Before I start this I need to ask for some help. In this shot the intention is to have tinservant looking into the tinman's back and seeing his own reflection. This shot is after the shot were the tinsernt polishes TM back. I have tried turning up reflectivity in hte group I am assuming is the group I want but I am not sure. I think I need Nancy's help here she textured TM maybe she knows best which group will turn the textured back of TM into a mirror. I want to test this out before I Animate this because he we can not acomplish this affect we need to rethink this scene

You can manipulate the reflectivity on the uppertunic group - but it will change it for the whole "toreador" vest - currently it's set for 50% reflective.

Which group did you try?

You might also want to decrease the % of the color & bump decal assigned to the tunic (chest toreador style) - so that the pattern decreases as well

I am not sure but I think that's the one I experiment on it was late when I tried I have tried just the relfectivity of the Uppertunic to 100% and not much affect I then tried getting more light in which should some change I am trying to turn the % of color down on bump decals purplebluediamond was 10% I am trying 1% but metalornatepattern will not go anything lower than 100%? I will post test shots.

I made uppertunic group 100%reflective and turned the "purplebluediamiond" bump (in chest toreador style decal) to 0 - rather than changing the color decal to 0. If you leave the bump set to 10% it will still reflect - but give a bumpy look

Getting there

this is with Nancy's seeting of last post

Hey, that looks cool.

Is there a way to turn down the reflectivity just a bit so it doesn't look radically different from all the other shots in this one shot? Maybe 75% of the reflection we see in these tests?

something between the first test Mark posted and the later more mirror-like one would be about right.

One problem you may have is going to be soft reflections. I don't think you are going to get what you want when final rendering is done. Turning off soft reflections will also affect tin servant.

This scene might need some TLC during rendering to turn out that is for sure and lighting will play a big part in this as well.

I have a rough take I just wanted to do a couple of poses to show Robert what I have in mind but I ended up animating a little to show the flow of what is in my mind. the 1 thing that I failed to show which might show better after I add aome brakdown is I wanted TS to be pulling his head arond by his chin Once I get the breakdowns in I am hoping this will show better.

2_01_50 Blocking

While I was at work I did a test Full Render to show how this might look and I think I need to pul TM down more the botom of his chest plate distorts to much and I wanted to get the mouth/hand to show better. But it looks promising!

Ok I had some difficulty once I tried to import TS pose from the previous scene so I had to reblock these out so the first block does not count this is the first blocking ok TW is sitting in chair I have rotated his chest bone to get a look at what looks best and I think I will have him rotated like he is in the end of this shot with a slight moving hold. I have not turned down reflectivivty to 75% yet that will be another 22 hour test render once I have some thing animated and I off to the cottage for a weekend

here's some notes...

-I think the key to that gesture is that his hand will be shifting on his chin. It's always on the part that he's examining in the mirror.

-we should probably change that line to "will there be anything else, sire?"

- he should glance up to the Tinman at the end of his line

- either his end pose in this shot will need to match the beginning of Sc51 or the beginning of Sc51 will need to be modified to match the end of this one. (Maybe that's what you were referring to when you said this wasn't full blocking yet)

-There's some sort of distracting motion going on in his shoulder. what's causing that?

- it might be possible to tilt the TM forward a bit to get a better reflection.

I had this happen too. there is a hidden bone that gets keyed somehow when doing IK FK switching. Look inthe PWS for a shoulder area bone that you haven't been animating that has some changing keyframes on it.
try making all the keyframes identical.

I will look into that now I am actualy working on this right now if you see this trun on Skype and give me a call I have some ideas about blending this into SC51 if we can talk about this first it could save me a lot of time experimenting on something you do not like the sound of.

Ok the descision is that I add the final pose of this shot into the first pose of the next shot SC51 and increase the amount the TS steps back into what is now pose at 5.13 of shot 51 so 4.04 pose changes and I have him do a stratled step back than SC 51 carries on. So My first step is then to finish this scene first to make sure the final pose is then copied into the next scene.

