Blending with Dinosaurs - Environment test UPDATED 2

http://www.enricovalenza.com/BlendwDino/alloenv.jpg

A first test for the environment:

http://www.enricovalenza.com/BlendwDino/alloenv.mpg (3.090 kb)

The trees are still on one single plane, they need to be dislocated for different distances; still lack little plants (ferns) in the closer foreground and the distant background is still in wip.
I’ll try to add the dust with particles and pterodactylus flying in the sky.
C&S welcome. :slight_smile:

EnV

Stunning!

I have to say the lack of the dislocation of the trees slipped my notice! The whole effect is very good.

My only complaint would be that the whole think has a very ‘processed’ look that doesn’t convey the “nature documentary” feel. Maybe if you used a little bit less yellow and a bit more blue light. Hmmm… I think it is the yellowed light combined with the diffuse shadows…

One more thing. The allosaur seems to have much sharper shadows than his surroundings.
Good start.

Alex

I hope you don’t mind my critics, I’m interested in your proyect and I want to help

Your models and texturing are great but your animation is simply not good, they seem like robots, first of all you shoud be very carefull whit the use of IK and NLA, for example look at the way the foot moves forward in the passing position, its totaly linear, no arcs at all, it travels horizontally to the ground.

Your up and down positions have no arcs too, the animal travels horizontally and moves verticaly in some points, very mechanic.

You have some delayed animation on the tail and thats good but it still looks too rigid

The head motion have a good sense of weight and that skin hanging from the neck looks awesome

In general you have to move tha masses like they weight a lot, walking is a sequence of interrupted falls so it have to get back in balance continuously, moving smoothly from side to side and forward.

I think part of the problem is current NLA system, It is helpfull for adding secondary animations but not to make the main animation, I’m sure 2.37 is going to change my opinion 8)

Please don’t get mad with me, I have read your tutorials, etc, and your modeling kick ass :o

I think it looks brilliant!

I suppose my only advice, which you probably know already, is when it comes to making an actual movie, setup your camera in such a way that it mimics the way wildlife programmes are shot. We never see a tiger or elephant up-close, as if the camera man is only a few yards away.

Try to simulate a feeling of voyeurism :stuck_out_tongue:

Beautiful job on the environment env but in my opinion the dino lacks some specularity and the result is a bit too flat

Keep it up

Is the environment CG? I thought it was a composition, like Discovery’s Walking with Dinosaurs :o :o :o

Gorgeous!

I can’t say anything else other than what has been said above.

BgDM

I agree with some of the movement comments. The dinosaur sort of looks as though it’s constipated. However, I think you have done an amazing job blending the dinosaur in with the real environment and the movements really just need tweaking. I don’t agree that the shadows are wrong, I think they look well suited to the environment. This is excellent work as usual env. Now make the bit where he picks up a human and bites him in half ;).

very nice.

Thanks all for answering. :slight_smile:
alicopey158: what you say sound interesting, but due to my bad english understanding I can’t realize perfectly what you mean with"a very ‘processed’ look that doesn’t convey the “nature documentary” feel". Could you explain me better, please?
You are absolutely right about the light color, too yellowish; fixed. :slight_smile: About the shadows, I tried to blur them but I couldn’t succed unless to have a big increase in the rendering times so , for the moment, I’ll leave them as they are.
ZanQdo: your critics are welcome. I realized that a lot of mechanization in the feet movement was due to LOCconstrains IPO to be fixed, now it should be better (in the next update to came); about the rest it’s the same animation I posted in earlier thread, noboby pointed me out about this, then. Honestly I don’t know, if you wish check the next update to tell me if it look better or no, please. :slight_smile:
The environment is a matte painting mapped on spheres and planes, I couldn’t effort a live footage for composition. :smiley:
magicbullet: yes, I’ll use a more “documentary” look.
Serialsiner: true, added more spec on the dino. Thanks.
osxrules: no human, sorry, only dinos. :smiley:

EnV

Updated. Still not perfect, but better. The link is always the first post one.

EnV

It’s great

Try to add some heavines with simple trick - shaking of the camera.

Fantastic job! Very inspiring. Love the pterodactylus in the background.

Drew

Speachless…

Well, almost.

That is amazing! I watched it like 15 times and im still just as amazed as the first time. Very Nice

looks great, although it looks like it hs just a bit to much up/down motion in its step, maybe thats just me.

I think it still looks a bit too bright yellow. It’s lost a lot of the wonderful texture detail it had in earlier renders.

Other than that, it is of course fantastic work.

Hey, thanks all. :slight_smile:
In the end I found I got a problem with animation; I think it’s NLA, because the same walkcycle applied the old way (no NLA) is smoothed (see earlier threads), while through NLA it changes in a bad way (most visible in the legs movements).
About the light, I’ll try to get back the textures details, but in this case my priority was to match the environment light.

EnV

:o whaou very nice

Great compositing and very nice animation! I am particularly impressed by the realistic dust around its feet.

Updated the animation again. This time the allosaurus movement should be improved, I totally remade the walkcycle with a more “natural” one.

http://www.enricovalenza.com/BlendwDino/alloenv.mpg

I consider this one the last test version, I’m going to try a more complex one (real camera mapping on modelled 3d objects, more than one dino and moving tree branches in the wind).

Thanks all for critics and suggestion, really useful, especially about the animation.

EnV