@fuzatron: You have some funny character for your short :). I will watch your progress.
Being 2 days away from driving to croatia I did not want to further work on the animatics. I did have some time though so I decided to start with some Ara sketches as long as I have a tablet available
Sketching a dragon or landscapes is somehow easier I had to recognize. I know exactly what traits Ara should have or signal through her appearance but to bring this to paper is very hard for me - i just lack the knowledge and experience.
So I struggle along and try and erase and draw and erase …
Anyway I am slowly arriving at something which starts to resemble the Ara I have in my mind.
So before leaving I post some more updates here
See attached the basic face sketch and some shading tests and ( because it was fun to do ) a hair test.
Hey cool, we get to see what Ara looks like. She looks great, her face might be the most challenging but it’s also the most rewarding (i think so anyways). Your preview looks ‘right on’, nice camera work and the rotation around Ara where you can see the sheer canyon walls is pretty dramatic. Have a great vacation.
Well, I am back from my vacation (for some time now actually) and slowly have my real life sorted to find some time again to continue on Ara’s Tale.
I decided to start modeling the dragon. Modeling is my weakest area (so far that is, lets see how animation turns out ) so this is quite some tedious work for me. I tried several approaches on how to best tackle the dragon head. The head won’t deform very much, so it will hopefully be quite forgiving to bad topology.
Not much to show but I will put it here nonetheless. Currently I am modeling the basic mesh without subsurf modifier to have a good basic layout. Maybe you can give me already some pointers on obvious errors in my approach.
I revisited the excellent thread by toontje about topology and recognized, that my modeling skills need a better foundation. Having loops going the way I wish them to go is not so easy, at least for me, and needs some practice, which i am currently doing with the dragon’s head, so no progress images on the head this time.
In the meantime ( to clear my mind :)) I did a nice mountain hiking tour to a location, which happens to have excellent references and inspiration for the canyon/cliffs I am going to use in my environment.
So I took the opportunity and shot quite a lot of photos for reference and later for the use in the texturing work.
you should check out the bigger brother of that thread, though personally am a bit cautious of both threads now that I have been reading up on shape keys in particular for facial animation I am a bit skeptical of what is said in both. the are helpful in getting you to think about poles and how the affect face loop flow on you mesh.
Nice mountains you definately have some good references there
What exactly makes you skeptical. Had you any problems setting up shape keys after following the tips given in these threads ?
Small update on the dragon. It progressing slowly but steady :). I want to have the basic shape and topology finished before I tweak the final shape and proportions.
I plan to use proportional edit and the sculpt tool ( without multires ) for that.
current status
8:45 Animatics
42:02 Concept Art
–12:00 Ara Design
–18:35 Color Tests
–11:27 Dragon Design
9:00 Modeling
–9:00 Dragon
2:46 Research
–1:16 2d-art
–1:30 animation
4:30 Script
21:25 Storyboard
The dragon face looks good although it is a bit smooth for my liking. I’m sure it will work itself out though in the long run when you add textures. Looks interesting!
Both threads are too focused on low level stuff that doesn’t really matter all that ‘unpole’, ‘xt’ ‘ct’ stuff is kinda of irrelevant in my opinion. The bottom up approach is a flawed way to do things. Going through the stop staring book I noticed a much different approach that starts not with loops or topology but with studying what you want to get from a face when you animate it so it looks realistic.
For the face you make a study of the landmarks that you get when you smile, frown, are surprised etc. Because many of those land marks are shared you can than structure a topology that should allow you to do all those things. I think the key thing to understand with poles is how the flow on you mesh is changed.
Where my skepticism grew when I saw how one face was recommend as a ‘very nice very clean xt topology’. Jason Ospeia in his book has a similar looking face and gives very good arguments as to way such a face would be bad from an animation point of view.
Excelent work so far. The animatic seems a little slow-paced, but I am sure it will be different in the final animation. I love the concept art and the model of the dragon is coming along nicely.
I place a lot more stock on concept and story boarding now that I’ve gone through the process of making an animated short. I’m glad to see you’re doing so much of it.
Interesting idea, recoring how much time you spend on things.
Keep it up!
@yellow: Thanks yellow. Yes, I wil be using an aspect ratio of 1.85:1.
@tyrant monkey, JayDez: Thanks, I will try to do my best
@Asano: You are right the pacing right now is too slow, especially the first shots, but as you said, this will of course be changed. The animatics gave me a good idea to see how the storyboard drawing catches the 3D realm and to do a quick layout for the environment.