Now with that I need to know if we are adding the "sire" into the dialog because that will affect the final pose of this shot. Should I make my own temp "sire" wave file and work with that or do we keep the dialog as is?

I recorded a new scratch with two versions on it and committed that to Sc50. Pick which ever you like better. I'm not sure who the real TinServant voice is?

I think that well work well I don't feel we need to chase down the TS voice actor unless he reads this and wants to step forward I say we go with your 2nd take you have his voice down so close noone will notice. I have rendered out some jpg and I set the relfectivity to 75 % what do you think shall I try 80% this is at time frame 500 which is the first turn look pose I will post another one at 615 which is the opposite turn pose in a couple of minutes.

Maybe I should raise TW up more ? I do not want to do this too much the next shot will be from him sitting down but maybe a couple of inches up might help?

Pose at 615 at 75% Reflectivity again rasing TW might help?

I'd turn the reflectivity down a bit, 60-65%? Real tin wouldn't be so mirror like. what we really need is to soften the reflection some. Probably a huge render hit to do that.

tilting the Tinman forward a bit will get the reflection lower on his back.

Robert I tried looking for that bone you mentioned to fix shoulder poping but I am unable to figure this out I am not done animating this but I want to fix this before I go any farther I commited V20 of this can you please take a look at it I have tried to animate the elbow to fix this as well the main thing is hte shoulder sheilding is crossing over each other.

Refletivivty turned down to 65% and I tilted TW forward to have TS face in center of TW back were back is flater. At least I tried

I'm looking at the shoulder thing, haven't figured it out yet.

the placement of the reflection looks better in those last renders. 65% looks just about the same as 75%.

I feel like his tin would have a sort of brushed metal reflection to it like this (faked in photoshop)

you'll have to click on it for full size to really see it

Click to view attachment

it is a bit more in line with his usual non-reflective appearance, it's something you'd only see upon close inspection.

But I'm not sure what it would take to render this effect in A:M

I see what your saying but If I am to be acting into a reflective surface and trying to get facial expression to be visible to the audience then once we make it like you are describing then my first thoughts are whats the point? I don't feel that a realistic polished tin surface is what we should be going for here. It's a carton and it's a slight joke that after the tinservant hard work that he polished the TW back so well that it turns into mirror so much that the TS can check out his shaving job earlier that morning. It's going to be hard enough to act into a mirror and have the audience look into the TW back to read TS facial expressions and not be looking at the back of TS head. Just my opinion on the matter and keep in mind that I have noticed that these Jpgs don't really match my test renders .mov and what we get in rendering my not be what we get in these Jpg unless I render this scene out myself multiple times experimenting with different setting and lighting which I know very little about . I think we need to talk to martin and see if some special attention in all of these things can be done to make sure the final render is workable

I figured the face we see directly will be the one they look at most for expression since it's so much bigger than the reflected image. We just need to easily see that there is a reflection there so the audience knows why TS is peering into TW's back.

But the soft effect isn't a must-have, probably more work than it's worth.

I put a question in the rigging forum about this. we'll see what they make of it.

I tried AimAt constraining the elbow controller to a stationary null thinking that would make it consistently point in one direction but it never really pointed at the null and it just got a different kind of weird motion.

One thing I noticed while looking at the shoulder...

when Tservant looks up at the end, do it with a blink rather than wandering the eyes up.

Mark, there are some clues on the shoulder thing here:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=29940

Ok Robert I have not seperated the poses yet so everything or alot of stuf lands on the same key frame still but before I Polish I want to know if this is goig in the right direction. I mangaed to fix the shoulder with David Simmons (it's just me)help

What would really help me is if you and accept or decline the final pose so I can start modifing the beginning of scene 51 like we talked about

Yes the last pose looks like it's in the right place. Go with that.

