Speed Animation Challenge - Week 02 - Peace

[Chrisp-3DT]

Week 02 of the Speed Animation Challenge

[shiroii]

thanx Chrisp-3DT,

ok, so this week's challenge:

In life there are always problems and things that go REALLY bad and the only thing you'd want the most at that moment, is just to get some peace, get away from it all and have no more worries.

Imagine rising back to live fully and enjoy the moments, leaving a conflict and suffering behind, escaping your "war" or personal demons and entering a state of peace

Some examples: War, soldiers fighting, explosions, the main character shoots around, and suddenly he sprouts wings, drops his rifle, and floats upward, and lands on a cloud, where birds fly around and the sun is shining. He rests and closes his eyes smiling, the sound of war replaced by an angelic chorus.

But it could also be an african child who just wants to flee away from all the misery. Or maybe this frustrated guy working in his stupid cubical who just got yelled at by the boss starts fantasizing how great it would be to dance right now, to be somewhere in a club with this cute girl dancing salsa. Or this little school boy sitting at school doing math while he looks outside and sees perfectly clear wheater with green grass and just thinks about how it would be to run out of the window and lay down in the grass.

Now think about this and make up your own thing. Obviously you can't use the above examples, becuase we made them up :)

Rules, guides etc.

- The time limit is Friday, the 22th of July. (maybe we'll pospone it to sat 23th, since it's quite big and we start half way of monday :))
- You can use premade rigs and models. You can use your own models. you can use JUST riggs, like CAT for max.
- Maximum animation length is 40 seconds.
- Recommended screen resolution in 320x240 ( you can also try 640x480 if you have to ).
- You can post W.I.P.s but you are allowed one and only one complete entry. That link is also final, you cannot redo it and post a new one. You must also specify what you worked on and how long it took and what premade objects or rigs you used, along with a short description of your animation.
- Webspace is up to you.
- You can not use dynamics for animation. You can use them to polish things with a flow of water, maybe a glowing line of dust when a magician waves his wand, or when a character disapears, etc. You get the idea.
-Remember, it's about animation, use your time for animation, not to get the best render possible, unless you can afford it(i.e, you've finished the animation and still got 3 days ;))
-Try to use quicktime if possible. Quicktime allows you to scrub through the animation. This will get you better C&c and is easier to study or use as reference

Looking forward to your entries!
shiroii

[anima3d]

hmmm... Peace... :roll: why not? :)
good luck guys!

[Mystik]

Tanks a Lot For The Week1 I'm pretty happy of it.... For The presentation, i'm sorry i do my animation on my lunch time so 1h a day so I got 5h per week for toing my animation :S


Peace sound Good

Tks Pikmin For your points

[Freespace-3DT]

Hey all. Welcome to week 02 of the speed animation. I hope you like this subject, we tried to be original and innovative with this one... There's a lot of work into it, cause it's not just another walkcycle or animation test. It's more than that.

Mystik, no problem. As long as its rendered :) presentation is extra. Animation seems to be what people around here care for, so that's the main objective. :D I'm not sure I'll be able to join this week, because I'm in driving school since this morning, and on Thursday I'm going to sign up for college, so won't be around for two days or so. Next time.

[antzzor]

Cool subject I'll definetly try and scratch something together for ths weeks challange,
by the way I think that having a weekly speed animation challange is totally awesome!!! thanks alot

[anima3d]

-

[Freespace-3DT]

antzzor: We're looking forward to your entry. Feel free to post WIPs for feedback and opinions.

anima3d: Focus on your ideea and animation. :) There's more time to refine your character afterwards! Looks alieny, though :ufo:

[anima3d]

ive allready found a nice story for this little_alien_guy..
I ll try to do my best this week ;)

[shiroii]

Looking forward to it Anima3D! I hope to show you guys some blocking by tommorow, just finished modeling etc :)

antzzor, welcome man, please post your work ;)

[antzzor]

thanks, just got an idea ready that I'm quite happy with I'll use a character and a rig I allready have so I should have some work in progress pretty soon

[anima3d]

-

[MaggieQue]

Hi, I have some questions. In this speed animation contest we can ONLY do character animation, those animation of explosion, water, particle can only be used as "decoration"?

