunstar heroes out of my head so it was time to hit the ole 3D max! Used the original sprite for inspiration but im not too bothered about retaining too much of a manga style as it's really not my forte so i've let it evolve more my way.

It's just a WIP head at the moment. Only texture is in the eyes (and thats probably placeholder). I want to model the whole thing and get some animation done with him (a grand pre-vis anim would be ace but I think thats beyond the scope of myself but we'll see!)

[Number 28]

I never played Gunstar Heroes (oooh) but it looks good to me.

I stuck some new (well, very old) stuff up at my site. Bit naff, but, deadlines n' that.

Gawd, I wish I had had more time to animate these things. Left that part ridiculously late in the proceedings.