wow in my opinion the second short movie you made looks totaly awesome … really … now my question is how did you inserted/imported the model/animation into the movie!?
i think yoda is shorter than that. BTW great modeling and compositing!
I agree walk cycle needs some improvement. Specially I think when left arm move forward, right leg move forward, not both left limbs moving paralelly. I do like the stomping effect on his left arm when the staff touches the ground.
Well I’ve never seen the “real” Yoda walking (or even a complete Star Wars movie … lightning strike me dead LOL), so I have nothing to compare your walk against. So that being the case I think the walk looks pretty good.
The one thing I noticed was that the left leg seemed a bit stiff. LOL, is that why he has a cane? I.e. his left leg is supposed to have a defect ?
The compositing looks great ! Did you do it in Blender/(nodes) ? … or an external program?
It would be neat to see the walk last a little longer without the camera pan.
Did you shoot the live footage?
WOW!, That’s some “by the way” ! :eek: :eek: Thanks very much for making it available !
I’m always looking for characters to animate, the “only” thing missing, and I realize it’s not trivial, is facial shapes. I’m kind of surprised there isn’t at least a jaw bone, I’ll try adding one.
Also I notice the eyes only show up when ray tracing is on. Is there a way to adjust the material so they’ll show up without ray tracing ? (I know next to nothing about the materials / texture side of Blender).
Mike
P.S.
I just stumbled onto this thread while looking for animations (**NOTE TO MODERATORS - Why or why can’t we divide the art sections into animated / still sections ???)
It’s called “compositing”.
You can do it with the Nodes editor in Blender 2.42. (CVS version)
You can get a windows version of CVS (2.42) here
There is more info on compositing in this thread
Mike
Well done. Keep pushing the envelope!
One crit, the clothing seems too animated for the character action. He’s barely moving but his clothing is waving about quite a bit. Watch it in slow motion for a better idea of what I mean. (Maybe there’s a strong breeze?)
Also, with regards to the walk-cycle, I think what’s letting it down is stiff ankles and toes. If you can add a bit of flex there so the heel lifts and the foot bends before the toes lift - then heel down before toes, I think the walk would improve 100% (regardless of how he might move in old SW movies).
Edit: Sorry, one other small thing. He doesn’t have a reflection in the floor. At this resolution/compression it isn’t a big issue but if you render at a higher resolution it will make a difference.
The place where Yoda touches the ground is not exactly what it should be… more like if the feet are to bright or something compared to the ground…
Also maybe try to add reflection, because the floor is reflective…
I can’t pick it out, but something about the walkcycle looks wrong to me. The compositing looks awesome. I think you should animate him in a LS battle, even if his opponent is only a stick figure. Only then, a Jedi will you be.
[Edit]
:eek::eek::eek: I’m speechless.
Forgive my ignorance on rigged characters, but my Yoda seems to have no bones/armatures. Is there something I have to do to use him, or is something missing? And I totally agree on his needing facial expression controls.
lol i love the 2nd animatoin:D
one thing i noticed is that his hair move unrealitsicaly in the second clip.
clothes don very nice and walkcycle needs work…
btw how did u get yoda in that vid? 
The armature is on layer 6
Mike
Ok, thanks. Now I have another problem - The entire skeleton moves with Yoda. I can’t move individual bones like with the Ludwig model. Sorry if this is stupid, I haven’t worked with rigged characters before.
wow!!! ur walk cycle might not be exactly like yodas but its still a good walk cycle, wen i was waching this i got kinda scared cus i saw yoda walking out of a movie theater, lol. wen u get it to be exact, post it on ebaums world so u can freak some people out
Some people may criticize you, but I for one think that it is amazing, It feels like Yoda is really there. Nice work, Keep it up.
To move the bones individually, the Armature has to be in Pose Mode. (Ctrl-Tab) or select it from the window-mode menu.
You might also want to turn on XRay mode for the Armature in the edit buttons (lets you see the bones through the mesh)
Mike
also, something that i found about yoda( i was watchin starwars episode 3) i found out that yoda walks with his head tilted down a bit wen he leans on his stick and his eyes arnt wide open, there kinda closed like squinted. he looks like a blind yoda right now:D
It’s not “criticising” it’s critiquing, which is what this forum is for. Rest assured, the crits are being put forward because it is very good work. Sometimes when you’ve spent hours, days, weeks, months… on something, you can miss the little things that could make a big difference and that’s when you post your work here for others to look at through fresh eyes. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with any comments though 
I’m half-expecting that rubbish bin to come to life. It looks like R2D2’s long-lost cousin.
I dream of the day that I can spend all my time doing nothing but 3d modelling :rolleyes:, but until then, I just have to keep apologizing for not getting back to you as soon as I should. Thank you ALL for your comments and critiques. I really really appreciate them. There will ALWAYS be something that people feel need to be better, (heck, I can tell you some things I think ILM should have done better) and comments and critiques only make your renders better. This next month, I am going to composite him into a longer scene (with the same coffee shop setting, but with an actual purpose, or plot behind it.)
Anyway, a few comments.
I will be working on getting some random facial and head movements in while he’s walking. I hope this will help a little with his “mechanicalness”.
I will work to improve his feet. One thing I found that could be part of why he doesn’t look like he’s touching the floor. HE WASN’T! I don’t know how I missed this, but he was actually walking about an inch off the floor! Silly me! This made the shadows not as dark near the feet as they should have been.
I will see if I can do something with the cloth, but it is really Really REALLY frustrating trying to get the perfect settings. Anyway.
If anyone wants a quick introduction to compositing here is a pretty good (although older) tutorial.
http://blenderwars.com/tut.php?module=blendcg
If anyone can help with the following areas, these are my biggest hurdles at this point.
-
Animated hair. How? I’m using static particle hair strands, and I’ve never figured out what the “animated” button does in static particles section, but it sure doesn’t seem to give hair any bounce or movement. Does all hair movement need to be done manually through curve guides, or is there perhaps another way?
-
Is there a wayto do a “reflections only” material kind of like a shadow only material? I tried a few different things, but most of the time it ended up making the entire floor reflective, reflecting the environment and world where it shouldn’t and just genereally making reflections where there shouldn’t be any. I’m working a little with the new compositing nodes to try to figure something out.
-
I was a little dissappointed that the cloth modifier didn’t make it into 2.42. I really can’t seem to get results better than this with soft bodies. More of a little rant than a problem you can help me with (unless perhaps you know the super secret settings for cloth with softbodies.)
Anyways, thanks for the replies, and hopefully you’ll see some results in a couple weeks.