And can I post animated gif?

[anima3d]

to MaggieQue-3DT:
i think its ok (both of ur questions) why not?
Lets see what the "Big Heads" has to say (shiroii & Freespace) :)

[Mystik]

i'll be using my Unique Biped hehehe

[Freespace-3DT]

Hey MaggieQue. Sure thing. The ideea is to express the theme through animation, as best as you can. Character animation is most common, but if you can amaze us with other kinds of animation and coreography (like what you said) then by all means, do so! Just watch out cause dynamics don't count in judging. New rule.
Why a gif? I don't see anything wrong with the ideea, but I thought an avi or mov would be easier. Do as you see fit, but finish by Friday. :) Good day.

[shiroii]

You can do whatever you want. If you animate your telephone or even your wacom pad and make it "live" it's still character animation. This forum just happends to be very "computery" there is some analog stuff, but computers kind a rule here. So most people will use that medium, but if you feel like drawing, doing stop action, stop motion or whatever, it's all good :)

About particles. That's tricky you know? If you succesfully animate a head or 7 horses into a flow of water coming down at you (like in LotR or the mummy) it could be considered as character animation.

Obviously you can give a flow of particles character by manipulating there controls or by using goals etc. I'm sure you can give character to this flow of particles and actually make us CARE about it. That would be very much ok by me, I'd love to see how it would turn out!

The thing with saying :"ok" to dynamics is: people could make things like raggdolls for there character. Like with the swing challange; when the character falls of the swing, you can replace it with a raggdoll and just let the simulation do it's thing. That was absolutely NOT the idea of these challanges. Obviously you only sabotage your self ...

If you want to use dynamics, just post your idea or PM me and we'll check out in which catogory it falls ;)

[LostBear]

im guesssing that cloth sims are ok then..since it nearly impossible to animate the clothes on a charachter without them. Stricly speaking a cloth sim is a dynamic simulation. what we are ruling out is the following:

(3d max specific please subtsitue equiv for your package)
Reactor Rope (it is possible to do rope with a clothsim (like chaos simcloth which is free btw) if u crank up the stiffness)

Reactor Driven ragdolls (or even home brew ones)

Using a dynamic system to automate keying something falling and landing on the floor or similar...like an apple from a tree for example)

Mocapdont think this counts, unless maybe if you can prove you created it from scratch including the mocap data.(we would want photos of you in the mocap suite or something)

Basically if youve hand keyed something it stays..if the computer worked something out for you it gets canned! (disqulified)


hope this clarifies things for some people

[anima3d]

any wip or update ?

[RideStowe]

i dont think reactor should be allowed in these animating contests. reactor pretty much aniamtes it for you.

[RideStowe]

oh and btw lost bear, clothes can be rigged with the character as iff part of the skin. they wont move quite as cloth would but it would give the appearance of clothing.

[LostBear]

welcome ridestowe...ermm...thanks..i am aware that clothes can be rigged.

[anima3d]

Listen guys...

Do u know what a "challenge" means? take a look at Speed modeling please..
3 days only 2 webpages? :eek: oh my GOD!!!wheres your works?
Wheres your block anim. shiroii???
wheres your W.I.Ps, feedbacks or whatever else in here?
Im the only one that im prepairing an animation for tomorow?
I dont think so cause im out from this week challenge.. :ugh:
sorry guys maybe another time in the future..

btw i removed my Wips from here cause i dont think so its the right place to be here.

& sorry for my english.

[antzzor]

hey can anyone tell me a good free place where i can put my animation to link here?

[shiroii]

I have everything set up etc, and I'm ready to work on it :)
just don't have much time becuase I'm moving :p
But we got till saturday and I can find a lot of time tommorow so no worries man :wave:

[Mystik]

I'll not show WIP only Finished Works

[Titan3]

this thing really ain't workning out all that well is it? hmmm... it's a little sad

[LostBear]

Titan3 is right. I think maybe this weeks challenge had to much challenge in it.

Maybe next week will bring something more people can have a stab at.

[shiroii]

mmyeah, the week before this one did go a bit better. Would it be a good idea to stay with the "simpler" and funier things, like the swing? It's a bit lighter and easier to do :dunno:

so anyhow, I'm at the point of moving, so I won't have internet for at least a day, maybe two. I hope to see you guys somewhere on monday or tuesday.

