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Archive for the ‘Animation’ Category

Robot Bike tranformers

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Mayıs 2, 2009

Animation | Short Film | Video içinde
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The new Bajaj DTSi commercial starring Pulsar 220, XCD 135 & Discover as ROBOTS. Created by Leo Burnett India & directed by Tarsem.

" Bipede Jump " Tutorial Part 3

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Ocak 28, 2009

Animation | Biped | Techniques | Tutorial | Video içinde
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This part covers hit animation, ground preaparation and camera animation. It also shows some fine tuning.

Biped Animation Tutorial PART 3 from Lukasz Kubinski on Vimeo.

Part 1 Part 2

Dynamic Animations in mental ray (without the flicker)!

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Ocak 19, 2009

Animation | rendering içinde
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Ok. This one was a long time coming. There are posts everywhere on how to do an “animation” of a camera going through a static scene. I’ve got one on this website. The truth is, this is just static animation. The big question is: how do you achieve this with moving objects in the scene? This technique can be done in V-ray using the VRaySphereFade, but mental-ray has a different way to do this trick. I’m going to go through the magic steps to create a dynamic animation without flicker, without super high FG and GI settings, and without the outrageous render times.

This animation (200 frames @640×480)took 27 min to render with the following technique, even with my poor animation skills

It’s not uncommon to think that because you have objects moving in your scene, you have to calculate FG/GI for every frame. This is true and untrue. With this technique here, we will only have to calculate FG/GI for every frame only for those objects that are moving. This is done in two render passes.

I rendered my background scene (with my animated objects hidden), with the freeze GI/FG technique

Once you have the background animation rendered, go back to your scene and hide everything that was rendered in your background pass, and unhide your animated characters.

Then place a box to replace the scene. This box will project your background animation, and create a plate for the characters reflections and shadows to fall onto. Think of this box as an actors green screen room…it can be as detailed as you want it to be. If the characters are moving behind other foreground objects like a chair or shelf, these objects should be considered.

We will use the Matte/Shadow/Reflection material. Apply this material to your box. Under the Camera Mapped Background slot, click on the button next to the color swatch and choose Environment/Background Camera Map. Now under the Map slot, this is where we will place our already created background animation as our background plate. Choose Bitmap, then locate to the first image sequence. Be sure you have Sequence checked, then click Open. This will create an .ifl file for your sequence.

We will need an instance of the Environment/Background Camera Map so right click on the map and choose Copy. Now open the environment window by hitting 8. Click the Environment Map button and choose Environment/Background Switcher. To access the parameters drag an instance of this shader into an empty slot in the material editor.

On the Background button, right click and paste instance of the Environment/Background Camera Map. For the Environment/Reflections button apply the Environment Probe/Chrome Ball shader. Where it says Chrome/Mirror, you will need to place an image of a chrome ball of the scene…so of course I had to render a ball with a chrome shader in this scene. But this slot is where this image is placed, and is what determines the reflections in your character. I cranked up the multiplier to 5 to get a decent reflection.

Lastly we will create a Skylight in our scene. In the create tab, go to lights->Standard->Skylight. Place it anywhere. In the modifier settings choose Use Scene Environment.

Other things to note: The lights for your character should closely match the lights in your background. So for this particular scene I created a rectangular directional light to match the light from the windows, so when the teapot was in sunlight it cast shadows to match the background. You can change the exposure of your scene too to get the most accurate match. I would suggest to turn off GI, but keep FG on for your characters. In your Matte/Shadow/Reflection material, be sure that Receive Shadows, AO, and Receive Reflections are all checked to get the best results.

Whew! That’s it. This should get you a basic set-up for your dynamic animation to render. Unfortunately refractions aren’t supported, and doing scenes with glass can be tricky. But now you can render dynamic animations super fast.

Here’s the scene file to make sense of what I’m talking about: dynamicAnimations.zip

Happy testing!

" Bipede Jump " Tutorial Part 2

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Aralık 16, 2008

Animation | Biped | Techniques | Tutorial | Video içinde
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The second part of the greate tutorial from Lukasz Kubinski show us how to animate biped jump you’ll enjoy with this tutorial .

