So I am back in the modeling section. After a short excursion into animation I decided that modeling is so much more relaxing than animation.

So here is the first WIP of my Thickest set.

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Russel

Hi Russel,

Looks like good stuff!

I've been animating the part of "The Thicket" that takes place around the warning sign. Can we revert to the sign already established? You can find it in this location...

data\Act2\Seq02_thicket\shared data\Models\WarningSign


It's awkward to switch now because I've been posing characters actually leaning on the sign and moving around it. You can download one of my chors...

\data\Act2\Seq02_thicket\Sc18

to see the specific placement that I've used.

Sorry about the inconvenience this causes.

I also have a storyboard up of the part I'm working on you can see what angles the set would need to be seen from and also what wouldn't be needed.

It is somewhat different from the Bob Taylor storyboard.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=194164

thanks!

OK thanks for the info.
I have replaced the sign with the one you used in your animation. Although it looks quite small compared to the one in your thicketH.mov movie. Did you scale it up a bit?

Russel

Here's the key to building sets that have props that the characters interact with. Open your prj or chor that you are building the set in, right click on the choreographies FOLDER (not the chor itself) and import the chor that has the animation and props, you should have 2 chors in the prj now. Drag and drop the props (cameras are helpful to populate the scene) from the imported chor into your chor (this gives you locations of the animation). Now delete the imported chor (DO NOT SAVE). Now that you have the props in your chor you can build the set around it. In your chor you should only have your ground plane (and props you dragged and dropped) populate your set in an action using the ground plane as the base model for the assembly action. For the mostpart, this action will work for most of the scenes. If you find a scene the the camera angle is different, you can modify the action and save it as another name (scene number).

When you dragged the prop (sign for example) to your chor, the choreography action was also imported (translation, rotation, scale). Since you created an assembly action of the set, you can translate rotate the ground plane in the chor and all the population prop that you added in the assembly action will move with it.

Hope this was helpful.

Yes, I did have to scale it in the chor.

Did some test with grass and wheat.
Also I found a way to reuse most of my sign model. ;-)

Click to view attachment


Russel

That looks beautiful!

I like that it's open since that will work with the line where Tinman tells Scarecrow "OK, you stay here in this open exposed clearing..."

You can probably go crazy with trees for the part where they're in the forest, but I'm not sure who's animating that section.

Have any ideas for this shot? It's the entrance to the forest as seen from the sign by the Tinman and Co.



I was thinking there might be some way to arrange the trees and other objects so they looked scary without making them anthropomorphic trees.

Just wanted to add:

That was a great set building tip Mark!


Russel that looks sweet as well. A bit too kept and clean perhaps?

I hate to suggest it because it looks so pretty but you may want to rough that up!
Also, unless this is a side path we are looking at the bridge/road looks too narrow.
I'd suggest roughly (pun intended!) the width of a wheeled cart. Especially if that wheat field looks maintained by farmers.
Perhaps if no longer used perhaps the same width you have it but show the other half broken down or removed?

If there hasn't been a lot of traffic... even more roughed up.
Even if you do rough it up... save this one!
Like Robert said, 'beautiful'.

Robert,
I believe the basic Loon forest is on SVN already.
Xtas was working on some trees in there too.

I hope that's not a hair material for the grass and wheat. Render times will go through the roof with added textures and animation. Looks nice though.

Thanks Rodney, at least someone noticed my post.

Thanks for your replies.

Actually the ways don't have any textures, so they look very clean. I will rough them up with bump maps.

The grass and the wheat are both hair materials. But render time is within an acceptable range at the moment.

The tree will be the only anthropomorphic one in the scene. I will place it a little separate from the wood. So it looks like a "woodkeeper". I also like the idea of using "normal" trees and stones to give the wood a scary look. I hope I will be able to archive this effect.

Here's a small update on the tree.

Click to view attachment

Russel

Right now A:M is driving me mad.
I worked on the wood. The leaves are just images with an alpha channel mapped on a simple grid. I can render it when I use only one light within a few seconds. As soon as I start to add one more light to the scene the render never finishes.
I would like to add a few "negative lights" in the wood so it appears dark and the "face" will be visible. But this is not possible at the moment. So here is a screenshot of the wood.


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Russel

Make sure shadows are turn off on those extra lights. that will kill render times (multiple shadows). I'm not sure what negative lights will do to render times.

Also, using patch images just adds more geometry to the scene. Hair may render longer, but it renders and I haven't had too many problems that I couldn't work around.

Thanks for your tip. I tried with "hair leafs" and now it renders even with a skydome. I just have to brush the hair now, so the "face" will be visible more clearly.

Here is what I have so far.

Click to view attachment

Russel

Can you make the forest scarier looking?

A bit dark and the face is still not very visable. Hope to get it better, and scarier.

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Russel

I've already got the Layout waiting for that set. It looks like it's going to be great. (I put your Yoop sets into Layout a couple weeks ago, Torsten. You'll see them assigned for animation soon.)

Hey Torsten,

Try just dropping your set into these chors, render a frame and let's see what comes out

2_02_01.cho

2_02_11_v42x.cho

2_02_15_v26.cho

2_02_17_v53facial.cho

These four will hit most of the odd camera angles in this scene

thanks!

This is what I am thinking. If its possible, add a bit of fog. That will give it eerieness (if thats a word )
Also, make the grass dead around it. there is not going to be perfectly green grown grass, right around a dead scary place.
And last but not least, Weeds. lots of them

Here's a first test of placing a character in the set... in Stereo!

2_02_21c_crosseyemp4a.mov

The amber waves of grain in the set take a lonnnngggg time to render so I rendered it once separately and composited it in back of the animation. The stereo effect is a bit flattish, I'd need to experiment more with camera settings to plus that.