As for next weeks exercise, try looking into this:

look here from the second post (http://animationgroup.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=Talk&action=display&thread=1094082933&page=2)
http://www.freewebs.com/kavehmichael/charanimideas.doc

There are some cool ideas there. Unfortunetly I don't have time to make one myself. I still have to detach lots of furniture peaces and move them to my new appartment to put them back together there :smug: But I'm sure you guys can pick something from the above links ;)

[Freespace-3DT]

Well, I could've come up with an interesting ideea... But if you guys prefer to choose some of those, tell me and I won't bother. :)

No entries, eh? That's wonderful. :cry:

[anima3d]

lol lol lol

[Titan3]

hmmm... I feared it would come to this, what I think we're lacking is motivation...maybe if the staff got more into this, maybe if winners actually got awards (huge prides),maybe if we had some front page advartising...what I thing we really miss is the fact that it's cute that we get to make animations and look at each other's but I think we'd like a little more recognition for it...

[shiroii]

Well, I could've come up with an interesting ideea... But if you guys prefer to choose some of those, tell me and I won't bother. :)

No entries, eh? That's wonderful. :cry:

but good for evaluation. We still have to see what works and what doesn't and this is a good lesson I think. There's also been some discussion about the time-limit and new people have shown intrest, so it's definitally not a lost week. This is the second time we do it and you can't excpect it to go perfectly smooth right from the beginning. (very corny, but for all of you who've seen the amazingly cool new batman movie: "why do we fall?" )

Thinks about that, instead of the fact that it didn't went perfect ;)

hmmm... I feared it would come to this, what I think we're lacking is motivation...maybe if the staff got more into this, maybe if winners actually got awards (huge prides),maybe if we had some front page advartising...what I thing we really miss is the fact that it's cute that we get to make animations and look at each other's but I think we'd like a little more recognition for it...

I would disagree. It's better to get the thing running smoothly with the people we have now, and then do a promotion kinda thing. It would be nice to have promotion and all, but it wouldn't really matter if things are still going so so. Because the new people will be like:"hmmyeah, it's nice and all, but I'll check it out later" just my 2cc

[RideStowe]

i dont have enough time to spend on these things >.< believe me if i had a day off from work i'd submit one but i can only really animate when i can sit down for 6 or-so hours at a time. its tough trying on and off for an hour at a time.

[Titan3]

I guess that's true...but I was just trying to find the source of wahever's making this week and probably next week and so not work...

[Ilkejav mk5]

I probably would have entered this week but I couldn't decide on a way to represent ''peace'' with a 3dsMax biped... I don't have a fully rigged facial animation character. Not to disrespect any of the people who made the theme but I just couldn't find something.

[Pikmin]

You should try to find cool subject :P , this one is really poor. Who is in charge of that? With this kind of subject, its to long to make quality.

[Mystik]

I've find everything I had to do and i'll finish it. But a peace anim need more work than a loopin Jump anim.

We just need simple action and mabe sometimes make a 2 week challenge for doing a long action like Peace

dunno

but it's a start and we have to make error

[RideStowe]

this topic would've been better put into the speed modellnig challenge instead of this.

[anima3d]

Ok guys, what r u saying about a fight? :D
I think its simple with a lot of fun!!! r u in?

[Pikmin]

I have the idee for speed animation, because I wanted to have fun , but the most important learn!!!!

Before starting any animation, I thing some of you need to learn animation principle. So I recommend to have subject as weight, mass balance, etc...

This is the basic and the most important thing to learn first. Its as fun as any other subject. Keep it simple for the best quality of animation. What you think?

As an exemple of subject:

-Weight
-1 character
-(an object here)
-(a situation)

...

(what ever we want)

[Mystik]

Anima3D : Do you have always good Idea like these?
mabe a fight against me it will take alf a secon instead a good month doing a nice fight.

I totaly Agreed with Pikmin he is Right where i Saw this Thread

[Titan3]

a fight...nah, don't really know most of times it needs lots of coreagraphy istread of just limple mooves... could be really hard for some people...but not me :P

[anima3d]

Anima3D : Do you have always good Idea like these?