The idea to track the time spent on this project is an old one, but I never actually did it for my projects so far. This short will be so much more work, that I really want to know how much time I spend my nightly hours in front of the computer :). I think its also very valuable to analyze these numbers after the short is finished and use it as a base for planning the next.
next update:
I started the dragons’s body, with emphasis on the wings. It took me several approaches to come up with a topology for the membranes. I am still not sure if the current one is feasible for animation.
I thought a lot about animating the wings and think I will have to do some preliminary tests before finalizing the topology and the rest position.
Has anyone here animated wings like this (with membranes) and can give me some pointers, what a good approach would be ? Right now I am playing with the idea of using soft body for the wings, which with the current rest position would not work very well.
Anyway here are some shots to show the current progress:
The past days I did some extensive rigging testing on how to actually rig the wings. I had the impression, that knowing how to rig the dragon will possibly have a major impact on how to build the mesh.
So the excursion the rigging was exhausting but in the end I think I have a good idea on how to tackle this. And I am keeping with my mesh ( so far ).
The next was to add the legs. I have never thought that legs can be such an enormous difficult task. There are now legs with feet but this will definitely need some more tweaking.
Anyway here a quick AAO render of the current progress.
Doing a short is definitely different to doing a still. Besides from being much more work, its the various aspects for animation influencing the modeling which kept me busy since the last update.
I also learned to better economize my energy. I tend to immerse myself completely into the project blending away hours far into the night. This is not advisable for a project like this, as the end point is too far away and I end up exhausted both emotionally and physically. This in turn affects motivation and I already had to experience my first low during this project.
Anyway, I think the dragon as a model is more or less finished. The storyboard guides me here as I know which parts of the dragon will be seen in high detail. The head will have some very near closeups and received the most attention.
I started with the rigging, but right now I only have added the deformation bones with some weight painting to see if the poses work as I want them to be. As it turns out, tweaking the deformation will be quite some task …
I also stumbled upon a problem with bone heat weighting. At first blender always told me ‘failed to find solution for one or more bones’. I checked all the naming and setup of the bones but could not find an error. For weight painting I had the subsurf modifier deactivated, as this slows down the process drastically. Only reactivating the subsurf modifier ( and only using level 2 ?) let me use the heat weighting feature. I just fail to see how the subsurf modifier should influence the heat weighting solution …
I want the dragons rig finished before starting to model Ara. And this includes creating a nice controller set and maybe even a fly-cycle for the dragon. To get nice deformations especially on the head area and on the wings I will most certainly use action constraints, maybe mixed with ipo driven shape keys, but here I have to gather more experience.
The sculpting, texturing, uv-unwrapping and materials will come after all the animation is done.
See below for some wires and some shots with the dragon posed. The poses are taken from actual shots from the storyboard. I wanted to see how they work out on the 3d model.
that dragon looks pretty amazing, I think you could tweak and change the topology around the area between the neck and flowing into the wings he has to flap those wings a fair bit so maybe some muscles in that area.
For Blender world cup, though I haven’t posted any pics of him yet, am working on a dragon that also has the wings but no forelimbs like yours. Some dragons that I have found with a similar design and have helped me out are the Hungarian Horntail from the Harry Potter movie, the Fell Beasts from the Lord of the Rings and Beouwulf’s son from the Beouwulf movie. You can get an idea of how they handled that neck/wing area I was speaking about.
@meemio: thanks for the tip. I will give it a try the next time.
@tyrant monkey: You are quite right. Modeling is my weak spot and modeling believable anatomy is even worse :). But I did a quick test and I think I will go for more muscles around the shoulders and upper arms.
And here I have my dilemma. In order to do the weight painting with bone heats I have to apply the mirror modifier. That leaves me now with doing the muscles twice.
Thanks for the mentioned references. I have never seen beowulf, but I have the dvds for hp IV and lotr. I had a look at the scene in the end of lotr ttt where the nazgul floats in front of frodo. You are right, the muscles visible there pronounce the immense strength the fell beast radiates.
It will also be a good reference for doing a fly cycle. In my short the dragon will hover in a similar manner in front of Ara.
I have been watching your thread for a long time!
And I am realy realy realy
It will be a increadebil short I am shure.
I am able to feel the movement form the pictur… amasing
The Dragon is brilliant beautyand brutal in the same time it is realy brillant. But I think the Dragon head is a bit too big , I think it will tip over
) so this is quite some tedious work for me. I tried several approaches on how to best tackle the dragon head. The head won’t deform very much, so it will hopefully be quite forgiving to bad topology.
