New short animation idea based on a true story:

The Adventures of Patchy Piebald
The Lonely GrizzlarPoley Bear®

(rough sketch)
Click to view attachment

An endearing story to delight young children everywhere as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers of global warming and the impact of climate change on the environment. Also addressing the issues of growing up in a diverse and unconventional family unit.

(Maybe Pizzly or Grolar bear. Those are the more accepted names but I want something different) Not so sure about the global warming impact on these creatures. Apparently they found one back in the late 1800's. Of course... that was the only one till now.

Amazing. Polar bears and Grizzly bears are VERY finicky when it comes to picking a mate. They spend ages courting before taking that final "plunge" into the cold waters of family commitment... well.. the female does anyway. The males are out of there when the fun is over.

-vern

COOL! What part of the story are you going to tell? The mating part?

Nice use of Hair! Look forward to more!

I was thinking it would be a story like The Ugly Duckling or Are You My Mohter? kind of thing but for a slightly older child... with a sociopolitical environmental slant. Maybe have "tips" incorporated into the story for kids to conserve energy and water etc. Maybe throw in some sarcastic parody of these types of books as well.


p.s. By the way I wasn't sure if when you mentioned the use of "hair" if you thought that image was done with AM... it's a quick photoshop sketch at the moment. I haven't gotten far enough along to model it yet.

-vern

I remember seeing a movie when I was younger about a 15' Grizzly terrorizing a forest. It would maul and eat a little bit of people, then bury them alive for a midnite snack.....

Grizzlys are known to have VERY long claws, I believe the longest of the living bear species.

Oh Man! (tyhats noty swearing I hope) That would make a nice AM model.....

I am thinking instead of trying to ANIMATE this (which would take me ages) I would do illustrations for a book using A:M instead. Sell it on Lulu.com. I keep looking at that image and I'm sure that kind of fur can be done with A:M.

-vern

Click to view attachment

I like the bear the hair look real good also that would also be a cool stuffed animal.

So I thought I would try ONCE AGAIN to make hair for a bear. As some may know I've had quite a hard time with "hairy bears" (not to be confused with a hairy bear that attacked my brother's mountain cabin on his honeymoon).

I think I get it now. Bears need a very dark skin with a dark hair base color to "hide" that "patchy" look. That spot between the hairs where the "skin" shows through? It always bugs me. I think this nails it and it only took a few minutes of fiddling around.

I have a single gradient image from very dark at the base to white at the tip. I made the hair group patches an overall very dark color that matches the base of the hair. Since Patchy Piebald is part polar bear, part grizzly I put a decal to control the overall hair color on the mesh.

Not only does this look pretty darn good, it looks good even when rendered in shaded view (this render however, is a final render with 9 passes).

Click to view attachment

-vern

That looks really good. The blending of colors creates a genuinely realistic looking hair.

Okay "bear" with me on this . This is not much of a bear yet. Just whacked this out to get a feel for the process. It looks more like a wolverine than a bear at this point, but I think the hair material will work. I plan to make extensive use of hair maps for length and density and thickness.

Unfortunately until hair is fixed I can't use transparency to fade out the "ends" but If I use a bit of jitter that should work pretty well. Render times are surprisingly speedy. Amazing what a good computer can do for inspiration. I don't know if I will animate this guy but who knows... maybe he could be a mascot entry when finished.

Click to view attachment

-vern

Wow. Wow. Wow. Hair should break more often!
That is outstanding.

Absolutely stunning hair

Agreed! That hair looks really good!

Lookin good Vernon! He needs a big black nose.

Still a long way to go but I like it so far. Probably way too much hair density but I didn't like so much skin showing through the hair. I suppose grooming will hide that. Lots of issues with this render as far as hair length and grooming but it's only a test for the mesh. All the grooming will be lost as I continue to build the model and I still plan to use maps for length and thickness especially the face for the transition from the short hairs on the snout to the face and head.


Click to view attachment

-vern

Looks good especially around the face ,hope your gona do a sorta tut as you carry on I would like to learn about using maps for the hair ,Ive only ever used them for colour and it sound's interesting

Vern, that bear is looking good!

If you use the same image, that is driving the hair colour, as a colour map for his skin you can lower the hair density without the skin being obvious.
Don't forget that you can then decrease the amount of effect that colur map will have so you can blend it toward the base colour of your groups if you so desired.

I want to see him shake water off that coat!

A decal on the mesh that has a hair material can control nearly every property of hair, length, color, direction etc etc. I plan to paint a gray scale image from a flattened pose of the face so I can control the length of the hair rather than trying to drag each hair by hand. With an image you can get really smooth transitions.

You said you only used decals for color? Hair color? If you used a decal for hair color than you know how to do it. Just choose a different property. If you mean you just use decals for the mesh color then applying the image only to the hair is very easy.

After applying the decal to the mesh and stamping it, expand the decal triangle in the PWS. Select the image in the decal. The default is "color". Scroll down that list and select "other". A new item will appear in the hair image decal properties called "Properties Driven".

Right click on "properties driven" and select "add new property". Now from that list you can select a hair property; diffuse color, length, etc. The tricky part is that if you have more than one hair material on any groups all the properties will appear in that list for all the hair groups. They will all show up without any indication which one is which. I just pick them at random till I get the right one. For example in the render above the model has a hair group for the snout and a hair group for the head and body. When I click on the decal properties for the image I see two of everything because there are two hair groups. It isn't hard to find the right one eventually. I turn on the show hair and particles in the render options so that when I select the right one it will appear in the model window.

The grayscale image would control length by, black is "short" white is "long". This length is based on the length setting in the hair material. So if the hair is 4cm all white pixels in the decal image would make the hair 4cm. Any "gray" pixels or values in the map would decrease the length based on it's darkness value. The same applies to density. So I want more density and shorter hair just for the snout area. I would paint gray in that area of the decal image that fades to white for the length, but I would want do the opposite for the density so that the snout has more density. The body won't need as much because the hair is longer and a little thicker.

I've never quite got the hang of using a decal image for hair direction. It's more tricky and involves an RGB image. Each color of the RGB channels controls the xyz direction for the hair. I find it easier to brush the hair for direction.

-vern

Yes, I have to play around with this. I think the image I use for the hair (not the decal, the hair image in the material) is too dark too far up the hair. I have been "tweaking" that base color so it's not so dark by decreasing the repeat value on the y to 0.75 (yes you can do that... it "shortens" the image... cuts it off) so the gradation starts higher up the hair. The trouble is that it tends to make the whole bear dark. The skin and base of the hair give it an overall dark look. By making the skin and base of the hair really dark it hides that "harsh" space between hairs at the skin but tends to darken the whole thing. I think if I keep tweaking I will find something that works well.

However even with a lot of density on the hair it rendered FREAKING FAST! Just a few minutes for that render at 1280 x 960 with 9 passes. Not too shabby. Of course it is a render in the model window with no lights or other objects... still... that's pretty encouraging.



AAAHHHHHHGGGGGGG!

That's a bit scary. I think I will aim to get him rigged for a STILL image first. Maybe eating a fish or something. The fish worked for the last Mascot image winner.
I think if I can get this model into the same pose as one of the original sketches I will be thrilled.

-vern

One word comes to mind................Excellent!