Yeaap ;P till my 1st day in this f***** planet ;P lol lol lol

[shiroii]

Pikmin, is kinda right. You can come up with intresting exercises for the beginning principles, I'm sure I can come up with something :) Not at the moment, but later I might ;) We could just take stuff out of the list I provided, there's a lot of principle thing there, which are intresting, or could be made more intresting.

I like Anima3d's idea. and I kinda modified it. You know these kind of challanges where someone paints something, the the second one paints another thing and then the first one paints another thing and so on. You could do that with animation, if you use the same package. Like, anima makes a move, sends me the file and I strike back, send it back to anima and so forth :) seems kinda cool.

[MonteCristo]

Ok folks here's an idea:

THE NINJA.

An animation for two characters (bipeds etc.).

One character is engaged in a passive activity (Could be washing dishes, guarding a house, sleeping in a rocking chair), unaware of the fate that will soon befall them. The second emerges, ambushes them and kills them, then slips into the shadows once more...

GO!

Enjoy... ;)

[shiroii]

Ok folks here's an idea:

THE NINJA.

An animation for two characters (bipeds etc.).

One character is engaged in a passive activity (Could be washing dishes, guarding a house, sleeping in a rocking chair), unaware of the fate that will soon befall them. The second emerges, ambushes them and kills them, then slips into the shadows once more...

GO!

Enjoy... ;)

Wooooow, coooool exercise :wave::smug:

I can set this up, make it a week thing. Like it starts tommorow and it ends next week (3 - 8 - 2005)This can easily be done in a week :) thanx MonteCristo-3DT

[Pikmin]

shiroii : Are you the only one to decide?

[anima3d]

Great idea MonteCristo! :drool:

[Pikmin]

Ok then , let do it!
I predicted crappy animation.


MonteCristo-3DT: Good idee, but with what I see in the week one, I think we should have animation principle subject.

[shiroii]

shiroii : Are you the only one to decide?

Of course not. You guys can set it up as well. You just send a pm to Chrisp-3DT and give him the title of the thread and he'll make it.

But I kinda made it sound like I was the only one, when I read it back. I first had more text, but I deleted it and forgot to ask for other peoples opinion, it wasn't my intention to sound that way :shy:

[Blusoul]

Hi,
I was thinking if u want people to get the basic principles in there animations. Then why not think on the ideas of the bouncing ball but use bideds. For example Character interacting with object to show weight/ Push pull, lift, catch throw ect...

The swing idea was on that level. keep it simple but effective?

Start off with character, then add interaction with objects and other characters, animals. I know people dont want to do walk cycles and stuff like that but what about something like say a character reacting to situation, causing a situation? but keeping things simple and not too long winded.

Do basics but add your personality to it?
It is kinda hard to work full time and then do the speed animation.

[hammering3D]

hello ppl,
I like alot u'r ideea, I watch u'r movie from the swing comp, and they are so nice, I love them, nice done and so funny.

I see not to many people, but ehh allways is like that at the begining, but people that are here, pls not leave beacuse the forum will die, stay and wait, beacuse otherwise other will left, and the forum will notbecame BIG...

It's true that people are bussy, and an aniamtion it take longer, but I think they will find time when they get use to this forum.

I wish to join, but I'll never done a serios animation, just playing along couple of minutes. And rig the hand from speed modeling comp and make 5sec crapy movie :)

But is a great oportunity to learn, so I'll join, but now in couple of days I going in vacantion so after I come back hope the forum will be stil UP

[LostBear]

Welcome Hammering3D.

Its ok that you havent done serious animation....well all here for fun and to learn new stuff.

We will look forward to seeing your stuff here

[anima3d]

im huppy to c u here hammering3D ;)
u r a great speed modeller n i think u can be a great speed animator too. cheers

[antzzor]

I have to say I agree with Pikmin I think it's better to excersises that will make you think about the basic principels of animation.

[hammering3D]

tnx LostBear - I can't wait to read something more about animation and give a shoot here, so see U after my vacantion.
and anima3d tnx for nice words :), I can wait to join U , and I can't wait to see more from U, the swing is so coool, I love it.

