My first Animation (Short Film)

[inveni0]

I've decided to try my hand at animation. Let me explain my goal here...

I'm looking to blend 3D and 2D so that there is a good "layered" feel to the animation. I hope to have good lighting and sharp textures. I want all of my environments to feel 3D, but to also have several 2D aspects within them. All of my characters will be 2D, drawn and colored simply in Photoshop.

Let me show you a bit more of what I mean. This is a test render currently under construction. I'm using it to see how the layers handle FOV, to test particle effects and to expirement with how things look in both 2D and 3D so that I can better decide which objects should be in which artform.

As for the film itself, it takes place after a novella I had written in College. It was called "Wishing Death to a Dying Raven", and was about a boy named Landon that met a raven who could take form as a man. The raven helped Landon learn how to control time. Long story short, the girl Landon loved died as a result and he blames God. So this is his journey to kill God.

I expect this story to continue in several volumes, each stretching over different landscapes and/or worlds. Afterall, journeying to God would take you further than Cincinatti, no?

Anyway, tell me what you think of the overall style. This sene isn't finished with detail or anything, but if I could get some C&C on the general feel, that would be great. I added the smoke in combustion, but when rendered the file was 42 MB, even in DIVX format. So I stuck it in a flash file. You may have to resize your window to bring it back to proper quality.

THANKS

Click here for the clip...

[martimus]

I see what your trying to acheive and i quite like it.

crits-

the smoke is unreal, it only begins moving after the animation has started, in combustion you can pre load the particles in the particle controls panel, make it so the smoke has already started moving perhaps 30 frames or so before the animation starts

the guy in the foreground seems to be getting bigger. there is slight movement in him which makes it seem slightly off. what is the guy meant to be doing? standing still or walking?

[inveni0]

Thanks for your reply, martimus.

I understand what you mean about the smoke Just a little glitch I need to figure out. The smoke does preload, but I have to animate the emitter so that it stays in line with the chimney. The movement is what makes the smoke seem to blow. I won't use combustion if I can't figure this out.

About his movement: he does move. But it's not supposed to be something noticeable. When it's tweaked, it should look like the FOV is effecting everything but the character.

Thanks for your keen eye. These are the things I'm experimenting with in this test animation. (Which, when completed, will be part of the first volume.)

[martimus]

Originally Posted by inveni0

Thanks for your reply, martimus.

I understand what you mean about the smoke Just a little glitch I need to figure out. The smoke does preload, but I have to animate the emitter so that it stays in line with the chimney. The movement is what makes the smoke seem to blow. I won't use combustion if I can't figure this out.

ah ha! of course

looking forward to seeing more!

You could render out the smoke seperatly and then composite it back in. that way you could manipulate the layer independently. It might also make your workflow much quicker.

Im sure their must be a way for the particles to inherit the motion of the emitter but i cant think of it.

one more thing!

42mb!? what is it 10 seconds? even less?! what settings are you using?!

[inveni0]

I can render it at 30kbps, and it's still 42 mb...i can only guess it's a prob with the program. nothing else renders to divx that way.

[Design]

Inveni0, i like the Concept of it, but this is what i noticed:
* usually when dealing with such issues i think that the matter of ratio is big, martimus noticed the man getting bigger, but he is getting bigger at a small ratio in comparison to the building getting smaller.
* i dont think that the horizon would be affected this much on such a small movement, one second you see no stars the next you see some. where the camera might have moved only few meters.

Other than that i think that it is a cool idea and i look forward to see how it turns out.

Hope my comments were of a good help.

[martimus]

Hmm thats really weird. Im not sure why its rendering such a large file.

I cant think why on earth its so big. Perhaps you have some settings wrong? what res are you rendering out at?

this is bugging me!

[inveni0]

Thanks, Design. Yes, the FOV is weird. I'm still working on it, and I won't use anything that I can't get to look right, so I'll hopefully be able to work it out.

Martimus, my settings in Combustion are the same as my settings in 3DS; however, 3DS renders to a filesize of 500 kb...It's really freak'n strange.

[martimus]

blimey

[inveni0]

Okay, I finally got Combustion to render to AVI correctly. (I just tried a diff. filename.) This is my final combustion test. I didn't add a mask for the car, so pardon the fact that it passes between the flame and the background. I'm not sure I'm going to use combustion for this film. Does anyone know any other good smoke/fire plugins for Max? Free or For Sale is fine.

Also, this is the final artwork for this shot of the main character.

Update

[martimus]

Much better!

[RxExpress]

looks awesome! you hand drew that guy in photoshop? also, would this involve frame by frame adjustments of the guy? that could be extremely hard to do...

[inveni0]

Awww....thanks, guys. :P Yeah, I use Photoshop. I'll be animating the kid, but his movements won't be anything like traditional animation. You'll see

[RxExpress]

hurry up, i want to see it!

[inveni0]

Well, I'm trying to learn combustion, so I put this little trailer together. No clips or screenshots, just a little test. The file is just over 12 MB and lasts for 1 minute:

Trailer