Biped jump animation videotutorial part 2 from Lukasz Kubinski on Vimeo

Part 1

The author of this video is Luke KUBIŃSKI, www.dashdot.pl

" Bipede Jump " Tutorial Part 1

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Aralık 7, 2008

Animation | Biped | Techniques | Tutorial | Video içinde
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I’ ve found this video on http://www.vimeo.com from Lukasz Kubinski he show us how to
animate ” Bipede Jump ” .created a nearly 2-hour video tutorial consisting of three parts.
In this video he use the polish language however you can understand it.

The first part shows the basic animation of biped running.

ANIMATION TUTORIAL PART1 from Lukasz Kubinski on Vimeo.

Part 2

The author of this video is Luke KUBIŃSKI, www.dashdot.pl

Why does my animation flicker?

Posted by: 3dsinifi on: Nisan 2, 2008

Animation | final gather | global illumination | lighting | mental ray | rendering içinde
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It seems like alot of folks on the forums are asking this question. Often when using low GI and Final Gather settings, an animation will flicker because the solution is not refined enough. To have a smooth animation you have to crank up your settings high enough to have similar results for each frame. Problem is you will have extremely long render times. This is my attempt at explaining how to create smooth animations with low indirect illumination settings in Max 2008.

common problem with low GI and Final Gather settings

Here’s a quick step-by-step, but if you read further I have exhausted each of these steps in detail.

•Turn on Photon Map, use Read/Write File, then render
•Turn on Final Gather, use Read/Write File
•Lower samples to 1/64 – 1/64
•Render active time segment at every 10 frames
•Turn on final gather Read Only (FG Freeze)
•Increase samples to 1 – 16
•Turn on Save File for Render Output
•Render active time segment at every 1 frame

First we calculate the photon map (PM). When calculating the PM it’s a good practice to have final gather (FG) off to see the pure PM results. To save your PM click on the […] button, and if you are rendering on a renderfarm, be sure to save your PM in a location that the farm has access to (your network). Also be sure “Read/Write File” is checked.

Now go ahead and render a single frame. Mental ray will calculate the PM first, save it to the location you specified, then renders your scene. Very important to note: now the second time you render, mental ray will not re-calculate the PM, but rather read the already calculated PM from the file location you specified because you have “Read/Write File” checked. The PM is scene based rather than view/camera based. This means that when the PM is calculated it is calculating the entire scene (much like radiosity). The great thing about the PM, is that once it is calculated, a rendering can be done from any view using that same PM…wonderful for animations!

Now that we have our PM calculated, we’re now going to move onto FG. Unlike the PM, FG is view/camera based. This means that when a FG map is calculated the information in the map is only of that viewing angle. So if you wanted to see both sides of an object, you would need at least 2 FG maps. This is very bad news for animations. Because every frame in an animation is different, you would need a new FG map for that frame. But we have a work around for this that I will get to.

For now:
•under FG check “Enable Final Gather”
•for the Preset choose Draft
•under Final Gather Map click on the […] button, and choose a location to save the FG map.

Be sure “Read/Write File” is checked and “Read Only” is not checked.

Now to get back to our problem of needing different FG maps for every frame. Instead of creating a FG map for every frame, I create a FG map for a range of frames. For example, if my animation is 100 frames long, I will render every 10 frames creating a FG map for only those 10 frames. Then with that combined FG map, will go back and render every frame. Here’s how to do this:

Make sure FG Map is checked on. Then in the Renderer tab, lower your samples to 1/64 – 1/64. We are doing this, because we are not concerned with the actual rendering, but just the calculation of the FG map. In the Common tab, change your Time Output to Active Time Segment, and under Every Nth Frame change it to 10.

Now click Render. You will get a warning that pops up telling you that you are rendering a sequence without saving the images to a location. That’s ok, because we are just interested in FG at this point. So click Yes. Now the animation will render every 10th frame. Because we have “Read/Write File” checked and do not have “Read Only” checked, every time FG for a frame is calculated it is added to the previous FG map. After all 10 frames render, you now have a single FG map for your animation sequence.

Now go back to Indirect Illumination tab, and under Final Gather Map check “Read Only”. Now when you render, it will not add to your already created FG map, but just read the one that it’s locating to. Also increase your samples back up to something reasonable (1-16), and change your “Every Nth Frame” back to 1. Also be sure to set your Render Output to save to a file location.

That’s it. Click render and enjoy!

Animation using PM and FG from file

Now it will start the rendering right away without calculating any indirect illumination. Even though the solution for PM and FG are low, it’s not that noticeable. The noise will be even less noticeable when texture are added. Note: this technique doesn’t work well for secondary animation (animation with moving objects or characters).