[Brimblashman]

Yo, i've just stumbled across this new speed animation challenge thing, sounds class and i will definately be doing something for the next one. probably something with ninja's in no doubt. Anyone know when the next challenge will start?
happy animating all,
Peace

[anima3d]

Thank u hammering3D :)

Wellcome Brimblashman as u can see we ve got a small prob the last week :smug: we need more people to join us :dunno:

[Freespace-3DT]

Well, there seems to be a lot of people joining in. Great! :D

I'm sorry I've been busy these last few days, and am currently modelling something ( http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=33230&page=1 ) ... So we settle for the Ninja? Has some "funny" potential. I'm sorry if I created some debate for my different point of view regarding animation, but I'll try ( as always ) to make presentation a part of my animations. Just as bonus for you fellas. :)

[Ilkejav mk5]

when is the next challenge supposed to start?

[anima3d]

maybe we must lunch "The Ninja" challenge Freespace!

[Freespace-3DT]

Ok then. Let's give this one TIME, starting tommorow until, say, next friday. That's a healthy 7 days! I'll PM Chrisp to make a new thread tommorow. Good luck everyone!

Edit: Ok, got the PM to Chrisp. New thread should be up when he sees my message. :smug:

[anima3d]

Thanx Freespace :) thats great news !!!

[tokai]

maybe we must lunch "The Ninja" challenge Freespace!

is it just me or wasn't this challenge already started? Wonder where the thread is now... :)

[anima3d]

nup.. Not yet tokai :) Its a long story (started-Stoped etc etc..)
Now we r waiting until Chrisp see the msg of Freespace! cheers..

[LostBear]

hmmmmm....ninjas. maybe i give this a shot.

[LostBear]

btw...does anyone know how to make a charachter hold an object with two hands with 3dsmax?

you know...like a sword or a stick or a pole or a teapot:)?

[anima3d]

btw...does anyone know how to make a charachter hold an object with two hands with 3dsmax?
you know...like a sword or a stick or a pole or a teapot:)?

With CAT (http://www.catoolkit.com/home.asp) (Character Animation Tool-Kit) its very simple. Just link the IK points of the palms to the object and animate the object ;)
I think u can do the same with simple bones if u r using IK solvers. Link the IK point to a dummy and the dummy link it with the object. ;) :)

[Brimblashman]

btw...does anyone know how to make a charachter hold an object with two hands with 3dsmax?

you know...like a sword or a stick or a pole or a teapot:)?

very carefully ahahahaaa,

if using biped there are prop objects which can be bound to hands (position and or rotation) or you could use the link constraint or some combination of position and orientation constraints. also you can temporarily add an object to a biped's ik chain by setting planted or sliding keys for say a hand, then going to the ik rollout and click the little arrow, select the object u want to add, then select the 'object' radio button ( i think)

hehe

[LostBear]

thanks anima and brimbleashman

im using biped...not thought of linking to the pivot points. ill give it a go

[anm8]

We cannot can this ninja thread! I just registered...spent 10 minutes planning and 25 minutes on my thumbs! Lets finish this one!!!

[anima3d]

The ninja thread has allready started!
sorry anm8 but u r too lale for this one.. :)
Wellcome btw.

[Freespace-3DT]

anm8, the Ninja's on now, but if you really feel like it, please do make an anim for Peace. It wold be interesting to see your interpretation of it. This contest is for self-improvement anyway! :)

[anm8]

The ninja thread has allready started!
sorry anm8 but u r too lale for this one.. :)
Wellcome btw.

Thanks for the welcome but how come I am too late??? Was there an entry deadline? If anything I would at the disadvantage just starting now. Perhaps if you will not let me in then I will do it anyway! Just hoping you would!!!

Alright Free...I going for it! Woo hoo!!!

[Freespace-3DT]

Yes, there are deadlines... This theme's done. The ninja is on until August 5th. :) Welcome to the Forums, by the way!!! :wave: I'm eager to see your work, anm8.

[anima3d]

Heres the deadline of this week!

Rules, guides etc.

- The time limit is Friday, the 22th of July.

U can find the time limits every week on the rules :)

[anm8]

Okay, its too late but still doing it anyway! Just about finished blocking but now its sleepy time! More to come!!! Correction....not blocking...I am almost done with my stand ins! Then on to blocking!!!