As you go forward on this...
-When he turns away from the camera dont' turn him so far that we lose sight of his eye
-the last expression woudl probably do better with raised eyebrows than "concerned" eyebrows.
-about 5:15 when he's turning his head back to the camera, his shoulders start moving away from the camera. that looks odd.
-watch out for wandering eyeballs and wandering eyebrows. facial expressions tend to dart from one form to another rather than slowly shift.

Ok here another take with the changes you mentioned and I tried to polish this up as well so tell me what you thinkg Robert.

I'm still seeing this...

(when I say "shoulders" there I'm thinking of his whole torso.) If that's an anticipation I'd make that smaller and make the whole turn snappier, because...

He's getting to the first pose well. I think he's taking too long to get to the second pose, and then not really holding that one long enough. If you make the move from pose 1 to 2 faster he can hold that second pose a bit longer.

Ok I worked the anticapation before the 2nd pose and it's a combination of me dipping the hips and rotating the chest controler both away from 2nd pose as an anticapation which I have reduced both of these and I have quickened the motion into the 2nd pose and use the time created to hold the 2 pose longer about 5 frames. One thing that I noticed is that during the antication I had the head with no anticaption move it was just rotating into the 2nd pose which made it look odd to me I have added the head slighlty into the anticapation now which looks better to me. What do you think of this?

IMAG0007.ASF

IMAG0009.ASF

Not totally done yet I thought I get a quick opinion is this to big or too small then i will polish accordly

The timing is right, but make it much smaller. barely a nudge. Right now that new bit is getting more attention than the palm out gesture because it's a sudden burst of fast activity. if it travels a shorter distance it won't be so fast.

this might be the relative scale of it.

Click to view attachment

How about this?

Man Igot all these kids knocking at thee door wanting candy. Don't they know I am trying to make a movie

hmmm... it still looks overly prominent. commit that chor and I'll take a look at it.

but before I do how about you finish off the other items we mentioned,...

-the too slow blinks
-more snap on his hand unfurling at the end.

then commit the chor

thanks

Ok I went through the tutorial you posted and I thought I try to do it here but I ran into a couple of problems.

1st to maintain a arc path of the hand I had to combine the bicep and forearm but I tried my best to stagger it as best I could. I went through a lot of ver. and I started off holding the hand and fingers to the end to uncoil them but it seemed to unnatural to me. I don't really see this as a "Pure Diesel Power, Baby!" Situation but maybe that is my problem? I see it as a more eligant gesture but I tried to follow the consegive breaking of joints and I keeped some snap in the fingers. Anyways take I look and we can start with this and see what you have up your slefs. I committed the files Ver. 47

Hi Mark,

This is for 50 and 51. It's two, two, two crits in one.

2_01_50-take47commentsMP4.mov

Did you commit your changes through SVN?

Sorry I didn't catch that sooner. I was fixing my roof all weekend. (Trying, anyway)

How did the roofing go?

I made some comments some were about eye brows disreguard those I see were I went wrong now and I fixing it.

Ok I fixed that blink that had very little eye brow too it there was some but not in scale to the ones I am doing in this scene that is for sure. So I increased it to match the rest of them I hope I did not over do it I thought this scene might need some ?? type of action/acting not sure of right word to describe.

Ok I have to admit I tried to get the reaction of TW past you I personally like it and I do not see this as him reacting more than an acknowledge meant that he heard TS and he thinks for a second then in scene 51 (next) he thinks of some thing and jumps out of chair. But its out now either way works and maybe I should of spoke up when we talked about this so I commited this take to 2_01_50.chr and .prj so unless you see something I think this scene is done.

Did you not start with the v52 I committed yesterday? That has the much smaller hand gesture in it.

No I did not I did not notice that tell after I posted so I will fix that the stuff there not that much too fix so no big deal

Man talk about Animating with blinders on how I did not see that is bryound me

Ok hows this

I'll know next time it rains.